NATS 1880 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Green Bank, West Virginia, Milky Way, Rare Earth Hypothesis
23 Mar 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
What is the drake equation: early on, scientists thought that it would be useful to estimate the chances of finding something. Number or civilizations = nhp x flife x fciv x fnow: this will tell us the number of civilizations in the milky way galaxy capable of interstellar communication. Nhp is the number of habitable planets in the galaxy. This is the first term because it is the prerequisite is having a habitable planet in which a planet can evolve. Flife is fraction of habitable planets that actually have life. So flife = 1 means that all habitable planets have life, where as flife= 1/1,000,000 means that only a one in a million habitable planets have life. So the first two proportions tell us the number of life- bearing planets in the galaxy. Fciv is the fraction of life-bearing planets on which a civilization capable of interstellar communication has at some time arisen.
