Alien Life and the Myelin Sheath Solution to the Fermi Paradox
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- Опубліковано 20 бер 2024
- An exploration of a new solution to the Fermi Paradox involving retroviruses and the very intricate needs to evolving the myelin sheath of nerve axons that allow for intelligent life.
My Patreon Page:
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Papers:
"A retroviral link to vertebrate myelination through retrotransposon-RNA-mediated control of myelin gene expression" , Ghosh et al, 2024
www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0...
Music:
Intermission in D by Miguel Johnson
migueljohnson.bandcamp.com/ - Наука та технологія
Appreciate you having actual captions and not just relying on the autogenerated ones, helps out people a lot!
Si, tal cual
No misspellings either, JMG is a person of quality.
Especially foreigners like me
Well it helps to have an entire script that he just speaks from pre-written and able to be turned directly into captions
He just speaks ai no language barrier found
As a biologist, the current theory suggest that viruses may come from a mutation from Bacterial plasmids. Plasmids in bacteria are small DNA/RNA packages that can self replicate and induce certain genetic markers into being expressed. What seems to be accepted in the microbiology field is that early on a plasmid went "rogue" and started to go rampant in terms of its replication throughout different bacterial species.
Honest question - Viruses rarely, only occasionally, jump species. Are bacterial species closely enough related that one form of virus can jump between all of them?
This is brilliant! Tysm for this insight!
not all viruses fit that model. The Pox viruses and their cousins may have degenerated from a third domain of bacteria as evidenced by their RNA polymerase being so distinct. We have tended to think that because they do not have ribosomes this means they were never cells ... but then where did those RNA polyermases come from? Personally, I think if you stand back a bit and look at the big picture, viruses are part of life and therefore deserve being called alive. Quite frankly, I think they will have evolved anywhere that cellular life did.
Could the movie Osmosis Jones be considered a documentary?
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
12:35
Thank you for the visual. Now I have a picture in my mind of an octopus as a blacksmith. He’s able to hammer one blade, while oil quenching another. All while pumping his own bellows.
Nice image! That would require adaptation to air breathing, which I might expect from cephalopods. Don't forget the coconut crab... 🦀
sounds like a good tattoo
Tend a garden too?
My ultimate future fantasy is to one day explore the galaxy with my octopus navigator, who is my superior and inferior in many symbiotic ways... maybe toss in our AI pilot...
Alas to dream of sharing a universe with other forms of sentience.
@@stopherhammy1686three dimensional ctraveling creatures would make superior navigators and pilots.
I remember an old Analog mag story about using squid to pilot the remote exploration of one of the outer moon's oceans.
Cephalopods have very large axon diameters in some of their neurons, notably in the giant axon of the squid, which allows for fast nerve impulse transmission without the need for myelination. That and their retinas, they must be the shadow biosphere.
Awesome addition! Love this topic! We need more!
All Cephalopod's have copper based blood everything else iron based
As in engineering there are often many ways to solve any technical issue. Often there are different tradeoffs for each solution.
Progeny of The Eldritch Horrors.
we gotta give them myelin sheathing
they'll actually turn into gods 💀
Another great video. I think one of the issues here is that we only have a single biosphere to get data from. Until we have enough biospheres to put on a spectrum or place into classes, I don't think we'll ever know how much our existence comes down to luck.
True, but something tells me a great deal of luck was involved. A number of factors came together to make us all possible. And the odds were astronomical. Just my gut feeling…
What if we *never* find another biosphere?
@@dot1298you never heard the story of if ?
@@dot1298then we make one or we don’t which will only happen if we aren’t around for it to matter anyway. Otherwise, there will be eventually, even if it’s accidentally like microorganisms attached to a ship that figures out how to survive on its own somewhere.
Modern microscopic life may prove a lot more resilient in adapting to non-terrestrial environments than ancient life or native simple alien microorganisms thanks to countless eons of evolution on our hospitable Earth, as opposed to early life struggling to adapt to environments new it. We have more diversity so there is likely already a microorganism somewhere which is well suited to survive Mars, or Titan, perhaps evolving these traits over time Martian bacteria didn’t have before it became too inhospitable, and once we’re visiting other worlds regularly it’ll probably be impossible not to seed worlds with simple, resilient earth life that may very well wipe out weaker, more fragile alien ecosystems that weren’t able to thrive enough to evolve the same way before introduction to the same environment.
As a chemist I have known about it for years, phosphorus is important in ADP andATP , sol system is unusual in high amounts with earth have a high amount compared to the rest of the system. Even then I would say we have barely enough for life, even now we need to mine it to add to depleted soils! So I believe we are a rare early high concentration of phosphorus, with the rest of the galaxy just catching up.
