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
@@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.
@@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.
@@anomonyus-57 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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
“...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So many billions of stars in a galaxy, and so many trillions of galaxies, stars and galaxies looking like noise on an empty TV channel, seemingly going on for an infinity. If intelligent life is rare, the odds for it to exist elsewhere is humongous anyways, the Universe is a big place of total randomness for things to happen, the Universe is very very big with an almost infinite of possibilities.
We're not ready for 'e.t.l.' & from the looks of it, they're none too happy with us... lol...😂 (... i grew-up, in college in 1975, working 3 years at a Planetarium, that housed a copy of Sagan's Plaque... We got an 'Arecibo Reply'... & nobody spoke too much about it... we're a real 'bunch'...😭(💔
@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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
@@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 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. :)
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.
@@ribbitgoesthedoglastnamehe4681 We're way past that last paragraph. In the same state, still 100 years from that point, we will be in the same situation. We can't go back in time, and once we have some serious damage, survivors will figure things out... because this is the planet of life.
Also, the fact we were located in our galaxy, not towards the central bulge would be blasted with too much radiation. There’s so many things that just have to be perfect with everything else that you’ve mentioned.
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
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.
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!
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!
@@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.
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 💙🙏
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?
@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.
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.
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)
@@عمرحليله-خ7ع 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.
@@عمرحليله-خ7ع Chemistry is not random, though. If you mix two chemicals, they will react the same way every time. The properties will be the same every time. Consider the phospholipid. It's moderately complex, but perfectly reasonable to find in nature. It has two major parts- a head and a tail. The head loves water. The tail hates it. They also have a natural tendency to line up in rows, kind of how magnets have a natural tendency to attract each other. To a chemist, seeing a natural line of phospholipids is no stranger than seeing oil and water refusing to mix. A line of phospholipids is what we call a cell wall. I would be remiss to say it was inevitable that a cell wall was going to form, but it was certainly reasonable. We're constantly finding amino acids in asteroids and on other planets. We're finding the building blocks for life all over the universe. You are correct in that it can't happen by pure random chance, but nobody believes that. It happened because the right stuff just happened to get together at the right time. It didn't go from random molecules to a full DNA strand overnight. It went from basic molecules to more complex molecules, which moved around thanks to some neat properties of chemistry (like water moving away from oil) until some of it started dividing itself into parts which could grow and divide again (also not too unusual- imagine a bead of water on a window pane growing in size. It can't grow forever- it'll split into two, each other which will attract other bits of water from surface tension). It gets more complex from there- not because of randomness. It's because chemistry allows it to.
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.
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.
@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?
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.
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 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 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!
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.
@@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.
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).
@@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.
@@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.
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?
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.
"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?!
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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😊
This is one of the most interesting problems that I've ever contemplated, is the Fermi Paradox. I'm baffled and love learning more about the topic. I've really spent time thinking about it, and I hope that more videos will be made on it.
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.
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
There was Professor back in the 70's that had a great video explaining the rare qualities our Solar System has, and did the mathematical odds that this could be repeated any where, gives you a greater appreciation for the Earth and our Solar System's uniqueness !
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.
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.
@@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.
of all the possible simulation this is a shitty one, heart disease, colon, breast, prostate cancer and dementia will get all of us. sounds like it could be much better sim.
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)
@LWCReaper I have never lost to the A.I there must be something wrong with you. You need to attack any unfriendly neighbors EARLY. Build to your fleet limit and attack, Concentrate your forces, use admirals.
@@kunal1957 That's interesting, but I guess we only have the idea of irrational numbers, while we can't actually write them down. We can't even imagine irrational numbers, only understand the concept of them
@@kunal1957The only way someone could imagine, recite or write down an irrational number, is with infinite time. So if an original civilization had access to resources like that, then I think they could. But I have no idea what they can or can not do or if they even exist. I don't really have an opinion of wether we are in a simulation or not. But I don't think irrational numbers would affect the possibility of this.
Life might be everywhere that it can exist, even in this solar system. Intelligent life, though, is something different. It may be something that only occurs within a tiny window of any planet's biological history - just like ours. And every intelligent species in the universe is probably intelligent in its own way. We might be one of very few species that organises itself into civilisations using technology. We should stop assuming that intelligence = technological civilisations that want to explore space.
