Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

lunarmark · 2004-09-07 06:35:40

Hi Lunarmark!
>> Who is this Sterling Webb person? I can't place him.
And why, in the case of his hypothetical planet exactly twice the diameter of Earth, should the mass be 12 times greater when the volume is only 8 times as great? Why does the average density of the hypothetical planet have to be 1.5 times Earth's average density?.... <<<

Shaun,

(Stirling web is a bloke on another mailing list, we had a similar thread going on there, and I though his reply was quite well layed out..)

The thing to remember is, that as the diameter of the planet increases the total mass goes up in an even bigger way, since the core actually represents a larger part of the mass of the planet, so whilst the diameter may be double earth it would be much much denser therefore there would be a lot more gravity.

It is widely belived that the bigger the planet the more water would be depositied there. Some of the water originates in the original enstatite material which formed the earth/planet. Other water might have come from comets or water laden meteorites which struck the earth early on, bu again a bigger planet might endure more impacts.

So we can assume that a x2 Earth would have much more water, or at least have had more water. It stands more chance of staying on the surface due to the higher gravity and magnetic field etc.

The point that was made about the distance of the x2 planet away from it's sun being critical is a good one. you would either end up with a super venus or a very large Europa. However a bigger warmer planet may very well mean the habitable zone may actually be wider with planetry systems with bigger planets.

Of course we could still be talking about mini Jupiters here so its all academic at the moment!

karov · 2004-09-07 10:18:01

About the moons` habitability and the dependency of livability of a planetary mass object from stellar light sourse:

http://www.sfwa.org/members/Nordley/Gra … ravity.pdf

, this of course puts in the account, prelliminary taken as "most probable", only the earth-type life - based on chemical reactions and hence, building blocks, thus restricted in complexity and subjective time speed by the maximum figures - property of the involved chemicals... and especially the liquid water based protein/NA-life, confined in our comperativelly narrow PHASE DIAGRAM borders.

The conclusion is that a world to be habitable by earthly lifeforms no at all needs a sun-like star at ~1 AU distance. For example if the plane of rotation of the Jupiter`s huge mag-field wasn`t excentric in accordance with the orbits of the Gallileans - they would have thick atmospheres as Titan ( orbiting within the Saturns mag-field with right angle) and regardless the distance to the Sun, if these atmospheres were thick enough ( several bars?) - at the surface liquid water temperatures would dominate! With insolation 25 times lower than the earth`s one, the local life needs 25 times more effective chlorophile-like pigment to ensure bisphere as vigorous as ours, but this is not necesarry in general... The internal heat reserves of any planetary mass object are really enormous, a life-cycle which utilizes it can last even longer than one depending on the stabile short phase of any Main sequence star...

see also, http://www.gps.caltech.edu/faculty/stev … ...ets.pdf

=====================================
About the tidally locked planets, you may see that they orbiting M-stars or in principle even Brown dwarfs, can have gaseous atmosphere and liquid water in have at least 0.15 bars of CO2. Other atmospheric content, too...

http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/gille … /joshi.pdf

Environments with right temperature/pressure for earth-type life are quite abundant here in the Solar system, as well as out there...

karov · 2004-09-11 07:12:11

Ocean-planets:

http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/03 … 308324.pdf

see, especially for the Habitabilty zone - 4.2 Planetary albedo -- which fenomenon extends the Habitable Zone to regions closer to the star. According to Kuchner`2003 - the naturally increased albedo prevents the planet from transforming into gass ball for billions of years even if it is pretty close to the star.
=====================================

The same way the greenhouse effect and non-radiant stellar power sourses could ensure in the opposite diresction away from the star liquid water surface temperatures even in the interstellar void.
==========================================

If the jovian gallilean moons were at the same distances to brown dwarf at least Io and Europa would have been in the HabZone, non-counting the effects of thick titan-like or other massive atmosphere. For example: http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … am....2004... the eventual companion of this brown dwarf - the 5 times jupiter mass planet is still radiating at 1000 C surface temperature due to formational gravitationally sqweezed heat. This heat will last for short in geological scale, but if it powers life emerging and innitial development, this life could hide in liquid water ocean beneath the ice-crust later, when the gas giant cools down.

