Space, to quote Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, is enormous. Average distance between one sun and another? 30 million million klicks. Looks like the chances of our universe being populated with other life forms is slim, right? Wrong.
According to Francis Drake, the maths actually works the other way around. Take a single galaxy, estimate the total number of stars in that galaxy and divide that by the number that have planetary systems. Divide that again by the number of planets in those systems that might possibly support life. Divide that again by a worst-case guess of how many might get microbial life to evolve to something recognizable as ‘intelligent’ life.
Doesn’t matter how pessimistic you make these figures, according to Drake, the number of possible planets in which intelligent life could have arisen in just a single galaxy is statistically in the millions. Multiply that by the number of estimated galaxies in the universe, around 80 billion, and you have a mathematical certainty that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.
The big question is, will they be more like Alien, Predator or Transformers?
Friday, 23 October 2009
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