You could also invoke the meteorite/meteoroid issue with phosphorus. Earth is comparatively rich in phosphorus as you noted but not necessarily at its surface where the magic needed to happen for abiogenesis. So the thinking is that perhaps the constant influx of meteoroid and meteorite material delivering even more phosphorus constantly to the surface was high enough to kick start things to where life could begin to use geologic phosphorus, and even then, only as best as it could.
@JohnMichaelGodier But then why would other planets not have large amounts of meteoric phosphorous? There's no shortage of bombardment events on any celestial body.
The biology discussed in this video is still earth bound with earth bound parameters as to what exists here on earth. It goes round and round. The biology of an alien race might not be remotely carbon based. Has anyone considered that?
@@JohnMichaelGodier Life from non-life has never been demonstrated. Now that we know the complex information systems needed for even single cell life, this is not surprising.
@@douglasrodriguez9762 there are good thermodynamic arguments that favor carbon against silicone. But why those at all? Because only those allow for a sufficient variety of chemical bonds, hence a complete chemical universe of compounds.
Similarly the case for water. Carbon based compounds imply an upper limit for the temperature, even in the absence of oxygene. As a solvent is needed, it also should first be liquid, then not too cold, and finally exhibit some dynamic polarity. It is not necessarily water, but water is readily available.
Having a stable terrestrial planet in the proper range of temperature is in itself very very rare.
SETI contact with the Giant Alien Pistol Shrimp ambassador -
"omg how can you humans think/reasons with all that inefficient myelin sheath all over nervous system?"
I want see that shrimp's radio telescope- forget the myelin, how did you construct underwater a radio telescope to communicate with the galaxy and why did you do it if you never knew there was a universe outside your ocean-world?
@@jota6262 Not to mention having to travel everywhere in a giant tank.
Without illness, there would be no intelligence. It is amazing how connected good and bad truly are.
Then you probably know what an enantiodromia is
Please explain plain. Yes, I did look it up, but the only effects it seems to have are detrimental
There is only war.
@@user-hc5nh8kv7gLuetin has entered the chat
Without weakness there would be no evolution.
I just got done with PT earlier and they were explaining to me that my nerves have too many "sensors" for motion, and that's part of why I'm having post op pain. The myelin sheath has gaps that allow exposed nerves to figure out where a stressor is that would cause pain.
So this video came out with some spooky timing for me.
I hope you feel better ❤️🩹
Its not even spooktober even.. heal well mate.
@@missfriscowin3606 agreed, great sentiment, Cheers!
Hope you heal quickly 🤙
Thanks, everyone! I'm healing ok. It's six months to a year recovery so next year I ought to be 100%.
Just in time for bed! As an avid member of the sleep crowd, nothing makes me happier than a well times JMG drop! Thanks, Goat Ear (:
Whatever
@hennersss are you alright mate?
JMG hit 400k subscribers! Congratulations you’ve earned it. It’s so cool to see a channel you love grow like that. I think he was at 20k or 30k when I started watching
This reminds me of the original proposal of panspermia which was that it was in fact via viruses and that new viral diseases came from interstellar space.
What gives me hope and despair in equal measure is the size of it all. It's large enough for billions of alien civilizations to exist yet space is so spread out that the likelihood of us meeting is incredibly low.
Billions… in the universe, Laniakea, Local Supercluster, Local Group, Milky Way or the Orion Arm?
Or - dare i say it - in the *multiverse* ?
(the „multiverse“ being the whole unobservable cosmos, containing zillions of „hubble volumes“ - each HV has its own cosmic horizon, where denizens are unable to observe beyond; the name „multiverse“ would probably be a misnomer here, better name would be „the cosmos beyond our local cosmic horizon“)
The whole unobservable universe/cosmos could be decillions (or even centillions) of times larger than the known observable universe.
So basically these people are being paid to do nothing.
Life finds a way, and did. Investigation of the UAP Phenomenon will lead you to that conclusion.
@@FMDD168DNA Based life finds a way
Endosymbiotic theory is another with huge potential for the great filter. The universe could be teeming with single-celled organisms but any potential endosymbiont relationship could be incredibly rare
It can't be rare tho, It happened more than 4 times here on earth on completely different cells and at different times completely independently
@@jesusramirezromo2037 Yeah, horizontal gene transfer is just a way to do fast evolution. Since viruses have size restrictions, they must pack in a lot of relevant information. This makes their sequences very non-random. So when they jump sideways, they have a much higher chance of producing an interesting phenotypical change, than say a random mutation. The only thing interesting here, is that the production of myelin probably had no-relation to functions of the genes carried by the virus. It was a 1+1=3 situation ;)
@@jesusramirezromo2037no evidence thus far tho…
Why isn't the possibility that aliens just don't care about us mentioned? I mean, why should they? They might take one whiff of us, so to speak, being utterly primitive and move on. What's so important about us? Compared to a race that actually mastered intergalactic travel, we would probably be akin to an amoeba.
