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Originally Posted by willravel
But, as you stated before, why do we assume that certain conditions must exist for life?
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Will, we're saying the same thing here. The Drake equation makes certain assumptions about the conditions for life which may not be valid. To me, though, that increases the odds of there being life elsewhere. Like most, I don't have any idea whether there actually are any ETs, but the odds seem pretty good that there are/were/will be, somewhere, sometime.
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Originally Posted by Infinite_Loser
I have a theory I'd like to share with everyone.
Technologically speaking, humans are the most advanced species in the universe by a few thousand years. The reason we haven't come into contact with other species from other planets is because they haven't yet discovered space travel (In other words, they're all underdeveloped when compared to Earth). Therefore, the only way we're going to discover life elsewhere in the universe is to:
1.) Actively seek out and make contact with such planets and its peoples or
2.) Wait for said species to evolve to the point where they branch out into space in hopes of making contact with extraterrestrial life.
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It's as good a theory as any, but seems unlikely to me as a simple matter of statistics.
If, over the lifetime of the universe, there are more than handful of intelligent species (including us, at least by our own standards), we can plot their existince - or at least their creation - over time on a simple x-y graph.
Let's make X (the bottom line) a measure of time from the beginning to the end of the universe, going from left to right (*EDIT: whoops - mixed those up the first time*).
Let's make Y (the line going up on the left hand side) a measure of the number of intelligent civilizations created in any given year.
Once you plot out all the data (of course, we have no data yet, but work with me here), I would expect one of two shapes to emerge:
1) A line moving up from left to right - indicating that as the universe ages, more and more civilizations emerge until the end of time.
2) A classic bell curve (low on the left, curves up to a peak in the middle, then curves back down to nothing on the right) - indicating that as the universe ages, more and more civilizations emerge until something happens that inhibits new civilizations from forming. (I guess that would not be a classic bell curve, as the right hand side may not be symmetrical with the left, but you get the idea)
In either case, it seems very unlikely that human civilization shows up at the very beginning (at the far left of the graph), rather than somewhere in the middle. It's possible, of course (someone has to be first, just like someone has to win a raffle) but the odds seem very low.