The Fermi Paradox: Drake's Equation
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- Опубліковано 7 кві 2021
- Drake's Equation lies at the core of the Fermi Paradox and SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, but is it a good guide in our search for aliens, and what does modern astronomy tell us about the probabilities of finding life on exoplanets?
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Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Drake's Equation
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 285, April 8, 2021
Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Writers:
Alexander T. Long
Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Jerry Guern
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier
Graphics:
Bryan Versteeg spacehabs.com
Jarred Eagley
Jeremy Jozwik www.artstation.com/zeuxis_of_...
Sergio Botero www.artstation.com/sboterod?f...
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.com/creator - Наука та технологія
I’ve been in the Hospital for 3 weeks after a building collapsed on me. Ty for the content man it has helped keep me sane. Today is my release date and this was the perfect video to wake up too.
Hopefully you have a speedy recovery, feel better soon :)
You're meant to move before you use the TNT mate
Ouch. Get well soon
Get well soon brother. I enjoy this content a lot too.
So what I'm getting is you miss leg day often at the gym, huh? 🤣 Get well soon and stay positive. ✌🏽
The Fermi Paradox is really an immense source of cool video topics
It's one of those simple and primal questions that examines a broad range of topics regarding mathematics, physics, philosophy, reality, engineering, and our knowledge about ourselves (and by association the rest of life on earth).
@@seffundoos o
Isaac, your speech is audibly improving. You sound more confident and your speech impediment doesn’t sound as pronounced. I don’t know if it’s something you’ve been trying to do consciously or not, but your channel only gets better.
PS: we all love your voice anyway
That Earth pronunciation was kinda cool, tho.
Isaac impediment doesn’t sound like an impediment at all at this point, if I hadn’t heard him speak of it in videos before I’d assume he just has an accent.
I just thought it was an accent. Sounds soothing honestly.
How do you know you haven't just improved at understanding the pattern of his speech?
The Isaac Arthur equation lol
I was looking for a joke with the punchline: “By seeking the Galactic Society, we become the Galactic Society.”
Yep by the time we leave and come back we are the aliens
“Either you die wondering about galactic societies, or you live long enough to become one”
One great thing about Drake's equation, we can guarantee that there are no factors or sub factors that are Zero, Because we exist.
Not quite. There are possible expiation where they are zero, such as if this is a simulation and life was a hack, but the actual laws of physics of the simulation don’t normally allow for it.
"So what you're saying...IS THERE'S A CHANCE?!" - Jim Carry from Dumb and Dumber.
@@relativisticvel if this is a simulation so is the Drake's equation.
@@relativisticvel unless your speaking of like a boltsman brain (idk the spelling) then something created the simulation in which case it still can’t be a sum of zero, no?
The problem with being the only 1 is that soon enough there won't be any at all.
Probability of Drake's equation being usable: N = Em (math exists) * Wm (math works) * Ea (mathematicians exist) * Ed (Drake exists) * Ee (equation exists) * Pu (probability that equation is usable)
This is awesome!
This doesn't make sense as Pu and N are equal, so they both cancel out and the rest of the equation equals 1.
@@rythmverma9780 That was kinda the point. It's what some refer to as a "joke". If you google it, you'll find quite a bit of info on it.
@@araptuga verm continued the joke
It's a pretentious folly consisting of all unknowns. Nothing annoys me more than the Drake "equation". It's not an equation. It's a list of things we don't know. Only a mathematician could be that arrogant.
radio astronomer here! "star formation rate doesnt really matter" made me sad haha because i spend 40 hours a week studying that haha
also, slight correction- the milky way DEFINITELY doesnt form 100 solar masses per year, thats high even for a very active galaxy (like a ULIRG such as Arp 220) and we know we pretty good confidence that the MW forms about 2-3 solar masses per year
enjoyed the video though!
:) thanks Savannah
U/Andromeda is that you?
You have a nice job
@@dongiovanni4331 I wish haha of only i could be that good, im with the NRAO
@@savannahwoods3222 Oh cool , I am mechanical engineer student but I sure love astronomy but never got the chance.
I’m your age and at secondary school (high school) my science teacher said “stars do not have planets” or words to that effect. I was 14 and I remember thinking it was absurd to think that.