@@jesusramirezromo2037ahnomams, neta?? Explícate, maese. Creía que sólo había sido una vez. O te refieres a la inclusión de otros organelos aparte del núcleo?
Myelin has a hand in dog psychopathy. Some white dogs with different colored eyes have extra thin myelin nerve coatings somehow related to their eyes and white hair color. Those dogs often go nuts, biting their owner and anyone else nearby. Almost like a psychotic break in humans. I know all this because when I was 20 I had a white, odd eyed pitbull puppy. Raised him from birth. Best of everything. Tons of love. He loved me back too. Then one day when he was the dog equivalent of a teenager he just snapped. It was an ugly scene. He had to be put down. After that as a coping mech I looked into the myelin issue and found the above. For what it's worth.
Sorry this happened to you- and your dog. That had to have been a hard thing to recover from.
Sorry for your loss.
It's bad enough to lose a pet, but it must be so much worse under those circumstances.
Your dog did what it did because it was a pitbull, which were bred to be violent.
Totally not because it's a pitbull , nope! 🤪🤪
Probably has more to do with it being a pitbull than having white fur. Pitbulls all have that random kill switch lurking in them for some reason, probably from the way that breed was created
I just realized that we’re lucky to live in an age to _not_ know the answer of the Fermi paradox. There’s definitely some sort of awe and wonder that exists now, not knowing life’s possibilities, that may not exist later. Born too early to explore the stars but not too early to speculate about life among them… I don’t want to spend a few decades in cryo, anyway.
Thanks for the video John, it was interesting hearing another answer to this question. It was so in depth! Thanks again.
Why isn't the possibility that aliens just don't care about us mentioned? I mean, why should they? They might take one whiff of us, so to speak, being utterly primitive and move on. What's so important about us? Compared to a race that actually mastered intergalactic travel, we would probably be akin to an amoeba.
I'm afraid if we get the true answer it would give people a sense of dread. No mystery, no other possibilities, especially if it disproves religion.
Religion is not about proof, it's about faith.
If it was about proof we would have kicked Communism and Third Positionism to the curb already.
~200 million deaths in living memory should be enough to convince people to leave that shite alone.
Instead we have people trying to hold up Third Positionism as the World Model.
It's no wonder the WEF types hold up China as *The* World Model to emulate.
@@c0ltz450 Anyone who doesn't already suffer from a sense of dread due simply to the state of their planet and what our own species has done to it has their head in the sand. No aliens could be more horrifying than our own species.
Last time I was this early, Pluto was still a planet.
Last time I was this early we still had a geocentric view of the cosmos 😳
Last time I was this early the cosmic microwave background was just a nightlight.
That's pretty good
Last time i was this early this was an original comment
Last time I was that early I was interrupted by the sudden inflation of the universe and forgot to hit "send"
Of all the amazing videos of yours I've watched, this one fascinates me the most.
I have Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Type 1A, a genetic neurodegenerative disorder marked by the erosion of the myelin sheaths around my nerves. Mine is a mild case, but even so, the signal conduction of my nerves is markedly slower because of the continuing loss of myelin; my considerably older sister has the same condition, and the loss of myelin in her nerves has led to serious neuropathy in her feet and hands. And the worst cases can put previously healthy and physically agile people into wheelchairs. Fortunately, we appear to only be a few years away from gene therapy solutions that may slow, stop, or even reverse this condition. To now learn through your video of how the myelin sheath may be one of the keys to intelligent, technologically advanced life arising on Earth, how retroviruses may have led to it as an evolutionary development, and how this may be the basis for a solution to the Fermi Paradox...well, that just blows my mind.
Thank you for sharing this theory with us. Because of my personal experience, it all seems to tie together to make a reasonable case for why we could be a very rare world and civilization indeed.
Have you been directed by your doctors and researchers toward lion's mane?
The sheer amount of things that have to go just right to have conscious and technologically intelligent life is mind bogglingly vast. Especially two at the same time within communicative ability. We are likely alone within our observable universe.
Just the fact that our species made it semi-intact through our 20th Century is the rarest stroke of luck. Now imagine the 10 million other filters life previously had to make it through, just to reach our species' existence in 1900. We are lucky little fireflies indeed and It's a bloody miracle anything like us is here at all.
Yes, we are. Fermi’s question is not a paradox.
@@jota6262This is the answer to the “paradox” although I suspect you don’t realize it.
Your right! that's why when it does happen you seed that special life on planets. This planet was seeded and other planets have been seeded.
@@MrBob1984 seems to me too much evidence that life started on earth. maybe we'll do the seeding one day
The universe being full of intelligent shrimp is the funniest idea for some reason.
Not to them!
Why isn't the possibility that aliens just don't care about us mentioned? I mean, why should they? They might take one whiff of us, so to speak, being utterly primitive and move on. What's so important about us? Compared to a race that actually mastered intergalactic travel, we would probably be akin to an amoeba.
