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I would love to have the quote that goes something like: If you eliminated 99 percent of the stars, and then 99 percent of the planets around that 1 percent, you’d still have about a billion planets that might support life.

OK, I know the numbers are totally wrong, but that’s the general thought. It was an amazing comment on the probability of life existing on another planet.

Anybody?

196 posted on 09/27/2012 10:46:28 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost (Johnny Rico picked the wrong girl!)

The Drake equation states that:

$N = R^{\ast} \cdot f_p \cdot n_e \cdot f_{\ell} \cdot f_i \cdot f_c \cdot L$


where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space[5]See Drake Equation

198 posted on 09/27/2012 10:55:21 AM PDT by Mycroft Holmes (<= Mash name for HTML Xampp PHP C JavaScript primer. Programming for everyone.)

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