[EggsAckley]

And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains.

Frank Drake is a neighbor of mine. Very fine man. He's taken up square dancing of late.

[hillary's_fat_a**]

I actually was a babysitter for Carl [for his son Nick] when I was at CU. Carl was a great guy - used to take me to HoJo's for dinner a few times.

[Restore]

Ask him if the Drake equation isn't usually written:

N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L

Where R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life. Likewise, L (The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.) is a whole number, not a fraction (fL) as Crichton suggests.

I'm not trying to be an upstart but it seems that the way Crichton writes the equation,

(N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL)

well, it doesn't make sense.