The Birth-Death Drake Equation | Part 2 of 2

Welcome to Part Two of our deep dive into the Drake Equation. In the second part, we explore the temporal aspect of the Drake Equation and how it illuminates a path towards an alternative formalism - the Birth-Death formalism. Join us as we move forward to the bleeding edge of modern research on the Drake Equation. Written and presneted by Prof David Kipping. Thanks to Jason Wright and Nadia Drake for help with this video.

Thank-you to our supporters T. Widdowson, D. Smith, M. Sloan, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, J. Allen, S. Brownlee, G. Fulton, N. Kildal, M. Lijoi, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zanjonc, C. Wolfred, F. Rebolledo, T. Leger, L. Skov, G. Suter, M. Elliot, M. Wallstab, B. Daniluk, J. Patrick-Saunders, M. Forbes, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, V. Alexandrov, L. Macchia, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, H. Jensen, F. Linker, J. Rockett, N. Fredrickson, N. Geisler, P. Cleeves, R. Case & B. Desormeaux.

::References::

::Music::
► "Waking Up" by Atlas
► "Always Dreaming" by Caleb Etheridge
► "The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow" by Chris Zabriskie
► "Y" by Joachim Heinrich
► "Fusion" by Indive
► "Cylinder Five" by Chris Zabriskie
► "The Oceans Continue to Rise" by Chris Zabriskie
► "Stories About the World That Once Was" by Chris Zabriskie
► "Trace Correction" by Indive

::Movies clips used::
► The Time Machine (2002) DreamWorks/Warner Bros.
► Noah (2014) Paramount Pictures

::Chapters::
0:00 Drakonian Time
9:37 The Birth-Death Formalism
15:25 Some Consequences of the Birth-Death Formalism
22:14 Final Thoughts

#DrakeEquation #AreWeAlone #CoolWorlds

[MrCriistiano]

In a way, Drake was succesful with his equation.
He created it to start a conversation, and that conversation hasn't stopped ever since.

[Malhorne]

Should not we split the Drake equation in 3 ? : 1 The chance to find life ... 2 The chance to encounter intelligence... 3 The chance to encounter advance communicative civilisation... With somewhere a factor relying on C as speed of light ? On a very personal point of view, if there is nothing, absolutely nothing moving/traveling/bending space time... to overcome C by a very large factor with a few amount of energy as we scale it... even if there is one or more advance civilisation somewhere... the chance to encounter one is likely to be very close to Zero...

[kevinoduor]

what about the average life of a star, i think that creates limits within the equation.

[michaelmoore]

In my mind, you can just about plug in any numbers into the equation and still have a substantial number of probable civilizations that are "making noise" in the universe. Correct me on this, but aren't we searching for life of all kinds in just about the entire electromagnetic spectrum? If so, isn't it true that the laws of physics are applicable universally, and that everything that exists falls within the ES in some form? And certainly civilizations that have reached a point similar to our own will absolutely leave the strongest signatures of evidence somewhere in the ES? If these are true then it seems to me the the first time we put the stethoscope to hear the heart of the universe, there should have been a cacaphony of noise; the beating of untold numbers of worlds polluting the universe with the din of sentient, civilized life. Or perhaps even just _one?_ The matter of whether they exist in the present here and now, or have expired long, long ago is of no consequence, but their echoes, or shadows of their existence _should_ be deafening. A bit further, shouldn't it also be true that given the universe came to be, and civilizations within it are probable as per the equation, that one could logically conclude that the equation should also include the probability of more than 1 universe? Because if the assumption is we are the only civilization in the universe as being conjecture and hubris, then it seems we must not also be so short-sighted to apply hubris and conjecture to only 1 universe.
I analogize the birth, life and death of the universe in this fashion: At 1st you have an emty room. 1 person shows up, starts talking or making noise...whatever. Another person shows up, they do the same. And another. And so on until it reaches a saturation, and it's impossible for them to communicate to each other, but they are aware of the existence of others without having to do so. Time passes. A lot of time. During this time, people are dying and new people enter the room, but the echoes of the dead and living are still reverberate and persist without pause or stopping. The population of the room rises and falls but still there is noise. this noise continues until the _room_ ceases to exist. Anyone popping into the room at any given time throughout the life of the room will witness the noise. And long after that person leaves the room, the evidence of _their_ existence persists and is heard by others who came to the room _after._
So the only people that are able to witness a silent room is either the 1st person before the 2nd came along, or the last person after all others have died out.
I welcome any thoughts on this.

