A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence

Abstract

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been heavily influenced by solutions to the Drake Equation, which returns an integer value for the number of communicating civilisations resident in the Milky Way, and by the Fermi Paradox, glibly stated as: "If they are there, where are they?". Both rely on using average values of key parameters, such as the mean signal lifetime of a communicating civilisation. A more accurate answer must take into account the distribution of stellar, planetary and biological attributes in the galaxy, as well as the stochastic nature of evolution itself. This paper outlines a method of Monte Carlo realisation which does this, and hence allows an estimation of the distribution of key parameters in SETI, as well as allowing a quantification of their errors (and the level of ignorance therein). Furthermore, it provides a means for competing theories of life and intelligence to be compared quantitatively.

22 pages, 24 figures, accepted by the International Journal of Astrobiology

References in corpus (6)

• The formation and retention of gas giant planets around stars with a range of metallicities
• The Galactic Habitable Zone and the Age Distribution of Complex Life in the Milky Way
• A New Family of Planets ? "Ocean Planets"
• The Temporal Aspect of the Drake Equation and SETI
• On The Timescale Forcing in Astrobiology
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Cited by in corpus (19)

• A Model of Habitability Within the Milky Way Galaxy
• A Stochastic Process Approach of the Drake Equation Parameters
• Fast Radio Bursts from Extragalactic Light Sails
• "Grandeur in this view of life": N-body simulation models of the Galactic habitable zone
• The Fermi Paradox and the Aurora Effect: Exo-civilization Settlement, Expansion and Steady States
• A Failure of Serendipity: the Square Kilometre Array will struggle to eavesdrop on Human-like ETI
• A Statistical Estimation of the Occurrence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Milky Way Galaxy
• Dissolving the Fermi Paradox
• Spatio-temporal Constraints on the Zoo Hypothesis, and the Breakdown of Total Hegemony
• Numerical Testing of The Rare Earth Hypothesis using Monte Carlo Realisation Techniques
• Galactic Habitability Re-Examined: Indications of Bimodality
• Biotechnology and the lifetime of technical civilizations
• The Galactic Club, or Galactic Cliques? Exploring the limits of interstellar hegemony and the Zoo Hypothesis
• Demography of galactic technosignatures
• Can Collimated Extraterrestrial Signals be Intercepted?
• Virulence as a Model for Interplanetary and Interstellar Colonisation - Parasitism or Mutualism
• Communicating extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI) interaction models based on the Drake Equation
• The Entropy Principle and the Influence of Sociological Pressures on SETI
• Artificial versus Biological Intelligence in the Cosmos: Clues from a Stochastic Analysis of the Drake Equation