1) Message boards : SETI Perspectives : The Drake Equation: Revisiting a Classic Tool to Estimate the Odds of Contact (Message 1988889) Posted 5 Apr 2019 by pestw Post: Dolphins are certainly intelligent, but they are unlikely to build powerful radio transmitters and point them skyward. This is an essential point, in my opinion. We humans tend to assume that our life form be the self-evident summit of evolution. We shouldn't forget, however, that the dinosaurs existed for several hundred million years and if there hadn't been this big asteroid bouncing down, they might still continue to prevail our planet without ever emitting radio waves. Despite they were highly evolved creatures, they couldn't have been detected by our techniques. Life restarted almost at zero after this mass extinction event and brought new forms of life into existence and coincidentially, the fittest of them is emitting radio waves for about 100 years now. After the next mass extinction, which might be immediately impending, another well-developed life form my prevail, perhaps even a technical one, which however does not use to use electromagnetic waves for communication but is based completely on glass fibres. Yes, highly developed, but not detectable from lightyears away. Nonetheless, I think we shouldn't miss the - unlikely - event that signals from a civilisation similar to ours might hit our antennae if this should occur anyway. That's why I support SETI@home.

 
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