This places Drake in the company of towering physicists with equations named after them, including James Clerk Maxwell and Erwin Schrödinger. Unlike those, Drake’s equation does not encapsulate a law ...

The Drake Equation estimates the number of communicating alien civilizations. It considers factors like star formation, planets around stars, and habitable planets. It also accounts for the likelihood ...

How many intelligent civilizations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on September 2 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to ...

When you look up in the night sky, you see … well, mostly nothing anymore. On a clear night, if you’re lucky enough to live in an area without much light pollution: the moon, a planet (probably Venus) ...

Astronomer Frank Drake formulated his influential equation in 1961 to estimate the number of civilizations in the Milky Way capable of communicating with us. Our understanding of planetary science has ...