The Drake Equation

XKCD pays homage to the Drake Equation, with their characteristic style:

It should be noted though that the new term Bs is redundant with L. That’s really the only parameter for which there is essentially no way to formulate any reasonable estimate. When I learned about the Drake Equation in college, we basically came to see that the Drake Equation was uttterly dominated by the assumption for L, even if fl, fi, and fc were all assumed to be 1. It’s a sobering thought that time, not space, is our greatest barrier to finding someone else Out There.

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