How Many Alien Civilizations Are Out There? The Drake Equation Explained

Описание: How many intelligent civilizations could exist in the Milky Way—and why is the answer anywhere from “basically none” to “millions”? In this 7-minute breakdown, we explain the Drake Equation, the famous framework used to estimate the number of potentially communicating civilizations in our galaxy.

We’ll walk through every part of the equation—what each term means, what modern astronomy has helped us constrain (like exoplanets and how common planetary systems are), and where the uncertainty still explodes (like how often life actually begins, how often intelligence evolves, and how long civilizations remain detectable).

Along the way, we connect the Drake Equation to the bigger questions:

Why the Drake Equation is not a prediction machine—but a thinking tool

How small changes in assumptions create radically different outcomes

What the Drake Equation implies for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

How it intersects with the Fermi Paradox (“Where is everybody?”)

Why “civilization lifetime” might be the most important—and scariest—variable

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Question for you: Which Drake Equation variable do you think is the biggest unknown—and what do you think it should be?