There are about billions of stars in our galaxy. But how would you even begin to estimate the odds of life?

In the 1960’s Frank Drake came up with a way of breaking the process in to pieces. Start with the number of stars. Then estimate the fraction of stars with planets. Then the fraction of planets that are earth-like. And so on.

Try it yourself. Use our Drake Equation interactive below to make your own estimate, and compare it against the estimates of others.