TED and Drake...

The Drake Equation

Topics: Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Drake Equation, SETI, TED

Note: today is my birthday. This blog auto posts, and I'm not doing anything special, as I'll be at work through Sunday. I haven't celebrated my birthday since the age of seven (or, as my mother said: "this kid is weird!"). Enjoy your weekend as well.

The Drake equation quantifies the probabilistic argument that gives the approximate number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy or the whole Universe. At its original form Drake equation has 7 factors, including the average star formation rate, the fraction of stars that have planets, the number of planets per star and others. Even though the equation seems extremely simple at the first glance, coming up with sensible values for the factors is much harder than one might think.

In this recent TEDx video Fred Crawford, who has been teaching physics for over 30 years, discusses the main factors of Drake’s equation and describes how we arrive to sensible values of each of them. For more similar videos use the links below.

The Mother of Invention...

(CNN) -- Richard Turere, 13, doesn't like lions. In fact, he hates them. Yet this bright Maasai boy has devised an innovative solution that's helping the survival of these magnificent beasts -- by keeping them away from humans.

Living on the edge of Nairobi National Park, in Kenya, Turere first became responsible for herding and safeguarding his family's cattle when he was just nine. But often, his valuable livestock would be raided by the lions roaming the park's sweet savannah grasses, leaving him to count the losses.

So, at the age of 11, Turere decided it was time to find a way of protecting his family's cows, goats and sheep from falling prey to hungry lions.

"One day, when I was walking around," he says, "I discovered that the lions were scared of the moving light."

He fitted a series of flashing LED bulbs onto poles around the livestock enclosure, facing outward. The lights were wired to a box with switches and to an old car battery powered by a solar panel. They were designed to flicker on and off intermittently, thus tricking the lions into believing that someone was moving around carrying a flashlight.

And it worked. Since Turere rigged up his "Lion Lights," his family has not lost any livestock to the wild beasts, to the great delight of his father and astonishment of his neighbors.

What's even more impressive is that Turere devised and installed the whole system by himself, without ever receiving any training in electronics or engineering.

The 13-year-old's remarkable ingenuity has been recognized with an invitation to the TED 2013 conference, being held this week in California, where he'll share the stage with some of the world's greatest thinkers, innovators and scientists.

CNN Inside Africa: Boy scares off lions with flashy invention

Fusion and the Future...

30,000,000 years of Tritium!