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wolram
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Why do people believe that life on other planets exist along side our own at the right time for us to find?
Why should they NOT believe it?wolram said:Why do people believe that life on other planets exist along side our own at the right time for us to find?
There's no real reason either way, we don't have the information make an informed guess.phinds said:Why should they NOT believe it?
Yes, *I* understand that. I was addressing the OP's question and trying to get HIM to think about that.Noisy Rhysling said:There's no real reason either way, we don't have the information make an informed guess.
Didn't say you were doing anything else.phinds said:Yes, *I* understand that. I was addressing the OP's question and trying to get HIM to think about that.
Noisy Rhysling said:Didn't say you were doing anything else.
rootone said:It's not really a predication, just a formula into which various parameters can be put.
Most of those parameters remain highly uncertain at the present time.
First we'd have to know if it was a valid conjecture. And then we'd have to have the numbers to plug into it. But Drake doesn't, IIRC, account for distance from Earth. If they're 10 billion light years away we may not hear from them.twiz_ said:Isn't Drake's initial prediction for extraterrestrial life in our galaxy, let alone modern predictions, enough to assume that life does exist somewhere in our galaxy other than earth?
Good point. And if aliens had visited Earth at almost any time during the period when we had life here they wouldn't have found intelligent life. (At least not until the dolphins evolved.)rootone said:Exactly. We really do need to discover another instance of life apart from that on Earth before any estimations are meaningful.
Even if it's only primitive slime mould or something similar.
Finding other life wouldn't fully help us with the Drake equation, it'd still leave one major variable that would have no information. What would be more interesting is finding the ruins of a dead civilization.rootone said:Exactly. We really do need to discover another instance of life apart from that on Earth before any estimations are meaningful.
Even if it's only primitive slime mould or something similar.
phinds said:Yes, *I* understand that. I was addressing the OP's question and trying to get HIM to think about that.
Drake's Equation is a mathematical formula created by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 to estimate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.
Drake's Equation takes into account factors such as the rate of star formation in our galaxy, the fraction of stars that have planets, the number of planets that could potentially support life, and the likelihood of life developing on those planets.
Drake's Equation is not considered to be a definitive answer on the existence of other life forms, but rather a way to estimate the probability of their existence based on our current scientific knowledge.
Yes, scientists have used Drake's Equation to guide their search for extraterrestrial life by focusing on planets and star systems that meet the criteria outlined in the equation.
One of the main limitations of Drake's Equation is that it relies on many unknown factors and assumptions, such as the frequency of intelligent life and the likelihood of communication between civilizations. Additionally, the equation only focuses on life forms that are similar to humans, and may not account for other forms of life that we are not yet aware of.