Who among us haven’t looked up at the sky and wondered what was really out there beyond our Earth? I distinctly remember being fascinated by the night-time sky as a small child and was lucky to live in a neighborhood without streetlights. We could see planets, twinkling stars, and meteors in all of their glory. It made my nerdy eight year old self feel blissfully insignificant. Pondering all of the mysteries and the “what ifs” stretched my imagination and eventually led to me being a lifelong fan of physics, cutting edge tech, and science fiction.
An already year old article serendipitously surfaced in my Google news feed today from the SETI Institute (source) that stoked the old flame of curiosity.
The Drake Equation
If you have even a mild interest in science you’ve probably heard of the Drake Equation:
Where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);
and
R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Moving Beyond The Drake Equation
The gist of the SETI Institute article was this...recent research has theorized that one-in-six stars in our galaxy is capable of sustaining life. If one-in-one-hundred of those planets eventually produced thinking beings, then one-in-one-hundred-million of these star systems should hold intelligent life in varying stages of evolution. If this new research is correct we should have ten-thousand intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. Ten-thousand!
Can you even imagine about how interesting it would be to learn about these other civilizations' history, their culture, their wisdom? Unless they land on our doorstep there's lots for us to learn before we can initiate anything resembling an open cultural exchange with another intelligent civilization.
The Caveat (there's always a catch)
Our Milky Way galaxy (not to mention the entirety of the universe) is unfathomably vast. The Milky Way is so vast in fact that the nearest intelligent civilization could be up to two-thousand light years away which would take approximately twenty-million-years to travel to using our current propulsion technology. Hey Elon, can you have your buddies at SpaceX get to work on a viable means of interstellar propulsion?
Nothing Worthwhile Is Easy
If humanity wisens up and survives long enough we will find a much faster way to traverse these long distances. As frustrating as a twenty million year journey seems there's a certain kind of harmony in the fact that we're this far apart and it's this difficult.
The enormous expanse of distance hints at a purposeful and intelligent design to this universe of ours. It all but insures that no contact is possible until civilizations are evolved/mature enough to handle the initiation of contact. This is assuming technical evolution keeps pace with spiritual and intellectual evolution.
As outlined in my novel, Alarm Clock Dawn, I'm of the belief that civilizations who don't develop technologically, intellectually, and spiritually at around the same rate they probably end up destroying themselves in a varying manor of grisly ways before they evolve into an interstellar species.
Judging by humanity's current track record, we have a long way to go before we're ready for interstellar travel but this is all so interesting to think about.
Maybe we'll get lucky and some enlightened (and very brave) civilization will drop by and pay us a visit. Many people among us believe they already have. If any of our neighbors have dropped by or do visit in the near future, I sure as hell hope some of their wisdom wears off on us.
Thank you for reading,
Eric
*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.
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