The shrimpiverse.
That's basically District 9, and it's a scary thought.
I walked worlds of smoke and half-truths, and one world with nothing but shrimp. I tired of that one quickly.
Exited to see a Fermi paradox episode after just having seen the first episode of the Three Body Problem!
Oh boy, wait till you get their answer to it, if you don't know it already. Truly terrifying 😂 will come up in season 2!
Why isn't the possibility that aliens just don't care about us mentioned? I mean, why should they? They might take one whiff of us, so to speak, being utterly primitive and move on. What's so important about us? Compared to a race that actually mastered intergalactic travel, we would probably be akin to an amoeba.
How is it? I want to read the book too, I just downloaded it.
@@Stygiophobic @blakeb9964 It’s great so far! I’ve read the books, so it was more about seeing how they did. And I’m very happy so far. They have cut some corners story wise but you kinda have to. I’m six episodes deep now and it’s true to what the core of the story is, for me anyway. I mean it’s no JMG video but it passes the time 😉
@@blakeb9964 there is one whole section in book 2 that is kinda weird and pointless, I honestly just skipped it and lost nothing from the story. But the rest is great
Why would alien intelligence need to resemble our anatomy at all? Surely the ability to make a model of the external world and manipulate it internally is so beneficial that it would evolve a number of different ways.
Then where are they?
This is the kind of curiosity that I appreciate
Great vid. Rewound several times. A topic that reminds me of Isaac Arthur. Your repeat guest and sometimes collaborator.
This solution to the Fermi paradox kinda just feels like "we're just probably built different" and I'm here for that.
the virus pressure is a very interesting hypothesis, i've never heard of this one before but it's definitely worth thinking about
An extremely intriguing theory, JMG!! Thanks for the video!
Octopuses are not a "jawed" species, yet they are extremely intelligent. It would be interesting to look at how their development was impacted by viruses.
Congrats on 400k subs!!! You deserve it for sure, quality content every time.
godammit I love it when people _think._ thank you JMG, for sharing this thought..
Especially when someone like JMG does the thinking for me.
The biology discussed in this video is still earth bound with earth bound parameters as to what exists here on earth. It goes round and round. The biology of an alien race might not be remotely carbon based. Has anyone considered that?
@@douglasrodriguez9762 lots of people have considered that, actually. Whether they have or not though, you're not making a valid criticism of this video. If non carbon based life is possible, or if it exists for sure, doesn't mean that the things discussed here are not worth discussing. Nor would it mean necessarily that these things being true would be impossible.
The point you're making bears no relevance here, is what I'm saying..
Fantastic exploration of science. Loved the visuals, it took me right into what you were saying.
JMG this is in fact one of your masterpieces 😊
I always am thrilled when you upload thanks for another fantastic video!
I could listen to JMG reading a phonebook and still be entertained
Congratulations for the 400.000 subscribers. You deserve even more.
another great fermi paradox video. my favorite. Happy 400k!🎉
Perfect timing, John
I love seeing original research like this. Keep it up!
Always love your videos!
The background music goes so well with you descriptions.
I actually play older videos I’ve already watched as I fall asleep. Keep up the phenomenal work!
The only channel I have to listen to at 1x speed. Good stuff.
It’s amazing that you even came up with that theory! It’s probably one of the most fascinating (and plausible) theories that I’ve heard on UA-cam.
This actually fits with my own personal solution to the Fermi paradox which is that we are not alone, we are simply among the first-born of the universe's technological intelligences. 14 billion years might seem like a lot of time but against a projected lifetime for the universe of 100 trillion years we are still in the newborn baby stage of the universe's development.
I'll bet it's not just one factor, but 10, or a million, that explains why we appear to be alone. But although I'm a lot more comfortable with the Rare Earth crowd than other explanations, just one ET signal would turn over the entire card table.
Someone has to be first - like that first kernel in a bag of popcorn. Change that 2 minutes into 100 trillion years and yeah, the time for that next kernel to pop would seem like a very long time.
Have you looked at the GRABBY ALIENS hypothesis as an answer to the Fermi paradox? It's an incredibly fascinating paper. It essentially posits we're among the first. But it goes much, much further than that. :)
This is pretty much my pet theory as well. The universe had to go through two generations of star formation before there was sufficient 'metals' distributed to allow life as we know it to appear, so 8-9bn years of no life or shortly-existing life (because their host stars went bang).
Sol, and stars like it, are 3rd generation stars with rocky planets and moons suitable for this life.
Oh, thank God for you, John. I can listen to you without having politics thrown at my face every direction every second.
You're not crazy for going after the Fermi Paradox. SETI is still important. It's laughed at because we haven't found anything, but it's not like it doesn't matter.
