N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L

If you want to prove to the skeptic's (and yourself) that this universe is inhabbited throughout with other life one is going to have to use MATH. Science is pretty much all theory. I know that hurts a lot of scientists who say they have "proved" something, but science fact has a tendency to turn into science fiction. Einstein knew this, thus he came up with the THEORY of relativity not the laws of relativity. Science has no laws. Science is open to change, it just depends on the scientist willingness to prove change.

Now the Equation in the title is obviously Drake's equation.

N = The number of communicative civilizations
R* = The rate of formation of suitable stars (stars such as our Sun)
fp = The fraction of those stars with planets. (Current evidence indicates that planetary systems may be common for stars like the Sun.)
ne = The number of Earth-like worlds per planetary system
fl = The fraction of those Earth-like planets where life actually develops
fi = The fraction of life sites where intelligence develops
fc = The fraction of communicative planets (those on which electromagnetic communications technology develops)
L = The "lifetime" of communicating civilizations

"Frank Drake's own current solution to the Drake Equation estimates 10,000 communicative civilizations in the Milky Way"

Holy crap that's A LOT. The average scientist may not agree with the outcome of Drake's Equation, but the average scientist usually agrees that the equation does hold basis that life is out there somewhere in the cosmos. The discrepency come's when you try and say we've been VISITED. Scientists panic to prove we haven't. It's pretty hard to prove the negative.

Now lets use more math to see if we can persuade people to accept we've been visited.

Universe= 13.5 billion yrs
Earth= 4.5 billion years

That means this planet is aprox 1/3 the life of the known universe. now FOR FUN (no need to fight) lets assume that we are the only life forms in our "third" of the universe and that life in the universe evolves at the same rate we have. Meaning that there will be only 3 life forms in the known universe and the 3 different forms are all evolving at the same speed just in different times (WAY LESS THAN DRAKE THOUGHT) Lets just assume that we believe what science says and that the Sumerians truly were the 1st inteligent civilization. (thats at least what I learned in High School). That means life on this planet is aprox 6000 yrs old, in the 2nd third of the universe it is 12000 yrs old, and in the 3rd it is 18000 yrs old. Now anyone with a brain knows that we have structures built on this planet older than 6000 yrs old and one could assume that would mean SOMEONE built these things (not natural). But even IF our civilization is ONLY 6000 yrs old (even though we have stucture's built prior to 6000 yrs ago), imagine what that the other 2 life forms in this universe are capable of? And that's assuming they evolved intelligence at the same rate.

Now realize that the universe is 100,000 light years across, (as far as we see it now) so if a civilization were traveling half the speed of light they could explore the known universe in 200,000 years. A long time but most Human Beings would agree that there is life somewhere in the universe older than 200,000 years old, even if you don't believe it has visited this planet.

So to explore the ENTIRE KNOWN UNIVERSE at 1/2 light speed would only be one ten-thousandth of a percent of none time (if my math is correct, missing my calculator) 0.001%!!! In universal time, that's nothing. Whether you believe in aliens or not one would have to admit that 0.001% of anything is a mere speck. And thats just assuming a civilization couldnt go faster than 93,000 miles per second or construct folds in space-time or any other means of travel. Seems to me that not only have we probably been visited, we've probably been visited multiple times by multiple life forms.

At just 10 percent the speed of light a sufficiently advanced species could colonize the Galaxy in 10 million years. A speck in universal time. So this seems quite plausible.

Not to be a narcissistic but why do the posts that contain jokes get a lot of views and comments but then serious stuff such as this post doesn't?

Has this planet been so dumbed down it can't even handle looking or replying to something with an ounce of intelligence?

Hmmmmmm....must be an ATS conspiracy.

I swear this site might as well be Below Top Secret because it's hard to find and legit posts on serious topics.

i just did the drake equation doesnt look good.

total number of communicating civs = 0.00025

number of civs in a galaxy like ours = 0.025

My numbers say we would need to search another 40 galaxies before finding another civlization.

[edit on 20-6-2009 by yeti101]

i like this one , the formual is correct, and it gets star and flag from me

cheers

Yeti101.

Can you please elaborate as to how you got to your numbers?

In school we were told to show our work, so could you please do your best to show yours.

