The number of known alien planets has just gone up by more than 60 percent.
NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered 1,284 new exoplanets, including nine rocky worlds that might be capable of supporting life as we know it, astronomers announced today (May 10). This is by far the largest haul of alien planets ever unveiled at one time.
Uh, that last line... Pessimistic Value must be at least 1. Unless you are so pessimistic as to not count us as civilized.
The pessimistic values for 'Fraction of earth-like planets that evolve life' and 'Length of time a civilization communicates' are crazy low, too. We can assume that if a planet is earth-like, it is HIGHLY likely that it will evolve some kind of life, even if it's just some single celled organisms or something.
And we ourselves have been communicating with radio signals for over 100 years already -- I'm sure that we will continue to communicate via that and other sources for as long as we exist.
The pessimistic values for 'Fraction of earth-like planets that evolve life' and 'Length of time a civilization communicates' are crazy low, too. We can assume that if a planet is earth-like, it is HIGHLY likely that it will evolve some kind of life, even if it's just some single celled organisms or something.
And we ourselves have been communicating with radio signals for over 100 years already -- I'm sure that we will continue to communicate via that and other sources for as long as we exist.
Why is it highly likely? And what is "earth-like"
Smarter people than me are optimistic, but there's so many things that make earth unique beyond temperature and water composition (magnetic property, earth core tectonic plates, moon-tidal system, etc) I'm not sure you can just "math" an estimate
The pessimistic values for 'Fraction of earth-like planets that evolve life' and 'Length of time a civilization communicates' are crazy low, too. We can assume that if a planet is earth-like, it is HIGHLY likely that it will evolve some kind of life, even if it's just some single celled organisms or something.
Why would you assume this? As far as I know, nobody actually knows how "life" initially formed out of whatever chemical soup was on Earth billions of years ago. I would bias my thinking the other way, and say that maybe it's really, really unlikely for life to form in the first place, but if it does form on an Earth-like world then there's a good chance it'll eventually evolve some higher intelligence.
Location: In my office, at the Ministry of Awesome!
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Uh, that last line... Pessimistic Value must be at least 1. Unless you are so pessimistic as to not count us as civilized.
No, the pessimistic value for the universe must be 1. We know of exactly 1 civilization in the whole universe, so picking an arbitrary part of it (our galaxy), and saying that the chance of us being there is the same as us being in the universe is the same is wrong.
What you're suggesting is no different than saying the chance of a civilization around any star is 1 because we are around this star.
__________________
THE SHANTZ WILL RISE AGAIN. <-----Check the Badge bitches. You want some Awesome, you come to me!
The "length of time civilizations communicate" and stating that there are likely 140,000 civilizations right now, is really where the formula falls down IMO.
For one, we are not even sure we would recognize other forms of life. We know what Earth life is like, but we can't assume to know all the rules that would come into play in other environments. Never mind recognizing what their "civilization" or "communication" would look like.
Plus, it also assumes that the nature of time is the same everywhere or that civilzations have any longevity at all.
I think it was one of the first couple of episodes of the new Cosmos series where he points out that random chance played a big role on Earth. The above formula assumes patterns, which is really no different than looking in the sky and seeing constellations.
I am sure that there must be life out there, but I think it's a fools errand to try and quantify at this point.
__________________
"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
The point of Drake's Equation is to identify the lowest probability of extraterrestrial intelligent life. The point of posting it at various times is to see the alteration that news such as the definitive identification of exo-planets, especially those that fall within the habitable zone, have on the overall minimum probability. In the last couple of years, the discoveries have been significant.
I believe that the ability of a civilization to communicate is based on our own ability to communicate outside of our own atmosphere. The longer that we prove capable of this, the higher that number will rise. We have nothing but ourselves on which to base that number. The first public radio broadcast was on Christmas Eve, 1906, so that number should actually read 110 years.
Many of the other numbers are educated guesses, but most have reasonable thought behind them.
The optimistic view is simply there to put a limit on the experiment, to provide context.
__________________
"By Grabthar's hammer ... what a savings."
