Astronomy without a telescope: The unlikeliness of being
Monday, August 1, 2011 - 13:00
in Astronomy & Space
History has proved time and again that mathematical modelling is no substitute for a telescope (or other data collection device). Nonetheless, some theoreticians have recently put forward a statistical analysis which suggests that life is probably very rare in the universe despite the apparent prevalence of habitable-zone exoplanets, being found by the Kepler mission and other exoplanet search techniques.