"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
I’m a historian, so when I think about this problem I think about it from the perspective of our particular history. If you think about all human history, for the vast majority of it (over 90% of our species existence) we’ve not had the tools to even ask and think about these questions; so why do we assume they are -inevitable-? Maybe they aren’t? Maybe if we could explore the universe, and find complex ‘intelligent’ life, we’d find creatures comparable to us in capacities, but lacking the historical context which prompted their species to build space telescopes, or rocket ships. They could have advanced sciences, even, but it might just be focused on entirely different types of problems. There’s also no reason why there can’t be great filters both behind, and in front of us. Maybe building a galactic-scale civilisation is very hard - especially if the speed of light is the hard limit it seems to be. If it takes two generations to travel to our nearest habitable star systems, I think that extensive travel outwards would be one-way, more like human migration out of Africa. Even 200 years ago, only a very small percentage of people would embark on a journey to the other side of earth, -and then return-... those types of journeys need to take say a maximum of ten years, out and back, I think for the centre to be able to hold. I’m thinking about the Greek colonial cities, Roman Empire, and British imperialism; each had very specific patterns, characteristics, and contexts. Thus even if we find intelligent technological life in the galaxy (and I think we never will) we we might find it occupying two or three star systems, with maybe some disconnected outposts, at best.
It only takes one species to desire to colonize the galaxy in order for it to be completely colonized in a matter of millions of years. So while it is possible that a species might have no interest in space exploration you still have to come up with a reason for why that attribute would apply to every other species. Particularly when the only example of a civilization we have (us) is very keen on colonizing space.
RazorbackPT we have only one example (us). There’s no reason to assume that another, alleged, intelligent species would have the same desire or circumstances of our own. Furthermore, a species desiring to colonise the galaxy doesn’t mean it’s possible and you don’t offer any argument why it would be.
For example, we know that different -human- civilisations were considerably different in outlook and culture to our own. And there are plenty of humans alive today who think that colonising space is a waste of resources given the lack of resources put towards saving the actual habitat of the planet itself. (I’m not saying they are right, just that they exist). And there are quantitive arguments against it - some made right in this very channel, just recently.
@@doctorscoot And all the civlilzations on a planet that doesn't expand die out, to the ones that do expand. Also, even if they don't want to go to space, do you really think they wouldn't have done it for billions of years?
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
7:50 Short nights are far from essential for photosynthesis...during the lengthy warm periods during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic the poles supported forests that underwent 6-month 'nights'!
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.
Haven’t chloroplasts also evolved 3-4 times? Seems pretty common, really. (And I think both Animals and Plants are pretty truly multicellular? Along with some fungi?)
Frankie Bedek Chloroplasts evolving isn’t the same as them emerging in the first place. Also keep in mind that there are trillions upon trillions of bacteria and other single cellular organisms which have short life spans and have had so for 4 billion years now. That an immense number of evolutionary cycles that have been undertaken and a vast number of opportunities for endosymbiosis to occur yet it only happened twice
@@mosesafrane1965 There;s no actual evidence that it only happened twice, it could have happened multiple times but only one a few were selected for. By analogy, there were multiple variations of hominids, but we're now the only one around because we out-competed everyone else. I agree that evolution of intelligence is probably extremely rare, but I don't see the evolution of the Eukaryota as as likely a great filter as is commonly supposed.
Kevin That’s the point it may have happened other times but there’s only two times were it yielded something viable and useful out of the trillions upon trillions of interactions between single cellular organisms over earths 4 billion year history.
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.
I think I’ve seen some discussion about how many of the prospective “habitable” planets are considerably greater in mass and surface gravity. it may be that there are “intelligent” civilisations on those planets but the cost of attempting to leave the gravity well vs the initial benefits keep them from attempting to leave. A second point I hope might be somewhat original thought on my part (but probably has been thought of before) is that while people talk about the relative infrequency of extinction level events being important in evolving to advanced forms of life, we must also consider how much we have springboarded our technology off fossil fuels, and that any earlier emergence of a technological species on earth might have used up what fossil fuels had thus far accrued purely on subsistence, perhaps prior to them even becoming fossilised (harvesting wood prior to it becoming coal for example). We benefit from the prospective prior consumers of that resource being wiped out before they advanced that far. There may be life on very similar planets to ours that simply emerged before a deep reserve of solar energy was able to form in fossil forms, and absent this, their technology hasn’t been able to leap forward through an industrial revolution.
