A team of scientists has reworked the famous Drake equation in order to answer the question of whether humans are the only technological species to have ever existed in the universe.

The question as to whether human beings are alone in the universe is just about the gist of the well-known Drake equation. 

Rife with uncertainty and various unknowables, it's fairly difficult to answer. 

But now, a team of scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Rochester, publishing in the journal Astrobiology, are asking a slightly different question: "Are we the only technological species that has ever arisen?" 

The answer? Probably not. 

Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan developed the new question in order to get around one of the biggest uncertain variables in the original Drake formulation--namely, how long civilizations might survive once they