Do you think Drakes Equation need some tinkering?
When I started getting into Astronomy the famous Frank Drake equation is one of the thing that fascinated me. But as time goes by and with some more discoveries and research being done in and out of our Galaxy, we tend to discover new things which I think affects the equation. Do you think there should be some changes needed to be done to it to maybe increase or decrease the probability?
what is Drake Equation? here’s a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
The concept behind the equation is still OK.
What keeps changing is the value that you are willing to use for each factor. It is still an equation that provides an educated “guess”. It should not, by itself, be considred a final equation with firm numbers.
When the equation first came out, most users used very optimistic numbers and the results were… optimistic. Something like hundreds of thousands of civilization (capable of interstellar communication) per “average galaxy”.
Then people started to find out that life is more fragile than we first thought. That the Goldilock Zone was not as wide as first thought. That The Universe in general (and Galaxies in particular) is a very dangerous place with radiation and accelerated charged particles, just ready to sterilize any planet that tries to grow life. At one point (end of the 1970s) the expected value dropped as low as 0.25 civilizations per galaxy (one interpretation of such a result is that we would have a 40% probability of being the only civilization in the entire Local Group).
Now the expected results are in the tens, with the more optimistic ones closing in on a hundred.
However, each result is just as personal as the user who decides what value is used for each factor. If you think that all Stars have Planets and that most planets should be favorable for life, then your results will be high. If you think that most stars don’t have planets and that The Planets that do exist are, in general, NOT conducive to intelligent life, then your results will be low.
Just remember that our existence makes it impossible for the answer to be exactly zero.
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