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'.
And each of our ancestors procreated at least once. We are all the last in a billion year long series of successful cells, animals and humans. Until we continue the unbroken chain. No pressure. :)
Personally I think Earths are rare, life on those rare Earths rarer and intelligence in life forms on those rare Earths almost impossibly unlikely. Life on Earth at least seems to have little to no drive towards it. Millions of species have lived here. Only one has developed technology of any kind. A physiological fluke more than anything. People are always saying that there are so many stars that it's inevitable while completely ignoring all the filters to intelligent life even in the one place we know it exists. If we one day find alien jellyfish I'll be pleasantly surprised. More likely it'll be germs. Hundreds of grains of sand separated by endless space are still just grains of sand. One is likely to be similar to another.
There are billions and billions of Earth like planets,even when intelligent life is extremely rare there is just no way we are alone.Only stupid people think that way
@@wouter.d.h. Depends on how extremely rare. If the ultimate chance of technological, intelligent life with culture forming before their home planet is rendered inhospitable is, say, 1 in trillion and there are 2 billion suitable planets in the galaxy, you've got 1 in 500 chance of getting one such civilization. Winning at 0,2% odds even once would be seriously lucky and expecting multiple wins would be rather optimistic to say the least. The 1 in trillion is an arbitrarily chosen number as we don't know much of the actual chance other than that it can't be high as we'd be observing loads of different spacefaring aliens by now otherwise given that the galactic conditions haven't apparently been absolutely exclusionary to life for the last 3 billion years given the survival of Earth's biosphere for about that long. The number might well be worse than 1 in trillion. For all we know, it might be 1 in quintillion or 1 per duodecillion. People do need to understand that highly improbable events have no obligation to happen in a sample size significantly smaller than the mean sample size for a single, solitary occurrence, or indeed even in larger sample sizes than the expected interval for 1 occurrence.
@@wouter.d.h. I would say only stupid people think there is no way. Is it possible we are the only intelligent life, yes. Is it likely we are the only intelligent life? Well I do not think we know enough about intelligent life to take a guess at that one.
@@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.
@Christobanistan maybe they cannot. It sure doesn't look like we're gonna be able to. The distance just to the nearest star is way too great. And if we invest everything on the hope that we will get there in thousands of years.... Chances are we won't find a habitable planet when we arrive.... And will be doomed.
Chad Billings I’m saying man. Maybe the reason we haven’t found any is because the universe is so gigantic. Sure they may be some more advanced civilizations than ours, but even with speeds almost reaching light, it would be extremely difficult to find us.
@Christobanistan intelligent life to come up took earth about 4 billion years. And you cannot assume that it will always take about that long. I am even sure we were very lucky that it didnt take any longer. I mean complex life to exist didnt take very long. But intelligence is on another level. So my conclusion is that life is there alot but intelligence or even high technology civilizations are super rare. Dont forget that we cant even tell for sure that there isnt or is any life on mars or other moons in our solar system. Imagine finding life on distant stars with just so few clues we can get about their atmospheric composition and orbit.. There is plenty of life but we cant see it
@@breadcat6454 Or we're just not smart enough to find it. Maybe a dinosaur species got smart enough to leave the planet for good and we've yet to catch up. Thankfully, they did such a poor job sterilizing the place on the way out that the vermin were able to evolve intelligence. Maybe.🙃
There is no bloody Fermi paradox. I do wish people would stop calling it that, even. Our first radio signal was broadcast in 1880 by David Edward Hughes. This signal can have only reached planets within 140 light years. For us to receive a reply, we have to halve the range to 70 light years. All we can say for sure is no response to our radio transmissions by a technological species using radio signals within a 70 light year sphere (max) has been received yet, and that we either haven’t been pro-actively sought out by species further or we missed the call or didn’t know the ringtone to listen for. Calling the misquoted quote attributed to Fermi a paradox is silly. It’s like getting your first mobile phone, turning it on, waiting five minutes and deciding that nobody else on Earth has a mobile phone because you haven’t gotten a ring yet.
