Reply #6: The Drake Equation (for those who don't already know of it...)

[Salviati]

While working as a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, Dr. Frank Drake (now Chairman of the Board of the SETI Institute) conceived an approach to bound the terms involved in estimating the number of technological civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.
http://www.seti.org/seti/seti_science/Welcome.html


The Drake Equation doesn't supply any answers per se, but it does let us know what questions we should be asking. E.g. from recent advances it sure seems like Fp, The fraction of stars with planetary systems, seems to be pretty high.