Why We Might Be Alone in the Universe
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- Опубліковано 3 лис 2019
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Why does it appear, that humanity is the lone intelligence in the universe? The answer might be that planet Earth is more unique than we've previously assumed. The rare earth hypothesis posits exactly this - that a range of factors made Earth exceptionally unusual and uniquely able to produce intelligent life.
In upcoming episodes we’ll be exploring the anthropic principle and its two main versions - the strong and the weak anthropic principles. The strong anthropic principle tells us that the observed universe must be able to produce observers - including the contentious idea that this predicts the existence of universes beyond our own. But in today's episode we’re going to focus on the weak anthropic principle. It says that we must find ourselves in a part of the universe capable of supporting us. For example, in a planetary biosphere rather than floating in the void between the galaxies. This may seems tautological, but accounting for this observer selection bias is important to understanding why the universe looks the way it does from our perspective. And the weak anthropic principle is much more useful than that. When combined with the apparent absence of alien civilizations, it may tell us why intelligent life is incredibly rare in our universe.
Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer & Adriano Leal
Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: / @jrsschattenberg
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Hey Everyone! So this is our first episode released in 4K. Hope you enjoy the upgrade.
I'm just glad I don't hear saliva noises every time he opens/closes his mouth.
One could say you made more quanta of spacetime... so you've undergone a rapid yet brief period of inflation over the last week?
I could tell the quality was better when you were talking about space and it looked gorgeous!
Very interesting video. I think that in order to really understand the Fermi Paradox we have to first understand the history of our Galaxy and how that has affected life here on Earth.
What were the levels of Galactic cosmic radiation in Earth's past and how did it affect the primitive life here on Earth? What event caused the Galactic Fermi bubbles and how did it affect primitive life on Earth? How stable are galaxies in the universe? Are galaxies generally as stable as ours and have low levels of radiation long enough to give rise to a civilisation?
Why a song of Justin Biebir has milions of views and this highly educational and thought provoking channel has only 0.5% of that?! We really like to be sedated am I right? Greetings from Romania
Even if advanced life is not SO rare, the sheer dimension of space may be an insurmountable barrier to any possible contact.
No matter if we are alone or not, we can all agree that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
We can also agree however, that either way there *is* matter!
You know you stole this.
This is cringe ...
Whats this "we" earth man?
*power station
The thing that made me think life may be rare is that we see very little phosphorus in the cosmos which was essential to life on Earth.
But who says evolution somewhere else means life does not need/produce phosphorus elsewhere.
@@loganmapes2307 Its rare on earth too, if life could evolve without it it would have
@@loganmapes2307you have no idea what you are saying. Phosphorus is extremely rare, you can even observe a similar trend in the milky way. Phosphorus is rare as you can get. And based on simple chemistry, yes phosphorus is extremely important to evolution.
@@edwardso8903 Life, if it exists, will likely follow a similar chemical composition. Carbon is simply too dynamic and suitable not to outcompete other elements life could be based on, so we are looking for other organic chemistry similar to our own, which would need phosphorus. Of course, life could exist as dark matter, or inside a black hole, but that would be beyond the current ability for us to verify whether it exists. Furthermore, our timespans may not sync, meaning life could have died out millions of years ago elsewhere and we'd never know that.
It's pretty cool that we live in a place that is instantly fatal basically 100% of the time.
Can my hours logged watching this channel transfer over to college credits?
Lmfaooooo lmk if it pulls thru
Let's hope
yes! *creates a 2mil college debt*
UA-cam has actually helped me in some classes. Like yes I already knew this info from hours of science videos.
Except for gender studies or diversity type degrees.
Ah so Jupiter is like Earths bouncer from weirdos and murderers
Jupiter lets Halley's comet pass though, he's a cool bouncer!
Yes.
@@Danilego
Yeah, but one orbit the comet will make a snide remark to Jupiter as it comes a bit close to it's personal space and, just like clockwork, 57,000 years later the gas giant get will become tired of the comet, reaching out a gravitational arm to pull it in by the _collar_ and have a word with it. One punch and it's over. You don't mess with Big J.
Samuel Shin yeah but they’re more like the warnings, Jupiter is like, you’ve came to the wrong house fool!
Yup. Jupiter says "you can't get in with those shoes". And he lets the pretty girls cut the line
Science and math channels like this should be mandatory study for students of all ages. Not tested on necessarily. But to help people develope understanding of what is scientific and what is not. Our current age of misinformation might not be so prevalent.
I don't think that will entirely fix it either. I know a couple of people with PhDs in scientific fields (inorganic chemistry and plant biology) who still believed in other anti-science BS because of their beliefs. They won't listen to others about why they are wrong because they just point at their degrees and believe they are automatically right about everything else. Sadly, one of them was hired by a school system to teach kids.
That our wonderful planet is so finely tuned for life makes me reflect on the monstrous ingratitude of our thoughtless and careless disregard for the stability of its climate system. If we could only appreciate the gift we have been given!
Nobody belongs anywhere, everything happens for no reason, nobody is important and everybody dies, as well as the entire universe. But sure, i guess.
Just remember that 100 corporations produce 70% of our global emissions
@@D3NM0NT3UR actually wheelchairs were made for a reason which was to help people with sucky legs
@@tylershelow8945 just remember that ordinary people like me and you are keeping these corporations alive by buying their stuff. Rules of supply and demand. This is our common responsibility, don't blame corporations.
@@borisengler8892 well, yes and no. It only takes one person in charge to not bend all willy nilly to the laws of supply and demand and say "I will supply as much as I can under the constraints of meeting *insert environmentally friendly goal*". For the consumers to have a significant impact on what the corporations do, a significant amount of consumers have to operate uniformly. This is seen in boycotting. However, its more difficult to properly boycott very very very popular goods. How many people will not buy a new laptop or phone in attempts to force tech companies to reduce their carbon footprint? You have to understand the consumer is a generally always a weak willed individual. Everyone has their weak spot. A person who doesn't care about having a smart phone and walks around with a 10 year old Nokia may be very adamant about eating beef for example. And this is just about goods that don't make life significantly easier/bearable. My point is, those in charge of corporations have a greater chance of being able to affect change in how they do things to reduce their carbon footprint than for consumers to do things differently to convince corporations to change how they do things to reduce their carbon footprint. I'm not saying it's futile. ESG investing is becoming more and more of a thing.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." /Arthur C. Clarke/
Andrey Lebedenko omg..
Or your brain is just creating shit..
You think the universe works like earth? No.
1 planet 1 species. We have a planet of deers, planet of lions planet of hippies, planet of nerds etc...
Take some of them and put them all in one planet together and you have the perfect tv reality show for the next billion years.
@@parakmi1 I like the way you think! And it's still terrifying! :D
@@parakmi1 true! Different laws.
“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.” Alan Watts
Whoa. Been getting a bit of his stuff recently and he's awesome... Plus I appreciate his voice in the era he came from.
We are all Boltzmann brains. Well, one of us is, everyone else is an NPC.
Alan Watts is timeless
I thought that was Sagan
What is so glorious? all men will die of prostate cancer if not sooner from colon ca or heart disease, for women its breast cancer or whither away in a nursing home babaling nonsense while wrapped in your own own piss in shit wearing a blue diaper. Plus the gamma ray burst that knocked out some developing civilization on some planet xyz in the past was a not so harmonious, glory-full, magnificent-beyond-belief, gift from the universe. alan watts lived in a delusion peddling happy juice while high on acid.
Still cannot wrap my head around the idea of organic, living things emerging from inorganic, lifeless things. Abiogenesis is mind blowing to me
I struggle with that too
viruses are not alive and yet they reproduce, have DNA, and use energy. "life" is just a man made construct to describe advanced organic machines that arise from natural selection. Abiogensis isn't as hard to imagine existing as you might think
Our "understanding" of abiogenesis is complete bullshit honestly. People don't realize that no one has even come close to demonstrating it in a lab (under perfect condition). Nevermind a cell, the odds of a single functional protein or DNA/RNA molecule arising by pure chance is so astronomically low that the universe would likely reset itself before it could happen:
The smallest functional protein is ~100 amino acids (this is being very generous) so the odds of forming a specific sequence with 20 possible amino acids is: 20^100
All amino acids must also be of the same chirality: 2^100
20^100 x 2^100 = 1.6 x 10^160 (just for reference, the number of atoms in the observable universe is ~10^80)
@@user-gt7op7we8e That's why nobody thinks it was pure chance. If you see a bunch of magnets get jostled around and then stick to each other, you wouldn't be surprised that all the north and south ends stuck together instead of north north or south south. Likewise, chemistry is not random chance. Some things are more likely than other things. Some things are inevitable once other things exist. If baking soda and vinegar exist and they mix, then they will react, no random chance required.