Bruh, the first exoplanet confirmed to exist was in 1992, there has been speculation of exoplanets since the late 1500's and Isaac Newton also speculated on exoplanets too in the late 1600's. So, it just sounds like your teacher was ignorant.
@@Crowbars2 it was a catholic school, that might have had something to do with it.
@@Totalinternalreflection definitely would’ve been mate. The religious like to keep their flock ignorant
@@totalanthony Lol edgy much?
It seems like they were trying to teach based on direct evidence, rather than theory. That's a valid approach to scientific teaching, but as our speed of discovery increased in the late 20th century, more discoveries were being made then could change the curriculum in a single generation. Remember that the scientific community used to be rather liberal with the use of speculation in the 19th and early 20th century, so there could be a real reason some would want to "stick with the facts", especially in secondary school.
To teach that exo-planets existed in 1980 is like saying there is water on mars in 2000. Models predict it, preliminary evidence points to it, but we hadn't sent a rover to collect samples just yet.
Happy Arthursday everyone! And I hope you all have a great weekend!!
As a physicist and long ago, former serviceman, Issac, I salute you!
I have listened to your videos near since the beginning and your popularity is well deserved! Rarely, if ever, have I found anyone that puts as much time and rationale into this topic (futurism and space, i.e. all your videos not just this one). It's truly refreshing and I can only hope to meet you one day for a discussion, online or otherwise. I find your approach and angle of attack to these abstract topics thought provoking and helpful as someone that often struggles to communicate these complex topics to others. I also find your positivity (in the assumption humanity won't anhialate itself first) and the way you produce them with subtle background music, calming for the brain and perfect consumption in the late hours to aide my chronic insomnia.
Keep up the excellent work, there is a beer waiting should we ever happen to bump into each other 👍
Pawg
I don't know what's more worrisome.. that there may be many, many alien civilizations.. or we're it.
Hmm it would be unfortunate if we are unable to find anyone else but us, but then again, rivals in space that are or more advanced than you is not fun to have.
Nice reimagining of an Arthur C Clarke quote 👍🏻
Having neighbors is definitely more worrisome.
@@marrqi7wini54 A more advanced “rival” is not a rival they are conquers think Germans and Romans or Mongols and China. Basically you can over throw them with time, but eventually you have to become them or you be replaced by them.
Why do so many people seem to think aliens would want to do anything to us? If they are advanced enough to find us, we literally don't ha e anything they would need to acquire through genocide to get, and we would never catch up to them in technology enough to threaten them, even if we decided to try. But we wouldn't need to, because once we get to the level of tech where we could visit their home planet or planets, we, too, wouldn't need to fight to take resources. We would already have figured out scarcity and how to colonise and/or cannibalise other, uninhabited or no intelligent life star systems. The only reasons left to fight would be over ethical concerns. Maybe in our future, people will want to either alter or end alien civilisations which practice polyamory? Or they might want to convert the aliens to their religion. The likeliest way to prevent a potentially violent rival species from attacking you is to gently nudge their civilisation in directions that would be most likely to get them to become more peaceful, and less fearful as a response to new info on alien people.
My favorite solution to the fermi paradox is that somehow life basically just emerged and even though there are aliens nearby nobody is more than ~50 years ahead of us. That would be amazing, but also terribly unlikely.
This also lends itself extremely well to sci-fi stories.
I wouldn't be surprised if we are one the earliest of if not the first technologically advanced civilizations in our region of the galaxy the sun formed towards the early end of time period where 3rd generation and later stars have been forming, and our only known example of life needs a solar system with a high metallicity in order to exist which suggests that complex life might have been extremely rare up until recently.
They are inter-dimensional beings, they live inside us, as a kind of parasite. So there's that.
As noted earlier, I think the odds of any alien civilization of any level coexisting with ours are extremely low
@gareth - its possible that complex life forms require metal, but its far from certain. All of them we know of do but we only have earth life to guess by.
The Drake equation was also a great tool to explain to my parents why I’ll be single forever.
Issac a great way to start the day
The thought of Extraterrestrial life has always fascinated me. I don't if I'll ever live to see it, but in this Infinite universe, I don't think it's unlikely
It frankly scares the shit out of me.
But it's an amazingly cool concept all the same. I just pray we don't run into the same scifi crap of Humanity getting annihilated lol.
