h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey, them's fighting jokes

Yep, them's fighting jokes

Actually, Mike Tyson's a fighting joke

Amazon has it for sale for $12.99 [don't know what the equivalent is in pounds]. I just bought it, thanks for reminding me.

Forgive my ignorance, but could you outline some of that overwhelming evidence for a skeptic? I don't flat out refuse the concept of extra-terrestrial life, but I have yet to see any decent evidence in support of it. In fact, I've seen some pretty convincing arguments to the contrary. Like any good Trekkie, I dream of the day when we'll all be flying around at warp speed chasing Romulan baddies, but I just don't think it's likely to happen. Please enlighten me.

Well, I'm not too well versed on the names of the people/person that thought this piece of strangly-obvious-when-you-think-about-it theory but it goes like this...

Lets say every planet in the universe that is like - or very similar to - Earth can sustain life, or hopefully intelligent life. Similar in the sense of distance from local star, environment etc.

Now think of how big the universe is. The great DNA himself tells us this - "The first thing you have to understand is that the universe is big, REALLY big...".

Ok got that, now considering how big the universe is just think of how many "Earths" there could be out there, the possibilities are endless.

Also take into account the new form of silicon based life some clever people found growing next to a thermal vent miles under the ocean. Up until that point we only new of the existence of carbon based life. Plus anything with any sense what-so-ever would consider evolving down there, but it did. It proves that life can live almost anywhere given half a chance - well in some cases less that half a chance, just look at Dudley!

And I bet you've been waiting for this for a while now. You're sitting there saying to yourself "its coming any minute now" and I'd hate to diappoint you so her it is...

"Life finds a way." - sorry

And, as it has been said, it would be a horrible waste of space.

And if not it still makes damn good entertainment to any passers-by.

Amen to that! Ever hear of the Cacophonous society? Check out http://www.inch.com/~william/cacalinks.html . Maybe they know more about errant aliens then they'd like to admit.

This should keep you all busy for a while......

The Drake Equation
Developed by Frank Drake in 1961 as a way to focus on the factors which determine how many intelligent, communicating civilizations there are in our galaxy. The Drake Equation is:

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

The equation can really be looked at as a number of questions:

(N*) represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy
Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy?
Answer: Current estimates are 100 billion.

(fp) is the fraction of stars that have planets around them
Question: What percentage of stars have planetary systems?
Answer: Current estimates range from 20% to 50%.

(ne) is the number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life
Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life?
Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5.

(fl) is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves
Question: On what percentage of the planets that are capable of sustaining life does life actually evolve?
Answer: Current estimates range from 100% (where life can evolve it will) down to close to 0%.

(fi) is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves
Question: On the planets where life does evolve, what percentage
evolves intelligent life?
Answer: Estimates range from 100% (intelligence is such a survival advantage that it will certainly evolve) down to near 0%.

(fc) is the fraction of fi that communicate
Question: What percentage of intelligent races have the means and the desire to communicate?
Answer: 10% to 20%

(fL) is fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live
Question: For each civilization that does communicate, for what fraction of the planet's life does the civilization survive?
Answer: This is the toughest of the questions. If we take Earth as an example, the expected lifetime of our Sun and the Earth is roughly 10 billion years. So far we've been communicating with radio waves for less than 100 years. How long will our civilization survive? Will we destroy ourselves in a few years like some predict or will we overcome our problems and survive for millennia? If we were destroyed tomorrow the answer to this question would be 1/100,000,000th. If we survive for 10,000 years the answer will be 1/1,000,000th.

When all of these variables are multiplied together when come up with: (N) the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.

Sorry about the length of this rave but it's damn interesting.......

So, if I remember my Maths correctly (could be some mistakes, don't have a calculator handy), there could be from 0.000something up to 50 000 planets with ETs on in just OUR galaxy. Now, how many galaxies are there in the universe? (and why can't I get one of those healer/gardeners? )

I'll place my bet on somewhere between 1 and 50000 planets supporting Intelligent life (atleast the Earth is 1, although I could argue against that . Oh and anyone who is interested in finding the little green guys try http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
An amazing screensaver that allows your computer to work on data from the Arecibo Radio telescope in South America. Over a million people have already contributed thousands of years of computing time (based on a single computer).
In the first weeks they had covered more sky and more frequencies than what had been previously achieved over the 30 or so years of SETI. Pretty Damn Amazing.....

Err hello, thats how this load of crap got started, I don't expect anyone new to the conversation to read it all but the least you could do is read the first damned entry!

That was the thing I was getting at, cheers you reminded me of his name old, old...er oh bugger

Old Frank Drake......
Anytime....

and GiGaBaNE said"let there be life in this dead subject"

damn, still looks dead. oh well...

Not that dead yet...unfortunately I have nothing useful to contribute, so it might as well just die! (Unless anyone else has anything to add...)

The thing with the equations above is it is all giuess work.
The earth wouldn;t be like it is if it was more than a few percent out in its orbit. Or the sun was just a bit hotter or colder. Or the moon wasn;t there. Or the other outer planets weren;t there to sweep up the various bits of galactic junk out there. And we wouldn;t be her eif the dinosaurs hadn;t been wiped out. Or the continental masses hadn't been one at the right point so that most life forms excepot our ancestors hadn;t died out. Or the various other branches of the ape family hadn;t died out. Etc. Etc. it's a hell of a lot of coincidences. Enough to make people believe there was some sort of super power in charge of everything who wante dus to exist. But that's just daft.

Anyway. I for one think we need to find aliens. There's nothing more certain to heal the rifts in humanties infighting than aliens. Once we have found aliens, you can be sure that white, brown, black, yellow and red will all gang up on green.

"Enough to make people believe there was some sort of super power in charge of everything who wante dus to exist. But that's just daft"

Not as daft as you might think. For one, as a Christian I'm pretty sure there is some such power, i.e. God, of whom there's pretty good evidence (tho' it might not seem like it at first) for Him having reveled himself to us. Secondly, I've read at least one book which seems to argue the case from a scientific prspective, called 'How Blind is the Watchmaker?' -I'm not sure who it's by, though. Part of the argument of the book seems to rest on the very low chance of life occurring by chance (like a whirlwind going through a junkyard and assembling a jumbo jet spontaneously, someone once said!) which could possibly be explained given an infinite universe over many billions of years, but then a) there's more to it than that and b) it doesn't necessarily rule out God, just makes arguments seem less plausible to sceptics.

As for whether aliens exist or not, the bible doesn't mention them but then, you never know...

Also, it probably *is* likely that we'll 'all gang up on green', but not me-if Ogd exists, then aiens are surely His creation as much as we are...