Frank Drake, astronomer famed for contributions to SETI, has died | Hacker News Reader

Frank Drake, astronomer famed for contributions to SETI, has died

arstechnica.com

202 pointscratermoon25 comments

RIP.

Some may see the Drake Equation as reductive, and that's kind of the point. Its simplicity makes it compelling: presenting the enormousness and diversity of the universe as a near infinitude that seems incapable of supporting only one planet full of life. It's also easily understood by anybody who can do basic math, with a 30-second explanation. You can make anyone think and make an informed guess on one of the most profound questions of all.

Here's hoping we prove his intuition right one day, I'm glad he lived to see so many advances in astronomy and physics, it must surely have felt like an unfolding of possibility to him.

I think the criticisms aren't that the Drake equation is reductive, so much as that it's packed with unspoken assumptions and that it's not actually helpful.

https://futuristspeaker.com/futurist-thomas-frey-insights/ar...

And for inspiration to search for extraterrestrial life? I think Star Trek has done that job better.

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1385/to-boldly-go-how-star-...

Failure is useful if we can learn from it. If we keep treating the Drake equation as meaningful, we're not learning.

I remember when I was pretty young someone gave me an article and said that, "This scientist made an equation to show many alien civilizations there are."

I was like: that's amazing! How could anyone figure that out? Science is nuts!

Then I read the equation. I was both disappointed and completely impressed. It didn't tell you how many aliens there are. It told you how to estimate that number and what you'd need to know to hone that estimate.

That, actually, had a pretty big influence on my through my eng career.

My favorite Drake story is the time when they were just starting SETI and thought they had found aliens at the second star they pointed at. Seriously, this reads like an old SF short story. Check it out.

http://www.bigear.org/vol1no1/ozma.htm

What a delightful slice of history!

Inventor of the "Drake equation" [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

I'm sure he's much more known for this than for SETI contributions.

FWIW, I hadn't heard about Frank Drake before, nor of "Drake equation", but I do know what SETI is since before.

I had heard of both but hadn’t realized how directly they were connected.

I just wish people would stop calling it a damn equation, because it clearly isn't. It's the Drake Estimate.

But that ship has clearly sailed.

It's an equation. The individual components of the equation are speculative, and their values are estimates.

There's unwritten fudge factors everywhere. That's not how equations work. But it is how estimates work.

There's zero shame in calling a thing what it really is.

Well there's math, and then there's physics math. Physics math is different. All the world is a frictionless plane, and we are merely spheres of uniform mass and charge density upon it.

You should see some of the calculus acrobatics they do in plasma physics. It's absolutely bonkers.

The fact that it's hard to know the inputs accurately and precisely doesn't make this any less of an equation. Given some inputs on one side, you get an output on the other. You might as well call y = mx + b an estimate.

Drake said, “only by doing the best we can with the very best that an era offers, do we find the way to do better in the future.”

Rest In Peace

His book is very approachable. It's wild, but apparently he just started writing the Drake Equation out at a (the first?) SETI discussion/meeting without much prior deliberation.

The world definitely needs more Frank Drakes. He will be missed.

The man was equally approachable. I wrote to him in 1961 with some questions I had while building my radio telescope. His prompt reply to an unknown high school student was an unexpected kindness that surprised and encouraged me.

There’s a fairly obscure video of a symposium that Drake participated in back some time ago, maybe in the 2010s, that was uploaded to YouTube. I think it might have taken place in Mountain View. I just went back to look and link to it but I couldn’t find it. Anyway, what’s surprising about the symposium is how much of a skeptical pessimist he is. He was speaking extemporaneously in response to questions, and he basically said, in realist terms, that due to various constraints, we will probably never leave the Solar System as a species, or if we manage to actually do it, we’re not going to get far. The video is kind of sad. I think he also said or implied that something like the Alcubierre drive is never going to happen and we’re basically not going anywhere. I’m probably misstating some of what he said, but that’s the general idea. It’s always stuck with me. It’s certainly possible that he was just having a bad day and woke up on the wrong side of the bed. After all, he has probably been asked these same questions thousands of times, and that might get a bit frustrating.

I think he was just being a realist. FTL travel is essentially just fantasy at this point. Pragmatically we don’t know of any way to make the physics of the Alcubierre drive possible, and there’s nothing to suggest we will.

Even getting something like a working generational ship up to say 10% light speed would require technology and levels of cooperation unknown to humanity at this point.

I’m sure you’re right, but I couldn’t help but think of Clarke’s first law:

> When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

The Drake equation and the Fermi paradox are extremely fun and entertaining thought experiments.

What strange timing--I was writing a bit about the Drake equation this morning:

https://superbowl.substack.com/p/digging-into-the-drake-equa...

As an early teen I was fascinated by the fact that someone had seriously attempted to quantify this. It made me wonder, what _can't_ math do? Turns out, quite a bit. But it's a really fun exercise.

RIP. Somehow I still find this song in my head from time to time.

http://www.setileague.org/songbook/equation.htm http://www.avsport.org/drseti/audio/equation.mp3

Sad to hear. Amazing person and contributor to the field of radio SETI, hoping his family are doing ok during this tough time.

RIP

And just this morning, before I read this news, I have watched 2 videos on drake equation.

Trippy and sad

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