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.
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
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
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
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.
@@anomonyus-57 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.
Oh my God. Never thought of that. Thx for sharing
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
Even if advanced life is not SO rare, the sheer dimension of space may be an insurmountable barrier to any possible contact.
My thought, too. 💯
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.
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
😂
"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.
"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
“...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.
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
"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
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.
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.
Which makes scientists start to accept... it must've been God behind all this 😅
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.
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.
So many billions of stars in a galaxy, and so many trillions of galaxies, stars and galaxies looking like noise on an empty TV channel, seemingly going on for an infinity. If intelligent life is rare, the odds for it to exist elsewhere is humongous anyways, the Universe is a big place of total randomness for things to happen, the Universe is very very big with an almost infinite of possibilities.
We're not ready for 'e.t.l.' & from the looks of it, they're none too happy with us... lol...😂 (... i grew-up, in college in 1975, working 3 years at a Planetarium, that housed a copy of Sagan's Plaque... We got an 'Arecibo Reply'... & nobody spoke too much about it... we're a real 'bunch'...😭(💔
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
It's pretty cool that we live in a place that is instantly fatal basically 100% of the time.
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.
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. :)
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.
@@ribbitgoesthedoglastnamehe4681 We're way past that last paragraph. In the same state, still 100 years from that point, we will be in the same situation.
We can't go back in time, and once we have some serious damage, survivors will figure things out... because this is the planet of life.
Also, the fact we were located in our galaxy, not towards the central bulge would be blasted with too much radiation. There’s so many things that just have to be perfect with everything else that you’ve mentioned.
I can feel when Matt is looking for the perfect phrase to end with "spacetime"
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
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!
Boltzman brains contemplating anthropic principle, universe has sense of humor.
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.
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
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 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
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 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?😯
Whatever the truth is, I'm grateful I got to ge born into this world. We love adventure and trying to solve impossible mysteries.
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.
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
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)
@@عمرحليله-خ7ع 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.
@@عمرحليله-خ7ع Chemistry is not random, though. If you mix two chemicals, they will react the same way every time. The properties will be the same every time.
Consider the phospholipid. It's moderately complex, but perfectly reasonable to find in nature. It has two major parts- a head and a tail. The head loves water. The tail hates it. They also have a natural tendency to line up in rows, kind of how magnets have a natural tendency to attract each other. To a chemist, seeing a natural line of phospholipids is no stranger than seeing oil and water refusing to mix. A line of phospholipids is what we call a cell wall.
I would be remiss to say it was inevitable that a cell wall was going to form, but it was certainly reasonable. We're constantly finding amino acids in asteroids and on other planets. We're finding the building blocks for life all over the universe. You are correct in that it can't happen by pure random chance, but nobody believes that. It happened because the right stuff just happened to get together at the right time. It didn't go from random molecules to a full DNA strand overnight. It went from basic molecules to more complex molecules, which moved around thanks to some neat properties of chemistry (like water moving away from oil) until some of it started dividing itself into parts which could grow and divide again (also not too unusual- imagine a bead of water on a window pane growing in size. It can't grow forever- it'll split into two, each other which will attract other bits of water from surface tension). It gets more complex from there- not because of randomness. It's because chemistry allows it to.
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?
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.
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!
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
I admire and love the way you explain everything! Love the Upgrade!!!! Cheers!
I love the fascination which physics never fails to incite.
This is an excellent video. Very thought provoking.
Delicious Fermi paradox space-time episode. A rare event but always welcome
i still subscribe to the "We are first" within our sphere of observable universe, as the most likely solution.
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.
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.
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😊
This is one of the most interesting problems that I've ever contemplated, is the Fermi Paradox. I'm baffled and love learning more about the topic. I've really spent time thinking about it, and I hope that more videos will be made on it.
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.
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
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?
There was Professor back in the 70's that had a great video explaining the rare qualities our Solar System has, and did the mathematical odds that this could be repeated any where, gives you a greater appreciation for the Earth and our Solar System's uniqueness !
Drake’s equation.
@@cedmelancon that's not Drake's equation.
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.
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..
Elegant looking proof that there is a God!
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.
6:20
Rtx on.
