Our Unique Planet
The Rev. Stephen D. Cole
S
aturday, February 13, 1965, was a big day at our house. My father,
Dandridge Cole, was on national network TV, featured in a David Wolper
documentary, “Way Out Men.” This was a series of interviews with men at the
cutting edge, or perhaps the fringes, of science.
Among the others interviewed were Michael DeBakey, who was working
toward heart transplant surgery, and John Lilly, who was attempting to
communicate with dolphins.
My father’s field was the prediction of future developments in space travel.
The other space scientist interviewed was astronomer Frank Drake, who had
launched the first systematic search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Drake called his effort “Project Ozma,” which appealed to my father, himself a
fan of L. Frank Baum’s Emerald City since his childhood.
My father passed away later that year, but Drake is still, after more than
50 years, pursuing the search for radio messages originating beyond the earth.
After so much time with no success, the effort might seem futile. After all, how
likely is it that there are others in the universe trying to communicate with us?
Frank Drake actually was also one of the first to try to spell out how
to answer this question. The “Drake Equation” suggests that the number of
civilizations in our galaxy which have the capacity for radio communication
can be calculated as the product of a series of seven terms:
• The rate of star formation
• The fraction of stars with planets
• The number of planets per star that can support life
• The fraction of these that actually do develop life
• The fraction of these that develop intelligent life
• The fraction of these that develop radio technology
• The length of time that these civilizations broadcast their signals
The Fermi Paradox
With all these conditions, it might appear that the probable number would be
small. And yet many have been optimistic because the number of stars in the
399