5 ms·

Am I reading this wrong, or is it basically just making a restatement of the Drake equation with updated numbers in place? [Edit: and ignoring some terms to al

by dtparr 10y ago

Am I reading this wrong, or is it basically just making a restatement of the Drake equation with updated numbers in place? [Edit: and ignoring some terms to allow for time irrelevance]. I was hoping for something addressing the Fermi paradox or something more than just a refined probabilistic estimate with such a definitive title.

eponeponepon 10y ago
No, that's exactly it. Those numbers will just keep on getting more precise as time goes on, though - we'll never know from the Drake equation alone, but it's the best guideline we have right now.
- dtparr 10y ago
  I suppose, but having more precise terms in the first half doesn't seem to really do much for us given that the terms dealing with the probability of life forming can't even really be estimated. This article is basically saying "surely it's more than 1 in 10^22", but I don't see any hint of why that would be, other than 'it's such a small chance that it had to be written in italics'.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Right. What's happened with the Drake Equation is that the terms related to possibly habitable planets have largely moved to the "almost certainly lots" realm. But, as you say, with respect to life (or at least complex multi-cellular life), we just don't know. But the Drake Equation encourages thinking like, even it's it's a 1 in a trillion chance effectively zero!, we'd have all these aliens running around. Because 1 in a trillion = 0 is pretty much what we're informed by day-to-day usage and intuition.
    - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
      > Because 1 in a trillion = 0 is pretty much what we're informed by day-to-day usage and intuition Avogadro's constant is 6.022 x 10^23 [1]. There are a hundred billion sets of a trillion constituent particles in ever mol of anything. A reaction that happens to water once in a trillion years would occur 20,000 times a second for each 18 mL of water. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant
      - ghaff 10y ago
        You're being an engineer :-) Yes, I am aware of those things but those sorts of numbers do not correspond to day-to-day usage and intuition of most people (as I said).
  - freeduck 10y ago
    Scientist all arround the world is trying to create artificial life. If they are successfull then we have a mesure for level 4
- xkxx 10y ago
  And that's why I think it's a very bad news article: there is no news here. Also: that sensationalistic title.
Animats 10y ago
That's about it. They also don't consider how many alien civilizations might be within communications range. The other big question is how long technological civilizations last. Ours is less than 200 years old. (A useful starting date is 1830, when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway started carrying paid passengers. That's when powered technology got out of beta.) How long before we run out of cost-effective nonrenewable resources? Probably a few hundred years, tops.
- acqq 10y ago
  > A useful starting date is 1830 I'd consider as the reasonable starting date, when we discuss about the alien civilizations on the distant planets, the day the radio communication starts to exist. So we're some just for some 110 years capable of sending and receiving any radio message. If we move to the "capable of receiving the faint message from the big distance" it's more like just some 60-something years. Also note that as we move to using the digital, high-density, compressed and especially encrypted messaging, the transmitted messages look more like the noise than the signal.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Also note that as we move to using the digital, high-density, compressed and especially encrypted messaging, the transmitted messages look more like the noise than the signal. I made that point to a SETI guy who was giving a talk. They were looking for "carriers". Nobody uses carriers much any more. It's a huge waste of power and bandwidth. There are much more efficient ways to get synchronization. Everything later than analog TV is low-carrier or no-carrier. Unless you have some idea of what to look for, the signal looks like white noise.
    - acqq 10y ago
      The assumption among the SETI guys is that the messages they are after are made with the only purpose to attract the attention to the senders. Which doesn't have to be cleverest thing to do, and maybe we should also be worried enough to care. To make a computing analogy, maybe taking part in the "galactic internet" without the latest "firewalls" and "spam filters" can be really the matter of life and death for the whole planet ("what you didn't know that we send the 'energy beam of death' to those who don't respect the protocol, well the whole galaxy knows, and you won't do it again, heh, heh" even if we avoid other trivial issues like a galaxy "superhighway" which has to be constructed in our neighborhood or simply that humans are maybe very good to be used as food or work animals from the point of the possible invaders). So we should learn about the others but really try to stay as undetected as we can until we know more. And maybe other aliens think like this paragraph argues too.

