Would Life Really Develop Differently on Another Planet? | Convergent Evolution
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- Опубліковано 23 січ 2025
- Finding out the appearance of aliens from what we already know about convergent evolution. Enjoy 10% off 6” and 8.5” MOVA Globes with code ASTRUM. Shop now on bit.ly/astrumx...
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divergent evolution coevolution convergent vs divergent evolution convergent and divergent evolution divergent vs convergent evolution
I'm skeptical about the Kardashev scale. It strikes me as naive, even primitive. The use of increasing amounts of energy as a civilization advances might have seemed logical in 1964 when Nikolai Kardashev proposed it, but what if true advancement consists of doing more with less? Compare, for example, the energy consumption of a tungsten light bulb vs. an LED.
Great to see this point made. I too think that there are very problematic assumptions in the scale, and indeed most arguments about what comprises 'advanced civilisations'.
valid criticism, but even when you can do more with less I'd argue that makes acquiring more energy even more attractive. a civilization that's already expansionist enough to reach space would probably want to keep going, or at the very least there's nothing I can think of that would make every single spacefaring civilization say "that's enough" and become zero growth.
@@xXx_Regulus_xXx- It might be that our belief in unlimited growth is a sign that we are an immature species. You know what else has unlimited growth? Cancer.
The scale is about more than just energy consumption. It is about scale. By becoming more and more efficient you can use less energy per unit. But the only way to stop per unit expansion is population control. No matter how efficient you get at using energy, your civilization will continue to grow until something stops it. And thus your need for more energy will also grow. Just look to the past 100 years of our own planet. We went from around 1.5 billion world population in 1918 to 7.5 billion around 2018. And while I don't think that high of a rate will continue, a doubling every 100 years is not out of the question. And you can't increase efficiency by 200% every century from now on. So your energy needs will increase because of the increase in demand.
@@racookster the cancer comparison requires a host organism that's harmed by the cancer's expansion, so I don't think it makes sense unless you think a dead universe is somehow harmed by life.
I think there are a grand amount of unique evolution paths across the universe that we cannot even imagine, but I think the amount of species we’d find that are very similar to what we’ve seen at home will be immense and a little creepy
What is the source of the biological instructions in DNA? Don’t ask a biology student, they will laugh you to scorn. Don’t ask a scientist in the field of biology, they will run from you.
I agree, however they would be capable of so much I feel they may make progress far quicker and from a distance that they would not use to many resources on us for general research. At the same time they could do the opposite, though.
True, but convergent evolution really is a thing. And his arguments of the needs of alien life are sound. First of all it is creepy that they will probably have DNA that looks similar to ours. But possible variations are extremely large 🙂 And then you are right the possible pathways to an intelligent solution are immens and awesome
They would have some sort of "hand" to make tools and interact with their environment. It might not look like our hand, but would have the same function.
They would also have eyes to see what they eat and to prevent swimming or running into walls. And they would have the ability to ear in the atmosphere of their world. Really useful if you notice approaching predators. And since you can already hear, might as well develop the ability to make sound to warn your fellow beings of danger.
@@denvan3143The source is the nucleotides
The fact nature created eyes is insane
Something so incredibly complex.
Because nature didn't. Anyone with a brain knows it's impossible.
Eyes are just light sensitive cells. Specially our eyes, they are not that complicated, in fact they are quite faulty. It's not that insane
@joelspringman523 yeah then how does it happen?, lol. Religious people think nature creating eyes is ridiculous, but magic gods doing it is fine lmao. It's impossible! It must be a magic spaceless powerful wizard who created eyes out of nothing obviously!
@@davidspencer343Galactic corporate bioengineering laboratories with very advanced technology, combined with consciousness created all the species on this and other planets. Scientists are slowly remembering this technology and will be able to replicate what was done before. Nothing new under the Sun.
Funny, I had a conversation with my 6 year old nephew (he was lately fascinated by aliens) about why they are being portayed this way in tv and we talked how big black eyes might be caused by environments with small amount of light. It always fascinates me how some kids are so open-minded. In this way I am silmilar, I can apply logic to everything without ridiculising it :D
Cows have big black eyes. It's to see predators at night.
Lucky you. It's a rare trait, like humility.
I always thought the grey aliens were wearing some kind of flight suits and the eyes are actually viewports
a 6 year old talking like that is a really great sign of intelligence..
HG Wells imagined future humans in a way very similar to grey aliens. Trey the Explainer goes into it in "Scientifically Accurate Aliens" here on UA-cam. In that case those Aliens are technically descended from us.
Something most people don't *seem* to realize about the Kardeshev scale is what it means to the individual within the civilization. At "0.7", a single individual in our civilization today can plow, by themselves, an entire valley or remove a mountain or clear an entire forest or remove the total world population in 100AD or FLY around the entire planet. These would be difficult feats, but are entirely without one person's grasp.
