Alien Life and the Rare Fire Solution to the Fermi Paradox
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- Опубліковано 5 кві 2024
- An exploration of the question of whether the conditions for fire in the universe are rare enough to be a solution to the Fermi Paradox.
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"Only us and the arson birds of Australia use fire as a tool."
That statement is more alarming than I expected it to be.
I suspect raccoons may one day figure out how to use fire.
Those birds, per legend taught their trade to humans.
There are probably other species which may occasionally figure out how to take advantage of fire, but humans and arson birds are likely the only species who use fire so regularly that we have instincts for cultivating and using it.
Remember, we fought a war against the emus and lost.
I mean, it's Australia, all the wildlife there is deadly.
Makes you rethink about all those myths where humans steal fire from the gods - almost like we understood subconsciously that we're not supposed to have it. It's a cheat code.
Very interesting indeed
Most myths like that are something steals fire & gives it to us against the gods wishes. The Cyote in the Desert tribes of the USA (forget the names & can't spell them) & the God Prometheus in greek myth which leads to him being punished. its quite intresting as fire is the key to the future.
An H. Erectus that encountered a flaming ember after a lightning sparked wildfire may have been our ancestors' first idea of divinity.
There is no such thing as "supposed to".
In myth: mortals steal everything from gods, Prometheus is simply the most repeated
Every time I see speculation about technological aquatic species I say "but what about fire?". I'm glad someone has addressed this.
As I stated in a stand alone comment, I don't think fire is essential to a technological civilisation. In a water world, chemical and electrolytic methods of construction can be used instead.
All Tomorrows includes this, if you haven't read it
@@brendanh8193 true, but these alternatives methods are not likely to scale to serve a civilization. Further, under water the gravity and water pressure wont allow you to study gasses, and the physics for big technologies
I wrote a book (not been published, but maybe in the future) and a species in it were intelligent, but couldn't get anywhere until other species helped them, due to them being aquatic.
Check out the children of time series. Lots of fun methods of progress in there. And they do make spaceships full of water lol
I mean, I'm still kinda stunned. Years of reading about the Fermi Paradox and this video posits a half dozen new reasons why civilizations might not arise on other planets. Absolutely fascinating. Bravo!
Why did you spend years reading about something that's outright untrue? There is no Fermi paradox because most of the values of the Drake equation are not known.
@@accelerationquanta5816
Maybe read up on the Fermi Paradox?
It has next to nothing to do with the Drake equation.
I have a different solution I haven't seen anywhere else:
A planet's biosphere is not big enough for space travel.
We are rapidly approaching/overstepping planetary boundaries, but we are nowhere near space travel.
Any technology needs a certain level of support structure and the current _planetary_ support structure can barely sustain more than one 5 nm chip foundry.
Despite the happy-talk from space geeks there is next to no return on space travel.
The Gobi dessert is way, *_way_* more accessible and hospitable than say Mars. Until we start making money from the Gobi, Mars is an even bigger money drain.
And even if we could start to mine asteroids we can't import more than ~5 times the current resource consumption before the potential energy lost when lowering the goods to Earth would heat the atmosphere as much as belching out GHGs are currently doing.
Sometimes reality is a B.
@@madshorn5826Without the Drake equation we have to assume that life doesn't exist off our planet because we have 0 evidence. Every theory I've seen can be poked full of holes or is downright ridiculous.... including yours. We just don't know and likely won't in our lifetimes.
@@accelerationquanta5816 "Why did you spend years reading about something that's outright untrue?"
you could go around and ask that question to 70% of the worlds popultion who think that there is a god ...
Normally people don't question philosophical concepts or theoretical questions.
In my own opinion: Our own civilization should be able to produce something like a "Von-Neuann" probe within the next ~200 years. Once done - it would (depending in the specific programming) seed every single starsystem in the MilkyWay galaxy within the next 1 Million years with an absolute certain proof that we exist.
If possible, they will definetly to it. I see that as a certainty since humany does a lot of shit just for the fun of it.
The more videos I watch on this topic the more I start believing in rare earth hypothesis. It seems like we hit the perfect storm of countless factors that life requires.
Life is possible. Obviously. But, yeah I think it was just a random chance joining of countless factors.
Almost like it was on purpose....
God ehh.
Perhaps our destiny is to populate the universe as the first of many to come.
The major caveat there is that we hit the perfect storm of countless factors that life *as we know it, as we ourselves are* requires. And even then, requires is a strong caveat. Who says we DID require all of that? That's one path. It's a very proven path (obviously), but perhaps not the only one, or even the best one.
