Feo: Findings in Martian meteorites...
Posted by Feo Amante on Jan 20, 2004 at 23:12
(24.130.231.153)Re: Findings in Martian meteorites... (peacepixy)
Forget Drake's Equation, it's junk science.
When you throw together a series of zero quantities there is nothing to even hypothesize about. It's mere guess work at any level and thus useless at every level.
Drake's equation is
We don't know. We don't have the technology yet for determining this. The SETI Project only scans for electromagnetic transmissions in patterns we are aware of at this stage of our technology. Much can be drowned out and much more is undetectable. The very first time Drake turned on his machine he tricked himself into thinking he caught an otherworldly signal. there have been many false alarms since then. None have stood up to scrutiny in 40+ years.
Which neither proves or disproves your point. According to Carl Sagan, in his book, The Demon Hauunted World, one of the common fallacies of logic and rhetoric is the Appeal to Ignorance, described thusly: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
N, in the Drake equation is meaningless.
Next is
Again, we have no idea. We are discovering new ones at a far more rapid rate now than we ever did during Drake's time and it is turning many theories on their heads. Jupiter sized gaseous planets orbiting as close or closer to their suns as mercury.
Tiny planets orbiting their suns and making them hotter.
And the like.
Yet another factor for which we have no idea and no clue, and we are slightly closer to extrapolating some kind of statistical curve now than Drake was back in the late 1950s, early 60s.
But it would still be nothing more than that: a statistical curve based on slim evidence.
Recent discoveries of extremophiles turns everything biologists once believed about life upside down. Even high pressure, acidic Venus may very well have life forms!
Impossible to guess since we are still only going by one solar system - ours. We also don't know what factors may create intelligence.
Like Al said, 200 years ago we weren't making any discernable radio waves. Who knows what the next 200 years will bring or even if radio wave communication is a given among alien species?
And at last we come to the final unknown in an equation without quantifiers. Now with no other civilizations to study besides our own, how can we possibly determine L? You can't even correctly determine all birds by looking at a single finch.
Drake's equation is tabloid science. Trivial fun for backyard barbeque speculation, but absolutely useless as any starting point of reasonable discussion - let alone science.
If you are using Drake (an otherwise brilliant man) as your basis for the theory that there is no other life in the Universe, you are working with zero theory; nothing testable; nothing that can be tried and tested by others; and no evidence at all.
You have a bag of squat that relies soley on faith without merit.
Sorry.
Follow Ups:
- Re: Feo: Findings in Martian meteorites... Measurement 24/1 12:25 (0)
- Re: Feo: Findings in Martian meteorites... danno might 21/1 07:20 (6)
- Feo2: Findings in Martian meteorites... Feo Amante 21/1 13:19 (5)
- Re: Feo2: Findings in Martian meteorites... Pasti 22/1 03:10 (4)
- Feo3: Findings in Martian meteorites... Feo Amante 22/1 10:20 (3)
- Re: Feo3: Findings in Martian meteorites... Planko 22/1 10:38 (2)
- Feo4: Findings in Martian meteorites... Feo Amante 22/1 22:43 (1)
- difficulty transmitting/picking up danno might 23/1 10:57 (0)