The impossible search / God’s Plan

Who among us hasn’t looked up to the stars and wondered if we are alone in this unimaginably large universe? I do that on a regular basis since I almost cannot believe that we are the only planet that can sustain intelligent life. More importantly, I would be completely lost to explain why if we were the only ones here. It would mean something that I wouldn’t be able to understand. It is just less stressful to believe that is there is someone else.

And science has been a good friend of mine. The drake equation is such a fascinating bit of math to put the staggering size of the universe and its odds into some sense of tangibility. The equation is a probabilistic argument that is used to estimate the number of active and communicative civilization in just our Milky Way galaxy. You can find the argument well described here. Once you plug in the numbers, the answer could very well be less that one (meaning we are the only ones!) or 1000 depending on whether you take conservative or optimistic estimates. The variation is much too large to draw a conclusive result but it leaves with me an analytical sense of hope.

Inspired by this hope, I performed a similar analysis with cars. Lately, I felt that if you were on lookout for a new family car which is also somewhat fun to drive, you were going to struggle. Yes, you could get expensive sport coupe or a sport car but the minute you want any kind of practicality, you were left struggling to find one. In fact, it didn’t even matter how much money you throw into the equation.

Let me explain.

I started with using one of the commonly used search engines for cars. I used Autotrader.com and performed this search step by step last night. I also don’t want to accused of looking for a unicorn. So I assumed that any car with 4 doors is practical. The niceness of the drive would come through a rear wheel drive layout. And engagement of the hand would come through a manual transmission. That is it! I did not filter for price or any other filter at this point. Here is what I found.

One of the major critiques of Drake’s equation has been Fermi’s paradox. It refers to apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and various high probability estimates. In other words, if there could be theoretically 1000 possible planets in our galaxy that could have intelligent life, then the question remains, where are they?

And on a similar note, here in the galaxy of United States, where annually over 15 million cars are sold, the chances of you finding a new four door sedan/wagon that is somewhat fun to drive is actually very low and close to 0.

Unicorn

These scientific metaphors just stress on how the automotive world is rapidly changing. In the rest of the world, you might still find a few samples of fast saloons that step out at the rear when pressed on. But here in the United States, an engaging practical family car is done and dusted for. It is as it is a shooting star, on which you can wish for, but not count on.