You've read it?
My best friend works for STSCI (Space Telescope Science Institute) the agency that allocates observation time on the Hubble. He's an astronomer and a physicist.
I'll be very sure to inform him of that. ;)
He's the one who turned me onto Rare Earth. He said it changed a lot of "Star Trek" life-is-common attitudes among folks in his department.
You Drake Equation folks are dinosaurs. ;) Don't hang onto an idea just because the New Idea frightens you.
Like I said, Rare Earth is a horror book.
OH, I might add: David Levy (of comet Shoemaker-Levy fame) referred to the authors as "...two of the top scientists in the field...." But what would he know?
The book has won plenty of accolades from astronomers, many of whom are extrasolar planet discoverers. Look at the dustcover.
The authors, Ward and Brownlee, make a convincing case, and a scary one. Ward, a geologist, tackles the stunning implications from his angle, and Brownlee, a professor of astronomy, lead the NASA Stardust mission and specializes in the origins of comets, meteorites, and astrobiology.
Brownlee is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. (Pre-Obama.)
Please tell me I'm able to sway your opinion, or is your mind still closed?
> Please tell me I’m able to sway your opinion, or is your mind still closed?
Right back at you.
Read more than one book, and obtain more than a bunch of cheerleader reviews of “Rare Earth”, before saddling on it as some kind of final word. The book is built on false premises and straw men, and the years have been less and less kind to it and its authors.
Just a while back some guy used the Hubble to take a long exposure shot of the night sky were absolutely nothing was visible, nor interesting was known to exist.
He produced about a dime in diameter shot of the sky, showing several million previously unknown galaxies and other formations.
There are trillions and trillions of these formations in our universe containing billions or trillions of stars each, that only here and there does life exist, and only a very few have intelligent life is past statistically absurd.
Those Rare Earth authors are just more learned science grant mongers with a different ax to grind.
Closed minds do not enter into it, common observable sense does.
I, for one, am not impressed because some dude with a PhD after his name claims something is true or false. Some dude is always claiming something with irrefutable, unbasised data is one or the other, only to be proved later on by some other dude with a PhD that the first guy is a moron and flat wrong.
MSNBC makes a lot of the same type of claim about politics, and they are provable morons with axes to grind. If you were to watch them, you might have to agree with them also on the basis of their claims.
I have to agree with Civ here: "The book “Rare Earth” is utter nonsense."