Just found your channel a few days ago. Excellent content!!!
You've got a lot of great videos to watch. I'm kind of jealous to be honest.
Enjoy the ride. Lots of videos here :)
Should go back and watch previous videos. His library of videos is amazing.
Yes, watching the past ones will keep you busy for a while. I’ve been here for a few years, and still occasionally come across one I’ve missed.
After many Years here, I still come across great channels. The content is almost infinite. As long as YT doesn't censor and demonetise.
I often think about the importance of trees for humans. Would we have evolved hands capable of manipulation without first evolving to grasp tree limbs? How would we have made more complex tools without wood? Buildings? Sustainable fires? It is thought meso-americans disappearance was caused by harvesting all the trees, leaving no other resources to continue human life there. Paper, fire, tool making, housing, evolution of hands, and enventual harvesting of compressed carbon fuels, all made possible by trees.
Go give one a hug, ya hippy!
Plot twist - trees have been farming us and consuming us from the beginning.
oh for fuck sake! #SMDH
Where did trees come from, grasses that got better at photosynthesis, made lignin (the non degradable plastic of its era), and compete for light and water.
The more trees, the more oxygen, the more UV protection via Ozone, the easier trees had it, until everything caught fire anyway.
@@liam3284 well, trees came 100s of millions of years before modern C4 grasses. While like JMG put, such grasses are important now for food, really did not play that large of a role in the evolution of modern humans besides agriculture. By that time though we could already be classified as an intelligent species are would be for the most part identical to us today.
One of your best videos in recent memory. So many cool ideas! I never thought about the first fire on Earth, and never noticed that nearly all naturally occurring fire burns organic creatures in one way or another.
Worth noting in North America the initial agricultural crops for the Easter Agricultural Complex cultures initially included Goosefoot (a chenopodium variety related to Quinoa), Sunflower, Marsh Elder, and squash. None of these are grasses. The "Three Sisters" agriculture based on Corn, beans (also not a grass), and squash came thousands of years later from Central America via trade (along with a lot of religious concepts such as the "Long Nosed God" and the "Feathered Serpent God"). The adoption of those early modern varieties led to the decline of the domesticated varieties of Marsh elder and goosefoot, while the squash remained (it served to stabilize farming mounds) as did sunflower (as an auxiliary crop). Civilization in North and South America was not dependent on the domestication of corn, but it did benefit from it.
I'm so glad that we didn't have only a choice of squash... absolutely vile stuff. How anyone can eat it when there are other viable options is beyond me.
Maybe that's why grasses were selectively bred instead, lol.
Meh, brown sugar and butter. That's how you eat squash!
Yes, thank you for stating that radio waves are a discovery, not an invention.
True, but that doesn't mean there isn't another natural discovery to be made that would use something other than radio
There is a philosophical argument to be had that all inventions are actually just discoveries in the latent space of possibilities. So it's not really that profound a point in my opinion.
@@rickybloss8537I disagree. Some things are clearly invented and some are discovered. Radio waves were discovered, but radios were invented.
@@rickybloss8537 a tin can made to preserve food is not a discovery. Sure we discovered how to make the tin can, but we didn’t discover that the tin can is an immutable constant of our universe, unlike radio. Radio waves are immutable constants of our universe. We can harness, manipulate and even create them, but we didn’t discover them in the same sense that we “discovered” how to make a tin can.
@@melgross My argument still stands. Radios are an arrangement of molecules that was discovered to manipulate and control radio waves. There is a large space of possible arrangements of matter, inventions are merely a sampling of that space. Meaning they're merely a discovery of a coordinate.
Best method to watch/listen every video of JMG:
-Like every one of them after done
Ha that's my method too!
Because of course Australia has a hawk that picks up flaming sticks to start fires elsewhere.
After all, they were in cahoots with the Emus.
This is I think my favorite possible answer to the fermi paradox and is exceptionally fascinating
One interesting thought that Edward Snowden shared on the topic of alien radio signals: If you look back on the history of telecommunications technology, there is only a brief nascent period where new technologies are unencrypted. After that, security inevitably becomes a concern. Even our primitive civilization has techniques which make encrypted radio signals indistinguishable from noise. If aliens are sending encrypted radio messages, SETI could be looking right at it, but not recognize it.
Unencrypted or not, we would not receive incidental alien radio signals. Broadband radio signals from Earth are destroyed by extinction from dust before they even get to Alpha Centauri.
thank you for progressively making your videos longer over the years.
yes very progressive indeed🤦
@@MrBlack-zb2eg might want to work on your reading comprehension, you were too busy looking for an excuse to insert your politics into the conversation to realize he was using the far more frequently used and primary definition of the word progressive: piece by piece / gradually over time.
