James Gearheart

How Far Are We from Alien Civilizations? (Part 4 of the Drake Equation Series) James Gearheart · Follow Published in Towards Data Science · 16 min read · Sep 8, 2024 — Recap: In our journey so far, we’ve walked through the Drake Equation to estimate how many civilizations might be “out there” in our galaxy. We’ve covered the stars, the planets that could support life, and how many might develop intelligent civilizations. In Part

Estimating Alien Civilizations (Part 3 of the Drake Equation Series) James Gearheart · Follow Published in Towards Data Science · 13 min read · Sep 8, 2024 — Welcome back! In Part 1, we began by estimating how many stars in our galaxy could have planets. In Part 2, we narrowed it down further to estimate how many planets could support life and how many of those might evolve intelligent civilizations. Now, in Part 3,

A Data-Driven Journey (Part 2 of the Drake Equation Series) James Gearheart · Follow Published in Towards Data Science · 11 min read · Sep 7, 2024 — In Part 1, we explored how many stars in our galaxy might have planets, and we used data to estimate the total number of stars with planets in the Milky Way. Now that we’ve tackled the stars, let’s take a closer look at the planets themselves. In

The Real Odds of Encountering Alien Life (Part 5 of the Drake Equation Series) James Gearheart · Follow Published in Towards Data Science · 11 min read · Sep 8, 2024 — Recap:Throughout this series, we’ve explored the factors that could lead to the existence of alien civilizations, starting from the number of habitable planets to the probability that intelligent civilizations have developed communication technology. In this final article, we approach the ultimate question: Have

A Data-Driven Look at Alien Civilizations (Part 1 of the Drake Equation Series) James Gearheart · Follow Published in Towards Data Science · 8 min read · Sep 7, 2024 — What if I told you there might be over 2,000 alien civilizations currently in the Milky Way galaxy? Sounds like a plot twist from your favorite sci-fi show, right? But what if I said we could use data science to get closer to an