A Manx student’s lockdown project has turned into a newly released book.

Jake Hanlon has just published his first book on the Drake equation.

The equation, which Jake has analysed, was formulated by American astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake in 1961 and uses different probabilities to predict how many extraterrestrial civilisations are in the galaxy.

There is no concrete answer to the equation, so the book discusses various theories.

The 22-year-old, who is currently doing a gap year and has been teaching children in the UK physics before taking on a masters degree in astrophysics, explained the book started as a project he began in lockdown.

He said: ’You’ve got to make the best of a bad situation.

’I probably wrote about the first quarter of it in lockdown as something to keep me sane and then I thought there’s no point stopping now, let’s finish it off and seven months later it was done.’

The Ramsey man had covered the equation briefly during his university degree but wanted to know more.

Jake said: ’It’s quite an abstract topic but it’s really interesting.

’There are a few parts of the equation, so it was a natural way to break a book down. I felt the chapters were already set out for me, so it was an easy framework to work from.

’If you’ve finished GCSE science I’d like to think you could follow it.’

His ambition to study astrophysics at university came from watching The Big Bang Theory.

The former Ramsey Grammar student said: ’From physicists being something you don’t really hear about to being on TV all the time, it made me wonder what they do.’

’I think that was a big step for me, it made it feel like a real thing rather than something so obscure.’

He explained he would like to write another book in the future.

’It’s not on my horizon anytime soon but I really enjoyed doing it. I think it’s because outside of an academic setting I could write what I want, when I liked and I’ve learnt stuff I didn’t know before.

’If you went back two years and said "Jake you’ll be teaching and you’ll publish your first book," I would’ve asked "what happened?" It’s just a crazy set of events.’

He hopes to go into academia following his masters and become a physics lecturer.

The book is called The Drake Equation: A Brief Description of the Stars, Planets and the Existence of Life and is available on Amazon.