3 ms·

Sorry, but I always thought the equation meaningless...

• taneq 6y ago
  I agree - it's basically just a way to arrive at a meaningless number by multiplying a whole lot of wild-ass guesses together. Do we have anything better, though?
  • JKCalhoun 6y ago
    Yeah, that's probably the point. You have to start somewhere. Personally I'm blown away that some parameters, like the fraction of those stars that have planets, we are able to capably plug values in for. I really never thought we'd be able to get statistics for things like that in my lifetime. I mean short of faster-than-light travel, I had assumed ignorantly that astronomy would be stuck more or less where it is for centuries to come.
    • cgriswald 6y ago
      I wrote a presentation for undergrad on the equation; and that was the focus. I went through each value and talked about the bounds for each value and arguments for those bounds. We’re still incredibly ignorant, but the bounds on the values have improved a lot. At the time the equation was written, it was assumed other stars had planets, but it wasn’t known and the value could have been anything. Now we know the f_p ≈ 1.
    • ArnoVW 6y ago
      Amazing isn't it? I really appreciated 'archives of the universe', which describes the chronological advancement of astronomy since the ancient Greek. Often by simply annotating the original works or papers. Amazing to see how humanity has gained insight piece by piece, thanks to the hard work of a select group op people. https://cmsw.mit.edu/archives-of-the-universe-marcia-bartusiak/ https://cmsw.mit.edu/archives-of-the-universe-marcia-bartusi...
  • eholk 6y ago
    I see it as a way of focusing the discussion. The numbers we could plug into it are mostly all wild guesses, but the exercise of plugging in different numbers can still be instructive. For example, we now know there are a huge number of planets out there, and even planets in the habitable zone. Yet we haven't found any extraterrestrial life, so that suggests maybe the other factors are smaller than we initially would have guessed.
• lisper 6y ago
  Because....?
• s1artibartfast 6y ago
  It is a fabulous equation which describes the factors that would contribute to alien life. It can inform how to think and pursue SETI and gauge our current knowledge. Any result that you see bandied about is meaningless because we don't know the inputs.
• ekianjo 6y ago
  And deeply flawed...