[gruuk]

I remember when Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series was first shown on PBS; the episode when the Drake equation was covered was one of my favorite, although even as a teen I understood how small were the chances of finding other sentient life as we hadn't found a single extrasolar planet at the time, let alone in the Goldilocks zone of a star.

Planetary discoveries (like this one) in the past few years are so cool to me.

[billforsternz]

I love the "Big Bang" episode where Howard raises the topic of the Drake equation. Sheldon immediately rattles it off, first the equation itself, then a rapid-fire explanation of each term in the equation. Sheldon loves that thing. Of course it turns out that Howard has adapted the equation to his own purposes, namely determining how many sentient human females willing and able to mate with Howard exist within the greater Los Angeles metro area.