Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0701238

From: Rasmus Bj{\o}rk [view email]

Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 12:58:05 GMT (537kb)

Exploring the Galaxy using space probes

Authors: Rasmus Bjoerk

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted by International Journal of Astrobiology

This paper investigates the possible use of space probes to explore the Milky Way, as a means both of finding life elsewhere in the Galaxy and as finding an answer to the Fermi paradox. I simulate exploration of the Galaxy by first examining how long time it takes a given number of space probes to explore 40,000 stars in a box from -300 to 300 pc above the Galactic thin disk, as a function of Galactic radius. I then model the Galaxy to consist of ~260,000 of these 40,000 stellar systems all located in a defined Galactic Habitable Zone and show how long time it takes to explore this zone. The result is that with 8 probes, each with 8 subprobes ~4% of the Galaxy can be explored in 9.57*10^{9} years. Increasing the number of probes to 200, still with 8 subprobes each, reduces the exploration time to 4*10^{8} years.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0701238