[jamesrussell]

"Stay thoughtful and stay curious." That, my friend, you succeed with every video you make. Thank you.

[TheExoplanetsChannel]

2 videos the same evening, I will bring my popcorn!

[LuciFeric]

I always watch your presentations at least twice. Lots of grist for the mill. Thank you Professor Kipping.

[guillaume]

There have been many videos on the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation, and somehow you manage to bring something more to the table, just brilliant!

[shinykoffing]

That observation about the current rate of star formation is so obvious in retrospect that it actually made me laugh. Great videos as always.

[cenedra]

Totally agree with your final thoughts but you already know that 😂
When we eventually find life on other planets I don't believe it will be on a world in the habitable zone of its star or that we'll be able to communicate with it because we'll just be too different.. that's the thing, there's no way to know.
I do believe that there is life beyond our planet and once we know what to look for we'll see it everywhere but we're a long way off from that. We can't even come together as a species so how could we ever hope to communicate with anyone else? I love this topic and all the ways it makes us think and consider the possibilities and that's thanks to TDE. Loved the 2 parter on this subject, Thank you 😍

[Sashek]

Dr. Kipping - do you have a Patreon page for those of us who would like to support your channel?

[ravenlord]

Yeah I suspect the Drake equation is missing a lot. Particularly n(e), which may require things like a yellow dwarf star, a large planet to moon mass ratio, an outer gas giant, a lack of an inner gas giant, the lack of a binary star companion, the proper radial distance from the galactic core, the proper cyclical distances from the galactic plane, the proper Oort cloud size, the proper ratio of number and size of cometary strikes over time, etc etc. Also f(c) is frustrating because for many (or probably most) ice moons, even if life and civilization arise, the odds of being able to breach the surface could be problematic.

[FrozunLightning]

Thank you so much for your hard work on both of these videos. I loved them both!

[BD-lqid]

Thank you for doing content like this. I think its vital to the health of science that these "fundamental" aspects of science are dissected and prodded to see if they really do a well-enough job explaining what they attempt to.

[renemanuelnzemontalban]

"Probability that we exist given that we exist" HILARIOUS statement and wonderfull video, btw!

[THX..]

I think I would dispute the idea we are a communicative civilization. First we have scarcely ever intentionally transmitted anything toward another star system and to the extent we ever have they were very short one time transmissions. If an alien SETI following identical rules to our SETI somehow detected those transmissions they would have disregarded the signals because they were too short in duration and never repeated. As far as the rest of our radio noise goes i find it hard to believe a civilization identical to ours could detect our radio noise more than say a dozen or so light years away.

The truth is the Milky Way could be thick with civilizations identical to our own and neither we, nor they would know it.

[jeffcurtis]

Thank you for willingness to do the hard work.

[rasmusmller]

Loved the point in the end. This formula might be less useful for calculations but all the discussion gives it merritt. I never really been taking it that serious but the subject itself is and that makes a contribution that inspires participation important.

[Khannea]

Omg what a charming daddy :P

How about we similate in a virtual reality a comprehensive but highly simlified rendering of what we know, specifically the numbers, speeds, compositions of the galaxy, the frequency of lethality events, the ambient lethality, resources and technological advances that are certain and plausible, how fast/effective technology allows civiisations leaves a meaningful imprint on the rest of the galaxy (travel, communication, berserkers, contaminations, prayer, whatever) - then we can reverse engineer an emerging heuristic simulation that puts reasons upper and lower bounds. There ARE upper pansmermeation speeds, say dictated by the speed of light, the resilience of rocket technologies, the energy comtained in whateve materials we know exist in typical solar systems, etc. etc. etc. and that will allow us to make some levelof statements of statistical ranges of what we can then conclude to be a maximum number of relevant (meaingful) presences in the galaxy.

[Successu]

Here is a great equation. Cool Worlds +1= Brilliant 🇮🇪☘️Thanks from Ireland. As a child I loved Patrick Moor . Now as an old Man I still love the same format. ASKING Questions. Getting answers is brilliant, but the magic is the ability to ASK Thanks for all you Creativity