| RIP Frank Drake 19:41 - Sep 12 with 902 views | StokieBlue |
Somehow the death of Frank Drake passed me by, he died on the 2nd September at the age of 92.
I am sure many are familiar with him but for those that aren't he was heavily involved in the early days of SETI and also developed an equation which uses diminishing probabilities to predict the number of intelligent civilisations in the galaxy.
He designed the Pioneer plaque with Carl Sagan as well as the golden record which was attached to the Voyager probes. He also wrote the Arecibo message which was the deliberately transmitted interstellar message from Earth and designed the first modern SETI experiment (Project Ozma).
He even got a Tweet from Voyager upon his death:
A real giant in the search for life on other planets.
SB
NYT obituary for any who are interested:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/science/space/frank-drake-dead.html
|  | | |  |
| RIP Frank Drake on 08:51 - Sep 13 with 694 views | Fenland_Blue |
RIP, he created the Drake theory which suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, and he also speculated that the lack of evidence of such civilizations may be because technological civilizations tend to disappear rather quickly.
SB, Do you think SETI ever find a real Wow signal? |  |
| Up and mainly down, following Town since 88 |
| |
| RIP Frank Drake on 09:04 - Sep 13 with 661 views | WeWereZombies |
Thanks for that, passed me by too. Back in the early days of home computing I used to have the SETI program running in the background (like tens of thousands of others) as our small contribution to the search. |  |
| |
| RIP Frank Drake on 11:43 - Sep 13 with 604 views | StokieBlue |
| RIP Frank Drake on 08:51 - Sep 13 by Fenland_Blue |
RIP, he created the Drake theory which suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, and he also speculated that the lack of evidence of such civilizations may be because technological civilizations tend to disappear rather quickly.
SB, Do you think SETI ever find a real Wow signal? |
It's certainly possible that they might although the scale of the problem is huge. Not only do you have to be looking at the right system at the right time but you also have to be looking in the right frequency range (that's before you even consider visual communication such as lasers).
As Sagan said, there are more world's on the cosmos than grains of sand on Earth.
What is required is a method to reduce the problem space and hopefully things like the JWST will help in establishing targets to focus on rather than just sweeping the sky in a search pattern, that would certainly increase the odds.
So I'm hopeful that one day they might find a valid signal but it's far from certain even if we make the assumption that other civilisations exist.
SB | | | |
| RIP Frank Drake on 11:44 - Sep 13 with 603 views | StokieBlue |
| RIP Frank Drake on 09:04 - Sep 13 by WeWereZombies |
Thanks for that, passed me by too. Back in the early days of home computing I used to have the SETI program running in the background (like tens of thousands of others) as our small contribution to the search. |
I had SETI@Home as well.
The graphs were great as it chugged through the data.
SB | | | |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
