In the conclusion of Blue Dot's two-part look at the state of the Drake Equation in 2024, Host Dave Schlom is once again joined by special co-host Bill Diamond, President and CEO of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
The Drake Equation was written by radio astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 as a way to organize the very first scientific conference on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Dave and Bill are joined by SETI Institute astronomer Laurance Doyle to examine the possibilities of the emergence of intelligence on another world and then SETI Institute Post Doctoral Fellow and radio astronomer Sophia Shake discusses the penultimate term in the equation, the emergence of technological civilizations.
In the finale, Dave and Bill discuss the most ominous term in the equation, L, the lifetime of those civilizations, which of course, has implications for our own!