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I think this is bolder: "fraction of Earth‐like planets that develop life: 1" For all we know that could be .001 or .0000001

rflrob 16y ago
I'm okay with the Field of Dreams interpretation of astrobiology: "If you build it, they will come", so to speak. All you need is for life to take hold once and it'll take over a planet in just a few billion years. Of course, my own hunch is that suitable chunks of rock (planets, moons, etc) are somewhat more rare than the default value[1]. [1] I plugged in .1, among other variable changes. On the other hand, I got the number of communicating civilizations = .02, so either I'm too pessimistic or we're just really, really lucky.
- jawee 16y ago
  I think there are far too many happen chances in evolutionary biology to say that an advanced civilization is inevitable; my rational mind has a LOT of trouble accepting that our current development is a long history of happen-stances beginning from life´s first development, but I see no viable alternative. But to think that given another Earth with life it would happen again? With all of the stretches that happen all along the evolutionary tree I find this absurd.
  - eru 16y ago
    There are lots of stretches on our path, but we don't know how likely other paths would be.
  - rflrob 16y ago
    I concur. Fortunately, the Drake equation gives us separate variables for "develops life" and "develops intelligent life". The value I used for f_i was somewhat lower than they gave, but I also thought that f_c was higher, so it worked out as a wash.
PixelRobot 16y ago
That one seems to be the most unreasonable assumption of the set to me. Specially if you consider life seems to have happened just once on Earth.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- bluekeybox 16y ago
  Actually the only thing we know for sure is that life on Earth happened at least once. It is entirely conceivable that several alternatives to RNA-based life (precursor to DNA-based life) popped up in several different places but then were hopelessly out-competed by the RNA-based lifeforms. I am a biologist by training, and the more I studied biology and evolution, the more life appeared to me as a powerful (somewhat scary even) and inevitable process, rather than a "unique snowflake" that many of us commonly think it to be. Life, given right conditions and enough time, seems to be about as inevitable as the eventual appearance of viral cat pictures on online forums, in other words. I think there is little wrong with assuming that the probability of emergence of life given right conditions and enough time is one; however we need to be very careful with estimating how common (and how stable!) those conditions are in our galaxy in the first place. A good place to start would be to look at how many places similar to Earth are out there (which we are already doing).
  - PixelRobot 16y ago
    I think there is little wrong with assuming that the probability of appearance of life given right condition and time to develop is one Fair enough. It's a bit like the infinite monkeys in infinite typewriters scenario. Given enough time, sure, you'll have life. It's a question of how much time. Still, assuming all Eart-like planets will actually develop life given the time lapse of the existence of the Milky Way does still seems like a bold assumption.
    - bluekeybox 16y ago
      > It's a question of how much time Your point is correct, but my hunch is that the time needed is no more than a million years or so (small on the galaxy scale), possibly less.

rflrob 16y ago

I'm okay with the Field of Dreams interpretation of astrobiology: "If you build it, they will come", so to speak. All you need is for life to take hold once and it'll take over a planet in just a few billion years. Of course, my own hunch is that suitable chunks of rock (planets, moons, etc) are somewhat more rare than the default value[1]. [1] I plugged in .1, among other variable changes. On the other hand, I got the number of communicating civilizations = .02, so either I'm too pessimistic or we're just really, really lucky.

jawee 16y ago
I think there are far too many happen chances in evolutionary biology to say that an advanced civilization is inevitable; my rational mind has a LOT of trouble accepting that our current development is a long history of happen-stances beginning from life´s first development, but I see no viable alternative. But to think that given another Earth with life it would happen again? With all of the stretches that happen all along the evolutionary tree I find this absurd.
- eru 16y ago
  There are lots of stretches on our path, but we don't know how likely other paths would be.
- rflrob 16y ago
  I concur. Fortunately, the Drake equation gives us separate variables for "develops life" and "develops intelligent life". The value I used for f_i was somewhat lower than they gave, but I also thought that f_c was higher, so it worked out as a wash.

PixelRobot 16y ago

That one seems to be the most unreasonable assumption of the set to me. Specially if you consider life seems to have happened just once on Earth.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
bluekeybox 16y ago
Actually the only thing we know for sure is that life on Earth happened at least once. It is entirely conceivable that several alternatives to RNA-based life (precursor to DNA-based life) popped up in several different places but then were hopelessly out-competed by the RNA-based lifeforms. I am a biologist by training, and the more I studied biology and evolution, the more life appeared to me as a powerful (somewhat scary even) and inevitable process, rather than a "unique snowflake" that many of us commonly think it to be. Life, given right conditions and enough time, seems to be about as inevitable as the eventual appearance of viral cat pictures on online forums, in other words. I think there is little wrong with assuming that the probability of emergence of life given right conditions and enough time is one; however we need to be very careful with estimating how common (and how stable!) those conditions are in our galaxy in the first place. A good place to start would be to look at how many places similar to Earth are out there (which we are already doing).
- PixelRobot 16y ago
  I think there is little wrong with assuming that the probability of appearance of life given right condition and time to develop is one Fair enough. It's a bit like the infinite monkeys in infinite typewriters scenario. Given enough time, sure, you'll have life. It's a question of how much time. Still, assuming all Eart-like planets will actually develop life given the time lapse of the existence of the Milky Way does still seems like a bold assumption.
  - bluekeybox 16y ago
    > It's a question of how much time Your point is correct, but my hunch is that the time needed is no more than a million years or so (small on the galaxy scale), possibly less.