Winter 2005 Issue

DR. SETI’s STARSHIP

 By Dr. H. Paul Shuch,* N6TX

A standard tool of the SETI trade is under constant attack, and although I enjoy a good argument as much as the next ham, it’s clear to me that the detractors are clueless as to the very purpose of the tool they so eagerly denigrate. A case in point is a recent critique on the Forbidden Knowledge website (<http://www. velocitypress.com/f_knowledge.htm> describing the Drake Equation as “a statistical analysis of the number of possible ‘intelligent communicating civilizations’ there are in the universe.” This summary misses the whole point of a powerful scientific tool that is not really an equation at all in the strictest sense and was never intended for the solving. A brief history of the Drake Equation should help to illuminate its true utility.

The modern search for life in space began just over 40 years ago, when in 1960 Dr. Frank Drake, a young astronomer at the newly established National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, launched a microwave scan of two nearby, sun-like stars. To no one’s surprise, Drake employed the very best ham microwave practices of his day in seeking the ultimate DX. His Project Ozma search came up dry, but demonstrated practical techniques for seeking out intelligently generated signals from space.

A year after Project Ozma’s brief tenure, Drake convened the first scientific conference devoted to modern SETI at Green Bank. The handful of scientists who assembled there called themselves the Order of the Dolphin, choosing recent studies of human-dolphin communication as a worthy metaphor for the challenge of interspecies communications on a grander cosmic scale.

On a blackboard, for discussion Drake chalked seven topics that would comprise the agenda for the week-long meeting. They included stellar formation, planetary formation, the existence of habitable zones, the emergence of life, the evolution of intelligence, communications technology, and the longevity of technological civilizations. Then Drake did something almost whimsical, something which assured his lasting fame: He strung together these seven factors into an equation.
 

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The famous Drake Equation, which purports to estimate the number of communicative civilizations in the galaxy, was actually the agenda for the world’s first SETI meeting in 1961. This plaque now graces the wall of the room at NRAO Green Bank, West Virginia that once held the blackboard on which the equation was first written. Analysis of the seven Drake factors constitutes a whole chapter in the author’s interactive CD-ROM book Tune In The Universe! published by the American Radio Relay League and available at quality bookstores across this planet (and possibly other planets as well) and through both the ARRL and The SETI League websites.