A research team from the University of Nottingham, UK, estimates that there may be 36 active communicating intelligent civilizations in our home Galaxy. The team, led by Christopher Conselice, developed their own approach, which uses simple assumptions for how life developed: basically, assuming that intelligent life formed in a similar way to Earth. “There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth,” he said in a statement. “The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”