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I love how space is refered to as the final frontier. It's like, yeah we've covered all of this one planet now, we're pretty much done, all that's left is the ENTIRE FUCKING REST OF THE UNIVERSE.

Not really. Pique is a better 'defender' than him, and nobody rates Pique as one of the best ever. Thing with Ramos, he always struggled with his positioning when you compare him to elite centrebacks. If he remained playing RB for the duration of his career, he could of easily been in contention for the best RB of his generation. What he has accomplished with both Spain and Real will go down in history though. Arguably one of their most influential players ever.

Looks like I am heading for a B-

You have put 2 very good and informative posts up now with tons to read through and as I am back to work tomorrow I now feel like I am under pressure to cram it in before going back on shift... I feel like if I don't get it all in today I am going to end up with B- on my course work and have to explain to someone why I never paid more attention....

Absolutely...Let me know what you think if you do read them!

I used to teach applied statistics to a bunch of 19 year olds who used to put on exactly the same face most of the time; I know well how to keep fragile egos in tact At any case, the Drake equation shouldn't be taken too seriously as it's just a conceptual framework; it's essentially impossible to assign values for most of the variables in the equation with certainty in order to apply it practically. Here's a good infographic for more info...

You know when you are standing in a group around someone who is explaining something and even though you don't understand a word of it you keep your mouth shut and try to look serious the whole time and nod your head periodically to indicate that you are fully on board to give the impression you know exactly what they are talking about... That's me right there... I have never heard of the Drake equation but thanks to you I have now... It's great how you don't just assume that we are all a bunch of pitchfork wielding farmers with straw hanging out their mouths.. gotta love you for that!

Inspired by @CaaC - John's post in the Space thread yesterday about the discovery of repeated fast radio bursts and the subsequent discussion with @Bluewolf, I thought it'd be a good time to recommend a very fascinating sci-fi book (or rather a trilogy) that deals with the subject and which is a part of the best sci-fi literature in recent years for sure. But before that, it's important to be familiar with a few concepts as the books deal with all these great theories about physics and the universe and threads them together into a fantastically epic story that determines the course of all humanity. So first of all, the Drake equation. As you're probably aware the equation is a science based thought experiment that is used to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the cosmos, or more simply put, the odds of finding intelligent life in the universe. Here's it is illustrated: I won't go into detailed discussion about each variable in the equation but one way or another, even if you were to plug in the lowest possible values for each component of the equation, it still indicates that alien life is statistically inevitable (even if not in our galaxy, but rather the universe as a whole.) So given that, we come to another interesting concept called the Fermi Paradox which refers to the contradiction between the absence of evidence and the high probability estimations for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There are a growing number of hypothesis trying to solve the paradox by looking for potential reasons why there has been no contact or at least signs of intelligent life out there; I posted a few videos about it earlier in this thread, but I would like to leave this video here as it's a very nice overview of the topic on hand: And finally we come to the last thing to be familiar with before I move to the actual book recommendation (bear with me! ); and that's one of the hypothesis for the Fermi Paradox which is known as the Dark Forest theory, and it is, well, dark... The main postulates of this hypothesis claim that: All life desires to stay alive. There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance. Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same. So basically the hypothesis claims that all intelligent life forms are expected to be risk-averse, contact of any kind is dangerous, as it almost assuredly would lead to the contacted race wiping out whoever was foolish enough to give away their location. Therefore civilizations are so fearful of being detected that they purposely avoid sending out any radio evidence of their existence and choose to hide in radio silence instead. And thus the proponents of this hypothesis raise the question whether we should stop broadcasting our existence to the universe too then as being found would inevitably end in our demise and destruction? And so I finally move to the actual book trilogy recommendation starting with an excerpt from one of the novels: "The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds another life—another hunter, angel, or a demon, a delicate infant to tottering old man, a fairy or demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them." And at last, I present you Cixin Liu’s highly acclaimed trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past. It consists of three novels: #1 The Three-Body Problem #2 The Dark Forest #3 Death's End Highly recommended. Do yourself a favour and read it!

Well that's just a depressing thought... that would be like walking the full length of the globe to surprise a distant relative you have not seen for ages and finding they have passed away before you got there...