by dtparr 10y ago

eponeponepon 10y ago

No, that's exactly it. Those numbers will just keep on getting more precise as time goes on, though - we'll never know from the Drake equation alone, but it's the best guideline we have right now.

dtparr 10y ago
I suppose, but having more precise terms in the first half doesn't seem to really do much for us given that the terms dealing with the probability of life forming can't even really be estimated. This article is basically saying "surely it's more than 1 in 10^22", but I don't see any hint of why that would be, other than 'it's such a small chance that it had to be written in italics'.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Right. What's happened with the Drake Equation is that the terms related to possibly habitable planets have largely moved to the "almost certainly lots" realm. But, as you say, with respect to life (or at least complex multi-cellular life), we just don't know. But the Drake Equation encourages thinking like, even it's it's a 1 in a trillion chance effectively zero!, we'd have all these aliens running around. Because 1 in a trillion = 0 is pretty much what we're informed by day-to-day usage and intuition.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > Because 1 in a trillion = 0 is pretty much what we're informed by day-to-day usage and intuition Avogadro's constant is 6.022 x 10^23 [1]. There are a hundred billion sets of a trillion constituent particles in ever mol of anything. A reaction that happens to water once in a trillion years would occur 20,000 times a second for each 18 mL of water. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant
    - ghaff 10y ago
      You're being an engineer :-) Yes, I am aware of those things but those sorts of numbers do not correspond to day-to-day usage and intuition of most people (as I said).
- freeduck 10y ago
  Scientist all arround the world is trying to create artificial life. If they are successfull then we have a mesure for level 4
xkxx 10y ago
And that's why I think it's a very bad news article: there is no news here. Also: that sensationalistic title.

Animats 10y ago

That's about it. They also don't consider how many alien civilizations might be within communications range. The other big question is how long technological civilizations last. Ours is less than 200 years old. (A useful starting date is 1830, when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway started carrying paid passengers. That's when powered technology got out of beta.) How long before we run out of cost-effective nonrenewable resources? Probably a few hundred years, tops.

acqq 10y ago
> A useful starting date is 1830 I'd consider as the reasonable starting date, when we discuss about the alien civilizations on the distant planets, the day the radio communication starts to exist. So we're some just for some 110 years capable of sending and receiving any radio message. If we move to the "capable of receiving the faint message from the big distance" it's more like just some 60-something years. Also note that as we move to using the digital, high-density, compressed and especially encrypted messaging, the transmitted messages look more like the noise than the signal.
- Animats 10y ago
  Also note that as we move to using the digital, high-density, compressed and especially encrypted messaging, the transmitted messages look more like the noise than the signal. I made that point to a SETI guy who was giving a talk. They were looking for "carriers". Nobody uses carriers much any more. It's a huge waste of power and bandwidth. There are much more efficient ways to get synchronization. Everything later than analog TV is low-carrier or no-carrier. Unless you have some idea of what to look for, the signal looks like white noise.
  - acqq 10y ago
    The assumption among the SETI guys is that the messages they are after are made with the only purpose to attract the attention to the senders. Which doesn't have to be cleverest thing to do, and maybe we should also be worried enough to care. To make a computing analogy, maybe taking part in the "galactic internet" without the latest "firewalls" and "spam filters" can be really the matter of life and death for the whole planet ("what you didn't know that we send the 'energy beam of death' to those who don't respect the protocol, well the whole galaxy knows, and you won't do it again, heh, heh" even if we avoid other trivial issues like a galaxy "superhighway" which has to be constructed in our neighborhood or simply that humans are maybe very good to be used as food or work animals from the point of the possible invaders). So we should learn about the others but really try to stay as undetected as we can until we know more. And maybe other aliens think like this paragraph argues too.