The exact process is still being worked out but we do know it wasn't chance.
@@jasonp7091 The issue isn't whether these reactions could occur or not, it's whether it's even feasible to produce anything resembling life given a finite time. Like yeah a monkey can hit a bunch of keys on a keyboard, but would it ever be able to type a coherent paragraph? There's nothing driving unliving molecules towards producing life. Without having a specific code (DNA/RNA) and enzymes, it's purely random.
As a biologist I can tell you, once life comes to exist, it's hard to kill.
As long as the oceans don't get affected too much life will not die.
The oceans are very stable, even from meteorite impact (depending on the size).
Also, life already existed way before oxygen, mitochondria and the cambrian but in smaller unicellular forms.
Seasons and daylength doesn't matter that much as long as a start is made (allthough enough light is important for life to form). Today, life thrives in the extremest of conditions thanks to the time it had to develop, including INSIDE LAVA AND ICE.
As soon as protocells exist and develop widely, life get's harder and harder to kill.
It's like a disease: easy to prevent but once it expands in your body, very hard to get rid of.
This video is a big list of reasons why life might be really rare. However, most of these reasons are in my eyes at least, completely unable to prevent life from forming. It might make it take more time though.
Intelligent life however, might indeed be rare, and for protocells to form (for life to start) on a planet probably takes a very specific combination of chemicals, stability and other factors like a spin and magnetic protection field..
Statistically speaking there is a BIG chance protocells were created many times but simply couldn't survive due to instability.
Life could easily have started from more than one place.
New protocells can be formed today as well.
Humans have managed to recreate those conditions and even if they didn't create LIFE, they observed some RNA like structures..
It's funny how we don't even yet (completely) know what it takes for protocells to form naturally.
Great video.
Excuse my English I'm not a native speaker.
Thanks for the insight
Intelligent life kills life at an astounding rate. Humanity is killing species at a faster and faster rate. This downward spiral will not stop until humanity is dead or all life is dead. Why would humanity be unique in the universe? Life creates other life.....unless that life is intelligent.
@@jrich749 Life is also micro organisms like bacteria and what not! We can NEVER kill all that. We'd kill ourselves.
Other aninals also kill for food and such but we are just extremely succesful at it.
You might have a point though, allthough maybe
Intelligent life doesn't have to mean they destroy the life around them.
the real question is are we alone after all the new released ufo stuff that just came out by the us gov. kind of proves we are not alone made me question things
@@jeffrey4547 Chances of being alone are about as small as them secretly spying on us.
If anything, I could say that this Earth was rare, but I thought, "nah forget it. Yo, homes, to Bel Air!"
@Cool Breeze I've seen both ways, and never settled on it. But I think you may be right. I went ahead and edited it.
Not bad for a fish
Dying
If you did a full remix of that song on that topic itd be quite hilarious
😂
“...when I say we’re alone, we’re alone. Life is only on Earth, and not for long.”
That line from the film, Melancholia, shook me to my core and saddened me. I always naturally assumed, due to the size of the universe, that the universe is teaming with life. But Melancholia made me consider that, for the first time, we may actually be a unique cosmic anomaly.
And so, 'become that,' is a 'taoist edict,' so to speak. 💜💫✨
That movie is pure depression
@@LuisSierra42 You could even say it is...melancholic
Heh.
Given how many solar systems have 'Hot Jupiters' orbiting very close to their parent star (which I acknowledge are the easiest for our methods to detect), one wonders whether we ought to add a new factor to the Drake Equation - the number Earth-like planets where the local gas giant performed the 'Grand Tack', I.e where the gas giant entered the inner regions after formation but was gravitationally-halted by the likes of a local Saturn before said giant could make a mess out any vulnerable inner terrestrial worlds.
Y'all don't have to remind me I'm alone in the universe. I live it everyday
Pr3ssPl4y do you know what a joke is??
@@CactusBerto let me introduce you to a little something redditers like to call r/woooosh
@@huyu9242 www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/a1hlxd/using_rwooosh_as_a_reply_to_others_is_really/? bro u gotta read this
We earthlings are the product of continuous evolution like everything else in the universe, here today and gone tomorrow. There must be millions and millions of inhabited planets with intelligent life forms
@@PlzPr3sspl4y Wow, no arrogance in your house, eh? Here is *YOUR* bone. Consider this; the mind is subtle that does not feel the need to impress, it is impressive by that which it does not say.
How life started on earth is so strange to me. It baffles me.
The only people it doesn't baffle are those who think they know more than they actually do.
jcr912 Yeah agreed
jcr912 It doesn't baffle me and I don't claim to know it all. I have a theory of my own about it (although I think it's extremely likely to be incorrect). There are a couple theories that could be right out there too. If I was to put myself on a Dunning-Kruger diagram, I'd say I'm past the peak of confidance, just starting to climb the 2nd curve.
Science can only go as far but beyond that is god
@@fartsniffer1093 God is a man made imagination
Getting hit by a planet, surviving, and winding up with an axial tilt that promotes seasons and a giant orbiting moon that promotes tides...this could be an impossibly rare set of circumstances. The band of possibilities where that collision doesn't simply destroy both planets may be absurdly narrow. So if seasons, tectonic plates, and tides are prerequisites for life and the only way to get that is for two planets to crash together in exactly the right way...yes it might be so rare as to be essentially impossible. Except for us.
essentially impossible is a big, big factor of difference from actually impossible. even if the odds are stupidly low, like one in a quadrillion, the universe is a big space, and the idea of those rare set of circumstances never appearing again in (as far as we know) an infinite universe is zero.
that rarity may put any other alien life so far away from us to virtually not exist, but even if we never manage to contact them, it's not the same as saying we're alone.
We can't deny that from our solar system, to our planet's ecosystem down to each lifeform, they all almost look almost like an engineering design.
So dear ,god definitely exists..
"This is Rare Earth"
-Evan Hadfield
Haplo lol
also Gil Bridges.
Sc, Yt, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu, Hf
When ever you mention the great filter I immediately start nervously sweating
@@goldeternalTino that's exactly what scares me. The fact that we are already pretty much doomed. We can't as individuals do much to fix the crisis our planet is in, and very few nations are listening.
Aberrant Artist the worse case scenario is countries fighting for resource and start a nuclear war
potato but roasted yeah or we just end killing our planet because of climate change
Guys calm down... the situation is no where near as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Go do physics or chemistry or engineering or something in tertiary education and work on developing fusion into a workable power source, or make fission safe and figure out what to do with the waste. When we do that, we will save the world at least from energy's side of the destruction.
Help invent better solutions to plastic than paper straws, because straws are nothing compared to half the crap that is entering our oceans. Instead of sitting here feeling hopeless, go and do something to help, beyond complaining about what everyone else does.
We don't have a lot of time, but we have more time than the doomsday sayers say we have. Time enough to develop technologies to further our race and aid in protecting the Earth we live on.
@@catchphase What people don't understand is that the fundamental problem isn't physics, it's how evolution shaped us and how our ideology and society evolves. Climate change won't kill us or the planet, the resulting wars will. The problem is that we still have nuclear weapons. That we will have no problems using biological weapons or autonomous weapons. There is something wrong with us.
If we started to act rationally now or in the future, we would be fine.
So yeah it's not necessarily too late but it might already be highly unlikely we survive long term, given human nature and current ideology acting in a large society.
The inaction and climate change denial is strong evidence for this. It's not that we don't know better, but that we just can't help ourselves.
As an example, try to convince anyone that we'll need to prevent the media from lying about existential risks like climate change and you are immediately confronted by people reverting to childish principles like free speech.
Or that we will need to alter our genetics to increase intelligence so we can understand the increasingly complex consequences of our policies. And increase empathy and weed out sociopaths.
We can't even talk about the steps that might (or might not) be needed to ensure we can survive long term.
The technical solutions to survival aren't the problem. Humanity might just be too stupid to live.