Thank You

Statistically there should be other intelligent (or only intelligent ) life forms out there. But there is nothing connecting existence of those life forms in universe in general and their visits to our own back yard. I exist , and yet i am not going to visit Orion's nebula where inhabitants of small planet in small star system claim that their cow-analogs are being mutilated by "pales".

reply to post by GeechQuestInfo


heh ok but i did it again with the most genrous numbers i could give. still not good

number of communicating civs = 0.06

average number of civs per galaxy = 0.06

so we need to search 16 galaxies to find another civ.

N*= 100 billion (stars in the galaxy)
Fp= 60%
Ne= 1
Fl=100%
Fi= 0.0001
Fc= 100%
FL= 10,000 years

you can try yourself here.
www.activemind.com...


[edit on 20-6-2009 by yeti101]

ZeroKnowledge

Statistically there should be other intelligent (or only intelligent ) life forms out there. But there is nothing connecting existence of those life forms in universe in general and their visits to our own back yard. I exist , and yet i am not going to visit Orion's nebula where inhabitants of small planet in small star system claim that their cow-analogs are being mutilated by "pales".

hahahaha, agreed I don't believe you are, but I guess we've never met so technically you COULD be.

But lets try and stay on this topic. Nobody said anything about mutilated cows. Truth be told, I personally don't believe the cow mutilations are due to other life forms.

I think it's how the US tracks the spread of Mad Cow. We as society are not told because beef sales are one of the most profitable to those who own farms.

If society knew that our cows had mad cow disease they MAY boycott beef thus hurting the food industry pretty bad.

Are we so ignorant to think that the cows in the good ol' USA are somehow immune to mad cow?

Columbus brought our cows over from Europe. So why would the cows, which originated in the same place, in Europe have mad cow but the American cows somehow don't?

To me it doesn't add up

Don't believe our livestock was brought over? It's okay, read this

Yeti101.

Thank You for showing your work, unless thats not your website.

Either way, if you take a math statistic course you will see that those numbers are hard to correlate.

As far as we know, the only thing we KNOW is that 1 star (our sun) in this solar system has 1 planet with life (our earth).

Now the numbers you provided are speculative, which is all this subject is anyways BUT if we use statistics to solve this problem the statistics that we KNOW say for every star you have a planet that can sustain life.

So if we speculate that there are 100 billion stars, using KNOWN statistics there should be 100 billion planets to sustain life, and a total of 800 billion planets.

Just as if there was only 1 person on this planet with natural purple hair, he wouldn't be a 1 out of a trillion chance, he would be a 1 out of a 6.5 billion chance. Because if 1 person with purple hair surfaced out of 6.5 billion people, chances are that there will be more when the population hits 1 trillion.

It's a tough concept that I'm not very good at explaining, so any questions I would be glad to try and explain better.

[edit on 20-6-2009 by GeechQuestInfo]

reply to post by GeechQuestInfo


im afraid not. We have already found solar systems whos planets are in chaotic eccentric orbits. And others that have massive jupiter size planets in the HZ of the star.

These systems are not suitable for earth like planets with complex life.

did you try the equation, what number did you get?

[edit on 20-6-2009 by yeti101]

No I didn't becuase I have no clue of what numbers to plug where. Every site has approximations so I would only wanna know the truth.

I realize this is all speculation.

To my knowledge we have seen specs of light visible only through high powered telescopes.

I'm guessing your saying that complex life is carbon based and thus these jupiter size planets you speak of couldn't support carbon based life.

But is all life carbon based?

I don't think anyone on this planet has ever SEEN any photos of what these planets look like let alone test atmosphere to see if life could be sustained. It's all speculation. And if they have I would sure like to see these photos.

I would love to see what another planet looks like

Originally posted by GeechQuestInfo
If you want to prove to the skeptic's (and yourself) that this universe is inhabbited throughout with other life one is going to have to use MATH. Science is pretty much all theory. I know that hurts a lot of scientists who say they have "proved" something, but science fact has a tendency to turn into science fiction. Einstein knew this, thus he came up with the THEORY of relativity not the laws of relativity. Science has no laws. Science is open to change, it just depends on the scientist willingness to prove change.

this is a common misconception. yes, everything in science (and everything anyone thinks they know) is theories - but in science's case, they are demonstrable, repeatable and reliable. A scientific theory is accurate enough that it explains things in 99% of all cases, because science strives to get an extreme approximation to reality. It is, therefore, for all intents and purposes, true.

