SF Signal: More for you John

More for you John

A bit more follow up on the ET Civilization post is here.

In it, the Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of earth-like planets that house intelligent life. Actually, a couple of different riffs on the DE are used, but the result, at least for Jay (owner of the site) is that we have almost no chance, ok zero, of encountering another spacefaring civilization.

I actually took a course at the Univ. of Texas called Search for Extraterrestrial Life. We covered several different topics, including the Viking experiments on Mars, as well as the Drake Equation. In fact, the DE took up the last couple of weeks and was a major factor on the final exam. We had to fill out the entire equation and support why we chose the values we did. I remember being somewhat of a pessimist and my resulting value was quite low, but not zero. I'd say I'm still in that camp today. I'll have to go back over it and think about it some more. Too bad I tossed out all my notes. That stuff was incredibly interesting. I see now that the Fermi Paradox is also a topic of discussion. The FP makes an appearance on A Voyage to Acturus as well. Its almost enough to make me want to go back to school. Almost.

I, too, attended UT Austin (86-91). I missed that class, but I did take "Astronomy in Science Fiction." Could as easily have been "An Introduction to Hard SF." I like the looks of your blog and am posting a link on my site.

Posted by John Lanius on Wednesday November 12, 2003 at 10:15 PM