PS: And that might be the answer to the fermi paradox as well, that most species that are as aggressive and genocidal as we are will wipe themselves out before their drive for unlimited grown would colonize the galaxy. Only the "good" ones survive and the hippies were right all along.
If you turn the volume all the way down, it looks like Matt is trying to convince you to not punch him in the face.
Thank you so much for amazing content with no ads! I am going down the rabbit hole with these videos! They are amazing!
Nobody mentions the other solution to the Fermi Paradox: someone has to be first.
Michael Meyers Universe is still relatively young as well. Us being the first is possible.
And how rare advanced technology might be. If we count N.Africa part of Asia, only three continents on Earth independently developed the wheel, only two developed blue water travel, only one developed the ability to cross oceans with regularity.
It’s more probable to be alone than to be first ... ?
I've heard the argument that the universe is old enough for it to be unlikely that we would be the first. There's also a statistical perspective that indicates that the more civilizations that exist, the more likely that any given civilization (i.e. us) is in the middle of the pack in terms of time of appearance.
It's unlikely, yes, but it was that unlikely for whichever civilization came first.
That is if intelligence or space travel are one of the filters.
The jury is still out whether Earth has intelligent life.
How original
@Warmage Two Crows you mean redundant jokes?
Autocorrect error, I presume?
@Warmage Two Crows You're sure reading a lot into me asking you meant redundant instead of "reverential." The latter genuinely didn't make sense to me.
Also, bringing up the possibility of it being an auto-correct error wasn't meant to be an insult. Autocorrect happens to most people. I steelemanned you. You should have steelemanned me.
@Warmage Two Crows I didn't even mention your spelling.
I asked if you meant an entirely different word. Just asked for clarification.
@Warmage Two Crows You're not familiar with the concept of gracefully giving someone the chance to clarify?
Let's also remember that by observing all known animal species, our linguistic abilities seem like a highly anomalous evolution, counterintuitively so. Perhaps a larger filter than we might initially think
Ehhh look at dolphins and parrots. Especially dolphins. Not our level. But with the right pressure likely could be
@@danielhicks1824 sperm whales too! extremely complicated communication abilities!
@@QuinnZip very true. It's almost like they have built in telegraphing ability lol what with the range they can communicate over too.
@@danielhicks1824 Sure but our linguistic capabilities are.. exceptional for terrestrial mammals.
@@jghifiversveiws8729 bats have complex communication too
Im happy that we got a universe that has dogs 🐕
Yeah, me too.
I sometimes look at my dog (Pepper) and think you are nearly as special as me...
Mainly a universe that has me :)
Animals generally make me happy 🙏
I want a tiny tyrannosaurus that acts like a cat
"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"
- Douglas Adams
"a hole"
DRRRR
DRRRR
DRRRR
*sorry?*
The puddle analogy assumes life existing to fit its environment by means of adapting to fit such a "puddle." Without the special environment we have emerged on to begin with there would be no water to fit such a puddle.
The puddle failed to consider that it has the power to think and wonder how that came to be.
@@faybrianhernandez2416 you don't get my reference about the hole.... "THIS HOLE WAS MADE FOR ME."
@@faybrianhernandez2416 nice, but when a metaphor is taken too far it brakes down and carries no meaning
Me: Are we alone in the universe?
Oracle: yes.
Me: then there's no life out there?
Oracle: there is.
.
.
They're alone too.
We may never be able to travel far enough to meet other life so in theory yes we are alone
Damn... that's sad.
damnit. truth
Clearly no one in this thread has played Stellaris. Lol
Well said
I've read that Fermi paradox once. My whole perspective has changed since then
I can't speak for the universe as a whole, but intelligent life on Earth is pretty rare.
Why else would this channel not have a billion subscribers?
Are you one of them? First broadcast!
Cause aliens don't understand what youtube is and probably doesn't know that we even exist
THE MITOCHONDRIA IS THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL
I was looking for this particular comment! 🤣 😂 😅
You mean power-bottom
And ATP is the currency
I DON'T EVEN KNOW THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE I LIVE IN
@@zeroireland
Including 8 billion of the rest of us
I really liked this video. You can’t imagine how hard has it been to explain people that life is highly improbable. There’s no reason for the universe to host life, it’s simply irrelevant. Yet, people discard this view automatically because for whatever reason they diminish the value of life and want to believe it’s very common everywhere, even if all evidence points towards the opposite. Great job on the video.
I honestly think it might be a somewhat reverse reaction to introduction of the Copernican Principle. We thought we were incredibly special, and the the universe was made for us. The social shock that disproving this caused, was quite big at the time. Now we have had several centruries where the oppsite story has become more and more certain. That we are not special and that life could be anywhere.
The problem I think many of our day and age have towards this concept is that if we truly are rare, and complex life in general is not really found most other places, then this does put a seismic ton of responsibility on our shoulders. Now I've heard enough people lamenting the state of our world but in the same breath saying that it probably does not matter, cause there is so many other species in the universe.
Especially young people up to 30+. There seems to be a strange coping mechanism of trying to diminish the importance and possbile rarity of ourselves and complex life on this planet, so that the tradegy of climate change and species extinction does not seem as overwhelming and as horrific as it actually is. This is my all means just my interpretation of this phenomena. But it is strange to see so many struggle with this idea, compared to that of a universe filled with intelligent life, and where our importance is miniscule. So I think there might be a somewhat coping/denial mechanism in there somewhere.
People simply retell what they are told by many scientists and shown in movies and books. Scientists need to be told that the universe is rich in life and intelligent life so that they are funded and so that people do not lose hope and dream. It is much more interesting to think about multiple worlds with a variety of plants, animals and intelligent species than to be alone in an eternal void.
I'm surprised that I rarely hear about the effect of time on the prevalence of intelligent life. Let's say the first intelligent life took a billion years to develop and lasted for a million years. In the 13 or 14 billion years star dust has been kicking around, 500,000,000 civilizations had time to develop and die with a gap of a million years until the next one arose. Yes, there are probably huge gulfs of space between civilizations but there are also probably huge gulfs of time between civilizations.
That's not possible. The early universe was extremely hostile and would've wiped out life pretty much immediately if there was any planet that was even remotely capable of having, well, anything but molten rock. Which I also doubt.
Black holes, exploding stars, supernovas all day. No way.
I'd start the math 6 billion years into the universe, as long as we limit to solar systems in the outskirts of large galaxies (the central parts of our galaxy have been dangerous forever and will continue to be for billions of years more, there are barely any planets there)
In Earth's case, we got our moon then stopped getting major asteroids almost immediately (thanks to Jupiter, our extremely massive neighbor conveniently positioned right where >99% of the debris is, with the asteroid belts at either side).
Only a million years after Earth got water, we got proto-life.
Around 2 BILLION years later we got eukaryote life. This may be the only part where Earth could've been slow. But was it slow? In an early planet teeming with microscopic life it's weird eukaryotes only appeared once, and once only.
300 million years later the world got full of large, cold-blooded reptiles. Can such animals even grow intelligence? They dominated much of the world for millions of years, yet there was nothing exceptional but the giantism. These dinosaurs and their descendants tend to be on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum. Not the most social ones either.
BOOM, all of them wiped out. Conveniently, mammals survived. They took over. Couple hundred million years later, and here we are, these mammals pondering about the universe.
I cannot seem to grasp this process as anything but a series of conveniently timed steps and happening way too fast. I'd be surprised if the number of smart species in the entire history of the Milky Way could be counted with more than two hands...
This is my perspective I try to impart on folks too. It’s not as much, “is there other intelligent life in the universe?” … it’s: “What are the chances that our civilization lines up with another (in time) intelligent civilization ?”.
Humans have only been able to comprehend the stars and skies for 300 years (telescope). Who’s to say we last another 300 years?
Great point
Well if you give an advanced star traveling alien species a billion or two years head start then they should be flooding the galaxy with their presence right? Therefore, it must be impossible to travel faster than light and so difficult that no matter how advanced a species becomes they are still stuck in a small area or decide it's pointless to try to branch out from there immediately close solar systems.
This is an amazing discussion! Mind boggling to say the least. Very well structured. Thank you
You said it all, " intelligent life is extremely Rare." 😀
Especially during rush hour.
Yeah, we certainly haven't found any intelligent life here.
everyone please help keep this at 69 likes.
Carl Sagan - 'The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.'
Indeed!
Cute: but the idea of a waste of space is meaningless outside of a human context.