But seriously this is the best looking simulation I've ever seen
Did we invented the universe in order to explain our existance ?
of all the possible simulation this is a shitty one, heart disease, colon, breast, prostate cancer and dementia will get all of us. sounds like it could be much better sim.
@@fitnesspoint2006 But what would a "perfect" universe look like? Wouldn't it may be a homogenous dead mass or something?
@@fitnesspoint2006 I don't think we'd get much progress on cancer by using SPH to simulate the colon.
@@csgowoes6319 I think any universe is a perfect one. Considering the diversity and size of ours there's gotta be something for someone!
The SPORE music in the background makes me so nostalgic
I didn't even notice until you mentioned it.
F :')
shhh.. EA may come and try to own this episode
Thereal Swinery same here.
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)
Good, It's super fun when you start with no other Empires in Stellaris.
@LWCReaper I have never lost to the A.I there must be something wrong with you.
You need to attack any unfriendly neighbors EARLY. Build to your fleet limit and attack, Concentrate your forces, use admirals.
PBS Space Time: "Earth is trully special in the universe"
Me: :Simulation Intensifies:
But mom, I don't want to dinner, my simulated universe just get a civ at the verge of self awareness. Oh well, I'll shut it off...
I don't think we're in stimulation. How do you explain irrational numbers?
@@kunal1957 That's interesting, but I guess we only have the idea of irrational numbers, while we can't actually write them down. We can't even imagine irrational numbers, only understand the concept of them
@@TimeisaSquigglyLine so do you think the original civilization can do that?
@@kunal1957The only way someone could imagine, recite or write down an irrational number, is with infinite time. So if an original civilization had access to resources like that, then I think they could. But I have no idea what they can or can not do or if they even exist.
I don't really have an opinion of wether we are in a simulation or not. But I don't think irrational numbers would affect the possibility of this.
Here I thought we were alone because our galaxy is practically at the edge sheet of a local void.
Life might be everywhere that it can exist, even in this solar system. Intelligent life, though, is something different. It may be something that only occurs within a tiny window of any planet's biological history - just like ours. And every intelligent species in the universe is probably intelligent in its own way. We might be one of very few species that organises itself into civilisations using technology. We should stop assuming that intelligence = technological civilisations that want to explore space.
"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.
the Anthropic Principle, or as I prefer to call it, "Duh"
"Duh" is definitely more concise. You win.
elegant in its simplicity
I’m a historian, so when I think about this problem I think about it from the perspective of our particular history. If you think about all human history, for the vast majority of it (over 90% of our species existence) we’ve not had the tools to even ask and think about these questions; so why do we assume they are -inevitable-? Maybe they aren’t? Maybe if we could explore the universe, and find complex ‘intelligent’ life, we’d find creatures comparable to us in capacities, but lacking the historical context which prompted their species to build space telescopes, or rocket ships. They could have advanced sciences, even, but it might just be focused on entirely different types of problems.
There’s also no reason why there can’t be great filters both behind, and in front of us. Maybe building a galactic-scale civilisation is very hard - especially if the speed of light is the hard limit it seems to be. If it takes two generations to travel to our nearest habitable star systems, I think that extensive travel outwards would be one-way, more like human migration out of Africa. Even 200 years ago, only a very small percentage of people would embark on a journey to the other side of earth, -and then return-... those types of journeys need to take say a maximum of ten years, out and back, I think for the centre to be able to hold. I’m thinking about the Greek colonial cities, Roman Empire, and British imperialism; each had very specific patterns, characteristics, and contexts.
Thus even if we find intelligent technological life in the galaxy (and I think we never will) we we might find it occupying two or three star systems, with maybe some disconnected outposts, at best.
It only takes one species to desire to colonize the galaxy in order for it to be completely colonized in a matter of millions of years. So while it is possible that a species might have no interest in space exploration you still have to come up with a reason for why that attribute would apply to every other species. Particularly when the only example of a civilization we have (us) is very keen on colonizing space.
We wont find the intelligent life in the galaxy it will find us.
RazorbackPT we have only one example (us). There’s no reason to assume that another, alleged, intelligent species would have the same desire or circumstances of our own.
Furthermore, a species desiring to colonise the galaxy doesn’t mean it’s possible and you don’t offer any argument why it would be.
For example, we know that different -human- civilisations were considerably different in outlook and culture to our own.