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally"...mind bending, amazing, and fantastical!!... with all due respect, Mr. Clarke
Equally terrifying
There's more than 2 possibilities. We just don't have the minds or the knowledge to fully understand them all, and thus, we get tunnel vision like this.
Agreed. The biology discussed in this video is still earth bound with earth bound parameters as to what exists here on earth. It goes round and round. The biology of an alien race might not be remotely carbon based. Has anyone considered that?
@siti1ca I'm sry, I'm confused, are you saying that because you think i don't know what the quote is?
@@creativesuit1930 if you don't have the mind to know or understand it, how do you know it's a possibility?
My favourite pick for the Fermi Paradox is the Mitochondria. We dont know what, how or why an outside cell with its own DNA got incorporated as a beneficial parasite into all eukaryotes, but it seems to have only happened with one type of cell once. Ever.
Part of the design as a result of master geneticists
I, also, believe that the universe is the domain of largely prokaryotic life.
However, the odd chance of it happening elsewhere is … tantalising.
It’s possible that the event hasn’t occurred since due to the fact that current eukaryotes have outcompeted any organisms with burgeoning convergent evolution in that direction - they’ve been at the game for about 2.2 billion years after all. Much like any primitive RNA life introduced to our current biosphere would be nothing more than fodder for the established, specialised and evolved microbiome of Earth today.
Edit: a b
Chloroplasts beg to differ
My personal idea is the actual subjects of natural selection are genes themselves and organisms are like societies with individuals (genomes and genes) thats how you get to observe phenomena like plasmids, virus and so on. This and a complex interpretation of population genetics is in my opinion the key to evolution
Watching Hank Green's _Journey Into The Microcosmos_ it's not hard to imagine how mitochondria got incorporated into another cell.
When you are a single-celled being and have no mouth, anus, or digestive tract, "eating" something is a case of enveloping it within your cell membrane and hoping your internal chemistry breaks it down.
It's not hard to imagine that one single-celled thing enveloped another single-celled thing that didn't break down but thought _"I like it in here. It's kinda cozy."_
You have a great voice for this. Its quite relaxing to listen to.
The engineered appearance of viruses is always striking.
It could be an interesting variation on directed panspermia - add viruses that will push extant life towards goals.
The Shadows of Za'ha'dum wouldn't care about the collateral damage.
What do you want?
Fascinating video - thank you John. As a physician, I care for patients with myelin sheath failure - whether peripheral nerves (Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and related disorders - paralysis, potentially leading to respiratory failure) and central nervous system (multiple sclerosis and others - often utterly debilitating). The importance of myelin to the normal function of the human nervous system cannot be overstated. This look at the evolution of the myelin sheath and its implications on the Fermi Paradox is fascinating.
Transposons have fascinated me since I first learned about them in college. I always thought there had to be more to them because I strongly believe there's no such thing as "junk" DNA. The complexity and energy that goes into replicating DNA, error checking it, correcting it etc. is enormous and I just have a hard time believing that evolutionary pressures would allow us to waste it to a significant degree. Finding out from you that transposons may code for ribozymes we actually use is very exciting to me by itself, finding out they may be critical to the formation of something as important as myelin sheathes just leaves me speechless. There's so much about our own biology we don't know and the further we probe the more incredible things we learn. Thanks for the video!
This is absolutely incredible. Wow
I was pretty convinced by your phosphorus video. I'm not so sure about this one for a couple of reasons. One is that I think viruses are particularly optimised parasites which have managed to get rid even of their own organelles, and parasitism evolves repeatedly, so I viruses are probably. Another is that there could be functional equivalents to the gnathostome nervous system, for instance a hydraulic version similar to the echinoderm water vascular system, and I don't think myelin sheaths are the only option for intelligent life to evolve, or even a nervous system as we know it.
Could you elaborate the bit about viruses? Do you mean that viruses are a paraphyletic group and that there have been multiple occurrences of cellular life originating viruses, which then go on to become much simpler because of parasitism?
Forgive my ignorance, but why would the myelin production have to occur simultaneously across multiple species? Wouldn't it just need to be present in the last common ancestor of jawed vertebrates, and then be passed along to ALL jawed vertebrates?
It probably didn't occur simultaneously. Just roughly so, but the reason they think it wasn't present in the last common ancestor is they found evidence of variation pointing to it having independently occurred in multiple species.
I enjoyed your production. In fact I shared it with family members. Keep making quality educational shorts.
Very cool take! The Fermi Paradox is silly to me but I like the exploration of a different angle like this.
Once again, a masterpiece. 🔥
I'm a big fan of stinky anel
I found the information on myelin and nerve evolution very interesting but your conclusions on its possible impact on intelligent evolution elsewhere less so, I was itching for the video to end but then you made my points for me so no need. Excellent work
That was a mind melter
Great way to put things into perspective as I start the day
There is so much we think we know so much about when really we just know a little about a lot
JMG, love the content and your humor. Great job!
