Name: Unknown
Status: Other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Prior to 1993
Question:
I have been pondering the question of whether life exists beyond
this solar system. Since there are so many millions of stars and planets, I
was thinking that the chances of life are very great. My former calculus
teacher, on the other hand, has an equation which he says assures me of no
other life. I do not believe that too much though. What do you think?
Replies:
There is an equation that is supposed to give the probability of
life elsewhere in our galaxy or elsewhere in universe. It is called the Drake
equation after Frank Drake the astronomer who first proposed it. Most people
use the Drake equation to show that life MUST exist, it all depends on your
choice of numbers that you plug into the equation.
There was a very interesting commentary article in Discover
dealing precisely with this question. The author's conclusion was that it was
mathematically unlikely that intelligent life can exist elsewhere in the
galaxy which were technologically advanced enough to attempt or respond to
communication. In essence, he was predicting that the SETI (Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence) will fail. He did not rule out that life could
not exist, or that even intelligent life could not exist elsewhere, but for
that life to evolve technologically to what humans have achieved would require
so many variables to fit that it would be statistically impossible. But then
again, before the sound barrier was broken, respected the physicists "proved"
that was impossible!
NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.
