RE: The Human race: A sci-fi story
July 23, 2017 at 12:55 pm
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2017 at 1:08 pm by ph445.)
(July 23, 2017 at 12:41 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: "My point is that we are the first civilization in this universe, an outlier. " 200 trillion galaxies in the known universe and you make that claim?
I know star trek and star wars are alluring and cooler, but we have no evidence of another civilization in the universe. It is largely sterile.
the famed Drake Equation is essentially guesswork, a long string of arbitrary variables that can be set to any value we choose. We choose by inference. For instance, intelligent life happened here, then we assign a number saying it can happen over there. Of course we haven’t the slightest clue what the conditions are over there, nor have we gathered the slightest clue regarding how DNA formed over here. Without knowing how DNA formed over here, we cannot infer how it would happen again over there, without knowing either how DNA forms out of nothingness, nor the conditions over there. We have no idea how DNA began. The very first barrier, how did we happen, is an unknown, and inferring any further is a null hypothesis.
It takes 3 billion base pairs to make the human genome. In and of itself, that means the probability of intelligent life happening again is already 3 billion to 1, using oversimplified statistics in our own known environment.
As an example of a low estimate, combining NASA's star formation rates, the rare Earth hypothesis value of fp*ne*fl = 10−5,
Mayr's view on intelligence arising, Drake's view of communication, and Shermer's's estimate of lifetime: R* = 7/year, fp*ne*fl = 10^−5,
fi = 10^−9, fc = 0.2, and L = 304 years gives: N = 7 × 10^−5 × 10^−9 × 0.2 × 304 = 4 x 10^−12 i.e., N=4 x 10^−12 (one trillionth) intelligent species in our galaxy (there are one hundred billion to one trillion galaxies in the universe) suggesting that we are alone in this galaxy, and most likely the observable universe. That is, at one trillionth a chance, it would require one trillion galaxies to be 68% certain of there being 1 intelligent species in the entire cosmos, using a standard Bell curve approach. However, at 1/10 the required lower limit of galaxies required (there are only one hundred billion galaxies in the known cosmos-not 200 trillion), the probability drifts so close to zero it is functionally zero. The fact that we are here is anomalous in every aspect.
10^-12 is quite small compared to the odds of forming DNA capable of forming a basic living organism at random, which is 10^40,000.
We are alone, the universe is a sterile void besides us.
