Playing Dice with the Universe

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder · Nov 9, 2025 · 26m · transcript

This week on Star Trails, we let the universe decide.We fire up a real quantum computer to generate pure randomness — the seed for a million-universe simulation of the famous Drake Equation. Each run explores how many intelligent civilizations might exist in our galaxy, from barren voids to thriving cosmic metropolises. The results are startling, the implications profound, and the method delightfully nerdy.Along the way, we revisit the roots of the Drake Equation, the strangeness of quantum mechanics, and the poetry of probability. Then we step outside to the real night sky: the waning Moon…