As an upside,, I generally assume if there are aliens they're not the genocidal types, since we're still here and the could crush us like a bug :)
@@TheIroncladResearcher Very true haha.
@@isaacarthurSFIA For sure!
If Dr. Brandenburg (physicist) is correct about what occured on Mars some 250 million years ago, as regarding the presence of Xenon 129, then yes, his answer to the Fermi Paradox is extremely unsettling. "They're all hiding because of this," is his summation. Meanwhile, we're the loudest in the Universe.
Finally have been waiting for this since Joe Scott introduced me too your channel.
When did this happen?
joe scott gang
I love joe Scott
JMG , Joe Scott and Isaac Arthur the holly trinity
@14:45, there's a math error. The odds of surviving 10,000 year is 1 in 2^100. A 1 in a million chance would be 2,000 years, not 10,000 years.
Thank you for not having ads. I love listening to your videos while resting. 🤙
I've been waiting for this topic for so long. The Fermi Paradox series is the pinnacle of youtube.
The biggest issue is time (in almost everything astronomical):
1. We have been looking for a very short time.
2. Even if we saw a signal from 50k LY away, it took 50k years to arrive. A civilization could die out before we even see the the signs it exists. And, we could also fail while waiting.
It's also worth noting that a civilization need not die violently; Mass farming is causing an increase in viral development and aliens would not necessarily avoid such difficult problems.
We probably couldn't detect any civilization smaller than a type 2 civilization at 50k light-years, and by the time a civilization reaches type 2 status you probably aren't going to kill it with anything weaker then a supernova. Disease doesn't transmit very well through a vacuum and the technology would be advanced enough that they could probably cure just about any illness that isn't a gray goo scenario.
A moment of sanity in an internet gone mad.
The IA Algorithm is served, thus saving us from any hostile AI on UA-cam.
Look at the views-to-likes ratio. Or the subscribers-views ratios.
I for one welcome out Aisac Iithur overlords.
Been waiting for another Fermi Paradox episode forever! Thanks for all your work Isaac!
Hope you enjoyed it!
@@isaacarthurSFIA Yes, so relevant for us, Space X is busy testing heavy engines for it's Star Ship.
The long awaited Drake's equation! I'm so happy this came out today, I needed a bit of a break from the world.
This a great birthday present. I get a video form my favorite youtuber, a video explaining a lot of my views on the Drake's Equation. This will save me a ton of time. So thank you very much!
Happy birthday!
In the video you questioned whether there was value in debating Drake's equation, but I feel there is great value to be found in not debating the equation itself, but rather its factors. For example, that last value L gives great insight into just what we *should* be looking for. Certain types of civilizations would tend to have longer values for L as you mentioned the T2 or T3 civilizations, and would be much easier to spot than one which never left its home planet and did not live for millions of years. So while the factors don't actually tell us if there is life or not, they do give us direction into how we should search.
"Civilizations generally do not hide themselves"
*laughs in Gondolin
Although from a more serious point, Civilizations might have something worth hiding from, Morgoth style.
Hah!
This channel has some of the best content on all of UA-cam. Thanks Isaac!!! This, like all episodes, woke me up mentally and I feel ready for the day.
Hi Isaac, thanks so much for you work, I found your channel 2 months ago and have been hooked ever since. Not only are your videos super interesting your picture of the future is incredibly morale boosting. I work in mental health and even knowing I am getting an incredibly biased sample, you can feel pretty grim about the future when your listening to the hardship of people's lives all day, which isn't helped when you come home to the constant deluge of negative news. Hearing you map out a potentially very bright future is very inspiring and helps lifts the spirits, thanks for that.
I know how you feel, I work at an elementary school. It’s hard to have a hope for the future when grade six kids are throwing up from eating each others snot. Lol
Calling it "a very bright future" is a stretch. Some people are sad when the glass is half empty. Isaac just points out that a spilled cup is still wet.
I think it’s an issue of time, and space - you’d have to have two intelligent forms of life evolve within a very close time period of each other, and within a very close distance (galactically speaking) to even be able to recognize that the other existed - our radio waves from television / radio are basically indistinguishable from noise the farther out you get, and we’ve actually been pumping out less noise as we evolve technologically, as bands narrow and we create better means of communicating without the large leakage that used to happen from the 20s to the 80s or so.