@Easliy Displeased To who? You are ascribing human attributes of judgement to what, to who? The entire idea of being a waste is a human conception. This should be easily understood. The statement was a quip, a low level joke. In a universe wherein we are the only planet with life, we are the only place that the concept of "a waste" could exist. It could as easily and more accurately be said that it is like a huge potential source of unlimited wealth that life on earth could eventually exploit for it's own evolution and expansion.
@Easliy Displeased And I did not realize you had the mind of a six year old.
Jac Flasche
I was going to say "a 5 year old", but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt! ✌️, Jac.
I think there is life out there, but due to the fact that the distance between objects is so huge it hasn't had the time to reach us yet
We would see the light from their spaceships by now. We are alone in our known universe.
@@nojatha4637 i disagree, light isnt instant, so they could be out there
@@Cyborg-xm1yh I understand light moves at a fixed rate, but we should still be able to see space ships from many many years ago. Especially if they’re within our galaxy.
@@nojatha4637 thats assuming they are significantly more advanced then us
@@Cyborg-xm1yh They most likely would be advanced. And if they aren’t, they are most likely still extremely undeveloped. For hundreds of thousands of years, human technological achievements were far and few between. Only through the last hundred years were we able to become as advanced as we are now. We live in a critical moment where our civilizations are advancing almost instantaneously relative to the rest of human history.
We have barely looked into the universe yet. We didn't even know there was a universe beyond the galaxy till a century ago. The Fermi Paradox is like a guy looking for something for two secinds and saying "Honey! I can't find....".
That photorealistic animation at 6:13 had my brain doing backflips for a minute!
The universe is so large that by the time an alien civilization finds us, we will have been long gone.
They already found us, and it seems they are quite fascinantes with us
Light lag is the main reason we don't observe alien life. In a billion years maybe our offsprings will experience what we have dreamt of forever.
You're not very familiar with the Fermi Paradox. Are you?
I forgot if Fermi calculated the colonization of the entire galaxy should take only few million or a few 100,000 years even with sublightspeed travel- no wormholes, no warp drive.
The earth is relatively young. By Fermi's calculations, even with a slight head start, an advanced inter-stelar traveling civilization should have found us by now.
Hence Fermi's famous line, "Where is everyone?"
@Marc T. try punctuation. Your prose's lack of it makes your comment difficult reading.
In spite of that, I was able to detect an apparent contradiction in your comment. .
Seemingly I the same sentence ( hard to tell due to total absence of punctuation), you say we have studied space "thoroughly" but then, acknowledge how little we know about space.
Can you reconcile those two claims?
@@liquidsandiego They already found us. It was just back when we were single-celled organisms in the ocean
The music/narration balance in this video is perfect!!! Oh- erm, 'almost', absolutely perfect. Almost. There, better.
Thanks for these videos, much appreciated. Best wishes from GB.
Crazy to think that if an alien from an advanced civilization were able to travel here, they could show us exactly where to point our telescopes to try an observe their home planet, but the light from said planet would probably be so old that we would be observing the planet before it was inhabited by life. That has to be a factor as to why the galaxy/universe seems so inhospitable to us. If only we can find a way to observe far distances without having to wait for the slow ass light to get here!
two things:
-If an alien traveled to the earth the light that we receive from his home planet would come from the moment he started or after, assuming the alien did not travel faster then the speed of light.
-Our galaxy is not that big (about 100.000 light years) so the oldest light we can see from stars in the milky way is just 100.000 years old. Geologically speaking that's not that much, humans existed for longer than that. And I'm pretty sure that observing exo planets outside of our own galaxy is impossible because they're way too far away.
well if they arrived on Earth, then the light we would see would be AFTER they had left their planet (unless they figured out a way to travel faster than speed of light, like a wormhole)
"I think we're alone now. There doesn't seem to be anyone around."
- Tiffany
Tommy James and the Shondells.
@@frphxkaboom3008 This.
soooo old....
@@KKTnio Not if you watched Umbrella Academy lol. It's come alive again in the present.
tiffany hadish?😯
As a biologist, I often hear a lot about "Where are all the alieeens?" when I go out in a bar with my engineer/designer friends. I also never forget to mention them that in the past people would look up at the skies and see half-men half-horse arrow shooting gods, and all other unknown phenomena was explained through that. People oughta understand more about epistemology. the space-time fabric of the universe and the physical limitations sentient beings such as us face. It's a multi-leveled complex problem that we are just beggining to understand. Asking "why haven't we found alien life" is actually starting backwards. We oughta ask ourselves "How the hell did we manage to survive up to now?"
@Nj Rh how about, no?
That you were going to say that when your at a bar you look around at all the trolls and skanks and say "here are the alien's progeny
@@ravenly8104 because why? Why cannot the theory of intelligent design stand along side the theory of auto biogenesis? I've always found it interesting that most are perfectly willing to look at all the steps that it takes for life to begin by itself and to flourish, yet are diametrically opposed to the possibility of a creator. The contrast in itself is telling.
@@brittanybatrez4537 There's no being that is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, admiting he exists, it's the same as seeing a killer kill someone, and just watch, if he exists he is cruel i don't want to believe in a god that lets its creation suffer and do nothing about it.. Many religious ppl say that god as a plan, that god knows everything, if he really knows everything he is sadistic, and plus, it's contradictory. Many say "god gave us free will" and at the same time, he knows everything?? If he knows everything we don't have free will at all, cause "it's in God's plan" religions created by man are no different from adore false gods or cows/goats etc.. Tell me whatever you want, but to me religion it was just a way to humans controll a society back in the day, by putting fear of going to hell onto ppl, so that they could say "this is good, and this is bad, don't do bad stuff or you won't be saved"
@@brittanybatrez4537 Designed things stand out from nature like a sore thumb. Nature and artifice are literally opposites. Whether life and intelligence are rare or common, nothing about them in their current state or anything we know about the process that led up to the current biosphere suggests any kind of design. Our bodies and minds are riddled with flaws and kludges even when they're working perfectly, and often enough these Rube Goldberg contraptions go wrong in trivial or catastrophic ways. If there is a supreme being, it's the Supreme Flighty Art School Narcissist.
I think life is abundant. Or at least capable of being abundant. But intelligent life is one of the rarest things in the entire universe. Not only is it unlikely for other forms of life to become eukaryotic, but it (according to our current knowledge) took *billions* of years for substantial intelligence to arise. I think that's where we got lucky. I think everything on the vast majority of other planets will go extinct before it has the chance to think.
I agree. Out of the millions upon millions life forms that have ever existed on Earth only one species has been able to create technology and ask the question: are we alone in the universe? Perhaps we're not alone and while I do think the universe is teeming with life, intelligent life is extremely rare and given the vast distances between stars and galaxies, it's unlikely we'll ever come in contact with other intelligent life forms. I think that's a comforting thought
I dont know where the quote came from but it says somthing like.... if there was a monkey in a room alone with a type writer, given all the time in the universe it could type out shakespheres play. Again rough quotations lol
Not finding alien life is just as thrilling and puzzling a discovery as the opposite.
What? No. That’s a really stupid sentiment
@@cameronfielder4955 Everybody expects that we will find ETs. What's the fun in finding what you expect? I'm only half serious, of course.
That's true. Or what if other alien life never went past microbes, because none of them happened to be able to live long enough to evolve and work as a team and creating the future single-celled organisms? That would be *incredible* to learn!
That's actually the opposite of a discovery.
@@uttcftptid4481 If scientists are some day able to scan Earth-like planets and say with confidence whether they harbour some form of life, and they find that a million such planets look pretty much alike and are probably dead - I would call that a major discovery. Unless you're working under the assumption that there MUST be life elsewhere, and that any result that does not find what you're looking for just means the method is wrong.
I can feel when Matt is looking for the perfect phrase to end with "spacetime"
Seven hundred thousand years from now, this was a classic.
We have to figure out a lot of stuff on this planet before we can even begin to spread throughout the galaxy to discover more habitable worlds
This is my favorite episode. Thank you!
The rarest, amazingly beautiful world, only existing for a blip of time and we take it for granted. Are we the most intelligent or the least? I feel so grateful to exist here, today. After her short life, Earth may never happen again.
The mitochondria: the powerhouse of the cell
It's funny you say this, I was in class the other day and for the most random reason I drew a mitochondria
thats all i learned in science and i am sixteen yrs old
@@oliviafontana9383 then you are dumb as bricks
@@CapsuleGraph11 "For a brick, he flew pretty good."
