Randomness for the masses

Quote of the Day:After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER."
-Willliam S. Burroughs

As a species, man is lonely. Why else would we constantly create fantasy stories? It is quite a scary thought that in the huge vasteness of the universe, (which contains everything and nothing, but there is very little everything and more nothing than you could imagine) that we are the only speck of intelligent life. I guess it is only natural to want company, but really, what are the posibilities of there being intelligent life out there?

I think it is fairly obvious that there is no life on mars, or any other planet in our Solar System. But what about outside our Solar System? Some people believe that life, especially intelligent life, is unlikely anywhere else in the universe, simply because there are too many circumstances that must be just so, and too many events must follow in just the right order.

But given the vastness of the universe with more than 40 billion trillion (40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the universe, the sun and indeed the Earth can not possibly that unique? An equation has been developed in order to calculate the likelyhood of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI):

N= N* x Fp x Ne x Fl x Fi x Fc x Fl

N=number of communicating ETIs in our falaxy, and the Milky Way.
N*=number of stars in the Milky Way.
Fp=fraction of stars that have planets.
Ne=average number of planets circling each star that can support life.
Fl=fraction of such planets on which life has actually originated.
Fi=fraction of those planets on which intelligent life has evolved.
Fc=fraction of those planets on which the intelligent beings have developed the means and desire for intersellar commumication.
Fl=fraction of a lanet's life occupied by such communicating civilizations.

However, many of the factors in this equation are nothing more than guesses. But this equation has been used to estimate 4,000 worlds with communicative civilizations. Whereas other estimates have been nearer 530,000. But if you think that is out of 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, its a miniscule number. Therefore actually finding one of these civilizations is going to be near on impossible.

But taking the premise that it does exist how will we go about finding and communicating with these ETIs? I doubt aliens will make their presence known by landing in some cornfield in America. I think it is more likely that we will learn about them through radio communication. If we take ourselves as an example, I'll explain why. With our present technology, our fastest spaceships can travel as around one six-thousandth the speed of light (no warp drives yet I'm afraid). If we think of this in real terms: The nearest star to us (except the sun) is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years away. This means that it would take more than 25,000 years for a space ship travelling at maximum speed to reach Proxima Centauri, and most stars are much farther away than that. Makes you feel isolated doesn't it? Obviously we're not as technologically advanced as we like to believe, we are nowhere near the point in space technology where we can even contemplate interstellar travel.

But radio waves travell at the speed of light, not six thousand times slower. Plus radio technology is not futuristic, infacy for nearly three quatres of a century we've been bombarding space with radio waves. At the moment our radio transmissions extend out into space for more than 70 light-years in all directions. I can only assume that extraterrestrial civilizations have evoloved in the same way. So instead of building landing strips for flying saucers we should be building radio receivers and pointing them at the stars.

By and large, this is exactly what we were doing. In 1960 NASA set up the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programme. So our quest to alleviate our lonliness continues.

Thinking about all this has made me realise how much we're all going to miss. Technology has advanced at a phenomenal rate, in my short life I have seen the development of the home computer, the construction of the Mier Space Station and huge leaps forward in terms of science and medicine. Infact film and moving image has only been around 100 years and look at it now. Think of all the possablities to come, we are treated to a glimpse of human ingenuity, which I think is as vast as the universe.