We’ve only been looking for the last ~60 years, an infinitesimal amount of time in comparison to the age of the universe. If someone had looked at our planet a 1,00 years ago, they would have seen nothing spectacular. Just a planet with an abundance of water, oxygen, and nitrogen in the atmosphere.
Not only that but the distances involved in actually reaching out and touching another civilization are, quite literally, astronomical.
Say a civilization explored and colonized a galaxy (never mind the problems Isaac has elucidated about keeping a galactic civilization in tact over any amount of time). But they died out 500 million years ago.
Would we even see any remnants? How about from 10 million years ago?
And another thing, what if your species evolves intelligence before there are vast oceans of readily accessible, super dense energy hydrocarbons beneath your feet? If humans had evolved 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, would there have been enough oil and gas to get us to our current technological level?
It seems like that ready access to super dense energy hugely accelerated our technological revolution - its hard to imagine us figuring onto how to connect globally without steam and coal and oil and gas. Those deposits take huge amounts of time to form.
There’s just a lot of problems with being around at the same time as another species, with enough technology to actually recognize they exist I think.
Just so you know, we weren't using coal until a little after the industrial revolution. Before that, we were using wood to power everything. We only started using coal because we hit the limit of how fast trees could grow. We may not have grown as fast had we not used coal, but we would already have radio by now. And more than likely it would have accelerated our usage of nuke power, which would be more abundant the farther back in time you go. Maybe we would go to renewables. Either way, no coal would only change the timeline by 50-100 years.
Haha hey ya, all good points, I’d totally forgotten that the abundance of isotopes we could use in reactors would be way higher 100 million years ago. I just meant I think it would take considerably longer to get to the same level of technology. Side note, if we’d discovered nuclear power prior, or at least advanced our understanding of nuclear power alongside fossil fuels, do you think that means a higher incidence of nuclear weapons discharge? Of course totally moot question as we’ve got a sample size of 1, so who can say, but I think it might be more likely? Throw nuclear weapons into the mix in WW1 and maybe there’s a different outcome.
Fossil fuels absolutely did speed up the process, but a lot of the early advancements of the industrial revolution used hydropower, and several early solar technologies absolutely could have powered a revolution if they were outcompeted by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels probably accelerated our development by roughly 500 years, but we already had a fairly stable civilization by the time we started using them in large quantities and they aren't strictly necessary to reach our level of capability.
Wow, Mr. Arthur this is your best episode yet. Thank you!
This is where the fun begins!
Humanity have invented friendliest greeting in universe: Obi Wan Kenobi saying ' Hello there'.
The fun begins when the roofies hit my date
Love u Isaac, by far my favourite content on UA-cam ❤️
I don't remember hearing you mention this, however Drake's Equation wasn't created as a means of discovering how many worlds have civilization in and of itself. The equation was invented as a way to open the basis for a discussion and/or dialog during a scientific convention.
Isaac doesnt see another motivation for a Alien Civ, he is always "set colony" kind of mentality
Love your videos. You really dig into topics and come up with ideas that I haven't thought of. Great job
Absolutely love Isaac's videos. What's with the skull spider though? That little critter seems to make its way into pretty much every episode
36 minutes! It's crazy how much there is to talk about in the realm of science and futurism!
oh, this isn't even among the longest SFIA vids.
@@jgr7487 I know
@@jgr7487 I'm a long time viewer, and the amount of content never ceases to amaze me
Much more concise summary than the previous fermi video, with a significant number of new and condensed arguments. I really liked the comparisons to IRL trees/caves/shacks/cities, it's helpful to give concrete and relateable comparisons when dealing with literally unfathomable odds.
Well said
Thank you Isaac: you’ve made Thursday the best day of the week for me.
I saw Drake's equation and I immediately knew that Isaac was going to tear it a new one. This going to be good.
Thanks for uploading, Isaac. Sorry again for missing the last few uploads.
Isaac Arthur's channel is easily the best thing on UA-cam.
The consistent quality and production value is amazing.
When i first started watching you, your speech impediment really bothered me (i don't know why, no offense) but now it's gotten so much better that i am able to binge watch your videos for hours😁 big up to you💪
Drake's equation is the mathematical restatement of a philosophical question that cannot be "solved" until/unless we actually observe other intelligent life, or scientifically rule it out unequivocally.
