Scientists Revise Famous Drake Equation

[BootinUp]

Assigning values to the seven variables has been an educated guessing game, leading to predictions that such civilizations should be widespread. But if that is true, why is there no conclusive evidence of their existence?

This contradiction is known as the Fermi paradox, named for the Italian and later naturalized American nuclear physicist and Nobelist Dr. Enrico Fermi, who informally posed the question to colleagues.

“Life has been around on Earth for about 4 billion years, but complex organisms like animals didn’t appear until about 600 million years ago, which is not long after the modern episode of plate tectonics began,” Professor Stern said.

“Plate tectonics really jump-starts the evolution machine, and we think we understand why.”

https://www.sci.news/astrobiology-2/revised-drake-equation-13067.html

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Thanks for posting. Interesting. . . . . nt

[cachukis]

2. Thanks.

[Irish_Dem]

3. The existence of intelligent life is quite rare.

And humans are hell bent on blowing themselves up.

They don't understand the existence of humans is rare and very special.

[BootinUp]

4. There is some interesting and opposing pov in the comments below

the article. But I am on your side.

[Irish_Dem]

5. Well I am not sure about it actually.

The problem is that we are understandably earth/human centric.

There could be intelligent life forms which are not humanoid at all.
And are not living on earth like planets.

[JoseBalow]

6. The article doesn't seem to really address it's main point

“Biogeochemistry posits that the solid Earth, particularly plate tectonics, speeds up the evolution of species,”

How so?

[BootinUp]

7. There is some more there

“In the original formulation, this factor was thought to be nearly 1, or 100% — that is, evolution on all planets with life would march forward and, with enough time, turn into an intelligent civilization. Our perspective is: That’s not true,” Professor Stern said.

The researchers propose a revision to the Drake equation that defines fi as the product of two terms:

foc: the fraction of habitable exoplanets with significant continents and oceans;

and fpt: the fraction of planets that have had long-lasting plate tectonics.

Based on the team’s analysis, the fraction of the exoplanets with optimal water volume is likely very small.

The authors estimate the value of foc ranges between 0.0002 and 0.01.

Similarly, they conclude that plate tectonics lasting more than 500 million years is also highly unusual, leading to an estimate of fpt at less than 0.17.

“When we multiply these factors together, we get a refined estimate of fi that is very small, between 0.003% and 0.2%, instead of 100%,” Professor Stern said.

“This explains the extreme rareness of favorable planetary conditions for the development of intelligent life in our Galaxy and resolves the Fermi paradox.”

[JoseBalow]

8. I understand how they want to factor that concept into the equation

And I understand how that additional factor would change the formula and it's predictions...

What I don't understand is how plate tectonics affects evolution. Why does plate tectonics matter?

As a related aside, I also don't understand how we can determine/estimate the presence of plate tectonics on distant planets... would it be based on moons/tidal forces, or something like that?

[BootinUp]

9. You should be able to access the actual paper here

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54700-x

I have not read it at this point. They started from the fact that the Drake Equation is not working out based on lack of evidence for intelligent life.

I will try to catch up later.

[JoseBalow]

10. Thanks for the link

It's not my background, but I took a look at that paper, and I'm still not sure how they reached their conclusions. They start with a premise that is cited with a footnote that doesn't have a link(2), but then it seems it's mostly speculations after that - a lot of "correlation, not causation" examples and extrapolations.

They seem to conclude that:

Five processes were likely involved: 1) Increased nutrient supply; 2) Increased oxygenation of atmosphere and ocean; 3) Climate amelioration; 4) Increased rate of habitat formation and destruction; and 5) Moderate, sustained pressure from incessant environmental change.

Are those things only possible with plate tectonics?

I would definitely appreciate the opinion of someone smarter than I to help explain it.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

11. What no one ever seems to take into consideration

when discussing the Fermi Paradox, is just how very old the Universe actually is, and just how incredibly long a billion years is, let alone 14 billion years.

Thousands of civilizations could arise, thrive, last for thousands of years. Eventually any given civilization dies. In a million years, a thousand civilizations could arise somewhere in the galaxy, and not a single one of them overlap another. So I'm not remotely surprised we haven't found actual evidence of some other technological civilization out there.

[BootinUp]

12. The history of the galaxy is part of the equation

it is supposed to factor in every planet where life could ever have evolved. There seems to be no evidence in our region of the galaxy for any *previous* or current intelligent life.

Some smart people have spent / wasted, their time on this.