That's the real rub, isn't it? We're assuming, since we have only one real data point, that intelligent life would tend to be on planets like ours, under suns like ours. For all we know, our kind of life is much more rare than, say, something that lives in the atmosphere of gas giants.
People doing the calculations have found that the radio noise of a civilization damps out a lot more quickly than we used to think, so who knows what systems really have life? If you assume intelligence without our kind of electromagnetic-radiating technology, it gets even trickier.
We'll know a lot more when we get at least one more data point. Finding independently evolved life anywhere else in our solar system would make it almost certain that life is abundant in the universe.
Space/Science » in reply to Good point.
re: "depends a lot on our aliens, too."
The whole thread (35 posts)
- Kepler looking at Red Dwarfs
- The supernova hail. an active SETI technique.
- re: Kepler looking at Red Dwarfs URL problem fixed here
- The SETI implications
- What are alien "Keplers" seeing?