Talk:Drake equation

This article in the press

This article is linked to in this press article: Man Uses Math to Explain Girlfriend Woes Samboy (talk) 05:22, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Wrong statement for L

RM below about L to talk. If L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space then Grote Reber and radio astronomy have nothing to do with this value, his antenna was a receiver, not a transmitter. Maybe the example should date back to the Invention of radio. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 00:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The value of L can be estimated from the lifetime of our current civilization from the advent of radio astronomy in 1938 (dated from Grote Reber's parabolic dish radio telescope) to the current date. In 2009, this gives an L of 71 years. However such an assumption would be erroneous. 71 for the value of L would be an artificial minimum based on Earth's broadcasting history to date and would make unlikely the possibility of other civilizations existing. 10,000 for L is still the most popular estimate.

Current estimate of f_l

In the "Current estimates of the parameters" section, it says that Drake estimated f_l to be 1, whereas a couple other guys more recently estimated it to be 0.13. However, in the two sections that calculate N based on the current estimates (both at the bottom of the "Historical estimates" section and the bottom of the "Current estimates" section), a value of 0.33 is used for f_l. Where did 0.33 come from? Should an explanation should be added regarding how 0.33 was derived, or should we be using 0.13 in our current estimate calculation of N? SnottyWong talk 21:29, 19 April 2010 (UTC)