[ExI] SETI reviews the Drake equation

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Wed Jan 30 19:22:18 UTC 2019


The Drake Equation: Could It Be Wrong?
The Drake Equation is a mixture of parameters whose values, or even
relevance, may change.

By Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer     Jan 29, 2019

<https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-could-it-be-wrong>

Quote:

And in any case, Drake argues that deliberate colonization might be uncommon.

“The spreading of intelligent life from one star system to another
would probably not appeal to truly intelligent creatures,” he says,
“once they calculate that, even travelling at, say, only one-tenth the
speed of light, it takes more than a million times more energy to
establish a colony around another star than required to establish one
of the same size near their own. There is plenty of material available
in the satellites and asteroids of stellar environments, assuming they
resemble ours, to create a multitude of habitable, planet-like abodes
right at home.”

As for panspermia, he notes that “it would be far more efficient to
send by radio the data to replicate the creature's DNA, to clone
duplicates of themselves.”
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BillK



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