Free the eukaryotic slaves!
Boltzman brains contemplating anthropic principle, universe has sense of humor.
In my mind, the solution to the Fermi paradox is trivial - there is no paradox. There could be intelligent life in every star system in this galaxy, and we'd probably not know it, because of the vast distances. Even technological life could be wide spread, and we'd be unlikely to detect it. There may even be other intelligent life within our own solar system. We haven't even ruled that possibility out. The lack of widespread alien contact, is probably best attributed to the impossibility, or at least fundamental impracticality, of traveling light years through space, and the vast distances would make any attempt at radio contact just as impractical. The amount of directed power necessary simply to send a detectable signal even to Andromeda makes it impractical to attempt. I think people, even scientifically minded people, tend to flippantly dismiss the difficulties created by the vastness of space.
Vast distances wouldn’t be a roadblock for any sufficiently advanced civilization given enough time. Saying there could be intelligent life in every star system in this galaxy, and we just wouldn’t know it, seems ridiculous. If the billions upon billions of star systems all held intelligent life, surely many of those civilizations would be far, far more advanced than us.
@@liamhagan4434 So let's say you transmit a strong 100kw signal, such as from a TV station. By the time you are 4 light years away, the distance to the closest neighboring star, it has decreased by a factor of 4x10^16, and is now roughly 10,000 times smaller than the cosmic microwave background radiation. This would be a serious engineering challenge to detect even if the source was out in the middle of empty space. But it isn't. Viewed from light years away, an alien civilization would have to detect that signal with our sun in the background. I know you may think technology can overcome that, and it can, but would require an unimaginably large antenna. It's a basic mathematical problem that has nothing to do with technology. There is no way around a truly unimaginably large antenna. This is fundamental to mathematics, not simply to our understanding of technology or even physics.
That isn't to say that aliens *could not* build such an antenna, but it doesn't make sense to assume they would.
...and this is to Andromeda. It gets worse and worse by the square of distance the further you go.
Now there is the problem of the speed of light. We've only been transmitting radio signals since about 1880. So only civilizations within 140 light years of us could even theoretically have received them. There are only a few thousand stars within that distance of us.
This is why I say that advanced alien civilizations could exist in around every star we see in the sky, and we would not know it. ..and for the same reason we would not seem them, they would be unlikely to see us either.
You have to start with the assumption that aliens permeate the galaxy far beyond their home stars, for there to be any hope they would detect us (or us them).
A key point in the Fermi paradox is that even with very slow generation ships it's possible to colonize an entire galaxy in a small fraction of the time the galaxy has existed. The technology to build such ships isn't especially advanced beyond what we already have on hand. It could be done, for example, with fission power, rotation for gravity, etc. The real barrier is an economic justification, but that might not matter to an advanced civilization with different values from our own.
The thing we never consider is that if we take Earth as an example, intelligent life only emerged 4.1 billion years after the first life form appeared : it’s literally a third of the age of the universe ! No one ever think about that when we talk about intelligent life emergence. So when you consider that with all the other parameters like the rare Earth or the gigantic distances we face just in our galaxy, or the fact that well-advanced intelligent species could all simply stop conquering more and more planets until the end of time, staying on their original planet or their solar system, which could totally be possible (who knows if humanity will really conquer the entire galaxy one day : Earth is pretty good, Mars is enough, we could also go on one of the satellites of Jupiter or other satellites in our solar system by terraforming them, the sun is perfect for us for at least 2 billion years, why would you bother exploring when life is good enough here), it’s no wonder we didn’t find any traces of aliens so far.
@@rigierish3807 A rare voice of common sense, I salute you, my guy
For me the rare earth hypothesis didn't seem very credible until seeing the odds of all the things that would need to go right added together. There's a lot of guess work but even conservative odds can land at odds so high it's easy to see why we haven't found anything out there.
I would say that we haven't found any life yet because the Universe is too big for us to explore fully. If we take into account the size of the Universe, the stars, the amount of galaxies, the time of 13,5 billion years for things to happen in other places. The rareness of life as the video suggest might be one in billions, and the Universe provides trillions of chances for us for life to exist elsewhere. Almost every star has a solar-system, it's insane.
@@karlkarlsson9126 Great take. If the universe is infinite, there has to be a copy of Earth with intelligent life because the odds would eventually have to match perfectly.
@@EventHorizon31 there's no evidence the universe is infinite though. a finite universe changes those odds dramatically.. That said, I do think it is almost certainly other life-bearing worlds, numbers game. And these rare earth hypothesis statistics are somewhat narrow-minded, making many assumptions about what life looks like.
I was waiting for the ufo to appear stealthily in the background cosmos while he talked about the lack of evidence. That would be totally brilliant. :)
After a species invents platforms like Twitter its intelligence regresses back to a simple lifeform.
ayy lmao
Well, you're not wrong.
Stimulus. Response. Stimulus. Response.
Perhaps civilizations slowly regress societally but progress technologically and eventually just go into their own simulations and other types of hidden living as a way of escaping reality and the harshness of the universe?
Or galactic twitter wipes out species a lot.
You're not wrong, but thinking on the wrong level. With the internet and the emergence of social media and quick information getting and sending, we are starting to act a collective whole and new behaviours are emerging that we had never had to deal with before. We, as whole, are acting like a simple life form.
It's going to take some time for us humans to learn how to adjust to easily findable infinite echo chambers and easy access to every person and all information available to mankind. If we can make it that far and not blow ourselves up first, I think the human race has a long future in front of it.
@In The Shadows
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even...
But seriously, I couldn't identify a question or final hypothesis posed by your comment. Your lack of punctuation annihilated any chances I had had of properly interpreting your thoughts. Also, are you not tangentially referring to Kaboom!'s post via the fermi paradox, not my own?
Anyways, confusing comment of the day... begon!
We are practically alone even though theoretically we may not be. The sheer distance between celestial bodies and the speed of light won’t allow us to travel in a feasible time to meet any other plausible civilisation. So, yes, we are practically alone.
As someone who loves the study of builogy I highly doubt that being multicelular is the hard part for evolution, I think that forming a cell is the hard part because its not formed by organisms (forming many organisms is actually easy) it is the organism (and making life is somthing we dont know how to do).
Multicellular requires lot of energy (ATP, because it requires lot of energy to combine collagen) and ATP is synthesized most of them from mitochondria's oxidative phosphorylation. Which means organisms need to use O2 to become multicellular specie because o2 is the best oxidant in the biology and this will certainly takes time. In fact, if we see the biome most of the organisms living in the earth is bacteria, which they don't use o2 or they use but in fermentation which is not efficient enough for multicellular species.
And multicellular species are difficult to achieve in a way that the cells need to do their job differently, which means development and body plan. And this radical miracle transformation happened around 53-540 millions years ago, famously known as Cambrian explosion or older than that Ediacara biome exist, but the diversity of organisms plunged at this moment.
If we see the history of Earth, earliest organism can be found in 4 billion years ago not long after oceans are created. And Cambrian explosion was happened almost 3.4 billion years after that! Which means that Earth's organism took most time to develop into multicellular organism and people often time don't know about this fact but the time took for the organism to becoming multicellular is something that really requires miracle. And by knowing so, if we find any organisms in outer would, i suspect it will be single cellular specie or multi but simple cellular specie. Becoming complex multicellular specie is really something, let alone intelligent species.
Intelligent species to come into alive requires more certain things like why evolution favored bigger brain if the brain consumes lot of energy and we don't need that much intelligent to survive and yet happened. Organisms need hand like function, shaped things to use certain tools and even make tools, use fires. Is it even possible to make fires easily if that planet is humid climate all the time. And you need certain object like tree branches and oil rich grasses to make fire. Is that accessible in other planet? Fire is prerequisite for civilization, and language also too. Because the organisms need to transfer complex information. And language requires verbal structures that enable organism to utter various kind of sounds. If we see chimpanzees, even they are very close in genetics, they can't utter well that much. Soooo, there's tons of tons of requirement for certain species to become, multicellular, intelligent, and build civilization. And even if they are smart enough to build houses, what if they stop there because they don't discover science. Science was not discovered until recently, it requires mathematics which is very symbolistic and abstract, and requires physics, and PAPER to write it down. What if they were not accessible to papers and write certain things in the clay board but clay board is clumsy and don't preserve that much, so the information wasn't transferred efficiently. Well, I'm being super speculative here, but the point is organisms need a lot of requirements to become intelligent. And if they are even intelligent enough , if they aren't curious or creative and satisfied with primitive life, the event will certainly not happen.
