*** VD 13 Commentary Thread ***

[Kevin Seitzer]

Even though my power is in and no snow in sight

Power to the people!

[The Feral Slasher]

Clearly.

Howdy ! Hope all is well with u in Texas

[Bene Futuis]

True ?

Ha, he looked it up! Moderately embarrassing handle but I'm just not that clever.

[The Feral Slasher]

Hearing some fireworks tonight. Don't think there will be official fireworks shows this year. I expect the peeples to step up

[Kevin Seitzer]

Howdy ! Hope all is well with u in Texas

Got a COVID test today, so that was fun.

[Bene Futuis]

Over the years it has become clear to me that Revo and I often don't share much common ground when it comes to fine arts preferences. But he's a Dodger fan miscast as a Jerseyite so I cut him a lot of slack.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Got a COVID test today, so that was fun.

*not actually fun

[The Feral Slasher]

Got a COVID test today, so that was fun.

Hope you have good results and hope I don't ever need one. But my fellow americans seem excited to infect me

[Bene Futuis]

Got a COVID test today, so that was fun.

I hope your test was positively negative!

[Kevin Seitzer]

Hope you have good results and hope I don't ever need one. But my fellow americans seem excited to infect me

I'll supposedly find out in 2-3 days.

[The Feral Slasher]

Hope you have good results and hope I don't ever need one. But my fellow americans seem excited to infect me

We are number one in covid. No one else can compete !

[The Feral Slasher]

I hope your test was positively negative!

Agreed, much better than negatively positive

[The Feral Slasher]

Is that Robert deNiro in the El DeBarge video?!

Who’s Johnny, Who’s holding donna now, man, they had a lot of questions!

This is a classic

[The Feral Slasher]

OK, here's where I'm at with the "are we alone out in this big ol' universe?" discussion:

There are things that we know to be certain.

We know that the probability of the existence of intelligent life in the universe is more than zero. We know this, arguments about this reality being a simulation aside, because we are living proof. We also know that rudimentary life can form in a relatively short period of time. We know this because life first originated about a billion years after Earth came into existence. We also know that a couple billion years later, we evolved from that primitive life. We know what the building blocks for the emergence of life as we know it are --- things like hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen --- and we also know they are incredibly prevalent throughout our galaxy. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, oxygen is third, etc.

The most common way scientists estimate the number of communicating civilizations in our galaxy is the Drake Equation, in which N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L where

N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.

R* = The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.

fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.

ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.

fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.

fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.

fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.


Of course, any zeroes in this equation mean we're alone, at least in our galaxy (one of hundreds of billions, remember).

But we do know some of these variables. R is somewhere between 1.5-3. F(sub)p is something approaching 1 --- stars with planets are the rule, rather than the exception. Fp minus Ne is somewhere around .4 --- there are more than 40 billion Earth-esque planets in habitable zones orbiting stars in the Milky Way alone. But now we start getting into the sticky stuff. For brevity's sake, of the remaining variables really only Fl is worth discussing here --- "is there any life at all out there?" The rest just speak to whether we (or they) would ever know of the other's existence. Of course, the enormous distances between planets makes all of this even more difficult --- if a civilization 65 million light years away, that is, not even outside our own galaxy, was somehow looking directly at Earth, they would see dinosaurs and not people. The time factor complicates everything enormously because even if there is other life out there, it would take a very, very specific window or some sort of prescience to be able to communicate. Humans have only been able to transmit radio waves beyond our atmosphere for 100 years.

But scientists often employ the Central Limit Theorem when trying to muscle through the Drake Equation. That is, given variables with finite mean and variance, the variables will be normally distributed on a plot. And when the theorem is applied to the Drake Equation, the probability of each of the seven variables of the Equation become positive.

There's an easy way to look at it, too. It's called the "pessimism line". Let's assume that ours is the only life ever to have existed in the universe. Given what we know right now and our ever-increasing knowledge about the other quantifiable variables, human civilization must be the only civilization in the universe if the odds of a civilization developing on a habitable planet are less than one in 10 billion trillion (one part in 10 to the 22nd power). This, of course, is an unbelievably small number and generally falls well below nearly all of even the most pessimistic projections.

It seems to me that it's likely that some life, at least some rudimentary form of life, has formed somewhere in the trillions of solar systems in the universe over the course of its 14+ billion year existence. Obviously the probability of life, in general, exceeds zero. But the vast distances and long time scales complicate things so much that even if there were billions of intelligent, spacefaring civilizations to have emerged, it is still likely we would never know. The best answer is that, for all practical purposes, we are alone in the universe even if there are millions or billions of other lifeforms out there.

I disagree

[The Feral Slasher]

I have rats in my attic.

Oh my ! I actually had one climb up the bushes into my attic. Heard the bastard scratching. Don't miss him at all