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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Drake equation

The Drake equation is used in speculating how many planets in our galaxy have extraterrestrial life. It states that



where

R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc 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.

Similar versions of the Drake equation can be used for lots of other things in life. Suppose we wanted to find sane (or at least not totally insane) Republicans in Washington. We could do something like this:

There are 535 members of the House and Senate.
219 of them are Republicans (178 in the House and 41 in the Senate).
0 House Repubs voted for the stimulus, so no sane ones there.
3 Senate Repubs voted for the bill.

So there is a total of 3 Repubs in our federal government who haven't totally lost their minds.

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