Astronomy: "What Is the Drake Equation? What is SETI?"
"The Drake equation (also sometimes called the "Green Bank equation," the "Green Bank Formula," or erroneously labeled the "Sagan equation") is a famous result in the fields of exobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). This equation was devised by Dr. Frank Drake (now Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz) in 1960, in an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way (our galaxy) with which we might come into contact. The main purpose of the equation is to allow scientists to quantify the uncertainty of the factors that determine the number of such extraterrestrial civilizations.
The Drake equation is closely related to the Fermi paradox in that Drake suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations (the Fermi paradox) suggests that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly. This theory often stimulates an interest in identifying and publicizing ways in which humanity could destroy itself, and then counters with hopes of avoiding such destruction and eventually becoming a space-faring species. A similar argument is The Great Filter,[1] which notes that since there are no observed extraterrestrial civilizations, despite the vast number of stars, then some step in the process must be acting as a filter to reduce the final value. According to this view, either it is very hard for intelligent life to arise, or the lifetime of such civilizations must be relatively short.fp is the fraction of stars that have planets around them.
ne is the number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life.
fl is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves.
fi is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves.
fc is the fraction of fi that communicate.
The resulting product, N, is the total number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.
The amazing thing about the Drake Equation is that no matter how conservative you are with the values of the individual factors, it leads to an incredibly large number of beings out there, with radios, attempting to contact one another. Human attempts to connect with a galactic community are only fledgling. The most famous and organized effort is called SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) which was founded by Frank Drake in 1961. Anyone with an Internet connection can now join the effort by lending their computer's idle time to analyzing radio signals from space in the hopes of finding unnatural patterns. The computer sharing program is administrated by SETI@HOME at University of California Berkeley."
"What is SETI@home? SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data." - http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
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