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Talk:Drake equation

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Oub (talk | contribs) at 12:52, 28 April 2010 (Mayr vs Sagan). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 fl

In the "Current estimates of the parameters" section, it says that Drake estimated fl 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 fl. 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)[reply]

Mayr vs Sagan out? Michael Crichton in?

Hello

Ernst Mayr was the most famous biologist, especially in the theory of evolution which is most relevant here, at our times and he criticised the SETI project in various occasions. I find the discussion he had with Carl Sagan, one of the fathers of SETI especially enlightening and that is why I added it. Now the current section about critics of the SETI project contains a cite of Michael Crichton, a science fiction writer and removed the Mayr link. With all due respect to Mr. Crichton but I think the critics of Ernst Mayr is far more relevant. One of his arguments, which he clearly emphasise as speculative is based on the fact that of the many species on earth, which are in the billions, only one developed intelligence. Now the wording of the paragraph I added can be changed of course and rephrased, but leaving Crichton in and Mayr out, seems to me sort of ridiculous. Oub (talk) 12:52, 28 April 2010 (UTC):[reply]

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