And there are plenty of humans alive today who think that colonising space is a waste of resources given the lack of resources put towards saving the actual habitat of the planet itself. (I’m not saying they are right, just that they exist). And there are quantitive arguments against it - some made right in this very channel, just recently.
@@doctorscoot And all the civlilzations on a planet that doesn't expand die out, to the ones that do expand. Also, even if they don't want to go to space, do you really think they wouldn't have done it for billions of years?
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
7:50 Short nights are far from essential for photosynthesis...during the lengthy warm periods during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic the poles supported forests that underwent 6-month 'nights'!
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.
Endosymbiosis has happened at least one more time - that's where we got chloroplasts. It has also been seen in the lab (Jeon, 2004).
Yes, but that was after eukarotes had already evolved. True multicellularity seems to only have arisen once in 4 billion years.
Haven’t chloroplasts also evolved 3-4 times? Seems pretty common, really. (And I think both Animals and Plants are pretty truly multicellular? Along with some fungi?)
Frankie Bedek Chloroplasts evolving isn’t the same as them emerging in the first place. Also keep in mind that there are trillions upon trillions of bacteria and other single cellular organisms which have short life spans and have had so for 4 billion years now. That an immense number of evolutionary cycles that have been undertaken and a vast number of opportunities for endosymbiosis to occur yet it only happened twice
@@mosesafrane1965 There;s no actual evidence that it only happened twice, it could have happened multiple times but only one a few were selected for. By analogy, there were multiple variations of hominids, but we're now the only one around because we out-competed everyone else. I agree that evolution of intelligence is probably extremely rare, but I don't see the evolution of the Eukaryota as as likely a great filter as is commonly supposed.
Kevin That’s the point it may have happened other times but there’s only two times were it yielded something viable and useful out of the trillions upon trillions of interactions between single cellular organisms over earths 4 billion year history.
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.
9:20 “...to the giant geishas, Jupiter and Saturn”
I think I’ve been living in Japan for a little too long
No, I heard it too and I've never even been to Japan.
The real hidden objective of JAXA is to find all the space geishas.
I heard it too xD
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
I think I’ve seen some discussion about how many of the prospective “habitable” planets are considerably greater in mass and surface gravity. it may be that there are “intelligent” civilisations on those planets but the cost of attempting to leave the gravity well vs the initial benefits keep them from attempting to leave.
A second point I hope might be somewhat original thought on my part (but probably has been thought of before) is that while people talk about the relative infrequency of extinction level events being important in evolving to advanced forms of life, we must also consider how much we have springboarded our technology off fossil fuels, and that any earlier emergence of a technological species on earth might have used up what fossil fuels had thus far accrued purely on subsistence, perhaps prior to them even becoming fossilised (harvesting wood prior to it becoming coal for example). We benefit from the prospective prior consumers of that resource being wiped out before they advanced that far.
There may be life on very similar planets to ours that simply emerged before a deep reserve of solar energy was able to form in fossil forms, and absent this, their technology hasn’t been able to leap forward through an industrial revolution.
This is an amazing discussion! Mind boggling to say the least. Very well structured. Thank you
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.
Psychiatrist to powerhouse mitochondria: "You have a Golgi Complex."
The Golgi apparatus is a completely different organelle than the mitochondrion
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
Let's start with the fact that the intelligent life is extremely rare on planet Earth. We might not be as lucky as we think we are.
>we might be alone in the universe
Me: * laughs in machine elf *
The machine elves are hyperdimensional beings from other universes with different physics.
Welcome to the non human club
Hello fellow traveler!
Finally someone else whom is experiencing consciousness having a human experience. 😊😂
"After a billion years
the show is still here
Not a single one of your fathers died young..."
@pyropulse #Literally
And each of our ancestors procreated at least once. We are all the last in a billion year long series of successful cells, animals and humans. Until we continue the unbroken chain. No pressure. :)
Personally I think Earths are rare, life on those rare Earths rarer and intelligence in life forms on those rare Earths almost impossibly unlikely. Life on Earth at least seems to have little to no drive towards it. Millions of species have lived here. Only one has developed technology of any kind. A physiological fluke more than anything. People are always saying that there are so many stars that it's inevitable while completely ignoring all the filters to intelligent life even in the one place we know it exists. If we one day find alien jellyfish I'll be pleasantly surprised. More likely it'll be germs. Hundreds of grains of sand separated by endless space are still just grains of sand. One is likely to be similar to another.
