[ExI] The Milky Way is probably full of dead civilizations

[Darin Sunley]

"Have you wondered why there are so many dead worlds out there? Let me tell
you why. It’s because despite the best advice of people who /know/ what
they are talking about, other people insist on doing the most /massively
stupid/ things."

– Galen to Captain Gideon. Babylon 5: Crusade

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 3:31 PM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> The Milky Way is probably full of dead civilizations
> By Rafi Letzter  19 Dec, 2020
>
> <https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-alien-life-map.html>
>
> Quote:
> That's the takeaway of a new study, published Dec. 14 to the arXiv
> database, which used modern astronomy and statistical modeling to map
> the emergence and death of intelligent life in time and space across
> the Milky Way. Their results amount to a more precise 2020 update of a
> famous equation that Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence founder
> Frank Drake wrote in 1961.
>
> The authors looked at a range of factors presumed to influence the
> development of intelligent life, such as the prevalence of sunlike
> stars harboring Earth-like planets; the frequency of deadly,
> radiation-blasting supernovas; the probability of and time necessary
> for intelligent life to evolve if conditions are right; and the
> possible tendency of advanced civilizations to destroy themselves.
> -------
> This last bit is the most uncertain variable in the paper; how often
> do civilizations kill themselves? But it's also the most important in
> determining how widespread civilization is, the researchers found.
> Even an extraordinarily low chance of a given civilization wiping
> itself out in any given century — say, via nuclear holocaust or
> runaway climate change — would mean that the overwhelming majority of
> peak Milky Way civilizations are already gone.
> -------
>
> The problem is the long timescales.  Can civilisations ever continue for
> billions of years?
>
> BillK
>
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