The phosphorus problem is particularly interesting, and it's not one you hear a whole lot about. The scarcity and uneven distribution is interesting on its own but why it's scarce in the first has to do with its position on the periodic table. Its neither easy to produce through collisions with helium and heavy elements compared to other forms fusions, and as a daughter element from decay tends to produce unstable isotopes of phosphorus. It could be that the ideal conditions for phosphorus to be produced, are very uncommon, like a second generation star that is unusually rich in heavier elements, a collision of specific stars, or maybe something else.
Stay tuned for the next video. In tandem with formulating the myelin sheath possibility, I've also been thinking through the phosphorus problem in greater detail than I have in the past. And eh .... I found that it's a far greater, deeper and more complicated geophysical problem than just scarcity alone. The conditions of getting that phosphorus into a concentration in water where abiogenesis could make use of it is a severe problem .... even on a phosphorus "rich" world like Earth. So there isn't just a phosphorus scarcity problem, there's a phosphorus conveyor problem and further very situational problems beyond that. That new take on it seems to me to restrict abiogenesis to some very very specific environments. Anyway, that's the next video, out likely tomorrow. Drop a comment with any thoughts when it comes out. Cheers.
@@JohnMichaelGodier thank you very much, I will certainly be interested in any new information. I suspect there's an issue like a battle between sulphates and phosphates, solubility...im more of a chemistry nerd I'll be there.
Bingo, I get into that. Solubility is a huge question, and it turns out volcanically produced phosphorus compounds in early earth usually aren't, yet hydrothermal vents do emit dissolved phosphorus. But there's another dimension that researchers recently showed that I'll detail.
Your videos are so interesting I stay awake til I sleep watching them all and your voice is relaxing! Thank you for posting so much!
Thought provoking indeed! Tysm for another amazing video!
As a neuroscientist I was dreading this video, but it feels compelling. Interesting that that there is a giant squid axon to increase its transmission speed. But giant axons being that big is not great for a compact or efficient nervous system. So yeah there may be something to to this. Mammals may have a great mix of both compact, fast and energy efficient signal conductors. With giant axons the size for a brain would have to be larger just for better thinking, thus harder to move around... though dinos sort of counter this... but the size of neurons or number of interneurons maybe could have compensated for that with no myelin. Same with energy, if you have to power more ion pumps they will need more energy. How much energy need, is too much for a complex brain, organism or ecosystem to sustain. This kind of thing is likey why an octopuses needs smaller brains to control and process input in their arms. I'll have to do some more research on that topic.
I too am very much interested in whether or not the rare earth hypothesis is valid or not. I definitely have a strong feeling that microorganic life is extremely common across the universe but the more I learn about all the possible filters the more convinced I am that if life exists elsewhere it is incredibly slow or simple. Taking into account your presented solution here further pushes me toward the most likely case being the majority of life in existence are lithotrophic. When life develops and begins the cycle of consuming and replicating looking at the most likely immediate ecosystems and available food sources fast life favors abundant sources of energy like the sun or atmosphere and complexity but slow life, of which we have multiple samples in our labs that survive and have yet to divide even once since we dug them up in core samples, could very easily burrow into their planets, thriving on the rocky surfaces they evolved on. In such worlds they would be safe so long as the planet doesn't get destroyed, and likely are candidates for seeding life if a meteor dislodges large planetary chunks sending debris elsewhere.
Fantastic episode,John,many thanks!
This could be one of the best solutions to the Fermi paradox,it's certainly the best one I've come across in a while.
If correct,it of course implies that we have made it through a Great Filter,and that the galaxy may be open to unchallenged human colonisation-let's not mess this one up guys!
You had me with Tabby's star but i said NEVER AGAIN!!!!
Speaking of Myelin, I wonder if a thinning of the Myelin layer might contribute to the development of some forms of Fibromyalgia? Like a wire running hot when the insulation is worn, might the nerves losing the protection of the Myelin start firing without a specific trigger or over respond to a specific trigger? That thinning might be caused by a nutritional deficiency, like milk or some other high fat, high mineral food.
As for the unlikely hood of Life, with so many coincidences, like our position in space, the elements present in the environment, the course of evolution and shear dumb luck, it is said that in a Universe where anything that is possible can happen, then anything possible WILL happen and here we are. Might even have something to do with God.
I think life is most likely everywhere, but intelligent life may be so rare that if it occurs more than once in a given galaxy then I would be surprised.
Another great video John. Well worth the listen! ❤
You just became one of my favourite channels
*Solution# 25,683:* Fermi's lunchtime musing was more the presumptuous conjecturing of a hangry scientist than an actual legitimate paradox.
