THE CRUX OF IT: Let reason guide you to new frontiers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are three unquestionably monumental and pervasive questions that exist for all people.

The first would be “Why are we here?”

The second would be “What happens after death?”

The third would be “Are we alone?”

 

 

Of those, only one can be adequately tackled with reason and science, and also with just hint of child-like imagination and wonderment.

The third question of whether the earth is unique and, undesirably, solitary can be addressed with a great piece of logic called the Drake Equation.

Put simply, this piece of brilliance was designed to estimate the number of technologically advanced civilizations that might exist in our Galaxy.

Just for the sake of reference, here it is:

N = R* f_p n_e f_l f_i f_c L
where,

• N = The number of communicative civilizations
• R* = The rate of formation of suitable stars (stars such as our Sun)
• f_p = The fraction of those stars with planets. (Current evidence indicates that planetary systems may be common for stars like the Sun.)
• n_e = The number of Earth-like worlds per planetary system
• f_l = The fraction of those Earth-like planets where life actually develops
• f_i = The fraction of life sites where intelligence develops
• f_c = The fraction of communicative planets (those on which electromagnetic communications technology develops)
• L = The “lifetime” of communicating civilizations

Impressed? I am.

 

The spiral galaxy we live in has 200 to 400 billion stars in it.

Frank Drake’s own current solution to the Drake Equation estimates 10,000 communicative civilizations in the Milky Way.

Now, that is an estimation of just our single galaxy. Our galaxy is like a solitary grain on a vast beach.

The most current estimates guess that there are 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the Universe, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars.

I’m not capable of extrapolating such numbers, but I think there are a lot!

Even if the conservative estimates are wrong, imagine that instead, one tenth of those civilizations were in existence. There would still be 1,000 in our galaxy alone!  When the numbers add up and logic narrows in a definitive direction, that is what science calls a probability.

WE ARE NOT ALONE…(probably)

Does Frank Drake or anyone else profess to have any further information such as, some civilization’s favorite Avenger or flavor of ColdStone ice cream? Of course not…But the math supports the likely-hood of existence all around us.

So, ultimately, what does that mean to each of us? Universally it means that the majority of what we believe and have been taught is grossly inaccurate. Religion, geopolitical strife, social  order, economics and every “ism” you can list will be called into question by any thinking person once anything greater than an off-world amoeba is discovered-and rightfully so!

Of course, there will be any number of people that will hunker down in their dogma if only to prevent their lives from losing meaning.

I look eagerly forward to a time when all of the things listed previously are called into question and hopefully discarded-and I would hope that you would as well.