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How the Drake Equation is used to hunt aliens

The Drake Equation is a seven-variable way of finding the chance of active civilizations existing beyond Earth.

It takes into account factors like the rate of star formation, the amount of stars that could form planetary systems, the number potentially habitable planets in those systems.

The equation includes recent data from Nasa's Kepler satellite on the number of exoplanets that could harbor life.

Researchers also adapted the equation from being about the number of civilizations that exist now, to being about the probability of civilization being the only one that has ever existed.

Researchers found the odds of an advanced civilization developing need to be less than one in 10 billion trillion for humans to be the only intelligent life in the universe.

Unless the odds of advanced life evolving on a habitable planet are astonishingly low, then humankind is not the only advanced civilization to have lived. 

But Kepler data places those odds much higher, which means technologically advanced aliens are likely to have existed at some point.

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