At this stage it's an idea generator, a thought provoker, nothing more. =)
We have seen multiple independent examples of intelligence evolving, so we only need examples of another intelligent species forming civilizations and other types of life coming into existence to improve the accuracy of the equation.
I love this guy.
Thanks for a great explanation. Keep up the great work.
You bet!
I feel like an actual Fermi equation would be a stochastic partial differential equation with really sensitive parameters. Maybe the mathematics of electrical engineering could be of some help here as there is some use of both continuous and discrete mathematics. I'm sure some bored mathematicam will take an actual crack at it one day
Yes, the equation will always need reconfiguration, as physicist s modify the foundations of matter, energy, etc., Which should roll over to the engineering and mathematicians, and it may not hurt to have a field of bio and genetics. They are going to publish another paper on matter, upping magnetism, which will be re researched as usual.
I watch a lot of science channels and this guys IQ is up there with the best of the best
Another great episode, thanks Isaac.
Oh hey! Cool Worlds just did a video on the Drake Equation too! It must be Drake Month or something
Probably a coincidence, it happens occassionally, but it could be from Arecibo collapsing. I imagine David plans his episodes a decent ways out too, I know I planned this one shortly after Arecibo collapsed last december and wrote it in January, it might have inspired their episode as well, and there was a lot of talk about SETI and Drake right around then.
@@isaacarthurSFIA Oh yeah, that would make sense
Nice to see some Fermi paradox content seems like it’s been a while
The best explanation of this topic I have come across.
Love your videos man.
As always. A great and informative video.
That is the coolest cover I have ever seen. Props to the artist.
Happy Arthursday!
Rough estimates of the number of the planets in the universe are around 10^24. Even if there are only 12 independent conditions with 1/100 odds of being able to sustain life, that leaves only one planet that satisfies all conditions.
Seems likely to be the case. Odd that we may be the only intelligent life in the universe. Makes me wonder if there may be some serious flaw in our thinking.
It's actually estimated to be far far higher than that just using known requirements of life from estimates from current astrophysicists lol. I posted already to you information but youtubes communist algorithm censored the comment because it had a link apparently. How pathetic the day and age we live in now where we literally can't even talk about science without being censored extensively.
I'd wish futurism had more place in peoples minds. Whenever someone makes an argument about long-term effects of a policy (like population, pollution or piloting), they probably mean "in 5 to 10 years".
I agree. If some of these issues become real problems they are quite easily solved. For example, how tough would it be for us to create carbon capture plants running on nuclear if we had to... right now it isn’t a problem at all. Overpopulation is a joke. People aren’t having kids and we are likely to have the opposite problem in a century - see Japan. Drive across the US plains. There is nobody there. Most of that garbage is the same old Malthusian bologna trotted out in the 1700s.
No long-term thinking, thinking big needs to become widespread again.
@@bassmanjr100 : In my observation overpopulation is more about resource usage than living space, and carbon extraction is more about where to put that stuff safely.
But I fully agree with you that we should seek technological solutions (as some people like Elon Musk do), rather than trying to save a percent here and there through abstainment.
Such an amazing channel.
9:24 this is my favorite reference to past episodes by far! i found it very funny
I listened to this episode while I was in the kitchen preparing a drink and a rather large snack for me and my 7 kids.
Extraterrestrial life is one of my favorite topics even though I confidently conjecture that the Earth and life are unique in the universe. It's too quiet out there.
This is the coolest thumbnail since interstellar empires
I like to think that we are the first to make it this far and will become to other civilizarions what sci-fi often refers to as the Elder Race.
This man always makes me sleepy.
His voice is really relaxing. It’s just one of the reasons I am so glad he decided to do his own narration.
@@ColdHawk and gotta love the vids too it fulfills my hunger for knowledge
Hi Isaac! Wonderful video as always, but I've been curious for a week or two now.
How do you feel about Stellaris and its background, in regards to a science fiction setting? Cycles of galaxies and what not, picking up the ruins of previous civilizations.
I'd suggest watching one of his earlier videos, specifically ua-cam.com/video/Yc64zEZaqBE/v-deo.html
@@AGTheOSHAViolationsCounter Thanks!
@@dandy6571 No problem!
I.. love this channel.
Drink.
Snack.
