While We’re at it Let’s Buy The Aliens Band Uniforms
Proof of extraterrestrial intelligence could come within 25 years, an astronomer who works on the search said Sunday.
See? Case closed. It could.
Shostak bases this estimation on the Drake Equation, a formula conceived by SETI pioneer Frank Drake to calculate the number (N) of alien civilizations with whom we might be able to communicate. That equation takes into account a variety of factors, including the rate of star formation in the galaxy, the fraction of stars that have planets, the fraction of planets that are habitable, the percent of those that actually develop life, the percent of those that develop intelligent life, the fraction of civilizations that have a technology that can broadcast their presence into space, and the length of time those signals would be broadcasted.
Hmmm. An equation. Doesn’t an equation usually have numbers? What, I wonder, would be the numbers for
- the fraction of stars that have planets?
- the fraction of planets that are habitable?
- The percent of those that actually develop life?
- The percent of those that actually develop intelligent life?
- The fraction of civilizations that have a technology …?
- and The number of people living outside our galaxy who can pat their heads while rubbing their tummies?
Run, do not walk, to send this guy your money. You don’t want to be the last on your block. This is a limited time offer. The supply of space aliens, unlike the earthbound variety, seems to be a finite number that is already known.
Were flim-flam artists always this brazenly transparent?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Tags: extraterrestrials, flim-flam
Hi Nimrod
May I just park my RV in the road opposite your driveway? I need to get away from Time Magazine and the stories about a mosque.
You have been so quiet and I clicked to find you are back alive and online, and with one of my pet topics as a special bonus.
Gosh you tell them straight I noticed. But I doubt whether you will ever receive one shred of detail on what you want to know. I had given up on discussing the topic when a little devil whispered in my ear the other day to make fun of them; and I listened to him though we should never do that.
I had decided on a debate like between school kids because that’s what this bunch act like with all their phenomenal Science and had my Post in when the English Trolls attacked me in it on a completely different issue. Thus my Post went to hell and I am still trying to shake the Trolls off.
Can you now see why I need a safe sanctuary for a while?
Thanks for the Post and allowing me in. Let me know when you receive the information you have asked for.
That was something else, wasn’t it? The way it was all layed out, all cut and dried.
Well, see, we just take the average number of stars with planets, which we don’t know, and then we take the number of planets with liveable environments, which we don’t know, and then we take the number of those planets which have life on them, which we don’t know, and we divide all that by the number of those life forms which are intelligent enough to contact us and we come up with a number.
Just like Obama’s Jobs Saved or Created.
The reference to the band uniforms, by the way, was to a wonderful movie called The Music Man about a huckster who came to town and convinced the people that their kids were going to be juvenile delinquents if they just hung around all summer and that what they needed was to learn to play instruments and be in a marching band. He knew as much about music as Obama’s economists know about job creation but teaching music wasn’t his purpose; what he wanted to do was sell them overpriced band uniforms. Which he did.
I sympathize about the mosque thing. Maybe you just need a change of pace. Maybe you can some rocks and go out and throw them at a rhinoceros or something. That’d take your mind of it.
I have been quiet because I got a virus on my computer, a really bad one. I got it fixed but it either came back or was never got rid of to begin with. So I decided to try something different to deal with it and, you know, just a second or two of magical thinking when dealing with a computer can really have an effect.
Now I have my machine running something called Ubuntu Linux and it is really swift. I can get on the Internet and I just got my printer working with it (that was a hoot — I couldn’t get a printer driver from Canon USA but I could get one from Canon Asia). It’s a lot to learn and I’m still taking baby steps. I’m trying really hard not to do something really stupid. Again.