• Question: can we rely on drakes equation?

    Asked by anon-197468 to Sonal, Rosanna, Matthew, Marleen, Dan, Atreya on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sonal Bhadane

      Sonal Bhadane answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I will be honest, I didn’t even know what Drake’s equation was until I saw this question ( I had to google it – guilty as charged). But I am so happy I actually got to learn something new that I was not aware of before participating in this challenge 🙂
      So it’s not just you learning from this interaction we are learning too 🙂

    • Photo: Matthew Selwood

      Matthew Selwood answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I know about as much about Drake’s equations as I do the music of the artist of the same name… That said, my understanding is that Drake’s equation is more of a train of thought and an approximation more than it is a hard and fast number to swear by. That said, his logic seems to follow? It is a very tough question, and verges on philosophy to quite a degree!

    • Photo: Rosanna Tilbrook

      Rosanna Tilbrook answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      Just as a heads up for anyone reading this who isn’t sure on what Drake’s equation is, it’s an equation that tries to estimate the number of technological civilisations currently living in our galaxy. It starts with the rate of star formation in the galaxy (the number of stars born per year), then the fraction of those that form planets, then the number of habitable planets per star… and so it continues, down to how long a technological civilisation exists for.

      The first two numbers in the equation are pretty well known- astrophysicists can work these out. But as we move through the equation, things become more and more of a guess. Even trying to estimate how many habitable planets there are round a star is tricky, as we have to make a whole bunch of assumptions. And the last few numbers are complete guesses- in particular, the length of time a technological civilisation exists for. We only know about 1 technological civilisation in the whole universe- us- and who knows how long we’ll last, and if that’s even a normal amount of time!

      At the end of the day, we only have one example of a star that has a habitable planet with intelligent life, which is our Sun, so it’s super hard to make guesses about all other stars in our galaxy based off of our own Solar System. It’s like you have a packet of sweets, and you open it to find one red sweet and 7 other blue ones, and then you’re given 10 billion other packets, and you have to guess how many other red sweets there are without looking inside. You can try and guess but at the end of the day no one really has a clue! So, to answer your question (sorry for the long winded answer), the Drake equation isn’t really reliable, as most of it is guesswork. People’s answers range from less than one civilisation in our galaxy (obviously wrong, because there’s us), to over 100 (where are they then?) because you can basically bung in whatever numbers you want for the last few parts of the equation!

    • Photo: Marleen Wilde

      Marleen Wilde answered on 11 Mar 2019:

      Thanks for your answer Rosanna, saves me googling what Drake’s equation might be 🙂 Always good to learn something new!

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