*Drake's Equation*
Howdy Isaac, you bring up some REALLY important points about the distortion of reality through the lens of perspective. From a philosophical perspective, that concept of limitied personal perspective altering the way we interpret the reality around us is possibly the single factor that is holding humanity back. For example, there's a book you've mentioned a few times which I absolutely LOATH. I don't see that particular work through the same perspective as you so my conclusions concerning it are different from yours. The reason we may not be able to see the "background chatter" of alien civilizations is that our interpretation of the universe is that all the signals and background radiation are "natural" are none of them are encrypted or heavily modulated transmissions. I wonder what would happen if we tried to put a pattern finding AI to work to "decipher" all the background noise and radiation.
whether the various cosmic background signals are or aren't artificial changes nothing or if anything it just makes the problem worse. since if someone's been transmitting for that long there shouldn't be any stars still left assembled. we shouldn't exist since any intelligence capable of that would have colonized the cosmos by now.
its good to have an open mind but science is based in a reality which seems to have fixed rules so some perspectives are just inherently more correct, or at least more useful, than others.
Isaac has gone and done it again.
Space goes on forever.
Forever means there IS another Sun and Earth combo with life,
but so far away we will never know it.
I love your vids. You would be the only reason I might ever buy UA-cam premium. But thx for keeping all this free.
Beautiful thoughts. Thank you. 🚀👽🛸❤️
Always great content, thank you.
-It's all so big and old there must be life elsewhere - a common argument based on the assumption life is 'easy'
-Our existence makes it almost certain 'we' are the only example - a less considered argument based on the assumption life is 'hard'.
We just don't have any kind of handle on the question at all. We may search the stars for thousands of years without being able to answer the question "easy or hard" because if nothing turns up that doesn't really prove there is nothing out there. Equally if we find life throughout the solar system that will say almost nothing about how common it may be in the universe as a whole - if it all looks like us that may be local panspermia or 'evidence' that there is only one route to life. Neither option says much about the universe as a whole. If it doesn't look like us that may say something about life in the universe or that there's something about the environment around our star that is specifically conducive to life.
To make any kind of useful judgement we need incontrovertible proof of life located as far from us as possible, preferably multiple separate examples. How far and how much is good enough 'evidence' will still rely on a judgement as to how 'infectious' life is. On the one hand if you judge all life must be trapped where it originates then any life found beyond Earth is proof of multiple origins. On the other hand if you judge life can disperse across the universe no amount of 'evidence' can answer the question "how rare is the origin of life?" as you may only be witnessing it's spread from here.
That's certainly not to say we shouldn't bother to speculate and look but that the questions are likely to remain more interesting than the answers for the foreseeable future.
PS
I've never been that impressed by the notion that once you have technology it's very hard to wipe out or at the least you can do it again.
For the former I think the opposite is true. Technology is like a game of Jenga; the higher you build the more prone you are to fall the the more catastrophic that fall will be. Worse, as resources become harder to access the more 'blocks' you have to take from the 'stack' to keep building. That increases instability even further. In other words the end of any technological society is inevitable and the longer your beat the odds the more catastrophic the end. To give an example the last super volcano eruption nearly caused our extinction, the next one most certainly will as our 'tower' has 'that much further to fall' and we have robbed out so many of the blocks to build that tower most of the ecosystems on which we rely are so fragile they will fall with us.
For the latter, unlike Jenga, you don't get to reuse the blocks for the 'next game'. Once a society has exhausted all the low-hanging fruit it must increasingly rely on it's technology to access more difficult resources. The next game won't get very far if most of the accessible building blocks are gone.
My unhappy predictions:
-We have been amazingly lucky to get this far and I fully expect the end is indeed 'nigh'... unless we sustainably get off this planet very soon.
-There are some very good arguments to suggest we cannot sustainably get off this planet,
-No planet can support more than one 'high technology' civilisation because of resource depletion. We are our planet's single shot.
Again that's not to suggest we should give up trying, indeed such miserable thoughts should spur us all on to ever greater efforts, but we do need to understand the nature of the universe in which we live and the world we have built for ourselves - a glorious future is worth striving for but it's almost certainly not going to happen and a little care and gratitude for what we have now might not go amiss.
