SETI Predicts We'll Find ETs by 2020

FTL writes "Based on the Drake Equation, Moore's Law, and the Allen Telescope, a new prediction has been made that Earth will make first contact with aliens within 20 years. Of course once we find the first aliens there's the question of can we decode their signals, would they spot our reply, and what's the lag time."

Comments

Flaw in Drake Equation

[uncadonna]

I've thought this for a long time. Maybe this is the occasion to get this idea across to people who might be interested.

While the equation is clearly true since it's basically redundant, it may not elucidate the problem very well. This is because some of the terms may be nonlinearly coupled.

If interstellar propagation of a technological species is possible, the rate of emergence of such species is not independent of whether such species have emerged in the past. There is an ecological competition between hypothetical spacefaring species. Unless two such species emerge simultaneously and accomodate each other, the emergence of one will essentially foreclose the emergence of another.

If the rate of formation of stable technological civilizations is sufficiently low, and the rate of interstellar spread of such civilizations is sufficiently high, there will only be time for one such civilization to emerge per galaxy. By the time the second one could emerge, the first one would have filled the entire niche.

In this scenario, by virtue of the fact that we have emerged, we can conclude that no stable competitors have emerged yet.

In fact, my intuition is that the universe is in precisely this regime, and therefore that we are very unlikely to succeed in SETI.