Aliens and Equations

If one wishes to know the probabilistic function that purportedly conjectures the likelihood of encountering intelligent alien life in the universe, one could turn to the Drake Equation – though it is quite certain that if that equation were used for this planet the conclusion would be indeterminate on several accounts. To get the output from the equation, one must input values for several variables including, but not limited to, ones that take into account star formation, the fraction of those stars with planets, the likelihood of life developing on those planets (this, of course, presumes evolution), the fraction of life that would develop into advanced civilizations capable of interstellar communication (like our own – but only as of a few decades ago). Drake’s original estimates for advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy alone ranged from 20 to 50,000,000 – quite a span, and quite a leap of faith! However, since we are dealing with real physics and real…mmhhmm, reality…and not theoretical, speculative physics and fantasy, we must talk about a few boundaries that would need to be overcome if there were even any civilizations out there to overcome them. The nearest star system to our own is over four light-years away; that is, it takes like four years to get to us from there traveling at, indeed, the speed of light. To even go one-third this speed would require four and half days of accelerating at 25 G’s, far beyond what our bodies could handle for a even a few seconds! The minimum turning radius for a spacecraft at this speed would be over five times the radius of Pluto’s orbit. Hitting even a speck of meteor dust the size of a grain of sand at this speed would be enough to be equivalent to the energy of four tons of TNT – and don’t even think about stopping in time (decelerating) to miss it! The energy consumption for such a vehicle to even accelerate to this speed would be the equivalent to the entire Earth’s energy consumption for over one month (where would you store all that fuel, as we are not dealing with the science fiction of Star Trek and antimatter engines?)! These are just a few of the many problems that a civilization would have to overcome to make “contact” (an no, we haven’t learned how to travel through wormholes yet, like Jodie Foster). It seems as though resistance is not as futile as contact itself with such extraterrestrials, that is, if they are even out there, which is highly speculative. There are other dimensional beings, ie angels and demons, but it is very unlikely there are ETs in the traditional sense.