Drake on Drake: ET Life A Certainty

astro writes "Frank Drake, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute applies Occam's Razor to his own Drake equation: 'Life should appear very frequently on other Earth-like planets. There will be microbial life nearby the solar system.' The simplest scenario is that 'Not Life' has a nearly identical number of assumptions as 'Life.' The contrasting view is that experimentation can prove it--but how many times did life independently create itself while the Earth changed through the whole spectrum of what biological forces might conjure up elsewhere. A sample size of 1 is in fact an experimental sample size of many--just here during Earth's climatic history."

Comments

1 != Many

[$carab]

A sample size of 1 is in fact an experimental sample size of many--just here during Earth's climatic history
Ummm....Im sorry, but I thought that there was, perhaps many singular events where life was formed billions of years ago, but simple evolution and extinction dont "scale" to be equivalent to non-life becoming life.

Furthermore, I recall reading a book..."Probability 1", that spend several chapters mucking around before submitting a "proof" that there must be intelligent life elsewhere...As I recall, it hinged on one instance of life, which is us.

Re:1 != Many

[AJWM]

Within the last few years, some scientists (don't recall at the moment whether they were biologists, climatologists or planetologists, or some combination thereof) have speculated that large asteroid impact events early in Earth's history (say in the range 1 to 3.5 billion years ago) were sufficient to pretty much sterilize the planet, only to have life re-form after things cooled off a bit.

Ockham vs. Drake, the remix

[nachoworld]

William of Ockham - "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."

Francis Drake - "My whole life's work, from SETI to the Drake equation to the 1970's Arecibo radio transmission, depends on their being aliens somewhere in the Universe, so I'll pop up every year or so and assert that ET does exist so I won't be a failure.

Re:well.

[sconeu]

Congratulations! You've just described Fermi's Paradox.

the real question is

[g4dget]

Why would intelligent life want to talk to earth? Indeed, why would it want to talk to anyone? If there is other intelligent life out there that managed to survive more than a few thousand years, maybe they just figured out that staying home taking care of their own planet is a lot more pleasant than traveling around the universe in tin cans or holding conversations with hundreds of years of lag.

Re:well.

[Em Emalb]

"The question, then, is why hasn't anyone found Earth yet, if the probability for life is so high?"

It might sound silly, but perhaps the need to explore is something only us earth-bound folks feel the need to do.

What if, say, a greatly advanced life-form existed on Neptune, but was content to create a "utopian" life on their own planet, with no need to explore?

The one thing we as humans fail in every time is that we assume all these aliens will be similar to us in their needs to explore, propogate, and conquer.

Maybe the answer is that they don't care about us, until we come to them.

Just some random ramblings

Possible Fermi Paradox Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I have liked this theory ever since I read about it.

Fermi had realized that given the age of the universe, and postulating a period of a thousand years for an intelligent space-faring race to colonize a planet and send out further colony ships, the galaxy should be fully colonized by now.

In 1967, the first gamma ray burst was observed by satellite-borne detectors intended to watch for violations of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In the last few years, high energy astrophysists have finally begun to understand GRBs more fully.

But could GRBs answer the question posed by Fermi's Paradox concerning the apparent lack of intelligent life in the galaxy? This abstract and linked article examines the strikingly similar timeframes between the occurance of GRBs in a galaxy, and the time it has taken intelligence to arise on Earth.

V - the miniseries and Stephen Gould

[xSterbenx]

For example, had the dinosaurs and half of all other species not been wiped out 65 million years ago, we wouldn't be here, stacking their bones in our museums

I recently rewatched "V - the series" and "V - the final battle". For those few here that haven't seen it, a bunch of seemingly humanoid aliens come to earth. However, these aliens end up being lizards who wear human skin to disguise themselves. A group of partisans realize the intent behind these aliens (to steal our water and use us for food).

One of the partisans makes what I consider a pretty good point (and makes this whole post on-topic). He notions the idea that unlike Earth, where some sort of disaster (meteor) wipes out many of the reptile species, the alien planet had no such disruption and the reptiles were free to evolve into sentient human-like beings.

Perhaps this is far-fetched. However, it is possible given our current idea of evolution. Why couldn't reptiles evolve into conscious beings? I'm not very knowledgable about the physiology of the human brain, but I do remember that temperature may have been a big factor in our evolution. The again, the word may implies that no one really knows exactly how evolution occured, and until we do I would say it is possible that reptiles may very well have been a predominent life on this planet if not for the meteor or whatever that wiped out all the dinosaurs.

Best - and most chilling - explanation I've seen

[Rogerborg]

Is in Toolmaker Koan. Lousy book, interesting premise. The premise is that progress comes through conflict, and that any society with the social drive to achieve the technology necessary for space travel is - axiomatically - so conflicted that it always bombs itself back to the stone age.

It's hard to argue against. We haven't destroyed ourselves - yet - but then again, we haven't achieved space travel either. I don't count holding our breath while we dash out, touch the moon, and dash back. That's proof of concept. When we get a self sufficient and growing colony on another planet, get back to me.