Are There Morons On Other Planets?

Mankind, on the whole, is pretty cool. Sure, we've had our missteps - reality television and Hitler spring to mind - but by and large we're not un-fun to hang out with.

Our story is an epic mostly comprised of an awfully long and rambling chapter about survival. Chapter 2 details how, better than any other species on the planet, we managed to gut it out and arrive on top of the food chain. If you're able to read this that means we're still doing a-ok. Yay us!

But now that we have a chance to pause and catch our breaths after all of that surviving nonsense, we find ourselves asking the big questions. Is Elvis still alive? If it were the early '80s and Phoebe Cates hadn't met Kevin Kline yet, would I have a shot? And, are we intelligent beasties on our own?

When you look up at the stars at night do you imagine life out there? (excluding the International Space Station - now the brightest star in the night sky - because it's not really a star so to count it would be cheating)

A short while ago in 1960, before Phoebe Cates was even a twinkle in her daddy's eye, Dr. Frank Drake cooked up an equation that would help us figure out how much intelligent extraterrestrial life was in the galaxy that we could sit down and Skype with. It's known as The Drake Equation and if you could figure out what numbers to plug into all the variables you could arrive at the answer. The only hitch is figuring out the variables. Here. Take your best shot:

R^* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy.

f_p is the fraction of those stars that have planets.

n_e is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.

f_ℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point.

f_i is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life.

f_c is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Once you've filled in the blanks you can multiply all those together to arrive at:

N: the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible.

Easy!

I don't know what you got, but me and Frank figured the answer to be 10.

10 other civilisations to compete with for god's love. Y'know, odds are we're not his favorite... Just sayin'.

So if we accept that there might be 10 civilizations capable of holding up their end in a game of pan-galactic pictionary, how many more could there be in the universe at large? Drake's equation only accounts for what we know about our own galaxy. What about the other galaxies? There's a fair few others. Right?

My dear friend, I like you, but you've just gone and wildly understated things. Again.

Allow me to try and illustrate just how bone headed your "fair few others" comment was.

"Galaxies. Very bad. You go first."

(image courtesy of The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO))

Here's an image showing a tiny fraction of the night sky taken by space perves at the European Southern Observatory.

I know what you're thinking. "Someone sneezed stars. Big deal. Seen it..." Right? Only, you're wrong again. These are galaxies. Quintzillions of 'em! Each one home to hundreds of billions of stars. And if we were any closer (10 billion light years give or take) they'd have us for lunch! Sure, Andromeda has first dibs, but Andromeda is a pussy. (Note: The big blips in the foreground? Yeah, okay those are stars in our own galaxy that stubbornly refused to clear the shot. They're just lucky Christian wasn't around. What we're talking about is the stampede of galaxies beyond those. Keep up.)

Now you're thinking "Great. You've just gone and blown my mind. Now what am I supposed to do about it? Feel all humbled an' shit?"

Heck, no! I say, do what I do. Visit Galaxy Zoo and get a kick out of insulting other galaxies one by one, and by extension, all races who live there! Did I also mention you get to have fun playing an addictive game of "classify the galaxies" AND get to feel good about yourself for helping to further science? I did?

Come on. Be a space perve too. Everybody's doing it. Probably even Elvis!

Sample insults to help get your creative juices flowing:

"Puny Clactadarians! Your galaxy is like a frisbee that was left on the dash of my car and warped in the midday sun!"

"Pitiful Oolabaalians! Your spiral galaxy has a mere two arms. Not spirally enough!"

"Cowardly Nargazoids... You call that a galaxy? Look, here comes another galaxy to eat you up! And about time too!"

Think you got it in you to better that? Bring it, sunshine. Oh, it's so ON!

(With thanks to Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy for tipping me off to this. But you still owe me a beer.)