It's amazing that your videos still somehow just keep getting better.... Most underrated channel on UA-cam in my opinion. Thanks so much, I appreciate you.
How weird that i was thinking about how rare fire is in the solar system and this comes up
If their isn’t life you don’t have oil
Then plastic etc
@@aroemaliuged4776 Oil is generated from deep in the earth
Collective consciousness at work my friend
@@Scarface1337_oil comes from organic material that was on or near the surface, later trapped in the earth and compressed into "oil."
🤫 loljk
I'm a simple man. I see a JMG video I click.
Came here to say this.
It's not bedtime yet
I came to this sub thread to say don’t you say that every episode? But now I see you guys collaborate and take turns.
@@nortonman5238No you didn’t. Maybe the last part of the comment but i’d bet my house the first bit you did not.
Original.
I don't understand how you don't have a sweet asmr voice gig which keeps you too busy for this channel!!!
he does the Event Horizon podcast as well as this channel :)
I absolutely love your content, I absolutely hate the totally immersion breaking ads.
then pay for premium
@@MrBlack-zb2egI avoided premium for years, but once I finally took the plunge I don't think I could ever turn back!
@@MrBlack-zb2eg no just adblock
@@MrBlack-zb2eg The way youtube is involved in censorship and behaving towards their creators is a 100% sure way to not ever get me to pay them premium.
Love you man. Keep up the great great great work. You and the content you magically create really is a huge positive impact for my daily life and my development. One of the greatest
Someday, people will look back at this channel as the Genesis of a number of heavily debated and discussed ideas.
It’s really incredible. This, as do a lot of JMG videos, really blew me away. Well done man
Err no - there is nothing new here, it's just new to you then, I assume. But it is brilliantly presented.
@@sunnyjim1355 erhm akshually
This legit might be the best channel on UA-cam
Not just fire, and not just the % of O2, but the presence of wood, trees, was critical to humanity's civilization. Wood as fuel for smelting, for construction materials for shelter, for transportation, shipping, armaments & defense. A wood analog would be required for all of the above.
IF you could get to grasses somehow without many trees, bamboo analogs could work. Even so, local fungi could evolve to fill in the "tree niche" of some ecosystems. Ditto with local ferns.
Trees would exist on all alien worlds that depend on photosynthesis. Biomechanics say so.
@@bradleypoe6846 as someone with mycophobia that idea makes me feel physically sick.
Im so glad your channel posts like this
This channel is top tier. I don't think I'm better than anyone...except myself 20 mins ago. Thanks John.
Your videos are always great. This one was profound and changed my outlook. Thank you.
I never even thought about a few things you covered here, but this essentially covers my hypothesis on the Fermi paradox... but you're so much better at expressing it. Thank you
This thought never even crossed my mind and I've spent a lot of time thinking about the fermi paradox, life in the universe, etc. Very well done video. Crazy potential implications too. wow.
One of the best JMG videos this year. I’ve listened to it multiple times already. Thanks John!
Coal and oil and plastic and wood might be some of the the rarest things in the universe
They might well be, especially for an exo-culture that had to get technological the hard way, through LOTS of collective action and sacrifice around active volcanoes and/or those sickening, "glowy rocks", a.k.a. naturally occurring chunks of uranium and plutonium. There's dry-land ways to get around the heat issues, but not the "lack of easy hydrocarbons" issue.
Huh. So that might BE a real reason why aliens, as such, would invade. They want polymers. Not just obvious plastics but textile fibers, even if they're polyester.
I wonder if there’s an alien JMG somewhere contemplating if we can exist?
Oh, absolutely!
Let It be known, the JMG alien also has the most soothing vocalization of his species
If there is, hopefully we never meet as we'd just stand there eyeing each other suspiciously.
What would the aliens be contemplating? And who would have a better outro?
Doesn't that presuppose that Alien JMG has eyes or at least eye analogs? 🤔
Another amazing video by John. Thank you so much for your work, you entertain and educate me every single evening.
Oh man this one was even more excellent than usual, love the connection you lay out between the processes of life and the cosmos
Wonderful!!!
I loved this episode. It's a story so nicely told.
Great job!!!
This is one of my favorite UA-cam channels! I love your videos so much! The moment I see a new video, I click!
Just purchased John’s book and it’s on its way! These videos add an entertaining quality to normal life.. so, I’m glad to support the cause (and I’m sure it’ll be great ! )
Always enjoy your uploads.
