I hate the Drake equation. Actually, maybe that's a little harsh. As I understand it, the intent was never to actually calculate how many intelligent alien cultures there are bumbling around our galaxy, but more to ascertain exactly what unknowns would be required to work such a thing out. Since several of these unknowns are pretty much massively fucking unknowable, though, the Drake equation essentially consists of someone very, very smart shrugging their shoulders. I really don't need to see the working out to know we're not in a position to work out the expected number of sentient extra-terrestrial species, thanks.
I am reliably informed (by Pause, again) that there are something like 100 000 000 000 stellar systems in our galaxy. We'll call our unknown probability p. We're thus considering X~Bin(100 000 000 000,p). Substituting that into the the binomial equation tells us that, for a given p, the probability that there is more than one stellar system supporting life (we already know there's at least one) is:
1-(1+99999999999p)(1-p)^99999999999
In other words, p has to be less than 0.0000000000169 before it's more likely than not that we're alone out there.
This, of course, isn't the full story. Technically we should be considering the conditional probability that there is at least two life-bearing systems given that there is at least one. That gives a new bound for p; now it has to be less than 0.0000000000126 before the odds are we're all alone in the night. [1]
That's about five thousand times less likely than winning the lottery on your first ticket. Depressingly, that doesn't really seem too outrageously low, considering all the factors involved. I'm not really one for biology, though, so I suggest you draw your own conclusions.
Update: Pause points out in comments that xkcd isn't a big fan of the Drake equation either.
[1] It has to be said that things get more complicated when we realise that the only reason we can perform this analysis in the first place is because we're already here, i.e. we ourselves are a product of the observed data. Frankly, though, it's too much of a headache to go into the implications of that, at least for now.
1 comment:
Am slightly disappointed the first link went to Wikipedia and not xkcd. Damn your ever-so-slightly responsible ways.
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