Thread: Space travelling Intelligent life acc to Drake Equation

I realise the famous Drake Equation, has been revised over the years.

It originally was: (source wiki)

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);
and

R_* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxyf_p = the fraction of those stars that have planetsn_e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planetsf_l = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some pointf_i = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)f_c = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into spaceL = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space^[8]

I am particularly interrested in the -f- bit. The fraction of civilisations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existance in space.

It seems to me, the huge potential of life that may be very intelligent, but may due to circumstances of environment or evolutionial physiology never be able to travel into space.

Several ideas came to my mind:

- A planet has no vulcanic activity, therefor will never recycle its basic raw materials. This may mean that if any intelligent lifeform indeed may ever grow there,... at some point during its development it will simply run out of materials on which it could build an even more advanced civilisation. It is well known that we on earth are lucky to be on an vulcanic active planet,... as it recycles many raw materials we these days use to make our technological civilisation. This could even mean a simple element as Iron on our planet,... could be very rare on an alien planet, if since its very early comming-into-being lacked enough vulcanic activity to recycle heavy materials like iron,... to the surface.

- The physiology of the intelligent creature simply does not allow it to interact with its world, that it will ever be able to make complex devices that will make if detectable and perhaps one day travel into space.

These are just 2 examples I could come up with, in which a creature may be very intelligent,... but will never develop a complex technological society like humans do on earth.

Any more thoughts on this?

Presumably all life is subject to the same basic rules-of-life (e.g. evolution), so an advanced ET must realize by setting out it "joins the game" to ultimately compete against other ETs. Ultimately one ET must say to another, "Thanks for the contact, now we're terribly sorry but we'll have to devour you for our own ends." And it knows we know... that it knows... etc. So in a sense we've already made contact, because all sentient life will figure out these universal rules of the game. They may play or not. There are no "hacks" or "cheats" that other players can't foresee, since the rules are life and we all know how that works.

I guess the most common benign strategy, for survival and reproduction, would be in becoming indispensable to something larger than oneself. All sentient ETs must see that, because they're all composed of parts (e.g. organs, genes, symbiots) which prove the strategy. These ETs will search out or manufacture greater entities, like little Russian dolls finding mother dolls to nest in. But of course they know we know about that, so they can't presume to hide. Hm. Game theory.