2011/12/07 by Nicolas Glade, Pascal Ballet, Olivier Bastien · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Planetary Science and Exploration #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #astro-ph.EP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s1473550411000413
22 pages, 0 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology
arxiv created 2011/12/07 · openalex publication_date 2012/01/09 · arxiv updated 2015/06/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The number N of detectable (i.e. communicating) extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy is usually done by using the Drake equation. This equation was established in 1961 by Frank Drake and was the first step to quantifying the SETI field. Practically, this equation is rather a simple algebraic expression and its simplistic nature leaves it open to frequent re-expression An additional problem of the Drake equation is the time-independence of its terms, which for example excludes the effects of the physico-chemical history of the galaxy. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the main shortcoming of the Drake equation is its lack of temporal structure, i.e., it fails to take into account various evolutionary processes. In particular, the Drake equation doesn't provides any error estimation about the measured quantity. Here, we propose a first treatment of these evolutionary aspects by constructing a simple stochastic process which will be able to provide both a temporal structure to the Drake equation (i.e. introduce time in the Drake formula in order to obtain something like N(t)) and a first standard error measure.