m. c. de marco: To invent new life and new civilizations...

I posted this to a mailing list yesterday, but then forgot to blog it last night. Via Futurismic: the physics arXiv blog reports on a possible solution to Fermi’s Paradox.

[…] the famous Drake equation, which attempts put a figure on the number intelligent civilisations out there now, implies that if the number of intelligent civilisations capable of communication in our galaxy is greater than 1, then we should eventually hear from them.

That overlooks one small factor, says Reginald Smith from the Bouchet-Franklin Institute in Rochester, New York state. He says that there is a limit to how far a signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. And when you factor that in, everything changes."