Since I've discovered Isaac I am watching several videos a day to play catch up. I'm happy to see there are quite a few with appealing titles that I can't wait to watch. Lately I've been waking up with a higher IQ.💪👍♥️
Two things have always struck me when thinking about this question and also examining the arguments put forth by various scientists and lay people alike. The Heisenberg quote about the universe being not only strange but stranger than we can imagine must surely include the possibility that strange as this thought is, we could possibly be the only life in the universe, perhaps the only life there ever will be. But I have often thought this, and there are arguments against this considering the age of the universe, but there wouldn't be any hard and fast rule as to when life must arise so I have long thought, not often heard, that someone has to be the first. What is to say that despite the age of the universe we cannot be the first life to arise, therefore we are technically alone as no other life exists... yet?
That's a great comment.
When you've seen the crumbling city section of video so many times you know it's an issac arthur video...maybe I've watched to many of these lol
A most wonderful early 25th birthday present! What better gift to distract me from wondering what I am doing with my life than contemplating the big questions and concepts of science fiction and the future with Isaac's wonderful videos.
One thing worth considering is rather than the Drake equation itself is looking at the time integration of natural parameters i.e. the rate of star formation over time in particular.
Regarding star formation it should be noted that based on GAIA observations star formation in the Milky Way has been episodic occurring mostly in starburst events associated with galaxy mergers most of these were early on having occurred by 9 billion years ago. Chronologically they seem to have been starting from 11+ Ga, Kraken(1st major Merger), Helmi Streams, Sequoia, and GAIA-Enceladus, all of which occurred over 9 billion years ago after which things settled down.
Then there was another much more "recent" of these starburst type events was the initial burst of star formation associated with the first encounter between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal progenitor which likely had a mass comparable to the Magellanic cloud system. The Sagittarius galaxy plunged through the disk of the Milky Way in the process inducing a major starburst interval within both Galaxies due to the shock waves compressing the gas. As this episode began 4.7 Ga our Sun was almost certainly created as a result of this interaction.
The nature of this event as a starburst suggests that most stars in the galaxy that are younger than 9 billion years old will also have formed within this window of time sinc ethere were so many more such stars than the typical trickle of "normal" star formation.
As metallicity is strongly a function of time (as well as radius from the galactic center) this suggests that most stars younger than 9 billion years will be more metal rich than those that formed earlier and these younger more metal rich stars are going to mostly be about the same age as the Sun.
Though as a caveat the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy merger is still ongoing with the dwarf galaxy locked into a disk plunging orbit that is dynamically decaying towards the core of our galaxy and each of these plunges still induce a weaker star formation burst than the previous pass with increasingly shorter separations between plunges. Thus there are still a significant number of younger stars which actually means the Sun is on average older than most metal rich stars.
So Aliens in the Milky Way statistically speaking unless they could evolve around more metal poor stars are unlikely to have had a head start on us, though if life is very easy to start and naturally reaches intelligence there is a non negligible population of stars formed under more steady state conditions so even in a metallicity constrained model there is still a chance at an earlier start.
That said when factoring in metallicity you also have to factor in stellar migration. One nuanced realization is that since stellar metallicity depends on both time and proximity to the galactic center for our Sun to have a similar metallicity to stars forming halfway out in the disk of the Milky Way today while being 4.6 billion years older suggests the Sun must have formed much closer to the galactic center and then migrated outwards over time.
If this is true which seems likely unless we are missing something big, then most stars in our galaxy of a similar metallicity are either much younger or also formed in the inner part of the Milky Way's disk. So if the galactic habitable zone is a thing then we are likely very early in the game in terms of the habitability window.
This doesn't bring us closer to solving the "fermi paradox" but it does suggest we likely aren't late to the game unless life on Earth took a particularly long time to develop "intelligence".
13:47 Consider the lobes of a transmitter, radio, light, or whatever. That's a lot of wasted energy not going to the receiver but is it worthwhile to focus on one very small target?
I’d like to watch a video of Isaac, JMG, and other UA-camrs plugging in their best guesses as to each term of the Drake equation. I realize they would be complete guesses for all of the terms but two, but it’s still interesting to see what people think.
Love your voice 🙂
When I look 12 months back, I think the Paradox solution is way more simple than we think.
I tend to think of life itself as likely quite common (I wouldn't be surprised if life, even if just simple prokaryote analogs) were found on most of the large bodies of the Sol system.
I also tend to think that usage of complex technology is probably one of the rarest things. Since on Earth it wasn't until very recently that complex technologies even appeared.
