{"id":74,"date":"2010-10-17T18:54:22","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T21:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/?p=74"},"modified":"2010-10-17T19:56:43","modified_gmt":"2010-10-17T22:56:43","slug":"las-respuestas-de-duncan-forgan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"Las respuestas \u00edntegras de Duncan Forgan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Duncan<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are the complete answers of Duncan Forgan, researcher of astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, to my article about the possibility of alien life.<\/p><\/div>\n

I told him:<\/div>\n
\u00abWe watched last Sunday in our country the Discovery Channel documentary with Stephen Hawking, and I saw your work mentioned in a BBC article called \u00abNumber of alien worlds quantified\u00bb (February, 2009).<\/div>\n
\u00abIt would be great for my article if you could answer a few questions.<\/p>\n

Question:
\n1. Which is the number of intelligent civilizations you deem most likely in our galaxy (and why): 1, 361, 31,513, 37,964, 1,000,000?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Forgan answer:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks for your mail. \u00a0Here are some answers for you, I hope they are useful!<\/p>\n

1. At the minute, all of those numbers are still possible. \u00a0Which number you come up with depends on which assumptions you make about life and its evolution into intelligent life. \u00a0I expect that the real number is closer to the tens of thousands.<\/p>\n

Question:
\n2. Do you think there is a possibility of contact with alien civilizations?<\/strong><\/p>\n

2. \u00a0Sadly no. \u00a0Even if there are tens of thousands of civilisations in the Galaxy, they are likely to be separated by vast distances. \u00a0The speed at which communications could travel is the speed of light. \u00a0The Galaxy is 100,000 light years across, which means signals would take 200,000 years to travel that distance and come back to us. \u00a0While aliens might be a little closer, my research indicates not much closer, maybe 1,000 light years away. \u00a0This means that if we send a signal now, we wouldn’t get a response until 4010.<\/p>\n

Also, civilisations have to exist at the same point in time to communicate. \u00a0The number tens of thousands<\/em> is throughout the history of the Galaxy (nearly ten billion years). \u00a0All these facts make the probability of communication very low indeed.<\/p>\n

Question:
\n3. Could there be life on Mars? Or, could life have existed on Mars?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>3. This is very difficult to say! There appears to be geological evidence of liquid water on Mars in the past, which would be very helpful for life. \u00a0It’s possible there may still be habitats for life under the surface in the permafrost. \u00a0If there ever was life on Mars, then it’s \u00a0unlikely to be more sophisticated than simple, hardy bacteria that can survive in conditions most lifeforms would think of as thoroughly unpleasant.<\/p>\n

Question:
\n4. The possibility of life in the universe is rare or frequent? What do you think? Are we average or the exception?<\/strong><\/p>\n

4. I suspect that simple bacterial life is probably very common. \u00a0I wouldn’t be surprised if we found it in our own Solar System (say on Jupiter’s moon Europa,<\/em> or Saturn’s moons Enceladus <\/em>or Titan).<\/em> As for intelligent life, I suspect that it may be moderately common, but in such a vast Galaxy, quite insignificant and probably impossible to communicate with. \u00a0Most of scientific theory since Copernicus begins with the premise that Earth and its occupants do not occupy a special place in the Universe. \u00a0I hope to live to see the day when that can be tested!<\/p>\n

Best Wishes,<\/p>\n

Duncan\u00a0Forgan<\/p>\n

Postgraduate PhD Student
\nInstitute for Astronomy
\nSchool of Physics and Astronomy
\nUniversity of Edinburgh
\nRoyal Observatory
\nBlackford Hill
\nEdinburgh<\/p>\n

Directory page: \u00a0http:\/\/www.roe.ac.uk\/ifa\/people\/dhf.html<\/a>
\nResearch page: \u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.roe.ac.uk\/~dhf<\/a><\/p>\n

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are the complete answers of Duncan Forgan, researcher of astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, to my article about the possibility of alien life. I told him: \u00abWe watched last Sunday in our country the Discovery Channel documentary with Stephen Hawking, and I saw your work mentioned in a BBC article called \u00abNumber of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,57,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrobiologia","category-astrofisica","category-astronomia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.superbuscador.cl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}