Are we alone?

“I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us…”

Frank Drake

After the first series of Star Trek, the series creator Gene Roddenberg was confronted at a press conference. He was asked to respond to those sceptical regarding the high number of English speaking aliens that the crew of the Enterprise seemed to encounter. Instantly, he referred to the Drake Equation and suggested the reporters present should do the math. This equation was proposed after 1959, when scientists realised that that the sensitivity of radio telescopes (think the dish at Parkes) had reached the point where it would be possible to detect radio and TV transmissions from inhabited planets in the Milky way. Frank Drake hosted an international conference to prepare a strategy to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Drake realised that the first step was to calculate the size of the target. His equation identified a logical series of key information pieces needed to calculate the number of planets we could expect to communicate with in our solar system. As of 2020, we are up to the fraction of planets that could support life, that actually support life. #itslifejimbutnotasweknowit #letsmakelemonade