How Rare is *Intelligent* Life in the Galaxy?
The Current State of the Drake Equation and the Chances for Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
Elon Musk’s SpaceX just sent a Tesla Roadster into space in February. It will travel almost 250 million miles into space before shifting into an orbit around the Sun. And yet such an extreme distance is nothing compared to the cosmos as a whole.
The scales of time and distance when it comes to astronomy boggle the mind.
Our nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.243 light-years away. If you send a laser beam of light or radio or TV signals toward that star, the fastest-moving things physics allows — at 186,000 miles per second — , it will take over 4 years to reach the destination, and, potentially, to be detectable by any alien life that might live there.
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