I’m loving these new videos that get very specific with the history of the earth including its atmosphere composition. Nice job. So many people leave out the details.
John Michael Godier your videos are always consistently awesome, I hope you have as much fun making these as I do watching them. Much love from across the pond 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
Fire content! As always! - Thanks for this one - enjoyed it. It made me think & ponder.
Been playing a lot of Elden ring, and now we get a JMG video about the role of fire in the development of life. Sounds very familiar!
I remember when I first subbed to his channel. It was just under 25-30k back then. Thanks for making these videos. I tend to watch your content whenever I need something to listen to while I work irl.
One of my fermi hypotheses has been rare fossil fuels, or to say rare very specific extinction events. We had to have the correct magnitude of extinction events (that left no scavengers for the next wave whose corpses sunk, etc etc), and at the correct time relative to our existence (enough time for oil to form) in order for us to be around at the right time to dig it up to make plastics and escape our gravity well with fuel. Same concept with plants and coal. We may be the super advanced ones.
Just the fact that in the 4.6 billion year history of Earth we are here at just the right time to see a total eclipse of the Sun, as the Moon is just the right distance from Earth to block the Sun's disk at a 1 to 1 ratio, is mind-boggling.
There is no "fermi paradox", so there is no reason to imagine justifications for it.
Fascinating video, very thought provoking, and brilliantly done.
This is definitely the best channel on UA-cam. I need this to calm down
Thanks JMG, another awesome video!
that was a really decent video. good analysis, no giant unexplained steps, lots of different arguments from separate view points. a really decent video. sub
I think this just raises another question. Plants and photosynthetic life appear to be able to modify the global environment in a way that inherently balances things around the critical atmospheric oxygen level between combustibility and planetwide fires. It may be that planets with merely the right ingredients and atmospheric conditions for terrestrial plants to arise at all, then go on to more or less inevitably reach a similar oxygen equilibrium to earth over geologic time scales.
speculation on a sample size of one isnt very sound
Extremely thought provoking once again. I sit down in awe and just smile at these simple facts you display in the manner you present them. I distinctly remember the one about octopuses not being able to build a supercomputer regardless of how intelligent they are. Thank you so much for these brain opening insights John. You've done a great service to science and education for many years now. Inspiring a new generation with new techniques to look at things, bravo. All my love and appreciation from the UK 🙏❤️
One question is how common woody plants are. On the one hand the chief structural material of land plants is cellulose, which is a polymer of sugars which in turn are a basic part of biochemistry as we know it. But on the other hand it wasn't necessarily guaranteed that plants would use cellulose as their main structural material. Some creatures use minerals to form shells, teeth or bones; others use proteins to form their hard structural elements. Arthropods use chitin for their shells and vertebrates use keratin to form hard parts such as scales, claws, horns and hooves. None of these animal compounds burn very well compared to cellulose. If a quirk of evolution produced plants that used proteins and minerals instead of cellulose to grow their structural elements, fire would be much harder.
I am watching your videos for a few years now to fall asleep it is hard sometimes because they are so interresting, i just want to say thank you for you and your videos ❤❤❤❤❤
Thank you for the video John
I feel this is some very clear thinking on this topic. Cheers!
I don't miss a video, your content is top notch, your approach tickles the mind, you got a great voice and the cherry on top is what to expect John is "eyeing suspiciously..." but
The Giant Carboniferous Fire Mosquito is in a class of its own!
Thanks for another great video!
That was an awesome talk!!!
Thank you!
What a fantastic video, and extra comforting before the eclipse.
Super fascinating as always!
I thought we inherited fire from Prometheus.
Thnk you JMG for your Videos regarding the Fermi paradox. The more I know, the more I tend to the rare earth explanation, at least regarding intelligent life.
new JMG video, dope stuff
One of my favorite subjects to think about and there is not much content out there about this particular topic.
Great video, love this channel.
Let me stop what I'm doing here and check this JMG video out real quick.
Mind blowing as always. 😊
Thanks John my yt has been dry all night.
Much love from birmingham England xx
John Michael God-tier
Land based life is so important. I suspect there are thousands of planets with highly intelligent octopuses / whales / etc - but with zero tools, industry, technology.
Locked in life. And it gets worse, imagine oceanic life in ice shell moons like Europa. They might be highly intelligent, but have no way to even learn that the rest of the universe exists outside their ocean.
@@JohnMichaelGodier "Say Bill, ever wonder what's outside those walls?"
"That's dangerous thinking Ted"
"OK"
There were so many new ways of thinking about evolution and technology in this video… I’m delightfully stunned.