He must have been pretty hungry if he walked all the way from the lab to Fuller Lodge for lunch; the geometry for getting to a sit-down meal with your colleagues must have been different back the early 1950s. That's one of the inconveniences of working at Los Alamos- your lunch spot options are as limited as the chances for finding extraterrestrial life.
It's an interesting hypothesis I have heard before. Phosphorous is unevenly distributed in space, but some planets are lucky to form near the right supernovae that spew out enough of the element. Meteorites on Earth have been found to contain schreibersite, (Fe,Ni)3P, a reactive source of phosphorus capable of forming phosphorylated molecules. We are beginning to understand the many variables required for life to form and flourish but still have only one poorly understood example of abiogenesis, our planet, and one lonely intelligent species, us.
Only recently did I learn to appreciate just how special our home is. The habitable zone of a yellow dwarf star, axial tilt giving us 4 seasons, an extra-large moon, providing an extremely stable environment with all the ingredients for life. Even with all that good fortune, it took billions of years to evolve just one intelligent species that could have easily been wiped out at any time (and almost was). Humans are the rarest species we know of. A fuller understanding of ourselves and our planet will help bring all these clues together. Either that, or we find another example of intelligent life. I learn a lot from this channel and others. John does such great thought-provoking videos.
Didn't understand all of this but what an amazing video.
Miguel Johnson's music with your describing is perfection.
Love the videos.
So many thoughts! One, I'm glad I named my daughter Myelin, I think viruses are failed bugs who became bitter, and that Rogue Plasmid would be an awesome comic book.
You named your daughter Myelin? You've got quite the nerve.
Very interesting, thought provoking and well-made!
👏😃
Youre a superstar jmg, loving your work
The emergence of sentient life seems to be becoming rarer the closer we look. I think it's about time we learned to cherish our existence and planet. Or are we doomed to fizzle out by our own hand...........
Why isn't the possibility that aliens just don't care about us mentioned? I mean, why should they? They might take one whiff of us, so to speak, being utterly primitive and move on. What's so important about us? Compared to a race that actually mastered intergalactic travel, we would probably be akin to an amoeba.
As far as we know, complex life is the most precious thing possible. Anywhere. Ever. And we're almost certainly botching it.
The biology discussed in this video is still earth bound with earth bound parameters as to what exists here on earth. It goes round and round. The biology of an alien race might not be remotely carbon based. Has anyone considered that?
We are barely reaching our teenage years as a species. If we had any form of guides, a god or aliens, or whatever we might not be botching it quite so badly, but we have none. And just like teens that grow up with zero guidance and no school but just learning on our own from trial and error, well we could have done a lot worse. Now if we can just get through the next few hundred years without destroying the planet. I give it about 50/50.
no such thing as botching it. natures gonna select how nature selects.
@@tdub6078So, nature is simultaneously predestination and also nihilist?
Kinda sounds like you're saying the analytic/predictive capacities we have developed are meaningless,
because even though clearly they emerged from natural selection,
that was just, like, nature's plan, man,
and if we nuke all life back to amoebas and viruses then that's nature's plan too,
so whatevs?
This is an excellent theory that I've somehow never heard anyone mention before and it honestly makes a lot of sense. It definitely gives you something to think about, but as do all of John's videos. I definitely want to look into it a little more, now that I've learned what I have.
Grist for the mill..thank you JMG; I am a new subscriber, glad I stumbled across you.
1:37 Isaac Arthur mentioned the general scarcity of phosphorous in the universe, saying that our planet was extraordinarily fortunate in having adequate supplies of the substance to enable life to exist. (At least, life in the forms we currently understand it. I suppose it's possible that alien life has a very different chemical makeup to ourselves).
No evidence yet for life elsewhere but assuming we live in a microbial cosmos, our phosphorus-rich biosphere might be one of the rare, necessary stepping stones to complex life. Infinitely frustrating that we may never know.
The biology discussed in this video is still earth bound with earth bound parameters as to what exists here on earth. It goes round and round. The biology of an alien race might not be remotely carbon based. Has anyone considered that?
I hate this planet, I want to go home.
Our ancestors screwed up and we continue to today so we're not going home anytime soon. Make peace with your fate.
In Tau Ceti system?
In Tau Ceti?
Me too
I love this place- a big, delicious, lactating mammal is in abundance, perfect for BBQing.
Just when I thought I was out of solutions to the Fermi Paradox, JMG put us back in new ones.
Kalimera from Athens, Greece.
What an intriguing notion! Thanks, JMG!☄👽👾🪐🚀🛰🛸🌠🌌👏
Wow, no views. 26 s. Ago.
Thanks for a divine voice and content.
I think most people look at life the wrong way. If you plot out the history of the universe (13.8 bil +/-)Im sure you can plug in civilizations here and there but I feel consciousness is a very rare thing so it don’t matter where you are but when you were or still to be if that makes an sense.
