Author Topic: Habitable planet discovered?  (Read 3088 times)

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Offline Sigmaleph

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Re: Habitable planet discovered?
« Reply #15 on: April 19, 2014, 10:28:27 pm »
Also what is the percentile for life-bearing planets (I know it's based on the whole Goldie locks zone thing) do we have some kind of equation or something for it?
The Drake Equation.

The Drake equation takes the probability of a planet bearing life as given, it doesn't calculate it. The number Drake originally used is that between one half and one fifth of all stars will have planets, and that each star with planets will have between one and five  planets capable of bearing life (Drake further assumes that 100% of planets capable of bearing life will do so). This adds up to between 0.2 and 2.5 planets with life per star (you can divide that by the average number of planets per star to get the per planet probability, but Drake did not supply that number).

Of course, Drake's educated guesses are just that, guesses, and are not really made more legitimate by the fact he managed to get an equation named after him.
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Offline Cerim Treascair

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Re: Habitable planet discovered?
« Reply #16 on: April 19, 2014, 10:31:49 pm »
To Drake's credit, it's slightly better than pulling numbers out of one's backside.
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