Habitable Zone - i.e. liquid water conditions - could be found in plenty of places in the universe, and it seems that the actual stellar irradiation plays insignifficant role.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-15 08:15:22

Hi again, Lunarmark!
I'm still having trouble with this guy, Sterling Webb, and his estimate of the mass of a SuperEarth exactly twice the linear dimensions of Earth.
He maintains that this hypothetical rocky planet, exactly 8x Earth's volume, will have 12x the mass. This immediately gives us an average density for SuperEarth of 1.5x Earth's average density.
Earth's average density is 5.5 g/cu.cm. Thus, according to Mr. Webb, SuperEarth's average density must be 8.25 g/cu.cm. (1.5 x 5.5 g/cu.cm). Interestingly, the density of elemental iron is only 7.874 g/cu.cm, which means Mr. Webb's SuperEarth couldn't be 12x Earth's mass, even if it were made entirely of pure iron!
When I did this simple calculation, it occurred to me that perhaps the immense pressures and temperatures at Earth's core, which is widely believed to be a mixture of iron and nickel, might produce some kind of super-dense metal. But apparently this is not the case. Iron and nickel are relatively incompressible, even under those conditions. In fact, due to impurities in the mix, such as sulphur, Earth's core has a density some 10% less than that of pure iron.

You have said; "The thing to remember is, that as the diameter of the planet increases the total mass goes up in an even bigger way, since the core actually represents a larger part of the mass of the planet, so whilst the diameter may be double earth it would be much much denser therefore there would be lot more gravity."
I don't think this is correct. I've done the arithmetic and found that if all of Earth's dimensions are doubled, including the diameter of the core, the ratio of the core volume to the total planetary volume remains the same. Therefore, there's no reason to assume that, as the planet's diameter doubles, the total planetary mass should increase beyond what you might expect from the increase in volume, which would be 8x.

As I've shown above, even if the hypothetical SuperEarth were to be entirely nickel/iron core material, with no rocky mantle and crust, it still wouldn't attain a mass 12x that of Earth.
To reach that kind of mass, you would have to assume that a significantly higher percentage of denser metals were available for planet-building in the region of space in which the SuperEarth formed. I'd be prepared to bet Mr. Webb hasn't made reference to any such special circumstances. And, if he did, then he is simply engineering things to suit his own purposes, since there is no evidence to support such a supposition.

I know I'm making a big deal out of Sterling Webb's little thought experiment! Why am I going to so much trouble to find flaws in his reasoning?
It's because I'm getting sick and tired of all the 'gloom merchants' who seem intent on shooting down anything and everything to do with space exploration. Just lately, we had another sermon from Jeff Bell, savagely criticising Dr. Zubrin and, by implication, the Mars Society, its membership, and its aspirations. His logic was faulty, too. And he is obviously emotionally attached to the proposition that the human exploration of Mars, and even the notion of a sample return mission, should be abandoned. If he had presented a well-reasoned case for such views, I would have reacted differently. But he didn't.
Now, along comes Mr. Webb. He seems to be trying to place unrealistic limits on the size of rocky planets which might harbour life. I wouldn't mind if his imaginary scenario made sense, but I don't believe it does.
Who are these people?!! Why do they try, at every turn, to belittle the exciting prospects for humanity in outer space? I could try to say they're part of a propaganda campaign to turn people away from 'the final frontier' - a kind of undercover Luddite conspiracy - but I'll resist that temptation!

However, at the very least, we need to expose the glaring flaws in their logic and their science. This is a 'heads up'. Keep your 'Bulls*** Detectors' primed and ready!
:laugh: :;):

rgcarnes · 2004-09-15 12:13:10

Thanks Shaun,

I'm certain that I, and surely many others, appreciate the attention you've paid to these matters.

The B-S detectors of many of us are saturated now days. Please keep up your efforts while you still can.

lunarmark · 2004-09-20 08:38:35

You said:

>Who are these people?!! Why do they try, at every turn, to belittle the exciting prospects for humanity in outer space? I could try to say they're part of a propaganda campaign to turn people away from 'the final frontier' - a kind of undercover Luddite conspiracy - but I'll resist <
>>

Conspiracy, hmm maybe, (or are we just the engineers that have to get the mad idea's to actually work), yes!