It seems that advanced tool use and communication of "how to do" across time is not that common outside of humans.
Agreed. Think how many species existed on this planet over the billions of years. Now take that one species and realize it's only been technological in a visible sense for a micro fraction of our existence.
桜ちやんは天才やな
Return to the Classics & Basics huh?! :]
Although I think the drakes equation is either cherrypicked or integrated throught a very narrow view
Just remember the lottery is like 1 and 100 trillion, so just buy one ticket is basically the same odds as buying two. Yet someone always wins. We could just be that lucky
Don't you just love it when the guy who won says: I never bought a ticket before in my life! 😖
Thanks for being real and dashing any hope of finding Aliens in the next 40 years :)
The answer to addressing (known) unknowns - and even unknown ones - is always the same: MORE DATA!
It is NOT muddled wishful thinking - no more than an expression of faith, really - by which we convince ourselves that something MUST be true because our instincts or intuitions tell us so...
We should all live by the motto: "Belief is easy, knowledge is hard"
I've always suspected that a K2 civilization would dump out a lot of hum from their power systems. On the power level of a K2 civilization, even a minor hum being broadcast, it's a lot of power from even a single star system.
Who else falls asleep listening to these?
Hopefully to the narration only audio versions :) i make those specifically so folks don't get startled awake by the outro music in the credits
U r going to have nice dreams .
Falling asleep when Isaac Arthur is speaking should be punished as if it were the scientific equivalent of Blasphemy.
@@isaacarthurSFIA I need to check that out
I have been doing it wrong lol 😆
the latest youtube recommendations make me believe that potassium is a good candidate for a filter for alien life
I can think of only one reason why an advanced tech race would not build a dyson swarm, and that would be that advanced technology reduces the population growth of a species, until it reaches equilibrium or stagnation. If that happend would they bother with trying to increase there numbers to encourage colonization?
As we've discussed previously, trying to solve Drake's Equation is a fruitless endeavor fraught with conjecture.
The inverse treatment is far more satisfying: Calculating the uniqueness of humanity's technological existence.
Maybe a revisit of the list of factors that make us unique is in the cards. A few I've mentioned before, that were not in your original 50? are our reliance on fossil fuels (without them, we'd never have risen to this tech level), our need for trees (fuel, construction, tools, housing, transportation), livestock (without beasts of burden we'd have never been able to manually grow enough food), and our technological rise between major CME events -- our lucky window theory. See ya around. -AM
Imo, one interesting concept of our metric for 'advanced or intelligent' alien life, always seems to involve how technologically advanced they are or how big their ecological signature is, etc.
Personality, I've always thought that a far more advanced (at least in terms of age) civilizations would be likely to go the opposite way. Humans are young and adventurous(I say young but it might also just be forgetful). A much older species might be more likely to slow down and shift focus, perhaps.
I suppose, the main routes to overcome the great barrier (for a similarly composed species)
1: most popular - get to a point where they overcome their biological weaknesses/shortcomings with technology.
2: get to a point where they finally become 'wise' enough as a planetary/host-dependent lifeform, to naturally live in 'perfect' synergy or harmony with their host (zero waste, pollution, etc)
3: they evolve into an 'ultra efficient' species (energy-wise) and are actually very small. Not like we normally think, where the more advanced, the bigger and greater, etc. I think it's far more likely (depending on overall needs) to get nano civilizations that use a very small fraction of energy to accomplish a lot more.
This is of course leaving out the enumerable ways that are more abstract, such as inter-dimensional, etc
I ended up going to waffle town. It can be hard to arrange thought in a comment :)
Love your videos/content, by the way
i would love to simplify/complicate this equation to account for current known values and possible outliers.
Go isaac!
The so-called Fermi Paradox long predates Fermi, of course. It's discussed in Jules Verne's *_From the Earth to the Moon,_* for instance (while on their way to the Moon, the three travellers discuss many topics, including the question if there are any people on the Moon, and if so why they haven't visited Earth, and considering the possibility that they had, and the people of Earth are their descendants.
the Fermi paradox is the astronomical "bumble bees shouldn't be able to fly" statement. hint: it's not the bee's fault.
Being this early... It has been a good week.
Hi Isaac, please index talking points with a short description and jumplinks to the video's segments. Thx
Drake be that kind of guy who gives equations.