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Harry Lime For This Useful Post:
Location: In my office, at the Ministry of Awesome!
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Lime
The point of Drake's Equation is to identify the lowest probability of extraterrestrial intelligent life. The point of posting it at various times is to see the alteration that news such as the definitive identification of exo-planets, especially those that fall within the habitable zone, have on the overall minimum probability. In the last couple of years, the discoveries have been significant.
I believe that the ability of a civilization to communicate is based on our own ability to communicate outside of our own atmosphere. The longer that we prove capable of this, the higher that number will rise. We have nothing but ourselves on which to base that number. The first public radio broadcast was on Christmas Eve, 1906, so that number should actually read 110 years.
Many of the other numbers are educated guesses, but most have reasonable thought behind them.
The optimistic view is simply there to put a limit on the experiment, to provide context.
That's a bit of a tricky thing to nail down actually. Just because we've been transmitting radio for the last 110 years doesn't mean anyone can actually pick those transmissions up. Space is pretty big, and those signals aren't that strong.
That's a pretty awesome video on this topic (the whole Space Time series is pretty cool to watch)
__________________
THE SHANTZ WILL RISE AGAIN. <-----Check the Badge bitches. You want some Awesome, you come to me!
No, the pessimistic value for the universe must be 1. We know of exactly 1 civilization in the whole universe, so picking an arbitrary part of it (our galaxy), and saying that the chance of us being there is the same as us being in the universe is the same is wrong.
What you're suggesting is no different than saying the chance of a civilization around any star is 1 because we are around this star.
Except the last line says "in the Milky Way", not some arbitrary part of the Universe. If they said "total number in some random galaxy in the Universe, I'd agree with you.
Smarter people than me are optimistic, but there's so many things that make earth unique beyond temperature and water composition (magnetic property, earth core tectonic plates, moon-tidal system, etc) I'm not sure you can just "math" an estimate
I would assume 'earth-like' means a moderate temperature that sustains mass amounts of free-flowing water, rocky land elements, and a oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Any planet with all of that, it must almost be a certainty to contain some kind of life.
The other things you list, I figure that would lead in to the "evolving into intelligent life" category, and would be a much smaller figure.
Location: In my office, at the Ministry of Awesome!
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Except the last line says "in the Milky Way", not some arbitrary part of the Universe.
Yeah it does but that's a misleading title.
What that line should say is "In a galaxy the size of the Milky way".
The fact that we are here doesn't change the fact that if the assumptions on the low end are correct then there would/should only be 1 civilization for every ~71 galaxies the size of the Milky way.
We can't say that the lower limit on the probability of having a civilization in the Milky Way is 1 because we are here, we can only say that there is a non-zero chance that there is a civilization in the Milky Way.
We could be the only one in the nearest 71 galaxies, in which case the 0.014 would be about right, or we could be one of 140,000 in the Milky Way, but the fact that we are here doesn't tell us much about which answer is more likely.
If you add up all of those probabilities it certainly will say that on the low end the chance of there being life around our star is quite low, but we are here, so by your logic, the low end of probability that life formed around our star is 100%.
__________________
THE SHANTZ WILL RISE AGAIN. <-----Check the Badge bitches. You want some Awesome, you come to me!
It's no more pedantic than correcting it by saying "well the actual minimum is 1", which though equally pedantic, is much less correct.
I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. Go look at the image. Look at my comment. My comment is correct with reference to the image. If you want to talk about other interpretations, that's fine, but don't tell me I'm wrong when I am not.
Location: In my office, at the Ministry of Awesome!
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. Go look at the image. Look at my comment. My comment is correct with reference to the image. If you want to talk about other interpretations, that's fine, but don't tell me I'm wrong when I am not.
Okay, I'll tell you you don't understand probability instead.
__________________
THE SHANTZ WILL RISE AGAIN. <-----Check the Badge bitches. You want some Awesome, you come to me!
NASA Finds 1,284 Alien Planets, Biggest Haul Yet, with Kepler Space Telescope
<-----Check the Badge bitches. You want some Awesome, you come to me!