Good points though...

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-08-09 11:13:28

How helicopters are shaking up the hunt for life on Mars
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/maga … fe-on-mars

‘All or nothing’: Scientists search for extraterrestrial intelligence
https://whyy.org/segments/all-or-nothin … elligence/

The Odds of Life and Intelligence - Maths of the Drake Equation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLbbpRYRW5Y

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-02 10:43:43

Frank Drake, astronomer famed for contributions to SETI, has died

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09 … -has-died/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-13 07:22:46

I'm still not sure if Life will be found currently on Mars, maybe evidence of past life or maybe something still living inside a Cave

After this you have Europa or Exoplanets

‘Super-Earth’ discovery by Australian astronomers ‘has potential to transform understanding of planetary atmospheres’
https://www.spacechatter.com/2022/09/12 … iese-486b/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-27 10:47:36

Search for Life on Mars Panel

1 hr 40 mins

25th Annual International Mars Society Convention

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVCPeDIsIiA

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-10 10:27:08

Aliens haven't contacted Earth because there's no sign of intelligence here, new answer to the Fermi paradox suggests
https://www.livescience.com/aliens-tech … al-signals

Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTrFAY3LUNw

Exploring the Drake Equation: We Talk About Aliens
https://lowell.edu/2023/03/07/exploring … ut-aliens/
Are we running through the six with our woes…. alone? The Drake Equation says no. On this episode of Star Stuff, our fearless hosts delve into a probabilistic argument created by Dr. Frank Drake in 1961, used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-30 08:21:06

Moons Orbiting Rogue Planets Could be Habitable

https://www.universetoday.com/160673/mo … habitable/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-05-10 05:32:30

NASA Uses Powerful Transmitters to Talk to Deep Space Spacecraft. Will Other Civilizations Receive Those Signals?

https://www.universetoday.com/161278/na … e-signals/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-05-24 17:16:09

The Genesis Lab: Exploring Life's Origins and Illuminating a Key Term in the Drake Equation

https://www.seti.org/genesis-lab-explor … e-equation

The Fermi Paradox: Searching For Dyson Spheres

https://www.bitchute.com/video/Uf9SZgeVDqI/

Isaac Arthur

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-06-18 04:16:58

A Western adaptation?

Liu Cixin and Three-Body Problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lj99Uz1d50

For years Hollywood has made both good and bad adaption of Japanese product now its Chinese scifi.

Three-Body Problem a scifi novel written by the Chinese writer Liu Cixin, the first novel of the Remembrance of Earth's Past. The book is a interesting journey, it is a basic cop murder suicide suspense story that turns into a sci-fi epic. The books are a kind of unique look at the world and space, they look into China's own history and scifi or science speculation from a Chinese Asian scifi perspective. The books have been translated and even in the West some people rank up there with Arthur C Clark, George Orwell, Frank Herbert's Dune, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Ben Bova, Jules Verne and so many other greats who would never be passed. There was already a recent Chinese tv show which I watched but I think the books are a little better because he goes deep into his own personal life and criticism of Communism and the Mass Deaths during the 'Cultural Revolution' the China made tv show of the book does not censor it but it does not describe it the same as the books do. It's hard to describe anything without spoiling everything but basically the book has a lot of 'Hard Science' there is no coming back from the dead like StarWars, StarTrek or Superhero movies, no FTL however they do in a way make contact with 'Aliens' and the Alien life through a set of entangled particles. The Aliens are not 'good' they want Earth and secretly attack by stealth messages not an invasion of little Green people. Life changes internally on Earth a cult forms once they learn of Alien life and this cult wants to change Earth from within like a 4chan Q-Anon video game cult, they create puzzles to lure people into a game-cult and eventually leads them into another UFO-ology style cult. Both the Alien through this particle or Quantum Entangled Particles and human 'cult' of people start to eat at humanity from within, they sabotaged Earth's technology, the invasion will take a long time but in the mean time a fanatical zealot like Fifth column begins to form, convert and killing Earth's scientists secretly. There seems to be a higher power out there not a religious described power in the books but he mostly avoids religion and avoids the Christian Buddhist thing only exploring it through an angry cynical woman's interaction with foreigner and the destruction of wildlife and resources on Earth. The 'Alien' power might even be seen as 'Maltheism' or malevolence or a powerful neutral force that does not know humans or ignores humans until it decides humans should be beaten. These Chinese books are different to the 'Berserker Hypothesis' scifi books dealing with a Cylon Terminator type story and that idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes. There is no event of "The Great Silence" in the Chinese books but a deliberate silence of people or an alien world waiting and watching for each other, when the invasion begins it is by stealth and they are already inside. And, of course, the game that Wang or Yang is playing is more than just a game, somehow during novel a common literary device never feels over done and the conspiracies are never cliché. The Aliens can not break the Laws of Physics and move Faster-Than-Light but there is a loophole for example he hints Aliens are more advanced than us and explores ideas from exotic matter and 'Quantum Mechanics'.

