{"id":7612,"date":"2016-07-18T22:58:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T05:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7612"},"modified":"2016-07-21T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T06:02:09","slug":"yes-there-were","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/07\/18\/yes-there-were\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, there were."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/13.7\/2016\/07\/14\/485992587\/were-there-aliens-before-us\" target=\"_blank\"><em>from NPR<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h1>Were There Aliens Before Us?<\/h1>\n<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/people\/336050847\/adam-frank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"author\" data-metrics=\"{&quot;action&quot;:&quot;Click Byline&quot;,&quot;category&quot;:&quot;Story Metadata&quot;}\">ADAM FRANK<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Drake's equation\" src=\"http:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2016\/07\/14\/drake-equation_custom-a23e8fff7eddd3cd3ca0d4ebc7307625eae9bca2-s800-c85.jpg\" alt=\"Drake's equation\" width=\"480\" \/><em>University of Rochester\/Courtesy of Adam Frank<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Are we the only civilization-building intelligent species that has ever occurred in the universe?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s one of science&#8217;s oldest questions. Earlier this year, my colleague Woody Sullivan and I published a paper in the journal\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/online.liebertpub.com\/doi\/full\/10.1089\/AST.2015.1418\" target=\"_blank\">Astrobiology<\/a><\/em>\u00a0presenting new results that, I believe, throw new light on the ancient question. And, based on that work, last month I wrote an OpEd in\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that ran with provocative title &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/06\/12\/opinion\/sunday\/yes-there-have-been-aliens.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">Yes, There Were Aliens<\/a>.&#8221; The\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0piece found a large audience and generated strong responses running from agreement to dissent to folks telling me I really should look into UFOs (sorry, not my thing).<\/p>\n<p>Today, I would like, once again, to present our argument and dive a little deeper into its meaning and its limits. In particular, I want to address two excellent rebuttals written by Ross Andersen in\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2016\/06\/fancy-math-cant-make-aliens-real\/487589\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and Ethan Siegel in\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/startswithabang\/2016\/06\/21\/humanity-may-be-alone-in-the-universe\/#3d1d054a7e06\" target=\"_blank\">Forbes<\/a><\/em>. Neither Andersen or Siegel was buying some of my contentions and they both made good points. The thing about science (take note climate deniers) is that it&#8217;s really a call and response. Both Andersen and Siegel are great writers. Their skepticism made me think even harder about the ideas in our paper and that was really helpful.<\/p>\n<p>One note before we begin. This piece is a tad long because I need to introduce some of the background for the rest of my argument to make sense. Those familiar with the &#8220;Drake equation&#8221; and its history can skip the next section.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/13.7\/2016\/07\/14\/485992587\/were-there-aliens-before-us\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at NPR<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from NPR Were There Aliens Before Us? By\u00a0ADAM FRANK University of Rochester\/Courtesy of Adam Frank Are we the only civilization-building intelligent species that has ever occurred in the universe? It&#8217;s one of science&#8217;s oldest questions. Earlier this year, my colleague Woody Sullivan and I published a paper in the journal\u00a0Astrobiology\u00a0presenting new results that, I believe, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}