An example would be newton's laws. They describe everything in the human world perfectly, and provide a very solid (albeit imperfect) explanation for most astronomical occurrences. If you were to throw a ball, newton's laws would perfectly describe its flight path. Now, if you were to try to explain the behavior of individual particles, then they do not apply. The reason for this is that in reality, the universe works in a way that we will probably never truly understand - the best we can possible hope for is to be able to reliably describe things in a frame of reference. Science does this perfectly. While newton's laws aren't absolute truth, they explain the movement of large quantities of particles (objects) perfectly in almost every situation. Its only under the electron microscope that the laws break down and you realize you're dealing with the average of a giant mass of individual particles all doing their own, seemingly random, things.

For all intents and purposes, however, science can be taken as a "fact" in our frame of reference. No matter how many times you attempt to disprove physics on the human scale, you will fail, because it will always behave in the expected way. It is only on the immensely tiny and immensely huge scales that the theories fray - and constantly get rewritten and improved.

You could say we understand exactly how things will behave, but not exactly why they behave the way they do.

Originally posted by GeechQuestInfo
No I didn't becuase I have no clue of what numbers to plug where. Every site has approximations so I would only wanna know the truth.

I realize this is all speculation.

To my knowledge we have seen specs of light visible only through high powered telescopes.

I'm guessing your saying that complex life is carbon based and thus these jupiter size planets you speak of couldn't support carbon based life.

But is all life carbon based?

I don't think anyone on this planet has ever SEEN any photos of what these planets look like let alone test atmosphere to see if life could be sustained. It's all speculation. And if they have I would sure like to see these photos.

I would love to see what another planet looks like

it is completely impossible to take a photo of an extrasolar planet with current technology. No one has ever actually seen one - the way we detect them is by noticing when stars dim slightly due to a planet passing between it and us, or by detecting the wobble in a star's path caused by mutual gravitational attraction between itself and an orbiting body.

reply to post by GeechQuestInfo


well we have no evidence of non-carbon based life. So yes im assuming all life is like earth life and needs approximately the same conditions.

Yeti, well said but like you said it can explain it 99%, which is perfectly fine by me I can live with 99%.

But I have a bug in me to wanna know the other 1%, and I'm wondering why others don't.

The time we live in seems like that 1% we put off is going to surface anyways, so why not have a logical, well spoken conversation about this stuff.

I really like the points you've made and it was very well said.

Would you mind giving me your insight into this post?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Jskytale I don't understand your point? Are you just taking what I said a little deeper?

And agreed with your comment on carbon based life.

But aren't computers "life-forms" that are not carbon based.

With new quantum computers, and AI becoming rediculously good, I wouldn't say that computer based, or silicon based life forms are that far out anymore

reply to post by yeti101


WOW, way to underestimate nature... You estimated .00001 planets with life will develop intelligence? No wonder you got such a small number. There is estimated to be around 200 billion stars in the Milky Way now. Not to mention you only gave 10,000 years for the civilization to live.... Neanderthals survived 200,000 years and weren't even intelligent, they were more animal than we are. Seriously, those are the most generous numbers you can give?

[edit on 20-6-2009 by SkepticPerhaps]

Originally posted by yeti101
i just did the drake equation doesnt look good.

total number of communicating civs = 0.00025

number of civs in a galaxy like ours = 0.025

My numbers say we would need to search another 40 galaxies before finding another civlization.

They can go either way. I liked Carl's view on the math. Enjoy.

reply to post by JScytale


on a related note, I plugged my own numbers in using the website linked previously.

N* = 300 billion (it is known to be 200-400 billion)

fp = 30%

ne = .33 (its a shame this couldn't be lower. I imagine such planets are exceedingly rare regardless of life's base - most planets are extraordinarily hostile or have no atmosphere, making any form of life forming much less likely)

fl = 0.0001% (i am assuming life arose by chance on earth)

fi = 80% (in my opinion, once life arises, predators will always arise too. predators tend to be highly intelligent and in more advanced forms, social. it is to be expected intelligent life is common where life exists.)

fc = 20% (i assume most intelligent life is very vastly different from us with vastly different priorities and beliefs. in my opinion, its to be expected many wont even consider life outside their world, or would have no interest in searching for it, or would prefer caution to broadcasting their position.)

fL = 10,000 years (this is an average. I believe a very large proportion of intelligent species would end up being destroyed via large impact or destroying themselves well before 10,000 years, while a few lucky civilizations manage to get a foothold on a second planet and thus guarantee survival for a much longer time. We have almost destroyed ourselves countless times and haven't had civilization for half as long as 10,000 years.)

Result was N = 0.004752

[edit on 20-6-2009 by JScytale]