www.nasa.gov
the Drake equation is the product of very drunk grad students.I figure with telescopes and other instruments in space we will have a much clearer picture of our stellar neighborhood at least out to several dozen light years. We should be able to detect biospheres at that distance, earth like analogs over a statistically significant potion of our galaxy, enough to make inferences. We would do this by spectroscopic examination of an exoplanet's atmosphere, looking for free oxygen and other by products of life including things like natural fires or even industrial pollution.
We will have the ability to image exoplanets and know what is in a star system without going there, even if we could. I expect this picture to emerge over the next 30 years and it will help answer if there is anybody or anything else alive out there. We will have a sample of the galaxy by then, enough of one to draw conclusions or rework the Drake equation with more solid numbers on the prevalence of life. Other factors are becoming know better in the Drake equation, a simple linear formula for structured speculation. It was the basis for an agenda of an early meeting on SETI in the early 60's.
Have some fun and plug in yer own numbers to come up with startrek!
Drake Equation Calculator
A simple online calculator to estimate how many alien civilizations we might be able to contact.www.spacecentre.nz
Two Exoplanets May Be Mostly Water, NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Find - NASA Science
A team led by researchers at the University of Montreal has found evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star are “water worlds,” where water makes up a large fraction of the entire planet. These worlds, located in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, are...
Hey, they got funding!
www.wyff4.com
did they?
For awhile and today they have the SETI institute that gets government funding too. HOWEVER, if we discover a half dozen biospheres or even one like earth within a couple of dozen light years, you can start working those drake equation factors further to the right and plugging in more numbers with greater confidence, the probabilities change. Then one might reassess the value of SETI efforts with greater confidence. We may be alone, there maybe millions of biospheres without civilizations, life could be common and so could complex life.
who funded whom!? I find it hard to believe.
They had government funding until the 70's and used to piggyback off of radio telescopes mostly. They formed the SETI institute and do other research under contract and now run the Allan telescope array among others that is used for regular astronomy work too. They are scientists, real ones and part of the astronomical community, NASA might use them for life on mars stuff or Europa stuff.
No; I am asking specifically who got funding for the Drake equation proper. Seti is way far too general. Piggybacking off observational assets does not address funding the Drake theoreticians, if you want to call them that.They had government funding until the 70's and used to piggyback off of radio telescopes mostly. They formed the SETI institute and do other research under contract and now run the Allan telescope array among others that is used for regular astronomy work too. They are scientists, real ones and part of the astronomical community, NASA might use them for life on mars stuff or Europa stuff.
Home
www.seti.org
As I recall there was a seminal meeting at the Greenbank observatory of interested astronomers in the very early 60s. Frank Drake was one of the radio astronomer organizers and wrote out the formula as a logical form of speculation to guide the agenda for the discussion on possible detection methodologies. I'm not sure anybody "paid" for it, it was just a simple formula to guide discussion. Nobody tried to answer the Fermi paradox, where are they? Well we could be them I suppose, a million or two years down the road, or something we create that replaces us could be more likely!
Actually, Greg Bear wrote a whole book of stories, and a pair of novels, that took Fermi’s paradox straight on.
I think the distances so vast and the ratio of biospheres to ones with advanced life forms are high and then there is technology. I saw and article about our detection by others being unlikely a few days ago, but didn't bother to read it. Interstellar distances make travel between the stars problematic and one would have to warp spacetime in a bubble compress it in the direction of travel and stretch it out behind you, or be stretched out to the point of cosmic rays from our perspective, if you tried it the old fashioned way and you'd need the energy of a galaxy to do it!