I’m already forever alone among humanity, so it can’t really get any worse
I see you, you aren't truly alone. ♥️
*we live in a society.*
zztop3000 🤨 Johnson?
Every particle has a pair. Which in turn would truly mean every human also has a other half to them. I find it’s mostly people who are scared to let others in that feel alone. It’s something you must work on if you don’t want to feel lonely.
I’m not 100% your comment is fact but thought I’d post this for anyone in the hope it will give them some solice in there thoughts.
@Pure Rust There _is_ worse.
Being alone while we are killing our own existence is a scary thing.
Great video as always.
No, it is not. Think it through.
We are not killing our existence. Any manmade disaster scenario invariably leaves survivors. The greatest threat to our survival is our incapability to survive the post-disaster world. Our technology is our weakest point, a knifes edge. We cannot maintain our technology without a working nation states and trade and stability. We cannot operate many things for long, as many of our tools have been designed to break after few years, to force us buy more. We cannot access information, as we are dependent on computers to store information. When I was a child, it was normal for a house to have a few dozen books, at least about basics such as a medical guide, as well as some work-related texts. A home library of hundreds of books was not unheard of. Today, houses are no longer designed to allow a bookshelf, and its rare to find books beyond fiction.
Yet at the same time, we are losing our basic skills. While hunting and woodworking are reasonably common, fixing a car is often specialist work. Farming in large scale enough for sustenance may be beyond most peoples capabilities. Especially since many gene modified crops do not produce viable seeds any more, forcing farmers to buy them each year, instead of sowing part of last years crop.
There are people who prepare for the end of the world in serious fashion, hauling weapons and preserved foods, yet they are only prepared to wait for help from others.
What can save humanity is not a gun. What you need is a dictionary. A very old one. When we cannot access modern tech and we have forgotten the old, a book that describes everything in the world from methods to machines, in the year, say, 1890.
Everything from forging iron to simple surgery, from farm equipment to animal care to basic electric bulbs, steam power to earliest combustion engines. Radio, lighter than air flight.
A civilization in a bag, and with surviving modern knowhow, only a decade of work from reaching earliest electronic computers again.
One of the coolest cartoons I've seen was a "New Yorker"-type with two fish crawling out of the water onto land with a limo and driver waiting with the door open and one saying to the other something like 'this is going to be good' or 'we're going to like this'.
Hahaha that's awesome
Having given this a fair amount of thought and analysis, I’d bet that life is not all that rare in the Universe, but intelligent life is extraordinarily rare. Perhaps there’s a few other locations in our galaxy with life, but we are almost certainly the only intelligent species in our galaxy. At that rate, the universe at large would have lots of places with life, and perhaps only a handful of other places with intelligent life in all the other galaxies. Given the distance between galaxies, it’s completely impossible to ever meet this other intelligent life. So basically, for all intents and purposes, we’re alone.
So many stars, so many galaxies, like noise on the TV, or grains of sand, even more so, 13.5 billion years in the making across the whole Universe that might be infinite, but even if it isn't, still trillions of galaxies. I would say intelligent life might be rare because it has to evolve and sustain itself, but considering the Universe is so big you could almost call it infinite, the chances of intelligent life will be many, but as you say, the distances between all of us is probably huge, one or two intelligent civilizations in each galaxy.
Let's hope.
There’s 2 Trillion (Trillion) Galaxies. Each with billions billions planets. Of course there’s llife
Ward and Brownlee agreed with you, in advance. If you haven't read 'Rare Earth' I'd recommend it.
Not only are we as a species alone, we as individuals are alone in our private minds and experiences. You cannot reach into my my mind nor can I. Consciousness is a first person, private phenomenon.
I believe it was Arthur C. Clarke who said
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Beat me to it.
I think we are Alone
@@griefweaver8432 we r alone in universe if there is some life then we should have been able to find in mars,moon and etc planets
We are probably not alone in the universe, but we live so far apart that direct communication is impossible. Not so terrifying after all.
I think Contact is probably more accurate. Lots of other intelligent life out there, but so far apart that communication is almost impossible, at least initially.
The odds of our planet being the ONLY planet with intelligent life, given the size of the universe, is astronomical. I think it's only our ego that even suggests we are somehow special.
On some other planet their tv show is telling everyone how they are likely alone in the universe due to the fact that their planet has such a rare group of characteristics.
No One i think you’re reaching a bit, if anything space exploration is gonna become earth’s industry in the next century lmao
No matter how unlikely the formation of life is, since the universe is incomprehensibly large there must be another planet where the exact same stuff happened.
@@blank003 Depends on your definition of Universe. This video is grounded on the finite observable universe. And even in an infinite universe, unique events can happen, although intelligent life is probably not one of them.
No One i mean space exploration is at peak interest since the late 1900s
@No One A more optimistic view of this theory of technological nihilism actually does not lead to the halt of obtaining knowledge. In all practical terms, if the universe was simulated, then space exploration and astronomy would be just as important as if it were actually real.This is because it would still be very real to us. The benefits of this technological nihilism could lead to the exploitation and understanding of the "coding" of our universe, or knowledge to manipulate the laws of our universe with the realization that it is an augmented reality. If this theory was led to become scientifically confirmed, it could lead to a new paradigm shift from the Eisenstein worldview we practice science in today, and thus more technological advances and space exploration could come of these exploits of our universe's "coding". A video version that states scientific theories that one may rationally come to believe this conclusion is Riddle - What If The Earth Does Not Exist ua-cam.com/video/3CyN8rYdX6g/v-deo.html
let me know what you think!
That animation when Matt describes eukaryotes was psychedelic. Science is beautiful
The Creator is beautiful
The closest star is just over 2 light years away. So when we look at it, we see it just over 2 years in the past, because of how long it takes to get here.
The furthest star is roughly 5 billion light years away. And the rest is scattered between those two points.
Considering the earth itself is only 4.5 billion years old, you must consider that what you are looking at is out of date.
Even planets we consider in the goldilocks zone, may not be habitable anymore.
And if the theory is irrefutable that nothing travels faster then the speed of light, then it makes sense why we can very easily see nothing.
And even if there is something there, it may never be able to contact us. All we can do is disprove faster then light travel, make it safe, and go where no man has gone before.
Because we can not look for alien life... until we can actually look for alien life.
Facts
Yup
The closest star is 4.2 light years away Proxima Centauri!
The closest star is 4 light years away. The farthest stars are 45 billion light years away.
@@bozo5632 u right. Mistyped lol
This was by far my favorite episode you’ve done. Extremely lucky to be be alive in this vast universe today and understanding that it’s not hard to believe that we are alone. That being said we should not take this for granted and we should continue to seek life on other planets but let’s be real now. The possibility that we can encounter intelligent life soon could be beyond the realm of possibilities. For instance a civilization may have existed a billion years ago and had done a fly by our planet to observe that we are in a developmental phase just to come to the conclusion that they will revisit. Since then it’s possible that they themselves fell victim to harsh gamma rays and died off.
Extinction on our planet may be an example of what happens in our galaxy and in the entire universe so it basically comes down to timing. It’s our time to explore and discover now and nothing should hinder that. If we can find simple single cells in our solar system then that would be the most extraordinary discovery of our short existence.
Simple life is probably a certainty, and it's very likely that there is larger, more complex life somewhere in the galaxy. But that doesn't affect the Fermi paradox, which is about intelligent life. But yea, finding any extraterrestrial life would be really cool :)
Good comment. Human intelligence is an extreme which may result in our self destruction and we must consider the great variations in our environment which have been favorable for us in the very short term. We may be an aberration in the great scheme of the universe.
"Encounters" is the key word. Even if there were 100 million earth like planets with earth like civilizations on them, the enormous distances and the old speed of light problem could mean that none of these 100 million civilizations can ever be aware of their distant neighbors
Positing a "civilization" even assumes a lot of human traits which may not exist anywhere else, including science, high technology, and language. The entire prospect for "intelligent life" elsewhere is tainted by anthropomorphic assumptions.
