An Add-On Idea For Drake Equation Like Inquiries

So, I have a general idea. I'll be working on the explicit math behind this formula soon.

The idea is this:
What's the size of our PHYSICAL cast net, for having had direct interaction for evidence of intelligence?

My idea is to take the gravity well size of our solar system, combined with the surface area for "landed/crashed" objects.
Then calculate, based on our solar system's movement speed through interstellar space, and the amount of time we've been moving with this general size of gravity well.

How much surface area of space, has our gravity well touched, where we could reasonably pull in interstellar objects, or even have them be directly caught by a stable surface in our solar system?

Let's say we simplify this idea to a bowling ball rolling through a warehouse floor.

The ball rolls one rotation per hour along the floor, and can pick up dust from the floor across a 1 inch wide band of our ball's circumference of 36 inches in length. One full rotation per hour would mean 36 inches of contact with the floor.

The ball has been rolling for 80 hours.

The ball has touched 36 inches * 80 = 2880 inches of contact where it could have picked up dust.

Without making any guess about how much dust is on that floor, that's a much larger contact area, than the ball itself.

Applied to our solar system's "astronomical" circumference, and speed of 515,000 miles per hour over 4+ billion years...

We have a lot of "warehouse floor" we have contacted, with "physical" contact, not just radio waves, light, etc...

We shot two big chunks of metal out of our solar system. (Voyagers) And have our own dust on the warehouse floor, now.
How many other "random bits" have been ejected out there over time?

a reply to: Archivalist

Gravity is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. It doesn't really have a cut off point. It just gets weaker, and weaker, and weaker.

So, you're going to have to work on that, too.

a reply to: Phage

That's why I used the phrasing "reasonable"

I'm sure I can find data on average speed and mass of interstellar objects.

I can do a version for that information, and then a version using our own Voyagers mass and speed.

I could reasonably determine at which points in our gravity well those objects would be "caught"

The "catch" part of the net, is much smaller than the total well size.

Although... We have been moving very fast, for a very long time.

Based on the conjectures of the original Drake equation, planets and objects that currently exist within our solar system could have formed with some of this stuff in them, even.

Maybe those 2 million year old screws we keep finding, have some merit after all?
((I'll be more convinced when we find something, obviously constructed, made of a long half-life metal.))

a reply to: Archivalist

Don't forget about the wake we leave as well.

originally posted by: wylekat
a reply to: Archivalist

Don't forget about the wake we leave as well.

I dont know much about the science of interstellar space.

But if our large solar mass is rocking through it, along with a wake behind us, is it possible that there is a deflationary action in front of us ... like a boat pushing away the water in front as it goes?

If so that would put a damper on the idea here. Any dust might be pushed away before it reaches us on the interior.

a reply to: Archivalist

When you start to consider the velocities involved I have a hunch you might find it unlikely that any interstellar object would be captured. Or, if not captured, but impact, that there would be much of anything left of them.

A line of inquiry you might follow to come up with some parameters would be to look for hypotheses about captured "rogue" planets. Some of your work may already have been done.

a reply to: DanDanDat

There is. It's called the heliosphere.

a reply to: DanDanDat
is it possible that there is a deflationary action in front of us ... like a boat pushing away the water in front as it goes?

I can't help but wonder- but gravity is a funny thing, also. While it's supposed to be constant, there's spots around earth that aren't (No, not talking about those spots where you sand sideways in a crooked house), like I think the Pacific Anomaly or something. There's probably more on planets, in the Oort cloud, etc...

Ya might want to just go simple, and start from there. I'm going to shut up and go stand in a corner now.

a reply to: Archivalist

So, I have a general idea. I'll be working on the explicit math behind this formula soon

Drake's EQUATION is not an equation . It was put forward as a "humorous" example of how the Laws of Probability could be used in the field of Astronomy by none other than Frank Drake himself . He chose the subject of his example from science fiction of the time...

There are some that have expanded on the example to try and quantify the example into a real equation though

For gosh sake , do some research first.

Instead of messing with Drakes eq. better read up on all the clues on humanity's past & present and I bet you'll come up with a different perspective.

a reply to: Gothmog

I feel like you didn't read my post.

Either way, thanks?


As for the "push" of the heliosphere, any object we contact will most like be moving as well.

We aren't hitting still targets, anyway, these are things that can be cancelled out of the equation entirely.

If we slowly catch something moving similarly to us, it could gently join in, through that "push" wall.

Something can interact through the sides without interacting with the "push" wall.

Something can have enough velocity that our "push" is marginalized.

Ultimately, because I'm not paying attention to the amount of "warehouse floor dust" anyway. I'm just determining the amount of floor we hit, dust or sans dust, I don't need to calculate for the type of interaction at all.

For what I am doing, my model is simplified by not worrying about wake forces.

a reply to: Archivalist

There's an article on New Scientist that does a good job of giving us a perspective of how far the Solar System has travelled through space for billions of years - Earth’s wild ride: Our voyage through the Milky Way. You might enjoy it.

An obstacle to your idea is we don't know 'where' we've been beyond a certain point in time. This means we don't know which regions we've passed through or whether there were any other systems featuring planets in what we call 'Goldilocks zones.' Even then, 'Goldilocks zones,' largely apply to burgeoning ETIs like us. The concepts of 2nd and 3rd Type Civilisations make habitable worlds redundant as they'd be sprawled out beyond heliospheres.

Setting aside that particular problem still leaves no basis for calculating a frequency of technological intelligences. Without knowing how many, or how often, or where civilisations arise it's impossible to estimate how many artefacts could then be captured by the gravity of our system.

I do like your thinking though. I don't know if you've read them yet, but it's worth reading papers by scientists like Forlan, Papagiannis, Livio and Brin. They've published papers exploring things like the Fermi paradox and the 'great silence.'

a reply to: Kandinsky

I'm not defining a goldilocks area.

Again, just care about the floor of the warehouse.

I don't actually care about the dust contents.

Distance and space. That's all I really want to know.

There is one issue you brought up, indirectly.

I can't prove for whether or not we've retraced steps.

It is more than likely, given the rotational nature of the milky way, that we have passed through the same area more than once, so I'm not worried about that.

All I want to know, is how much floor, the bowling ball touched.

I don't care about the shape of the warehouse or the dust contents.

a reply to: Archivalist

It is more than likely, given the rotational nature of the milky way, that we have passed through the same area more than once, so I'm not worried about that.

Galaxies are dynamic, energetic areas that are always changing. Even if we pass through the same areas, those areas are changing profoundly over millions of years. There are supernovae, new stars, galaxies separating or colliding so the view from Earth's metaphorical window will have changed substantially in ~4.5 billion years. There's no honest way to derive frequency of ETI or artefacts over time/space travelled with a sample of zero.

All I want to know, is how much floor, the bowling ball touched.

220km per second for ~4.5 billion years will give you a ball-park distance. Good luck.

a reply to: Kandinsky

It rounds to zero, but isn't zero.

I can use both Voyager probes as a combined guess object and see what the magnitude is.

Of course it will round to zero on most calculation devices.

It won't be true zero if I use that method though.

I consider ourselves as a data set of 1 for intelligent life in the universe.

It's not irrational to use ourselves as a data value for this, since we DO exist, from the standpoint of universal observations.

Either way, this is just to find a general idea of physical dimensions, not rates.
Like I keep saying, I don't want to guess at the dust rate.
I just want to know the spatial contact values.