Chinese have some strange scifi stories dealing with the Drake Equation and the books have a lot of fans in the West. It seems like at times the Chinese might take over Netflix, the Koreans and Japanese have already taken a lot of America's and the West comicbook and tv entertainment industry and Indian film 'RRR' was praised, Hollywood seems to be out of ideas or obsessed with fighting inward and politically sabotaging each other so now it seems only naturally they would look to China for writers. In Japan one of the 'Gods of Manga' the man who created 'Astro-Boy' recently stated Japan's powerhouse manga video game anime business risks being overtaken by rising Chinese competition. The Japanese guy said Chinese culture could dominate as Japan once did with its Japan Cool Brand, he said if China opened up a little more it could dominate through books and philosophy and simple entertainment, 'Soft Power' but it is still too closed. There are a lot of subtle messages inside the Chinese writing characters, my Chinese is basic and not good enough to read such a book but I sometimes do understand a lot of their pictograms, for example in the book there is double entendre between sophon (a fictitious elementary particle) and the Japanese human name, Ken Liu when translating sometimes leaves little marked references and footnote at the bottom of a page describing what an alphabetical character might reference linking to an event in the cultural Revolution or a Tree or Flower might just mean a Tree or Flower or it could also mean an event that happened in a waring period of history or some Chinese philosopher. Chinese doesn't really have an Alphabet but 'picture' ideas you would be expected not to know an alphabet of consisting of 26 letters but to know 3 Thousand to read Chinese, the most Common 3000 Chinese 'Hanzi'. I guess this might be understood as 'symbolism' hidden within their writings like how a Rose might reference a sport team from England, a Skull picture could mean poison or death, a heart meaning health and love or the Eagle and Bear might not just be an Eagle and Bear to people. The translated books do provide context to a non-Chinese reader. The books do an exploration the 'Dark Forest' very well. Dark Forest in Three Body it is the conjecture that many alien civilizations exist throughout the universe, but they are both silent and paranoid, this has been discussed many times but the books go into huge detail on how such a scenario might be. In Three Body it is presumed that any power of a space-faring civilization would eventually view any other intelligent life becoming powerful as an inevitable threat.

Publishers have chased for the rights, Obama praised the novel, calling it “just wildly imaginative.” Mark Zuckerberg recommended it to his tens of millions of Facebook followers; George R.R. Martin blogged about it. Probably one of the weird successful things about the books are the description of the 'Trisolarians' Chinese writer Liu Cixin mostly avoids giving us full detail on what they look like, he does describe the aliens but very vaguely, you are like trying to find their shape through a foggy dreamy description. You know they can have fiber elements, they can seem Squid like or Crab like or Humanoid depending on how you interpret his writings, they can dehydrate and become like compressed ancient wood, they can glow like a bioluminescent fish or a Firefly, they might even be upright and 'Humanoid' looking. If you create the alien in your own mind maybe its better as sometimes things are best left unsaid, a plot point that is uncertain and wandering can leave the reader fill in the gaps and add to the imagination. The Alien is a hidden plot, when the human 'cult' interacts with the Aliens through the video game they do not see the Aliens face but instead an A.I avatar in real time chatting with familiar faces in Earth history, inside a video game puzzle a real person would choose to play and chat with other characters like, Galileo, Einstein, Copernicus, there are also characters from ancient Chinese philosophy like Mozi or Mo Di and the Hundred Schools of Thought and Meritocracy and I think characters from Greece and Rome, they all interact with each other inside this video game ignoring real world timelines. It is a interesting and funny scenario watching these mimics from different periods of different Civilization talk to each other. The video game world is a cruel puzzle to be solve but a fun adventure of escapism. Inside the game there is a world of science and adventure and comfort and puzzle that is very different to the history and a different world to cruelty of Mao’s Red Guard but then inside the video game the virtual world is overwhelmed by a catastrophe, it seems to be a problem of math and outerspace which the players must figure out to 'win' the game, unknown to people is how much the 'Aliens' have infiltrated a video game and China and also the entire world.

