Trying saying that five times fast…. Did you miss my short story Return Blessing last year in Analog magazine? Luckily for you, it’s now available in standalone ebook and print editions at all the usual places. Jeffrey just wants to have a good time, drinking and partying in thehuman zone near the city of the …
Quoting Nick Land, expat Brit philosopher in Shanghai, “The cosmic reality visible to us is characterized by an intense, efficient aversion to the existence of advanced civilizations.” He calls whatever it is that prevents the existence of advanced civilizations “The Great Filter.” Longtime science fiction readers familiar with Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center series or Fred …
Long article about Elon Musk at Aeon. Musk, along with Peter Thiel, is one of the few modern capitalists who resembles the Heinlein hero D.D.Harriman (or one of Ayn Rand’s late-career male lead characters): an innovator who wants to remake the world of possibilities, expand the pie for everyone, and grab a big slice of …
Elon Musk, the Fermi Paradox, & religious motivations for space settlement Read More »
I’m pleased to let you know that I have a new science fiction short novel coming out on September 25, 2014. It’s got intrigue, a love story, and an homage to Lawrence Durrell’s tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet, all wrapped up in my distinctive flavor of sf speculation. You can preorder the ebook now or buy …
After numerous posts, we’ve now reached an analysis of the final term in the Drake equation, L, the average lifespan of high-tech civilizations. If you thought putting a value on f_c, the likelihood of an intelligent civilization developing a high enough technology to make its existence known across interstellar distances, was a prime avenue for …
The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – The Longevity of High-Tech Civilizations (L) Read More »
So far in the series, we’ve gotten a range for N, the number of detectable civilizations in the galaxy, to [5e-7 to 8e-6] * f_c * L. Today’s post will estimate the value of f_c, the fraction of intelligent species that go on to develop a civilization detectable (through electromagnetic transmissions and/or probes travelling at …
The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – From Intelligence to High-Tech Civ (f_c) Read More »
In our last post, we looked at some of the many ways life could be prevented from giving rise to a pre-intelligent species–say, an animal like Proconsul, the earliest known ape, living about 25 million years ago. In doing so, we knocked f_i down to 0.02. Here, we’ll look at what could prevent the descendants …
The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – From the Cusp, to Intelligence (f_i, part 2) Read More »
Uncertainty in calculating the Drake Equation has led us to a broad range, with N = [0.84-16.03] * f_i * f_c * L. Despite the uncertainty, we concluded that relatively high values of f_i (the fraction of life-bearing worlds that give rise to intelligence), f_c (the fraction of intelligent species that develop technology detectable across …
This has been the toughest post in the series to write, because the question of how life arose is the most open. A look at the linked article will show a lot of different conjectures. Which one(s) explain how life actually arose on Earth and/or would arise on other planets are still unknown. Let’s make …
The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – Fraction of Planets Where Life Arises Read More »
As we discussed in the series so far (1 2 3), the Drake Equation gives an estimate of the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible, N. After entering the first two values, we have: N = 5.625 * n_e * f_l * f_i * f_c * L Today, we’ll …
The Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation – Planets Potentially Supporting Life Read More »
