Look to the stars

Just a typical Tuesday newsletter based on an article from The Astrophysical Journal, and the trip my wife and I took after our wedding. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

We interrupt this cycle of pandemic and protests to bring you something a little bit different.

On Monday, scientists from the University of Nottingham in England published an article in The Astrophysical Journal theorizing that we’re not alone, and there could be a minimum of 36 potential “active and communicating intelligent civilizations” in the Milky Way galaxy.

Astrophysicists Tom Westby and Christopher J. Conselice based the whole thing on mathematical supposition. As Conselice put it in an email to CNN:

“The key difference between our calculation and previous ones … is that we make very simple assumptions about how life developed. One of them is that life forms in a scientific way. … [I]f the right conditions are met, then life will form.

This avoids impossible to answer questions such as 'What fraction of planets in a habitable zone of a star will form life?' and 'What fraction of life will evolve into intelligent life?' as these are not answerable until we actually detect life,…