The Galaxy of 'Three Body' has life. the Alien is Not making a sound but looking out and Silently watching each other through a 'Dark Forest'.

At the same time all this philosophy and 'video game' cult and astronomy stuff is happening, a nanomaterial researcher Wang Miao gets entangled in a vast conspiracy after local police and state intelligence ask him to solve a number of brutal higher profile murder /suicides which may or may not connect to other suicide murders across the world. It is very interesting how Liu Cixin layers all these seemingly unconnected stories together and brings them into one big story. The first book has a great level of foward motion and drive because it works like one of those really good but basic thriller books you might buy on a train journey or airport, at its core it is just a cop murder suspense story before it hits you with all the alien, VR, science stuff.

Imagine the universe as a forest,
https://forbiddenplanet.com/175364-reme … rk-forest/
patrolled by numberless and nameless predators.

How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/maga … ction.html
The translator Ken Liu has done more than anyone to bridge the gap between Chinese science fiction and American readers.

Now, Liu Cixin says, he recommends that Chinese sci-fi fans who speak English read Ken Liu’s translation of “The Three-Body Problem” rather than the Chinese version. “Usually when Chinese literature gets translated to a foreign language, it tends to lose something,” he says. “I don’t think that happened with ‘The Three-Body Problem.’ I think it gained something.”

It was announced in September 2020 that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were developing a television adaptation of the novel at Netflix, with Alexander Woo co-writing alongside them. They were given a $200 million contract to direct the television series. The series is expected to premiere on Netflix in January 2024.

Life on Other Worlds? The Drake Equation
https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1350/a … -equation/

Are humans unique and alone in the vast universe? This question--summed up in the famous Drake equation--has for a half-century been one of the most intractable and uncertain in science.

But a new paper shows that the recent discoveries of exoplanets combined with a broader approach to the question makes it possible to assign a new empirically valid probability to whether any other advanced technological civilizations have ever existed.

And it shows that unless the odds of advanced life evolving on a habitable planet are astonishingly low, then human kind is not the universe’s first technological, or advanced, civilization.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-06-18 11:42:13)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-07-08 18:21:57

Astronomers Scan the Skies for Nanosecond Pulses of Light From Interstellar Civilizations

https://www.universetoday.com/162270/as … lizations/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-08-16 18:22:03

Robert Zubrin - Drake Equation Mistakes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7NjSHyAZ2U

an Overseas Scifi writer, he is becoming very popular in the West but orginally from a Communist culture not 'Western'

Liu Cixin sci-fi event kicks off at writer’s hometown in North China’s Shanxi
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202308/1296422.shtml

The Most Overlooked Sci-Fi Blockbuster of 2023 Just Quietly Dropped on Amazon
https://www.inverse.com/culture/sci-fi- … ng-earth-2
Despite its failure to crossover with Western viewers, The Wandering Earth II provides a welcome extension

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-08-16 18:35:26)

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#51 2004-09-07 06:35:40

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#52 2004-09-07 10:18:01

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#53 2004-09-11 07:12:11

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#54 2004-09-15 08:15:22

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#55 2004-09-15 12:13:10

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#56 2004-09-20 08:38:35

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#57 2022-08-09 11:13:28

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#58 2022-09-02 10:43:43

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#59 2022-09-13 07:22:46

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#60 2022-10-27 10:47:36

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#61 2023-03-10 10:27:08

Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

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Re: Drake Equation??? Humbug!!!!!

#64 2023-05-24 17:16:09

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