Nice, well done, love this video.
this is remarkably good, I never thought baby of this, wow, thank you. so interesting.
Very very good vid 👌👏keep em comin
I've been saying this exact solution to people for years, thanks man, a great episode
Very good one, John.
Another great video John! Now I have to keep an eye on the deer outside and see if they start playing with matches.
Best episode of very many good episodes.
Awesome information
I kinda figured out the Fermi paradox a little while ago when I was stoned.
While the conditions for life aren't that difficult to meet. The conditions for advanced sapient life are insane. If they managed to evolve anywhere in the galaxy, they would be almost identical to us.
Symmetrical bodies
An upright bipedal gait
If not fingers and hands, then tentacles are mandatory. They'll need that high level of dexterity and fine motor skills that most species lack.
They need to be at least predatory, if not omnivorous.
But the most important part of the Fermi paradox, is it works under the assumption that an alien race is more advanced than us. If the universe is 14 billion years old, age our world is 4 billion. It means that our planet has existed for a total of 27% of the entire existence of everything. Maybe we're not a young species, but an old one. And other races just haven't evolved yet. We're probably not alone, but we're probably one of only a handful of sapient advanced races.
Your videos are allways amazig!
This was fascinating and awesome!
Thank you, John. You are this insomniac’s plan B for when sleep doesn’t come: get up, make some tea, put on a random JMG video (often more than one) and work on a crochet project I have lying around until I‘m done drinking the tea, go back to bed and try again.
Usually does the trick.
Great podcast!
This is one of your best videos 👍 I think this is a likely explanation for why we're not finding advanced life, it's just so extremely rare. And less advanced life might be more common but difficult to spot from a great distance.
🙏very pleasant and informative videos / mini docs. :) keep up the good work! 📿
You sir, are a gift to the internet and humanity :) Thank you for your insights and thought provoking content.
These aren't his insights these ideas have been around for a long time
A planet constantly ablaze with burning fluorine compounds would be terrifying... just an entire planet constantly exploding because its atmosphere is made of FOOF
Yep, and the only consolation prize is that any life that survives all that? Has to be close to indestructible, and have a hell of a metabolism that actually uses FOOF in their mitochondria equivalents to burn calories. I mean, who knows, FOOF might actually beat phosphorus in this regard. (*shrugs*)
Would fluorine be capable of a recycling reaction? Oxygen turns to CO2, used by plants to make O2. Without an ability to recycle each others 'waste gas', oxygen would run out. CO2 would probably sufficiently outgas from geological activity.
Thank god another solution to the Fermi Paradox! It is almost two weeks since the last newest solution was found. :)
lol
Found? These ideas have been around for a long while now. This channel just regurgitates
This is very interesting. My knowledge of this used to only go as far as the stuff you said about aquatic life. This is the Occam's Razor compliant solution, in my opinion.
Such a great realistic insight vid..
I love the way this man thinks. Another sensational video JMG. Thank you for you work.
Y'all should read his books.
This is an incredible solution to the paradox! It's also a fantastic illustration of the lacunae in the Drake Equation.
Excellent considerations! 🏆
Quality video Ty
Shutout from rehab. Love you JMG
On earth, the connection between fire and life goes even deeper. There's a tiny fire burning in every cell of our bodies. The oxidation reaction at the heart of aerobic cellular respiration is chemically the same process as the reaction in macroscopic fire. Nearly every multicellular organism on earth relies on these tiny fires to power cellular machinery. Life is fire, and fire is life.
I'm glad you mentioned hydrothermal vents and alternate oxidizers. A very intelligent mollusk might craft ceramics similar to a 3D printer. Other life forms could produce polymers. It gets stranger from there.
Yeah, it has to be left open. Different circumstances lead to different outcomes.
Imagine alien deep sea lifeforms using geothermal vents as their “fire.” I imagine they’d fight wars, if they got that advanced, over the limited number of vents that exist, and have to schedule when to manufacture different products over the vents because they have to change the infrastructure.
But why would they bother if life in the sea already gave them everything they need? We were helpless in our environment without fire, but fish are anything but.
@@jota6262There are Many sea Animals even Here on Earth that Use tools.
Its not That hard To imagine That on An ocean World, they May desire Stronger, more Durable tools.
Of course, That would Depend on The temperature Of said Vents. on Earth they Only get To about ~400C, so The vents Would need To be 2-3 times Hotter, if They were To be Used for Most useful Metals.
Thank you for this!! 🌍☀️🌑🔥💥
Honestly the fermo paradox videos are the best