There are billions and billions of Earth like planets,even when intelligent life is extremely rare there is just no way we are alone.Only stupid people think that way
@@wouter.d.h. Depends on how extremely rare. If the ultimate chance of technological, intelligent life with culture forming before their home planet is rendered inhospitable is, say, 1 in trillion and there are 2 billion suitable planets in the galaxy, you've got 1 in 500 chance of getting one such civilization. Winning at 0,2% odds even once would be seriously lucky and expecting multiple wins would be rather optimistic to say the least.
The 1 in trillion is an arbitrarily chosen number as we don't know much of the actual chance other than that it can't be high as we'd be observing loads of different spacefaring aliens by now otherwise given that the galactic conditions haven't apparently been absolutely exclusionary to life for the last 3 billion years given the survival of Earth's biosphere for about that long.
The number might well be worse than 1 in trillion. For all we know, it might be 1 in quintillion or 1 per duodecillion.
People do need to understand that highly improbable events have no obligation to happen in a sample size significantly smaller than the mean sample size for a single, solitary occurrence, or indeed even in larger sample sizes than the expected interval for 1 occurrence.
@@Teknokraatti We are here so I think Intelligent life isnt as rare as we think sometimes
@@wouter.d.h. I would say only stupid people think there is no way. Is it possible we are the only intelligent life, yes. Is it likely we are the only intelligent life? Well I do not think we know enough about intelligent life to take a guess at that one.
@@PortableXombie No, only arrogant ppl think we are alone
There's something pleasant about the idea that life on any planet capable of supporting it sees a big bright moon and a Jupiter in the sky.
*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.
Intelligent life is rare. Life has been booming on earth for the last 500 million years, and it took that long for us to show up...
Nj Rh exactly
@Christobanistan maybe they cannot. It sure doesn't look like we're gonna be able to. The distance just to the nearest star is way too great. And if we invest everything on the hope that we will get there in thousands of years.... Chances are we won't find a habitable planet when we arrive.... And will be doomed.
Chad Billings I’m saying man. Maybe the reason we haven’t found any is because the universe is so gigantic. Sure they may be some more advanced civilizations than ours, but even with speeds almost reaching light, it would be extremely difficult to find us.
@Christobanistan intelligent life to come up took earth about 4 billion years. And you cannot assume that it will always take about that long. I am even sure we were very lucky that it didnt take any longer. I mean complex life to exist didnt take very long. But intelligence is on another level. So my conclusion is that life is there alot but intelligence or even high technology civilizations are super rare. Dont forget that we cant even tell for sure that there isnt or is any life on mars or other moons in our solar system. Imagine finding life on distant stars with just so few clues we can get about their atmospheric composition and orbit.. There is plenty of life but we cant see it
@@breadcat6454 Or we're just not smart enough to find it. Maybe a dinosaur species got smart enough to leave the planet for good and we've yet to catch up. Thankfully, they did such a poor job sterilizing the place on the way out that the vermin were able to evolve intelligence. Maybe.🙃
Anybody ever think this whole universe is like the inside of a particle collider
Or an alien's keychain! 😂
The Galaxy is on Orion's Belt...
Patrick Johnson-Hedges nice MIB reference!
Insane Insane what if we are just code on some aliens Computer
@@ZKFossil quantum mechanics kinda suggests that with uncertainty principle and other properties
There is no bloody Fermi paradox. I do wish people would stop calling it that, even.
Our first radio signal was broadcast in 1880 by David Edward Hughes. This signal can have only reached planets within 140 light years. For us to receive a reply, we have to halve the range to 70 light years.
All we can say for sure is no response to our radio transmissions by a technological species using radio signals within a 70 light year sphere (max) has been received yet, and that we either haven’t been pro-actively sought out by species further or we missed the call or didn’t know the ringtone to listen for.
Calling the misquoted quote attributed to Fermi a paradox is silly. It’s like getting your first mobile phone, turning it on, waiting five minutes and deciding that nobody else on Earth has a mobile phone because you haven’t gotten a ring yet.
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.