Exploring the Galaxy Using Space Probes

astro-ph/0701238
Title: 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.

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