Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003pobeo..75..307d&link_type=abstract
Publications of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade (ISSN 0373-3742), No. 75, p. 307 - 311 (2003). In: Proceedings of the X
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
History Of Astronomy, Philosophy
Scientific paper
A well-known argument due to Brandon Carter suggests that intelligent life in the Galaxy is much rarer than a conventional probabilistic reasoning would suggest. A crucial assumption in that application of the anthropic reasoning is that the biological timescales for the development of life and intelligence are entirely independent ("uncorrelated") of astrophysical timescales for habitability of planetary ecospheres around Main Sequence stars. This assumption may be too naive extrapolation from our state of relative ignorance. We discuss the impact of several plausible mechanisms inducing a correlation between the two timescales, some of them of fairly recent origin, such as the impact of local ("galactic") gamma-ray bursts. Although the results are still far from conclusive, due mainly to our poor understanding of biogenesis and noogenesis, we hope to set up a long-term research programme aimed at addressing these uncertainties in a quantitative manner.
Cirkovic Milan M.
Dragicevic Ivana
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