Its said that our souls are immortal and brought all this physical matter into being because consciousness is fundamental. We dont remember where we've been because Earth is being controlled to block our soul memory
The biology discussed in this video is still earth bound with earth bound parameters as to what exists here on earth. It goes round and round. The biology of an alien race might not be remotely carbon based. Has anyone considered that?
wow, you made the food look so good ive added this place to my list!
Nicely done. To generalize: there are probably many more factors to the Drake equation than we realize, many more factors of small.
I've always suspected viruses are simply "life bits" leftover from the initial formation of life that living cells can use or can be infected by. Which means wherever you find life, you should find something like viruses too. Think of it as "failed life" that arose during the process of life forming. Viruses evolve as life evolves, but cannot evolve independently. There is a strongly established interdependence between the two, almost as if viruses are like the "tools" or "spare parts" of life that it uses to diverge. Yes some viruses become pathogens, but most aren't and many are relied upon by life for important functions. This goes beyond just Myelin Sheath production.
With that said, the "solution" to the Fermi Paradox is kind of "all the above" or maybe "most of the above". Considering all of the hoops life has to jump through to exist on a given planet, then evolve to sapience, then even have the environment it can use to create technology it would not be surprising for a single galaxy to only have a half dozen or so technological species at any given time. On top of that, even the Milky Way is so big that you could have 100 such species and many of them will not hear or see any indications of another until well after they have the capability to even listen. Centuries at least, potentially Millenia.
An Earth-like planet doesn't necessarily have to be super rare, but is likely rare enough that given all of the other random factors involved, sapient life itself is extremely rare. But I would bet wherever you find any life, no matter how primitive, you will find some virus analogue. Which suggests that a lot of the same steps of evolution might be similar, where life uses viral particles and vice versa.
I never thought I'd see the myelin sheath and the fermi paradox joined into a single concept.
You saw them joined into a single concept? Wow! Where?
I mean, this video only outlined some basic biology and then stupidly asked if aliens designed that basic biology. I don't praise such low efforts.
Saw the word Myelin while I was scrolling which I'm far too familiar with Lotsa trouble with my long axons, and know nerve descriptions by heart. Peripheral bi-lateral neuropathy from repeated cellulitis infections coupled with endless hospitalizations. It's fatty tissue that rolls in long sheaths around the nerve. It's not Annette Funicello bad, not MS, but gotten progressively worse. Walk with a cane The recent 2 year "Fear & Panic" and people who couldn't describe a virus if their life depended upon it, are still driving around in their cars with useless face masks. So, now I'm a new subscriber, used to love William Gibson and Herbert but haven't read any in years, so thanks, I will start again with you
But seriously, this is a very thought-provoking episode. I learned the reason for what was called "junk DNA" in our genome, and a very possible solution to the Fermi paradox, both thru learning some amazing new data about viruses directly having made us smarter (I already knew that they did so indirectly by providing evolutionary pressures, but THIS, giving us myelin, is like Prometheus giving us fire. Wow! I realize it was in conjunction with another protein having to be present... okay - Wow! Still wow. Assuming the conclusion isn't flawed, obviously... wow.
I'm kind of baffled by this notion of the "great silence" regarding advanced alien life. Just because we haven't discovered Dyson spheres and radio signals doesn't really mean anything. We have a very narrow set of parameters we're searching for so it's no wonder we haven't discovered anything. Doesn't mean there's nothing out there, more than likely we need to expand our ideas when looking for technology.
But a sure belief in what is not there transcends science and enters the realm of religion. I take evidence as I find it and right now it appears we are alone, for at least as far as we able to see and detect. Until that evidence changes the Rare Earth odds look a lot better than competing hypotheses.
@jota6262 Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. My point is to expand our parameters when looking for advanced technology and develop new methods to search for alien life. Currently we have limited means and narrow criteria when searching for life. Plus we haven't been looking very long. I would like to see some of our assumptions about aliens be challenged when searching the universe. Looking primarily for radio signals and giant mega structures are a product of our limited technology, it shouldn't be used as the only standard by which we conclude there's no advanced civilizations out there.
We assume we are alone but how hard have we looked? We laughably assume aliens would use radio signals and we haven't even managed to zoom in on an exoplanet. We even assume alien races need to be technological, Why? Because we are? Yet there are things flying around in our skies we cannot account for 🤯
It is a common assumption that we are inferior and the Alien Angels out there are so much more advanced or incomprehensible than us little earthbound worms. Yet, there is no evidence for anything out there at all, primitive or advanced, and we may not ever find it even if there is. Until that happens it may be more useful to appreciate our own uniqueness so that we may do everything we can to save ourselves and this beautiful planet we are so lucky to inhabit.
Truly fascinating, great video as always!
Great food for thought! Nice balance of detail and simplicity. Just subscribed :)
I absolutely love your work! Thank you for your time and passion!