@@AceofDlamonds excellent point. I will take your point one step further and point out that the conclusion that we are alone in the universe because we don't have any clear evidence of the existence of intelligent xenomorphs is the #1 anthropomorphic confirmation bias. And when you add the time dimension to this point, the question becomes "did intenlligent xenomorphic life ever exist anywhere in the universe, given that light speed limits our ability to collect any such evidence from worlds that may have already been destroyed by supernovae etc.?
Raised on Star Trek and Star Wars, I WANTED to believe that varied assortment of civilizations around every corner of the galaxy, but the more I read and think, the more I believe in the Rare Earth Hypothesis.
True, but look at our own solar system. Europea might have life inside of it.
Star Wars is kinda a post Early Civilization galaxy. Humans were one of the early colonizers, hence humans being far more common than other species.
So we could be like Star Wars, just 100,000 years early. As humanity in Star Wars spread out to hundreds of worlds in generation ships, thus they had the population of thousands of worlds once they started colonizing with FTL travel. But hey, our descendants will have a blast.
There's a problem with the Rare Earth Hypothesis. We look for alien life from Earth Humano-centrist view. Different conditions breed different type of life in theory.
Universe is huge. Way. Huge.
@Galva Tron it gets worse. Not only are we alone so far. We are also alone on earth.
During the 4.5 billion years of the Earth being a "perfect cradle for life", it has produced only 1 strain of life in that 4.5 billion years. Only 1 life formation event in 4.5 billion years...and counting. Another 100 million years might go by with no second life forming event happening on earth.
Why is no other life forming independently on earth? Is such an event THAT rare?
So, if you created a copy of Earth with no life on it, and left it alone for 4.5 billion years. Statistically, what are the odds of finding life on it?
This is an excellent video. Very thought provoking.
We definitely won't be the only one in the universe, but we can be the only Intelligent ones
Stellaris: "Incoming transmission"
United Nations: OH MY GOD ALIENS EXIST WE HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!
Aliens: Want to buy our bunk-beds? They're _really_ high quality.
@@BenoHourglass "learn" aka enslave
3DGamma “determined exterminators”: hello there
-1000 relations
: ^ )
@@MrAlejandruko Flesh is weak.
Let's be xenophobic, it's really in this year.
"It's so crazy that I just happen to be in one of the few places in the universe where I don't instantly asphyxiate or freeze or vaporize or dehydrate, it's just lucky I guess."
You're literally in space! How?!
The Earth is in space. Any way he said few places in the universe not space. And er we are in the universe.
@@Gavin-Leo--uk Just look at the video dude, he's floating around in space, can'tya see?
Always interesting, thank you.
Honestly this episode is amazing, awesome script
Delicious Fermi paradox space-time episode. A rare event but always welcome
i think it's more likely that we just haven't had enough time to find alien life, coupled with the fact that everything is so far apart. we've only been exploring space for around 50 years, a time period so small it's immeasurable in a universe stretched across billions of lightyears. if intelligent life is rare, we shouldn't expect to see it on every earth-like planet near us, and not right at this moment. humans have only been on earth for a few thousand years, so maybe intelligent life will pop up on Proxima Centauri b in a few thousand years from now, or maybe there's already been intelligent life near us that went extinct millions of years ago. just because we're here now, doesn't mean intelligent life elsewhere needs to be. although, there could be intelligent life out there right now that's too far away for us to see. there could be an active galactic empire 3 million lightyears away- if it came to fruition in the last 3 million years we'd have no idea it's there because we're seeing how it looked before. because earth is the only sample space for life we have, we have no idea what's a universal requirement for life and what's earth-specific. there could be mermaids chilling in a subsurface ocean of liquid ammonia in an ice planet for all we know
very good - my theory also
How can we assume the likeliness of alien life, if we don't even know the probability or conditions necessary for abiogenesis? Like you said, we only have one sample size.
There is a planet 40 some odd light years away from Earth that is larger but very similar. It's very plausible that the planets intelligence is either our level or far beyond and is bipedal like human's.
@@arthurzettel6618 -and just where in the cosmic dust do you get this undocumented info?
But we also understand that our situation is very special. Imagine you winning jackpot 10 times in one lifetime
That’s actually scary to imagine more so than not being alone
@Javier Flores
*Yes* i always thought that quote from Arthur C. Clarke (sci fi writer) " Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying"
to be false in my opinion.
Being alone and feeling alone and God being illusion of human minds is alot mot scarier, because it's just "us" and nothingness.
That remind me of the film "Ad Astra" which made it's whole point around this question.
If we are indeed alone then Life on earth and human relationships are much more precious then anything else.
@Syntax It is scary, have you ever watched those videos about the scale of the universe? It's really terrifying to think this insignificant planet could harbour the only life in the universe. Once you get the idea of how truly big the universe is compared to our own galaxy, it really becomes obviously apparent why it's a terrifying thought
@@muz9663 it isn't really. Because scarier things are happening in our neighborhood.
@@muz9663 I actually find it exciting. How could it be scary?
The only scary thing is that we may screw up and die out too soon! We have so much to do, life is so beautiful and we need to spread it far and wide, my friend. May Humanity last for eons.
@@alonsoACRhaha bro I agree. May humanity last for eons and explore the universe!
I think it'd be cool to be first. All the scifi books I've read and movies I've watched either have aliens, alien ruins, or space travel that haven't gotten beyond the solar system or Alpha Centuri. The only one I can think of that doesnt have aliens is Dune.
Imagine though if we were truly the first species to colonise the galaxy. Everyone always imagines an Alien race watching us in hiding, waiting until we're advanced enough to be part of the greater galactic community, but what if we become those Aliens. Imagine us being the forerunners.
Pretty cool though imo.
why is this resolution so much lower than the one posted 6 years from now
GOD that damn pre 20s UA-cam compression makes everything look like sand
Exactly I am seeing one of his videos posted today on December 15 2034 and it's quality is way better. Also he looks young in this video ofcourse
bcause we are alone in the multiverse
Plot twist: it really doesn't look that worse.
You're God, why don't you tell us?
we are on a "rare earth" because the alien race simulating us can't afford a more powerful CPU that would allow to expand the simulation
Tin foil
this is ridiculous, if we assume the size of the universe is true, and not a hologram. check what sagan says about it: that would be complete waste of "spacetime". Or implies Consciousness is somehow exceptionally harder to "generate", than physical spacetime. Still, an interesting and provocative remark.
guys chill, I was kidding, it was meant as a joke like "there is only one good place because the ones simulating us have a shitty computer"
LMAO. Awesome reply.
@@stanislavdaganov574 but a simulation wouldn't have to simulate the entire universe, just its effects on us. The light traveling towards us could just be spawned and etc.
Whatever the truth is, I'm grateful I got to ge born into this world. We love adventure and trying to solve impossible mysteries.
it's scary that some of these things, like jupiter-sized planets, are so rare
*before video* "I'm certain there are millions of planets with life" *post video* "I'm certain we're alone in the universe"
Nothing in the unverese is 100% certain. (Specially with pur still stone age technology)
Pretty much any tiny possibilities translate to millions throughout the universe.
@@withe4163 If there are species technologically advanced enough to travel to earth, I don't think they would care about attacking our planet, I think it would be the equivalent of the US military trying to attack an ant mound.
With E hate to break it to you but the chances are we are eventually doomed regardless. Even if we somehow become better shepherds for are planet and avoid any number a cosmic catastrophe that may turn back the evolutionary clock similar to the dinosaurs extinction or even worse completely destroy any viability for like on this planet are son still has an expiration date. But hey, if we can actually last the billions of years it would take for that to happen then I would call are time on this beautiful blue marble we call are home a successful existence.
@Christobanistan I don't think @Pr3ssPl4y is referring to just communication, I think he means that some civilizations might just be so advanced that we have no way of "seeing them", in other words they might be so advanced that we would see them as gods and who knows what kind of technology or control over the universe a godlike civilization would have.
"You're lonely and I'm lonely. But, together, we're lonely together." - turanga leela
"Yes we're sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it's better than drinking alone." - Billy Joel (paraphrased)
Whatever happens, I'll see you all at Milliways
Why Don't You See Us At TDS046-3 On DTO599 Instead?
"Ah, she's built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a bistro"
-Zapp Brannigan
I drink alone with my old buddy Johnny Walker and his friends black and red.
To quote Fred Dagg: "We don't know how lucky we are, mate".
