Ain't nobody here but us chickens

[andygates]

I'm not sure why, but lately I've become convinced that we are alone in the universe.  Just us, on our precious and singular little rock.  I don't think that it's the rock - my money is on the exoplanet guys finding a ton of Earthlikes soon - but I just have a gut feeling that they've all got bacterial mats, stromatolites, and that's the lot.



In the Drake equation, that's fi, the fraction of life-bearing planets which develop intelligent life.

It's a strange and profoundly melancholy feeling which makes even the most wretched human twaddle seen unbearably precious.

Comments

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Actually, running Drake on a bunch of made-up numbers for the unknowns, it's easy to get one or fewer intelligent species per galaxy at any one time. Mind you, Drake is so vague that it's easy to get anything you like out of it.

"The Hubble Deep Field, an extremely long exposure of a relatively empty part of the sky, provided evidence that there are about 125 billion galaxies in the universe."

It would be poetic (and twee and pat and gothily, indulgently self-satisfying) to imagine just one sentient species in each of those galaxies, cut off forever by huge gert slabs of intergalactic void.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're going to be that depressing about it...

I mean, you could start using imaginary or complex numbers for Drake. Then you'll end up with stupid answers.

As for the huge slabs of intergalactic void: just because they seem insoluble barriers to us, who knows what lies in the future or what might be out there? If it took N billion years to produce us, and there are galaxies out there N+M years older than ours, there might be species out there with M years worth of technological progress.

Thing is, the universe is such an unimaginably vast place, no possibility can be rigorously discounted. I'd rather wonder at the possibilities and potentials than get depressed about how lonely we are.

I'll quite happily get depressed about how damn stupid we are, though.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I need optimistic happy-bum sci-fi.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ah, found it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE

We're made out of meat. :)