Jimmy Aiken's mysterious world is brought to you by the StarQuest Production Network

and is made possible by our many generous patrons.

If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit sqpn.com slash give.

You're listening to episode 372 of Jimmy Yakin's mysterious world, where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason. In this episode, we're talking about the

Drake equation and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

I'm Don Betanelli, and joining me today is Jimmy Akin. Hey, Jimmy. Howdy, Dom?

Folks, be sure to stick around to the end of the episode, as we'll have your feedback on our

recent episode on The Mystery of the Year. But first, for decades, scientists have tried detecting intelligent

life beyond the Earth. This is known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

And one common way of doing it is by using radio telescopes to look for radio transmissions

from other solar systems. But all such efforts presuppose that there's someone out there we could talk to.

And that raises the question of just how many alien civilizations there are.

In 1961, astrophysicist Frank Drake tried to estimate how many there might be,

so we came up with a mathematical formula now

known as the Drake equation. So what is the Drake equation? How have estimates changed over the

years and how many alien civilizations are actually out there? That's what we'll be talking

about on this episode of Jimmy Eakin's mysterious world.

Jimmy, what would you like to say to begin?

Well, today's episode is one in a series of episodes that look at the idea of extraterrestrial

life from a scientific perspective. The original installment in this series was way back

in episode 10 on the Fermi paradox, which deals with the

question of why we allegedly don't see evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. Of course,

...