Actually luck is relative. İf you think you are lucky, you are. But from distant picture ... You may not be that lucky relative to someone else. İt's relative to luck of the one you compare. İf there is no other life luck is invalid/infinite
Out of 9 planets, thousands of moons, proto moons and mini planets in our Solar system only 1 planet Earth 🌎 has given life to 🧬
We are so damn rare we should look at life in a different light..in awe. Next time you see a tiny bug 🪲, just think of how precious that life is to be here in this VAST Universe. You will grow to appreciate everything and also love all life.
I know for a fact that the ingredients for life are everywhere in the Universe. It just takes a specific type of circumstances for life to emerge on a planet. Otherwise life would be on every planet, gas giants to lava planets, but its not. Whatever you are right now is incredibly complex amd incredibly rare. Especially that tiny ant. Earth is incredibly beautiful and I love Earth, please protect her and all life 💙🙏
The Andromeda Galaxy could already be populated but we wouldn't know, because it's millions of light years away
Andromeda is 2.537 million light years away. Dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. Stone tools have been found dating back to 3.3 million years ago. Life on Earth has been around for around for around 4 billion years. So if intelligent life in Andromeda did not evolve until so recently that we can't see them then that poses a big question. Why did it take so long for intelligence to evolve in both our galaxy and Andromeda? Especially given how much longer complex life has been around on Earth.
@@darongw I think even if they are there we shouldn't expect to see them. I don't think we could even detect our own civilization from more than a light year or so away. It's very possible that no civilization ever leaves it's home solar system, or builds anything big enough to be seen even a couple stars away.
@@danieljensen2626 Could be. But go watch anything from isaac arthur and you will quickly realise that even with technology we have today we could build something big enough to be seen lightyears away.
It would also mean that life is so statistically common that we ought to expect galactic empires all around us. With these timelines, they ought to be not only capable of colonising their entire galaxy in the blink of an eye, but turn every star of their galaxy into a Dyson swarm and even begin to send inter-galactic fleets to spread across the entire galaxy cluster even if such missions require millions of years to complete. We should find evidence of Dyson Swarms all over distant galaxies. The fact that we don't might mean that there are no technological civilisation within a range of half a billion light-years.
@rvidal0001 I'm not saying we right now should have already built such things. I'm saying that it's possible to build them with todays technology. Besides competition drives innovation.
Psychiatrist to powerhouse mitochondria: "You have a Golgi Complex."
The Golgi apparatus is a completely different organelle than the mitochondrion
I really like your physics thinking on the principles of life developing
Great broadcast. And there is stuff you don't know. better and better.
So glad you mentioned all of the moon related factors, that cumulative improbability must be enormous, let alone everything else!
@@PlzPr3sspl4y Having a moon is not unlikely. Having a moon so large in relation to its planet is. Earth/Moon is nearly a double planet. Our combined center of revolution (barycenter) is some 2900 miles away from the planet's center (though still within it). That creates unusually strong tidal forces, energy to stir the proverbial pot.
@@joesterling4299 "unlikely", "unusually strong". How do you know? It's unique for our solar system, but we have almost zero data on truly earth sized exoplanets let alone their moons.
Actually it is not uniqe for celestial bodies to have large moons even in our Solar system! Pluto, Orcus, Eris.... to name a few. Yes, Earth is a little bigger, but nothing special...
@@PlzPr3sspl4y part of the rarity could be that two planetary cores are possibly under us, combined with the surface area of a single planet could be what drives tectonics and the mag shield.
@@joesterling4299 You claim things which we don't know for sure. The best we can do currently is estimate probabilities, but we don't yet have a large enough sample size to conclude that the Earth-Moon system is rare. Similarly, we're not in a position to make assumptions about what's required for Abiogenesis. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.
this is something I've pretty much always thought but never heard anyone say: why do the conditions that allow life to develop have to be so rare for there to not be any other life. Just because a planet can support life doesn't mean it is bound to happen. How many times do we think life sprung up on earth? How many individual instances of abiogenesis occurred leading to the life on earth now? Probably just one. We've observed the conditions that we believe would be what led to life on earth, we've seen some of the abiotic building blocks of life form in the right chemical conditions, but we've never seen anything reproductive form, or anything capable of reacting to stimulus. It's not something that just happens when it can. There's a huge amount of random chance that would go into the 'spontaneous' production of reproductive life from nonliving matter. Molecules have to line up in just the right way, in just the right place, and be able to survive to successfully reproduce. There very well might be many planets out there that *can* support life in just the same way earth did 500 million years into its existence. But that doesn't mean anything remotely certain. We can speculate, and there's really no wrong answers. It's not unreasonable to say there's probably life out there, but it's definitely not unreasonable to say there may not be any yet either. None of the discussions about if life might be rare or common have really resonated with me because they never really seem to address the element of chance in life even forming, they only ever really go into the conditions that would allow that to happen but that's not the whole picture
life on earth sprung up, as far as we can tell (and we do have evidence for it) once. It happened about 1,000,000 years or less after it was physically possible for it to happen. That is the reason we don't really consider your hypothesis - in the one example we have life took roots instantly. On a cosmic timescale it would be so so unlikely that life isn't very easy to produce when it is viable (because it did it so quickly for us) that we can discount it out of hand.
Imagine someone has a server with 99,99..% uptime. Every time you contact this server it replies, you know it will not always reply, but because it does so often you can discount the fact that it may one day not reply because it is so unlikely. (I'm normally pretty good with coming up with analogies but my brain failed me this time).
@@ichigo_nyanko There's one problem with this probability argument. The sample size is 1. You can't say that is statistically significant. On the other hand, if it is so easy for life to spontaneously occur, why hasn't it spontaneously developed multiple times? Of course, it's always possible that it did, but we don't know about it yet (or we will never know).
@@michigandersea3485 you can't, yet it still seems our best guess. An N of 1 in this context is more valuable than an N of 1 in an opinion survey
@@ichigo_nyanko 1,000,000 years? Even with perfect conditions and unlimited building blocks, the odds of just getting a single functional protein by pure chance (like a rudimentary DNA/RNA polymerase), would be around 10^90; and that's being extremely generous.
This is inspiring! Science is so brilliant
I think this is my favorite channel ever.
Both scenarios are equally exciting imo. If there are other civilizations around us, then great. Humans may be able to one day experience the joy of interacting with alien species. However, if no one else exists, then that's great too. That means the universe is ours for the taking. The raw materials and forces may one day bend to our will and we may be able to terraform planets and grow the seeds of life all throughout the cosmos. We may be alone now, but why keep it that way? Miraculous accidents may have led to our creation, but future species and civilizations will have us to thank for their creation. We may never be able to find out if God exists or not, but to the Future species we may help create, we would quite literally be their God. To be known as the creators of life in the future would be pretty neat, as opposed to what we are now.
*Maniacal laughter*
What if that already happened and that's what we call gods from the ancient times or UFOs🤔
That was my thought too. Unfortunately we'll probably never be able to travel away from the solar system.
@@ashjeansims8731 I think that has happened. They drop the organisms in the water and they knew we would evolve. They come check up on us every so often and maybe back than they could've helped build amazing feats for their benefit. That's why maybe there's great evidence of them coming back and forth
But no one's ready for that convo yet
I think civilization in the universe is exceedingly rare. If any organism is discovered, I would say, almost all of them are like bacterias and even multicellular species are extremely rare. And even the chance that organisms will discover the fire, languages, computers and so on. How it will the chance be? The planet must be relatively stable billions of years and this is an important factors as well. If the planet hit by huge asteroids or super nova, the biome will easily get exterminated altho any potential. So I think civilization is extremely rare and at least in this galaxy it is likely that we are ahead.
I was wondering yesterday, while searching through the old videos that they missed this topic. There must be a video on anthropic principle and here it is....thanks a lot😊
I guess this was just an introduction to the topic.
I know of at least a dozen more things that makes Earth not just rare, but mind-bogglingly rare.
I've heard something similar before. Is there a video or two that you know of that illustrates this?
Rare earth hypothesis is the only thing that makes sense given our current catalog of stars (if homogeneity of the universe is to be believed). A very stable star main sequence star, gas giants in the right locations, a natural satellite to form tides, plate tectonics recycling crust, liquid and ice water, right place in the galaxy for diverse chemical building blocks for life, etc. etc.
Even if life isn't rare, we should treat it as rare, it should be our mission to preserve Earth life to study the universe since we might be one of the lucky few to be blessed with the ability to live.