Post by MuseAphelion on Jun 11, 2004 13:03:41 GMT -6
All this discussion about travel to other planets, astonomy, and Star Trek got me to thinking about acutally finding life out there. Not just life, but intelligent life that can give us a hand with our technology and teach us to live long and prosper, you know stuff like that.
I thought back to my Astronomy class and remembered the Drake Equation that tried to mathmatically estimate the number of possible intelligent life forms in our galaxy. Here it is:
N = N * fn ne fl fi fc fL
I'd post the explanation for it, but that would make this post too long, besides the link also has a way for you to play with the data and come up with your own estimates. The absolute lowest end will give you around 1000, the highest 500 Billion.
www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html
But why this sudden urge to post the Drake Equation? Simple, Frank Drake was born in Chicago! Drake became a radio astronomer by accident when he wanted to take a graduate course in optical astronomy but the only one available was radio astronomy. Drake went on to organize the first SETI conference and first present his equation. He was also the director of the Arecibo Observatory for three years.
Just think, if he had taken that other course would he have come up with the ideas he had? It's these little accidents like these that keep life interesting.
By the way, he's still around and is the senior scientist for the SETI institue. If you want to e-mail him, I found that too
www.ucolick.org/~board/faculty/drake.html
I thought back to my Astronomy class and remembered the Drake Equation that tried to mathmatically estimate the number of possible intelligent life forms in our galaxy. Here it is:
N = N * fn ne fl fi fc fL
I'd post the explanation for it, but that would make this post too long, besides the link also has a way for you to play with the data and come up with your own estimates. The absolute lowest end will give you around 1000, the highest 500 Billion.
www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html
But why this sudden urge to post the Drake Equation? Simple, Frank Drake was born in Chicago! Drake became a radio astronomer by accident when he wanted to take a graduate course in optical astronomy but the only one available was radio astronomy. Drake went on to organize the first SETI conference and first present his equation. He was also the director of the Arecibo Observatory for three years.
Just think, if he had taken that other course would he have come up with the ideas he had? It's these little accidents like these that keep life interesting.
By the way, he's still around and is the senior scientist for the SETI institue. If you want to e-mail him, I found that too
www.ucolick.org/~board/faculty/drake.html