Now, think of a Type II civilization individual where a single person would like to change the color of a planet's oceans because it is that person's birthday, or perhaps the moon is too far away for an eclipse, or there is something worth seeing on the other end of the galaxy. Actions entirely impossible for our population of 8 billion to achieve will be done by a single person in a Type II. How much energy does it take to accelerate a bus sized object to the speed of light? Perhaps these individuals would recklessly do this to order cheese. The power of our "0.7" civilization is used for bitcoins and porn and ordering cheese, so why not use the entire mass of a tiny asteroid for drying my hair instantly, yet perfectly?
If you can manage it, think of a Type III civilization. An INDIVIDUAL in this civilization would have the footprint of a constellation of stars. That person could travel to other galaxies or create planets. Matter would be a thing that has no meaning accept to do whatever you want with. One single person would wage, for our perspective, a Star Wars style war or have entire planets as their personal gardens.
Now imagine further an entire species population spectrum with these types of manipulations at their disposal and you can get just a hint of an idea at why they would require such utterly vast amounts of energy. The question should be raised to the surface of how much total energy and resource consumption it takes just to for us to interact on this video page, and maybe then we can get a little better grasp at why someone would look at a star for energy and then all of the stars.
Humans : Get your cycle off my lawn kid !!
Aliens : Get your space shuttle off my solar system kid!
I get the premise, but unfortunately, everything is ultimately limited by the speed of light. It has a much bigger impact on how advanced civilizations can ever be, than you would like to think. Consider this, it takes light about one day to cross a star system, and several years to reach the closest one. You can't get around it either, as it's the speed of causality itself so any method of FTL, if possible at all, will allow travel back in time and violate causality, which, well, the universe doesn't like that so it might as well be impossible.
Empires will forever be limited to one star system at a time. A type III might be possible but we're talking about a sphere of influence so vast any kinds of information will need tens of thousands of years to reach the far ends. It will be more like a network of billions of type IIs that collectively could be called a type III, but this network will never be more connected than the occasional shipment and some information sharing between the closest neighbors. Individuals will reside in their native star systems all their lives, never knowing what's happening in other star systems in real time as the most recent news they receive are anywhere from about 5 years old to 100,000 years old. People might occasionally take one way trips to the closest star systems, especially if events such as war or genocide are taking place in their native systems, but no more spectacular than that.
Such a network spanning the entire galaxy will take upto a million years to build if we're talking about the Milky Way. What I imagine is stellar hopping. It starts with sending generation ships from Earth to every star system upto 15 light years distant. At 0.2c, the longest trip will take upto 75 years, so not too bad, could be done in 3 generations. Now they spend a few decades building a colony on the star systems they landed on before they launch their own fleet of generation ships to every star system upto 15 light years away from them, except the ones that has already been colonized by others. Rinse and repeat. After about a million years, there will be humans on every star system in the Milky Way galaxy.
There will be countless languages, cultures, and even species of humans across the galaxy. And linguistic, cultural and genetic influences could sometimes spread surprisingly far amongst the galactic populations considering everyone is interacting with their closest neighbors all the time so everything is still connected in a way. It's still quite an interesting future despite the limitations.
Now, extragalactic colonization is off limits. There are close to no stars between galaxies so stellar hopping is cerntainly not possible. The entire distance has to be traversed by the same ship alone with no stopping and aiding. For a trip to Andromeda, this can take upto 12 million years at 0.2c, and 2.5 million years at 0.71c (from the ship's perspective). No ships are going to last that long structurally. 2.5 million years is a long ass time, hitting intergalactic particles at that speed alone is going to erode the whole ship long before it's even half way. There are no way around it either, you could accelerate it to close to the speed of light so travel time according to the ship might be reduced to let's say 100 years, but the kinetic energy of those particles will also increase relativistically, so erosion is still imminent. The next timeframe for further human expansion would most likely be when Andromeda collides with the Milky Way 4 billion years in the future. But this far into the future we most likely don't look remotely human anymore.
Interstellar colonization and expansion is certainly possible, but we're ultimately stuck in our own galaxy, no matter how you wanna twist the narrative.
Fantastic visualisation I like it. If these sentient beings become philosophers could they reject material goods and maybe transform to energy particles and cut down on their 'McDonald's type' material desires.
@@jamespkinsella5018 They don't need material goods, doesn't mean they reject them.
If we were type 4 civilisation we would be able to date your mom
My concern is that when a species attains a certain level of intelligence and technology, they effectively remove themselves from the process of evolution. Maybe with unforseen and disastrous consequences. This might even be something that occurs predictably and could function as a great filter that might explain the Fermi paradox.
i think the great filter is at the start of life. almost all life start different than it did on earth (not with rna but something different). it can replicate but it cant scale up to complex life. once it duplicated itself other forms of life dont get a chance.
absurd, evolution isn't some chastising force bringing down those who get to out of line, evolution is obsolescent as it's only function is to allow us to live long enough to procreate. we can only ever surpass it
@Uncle Charlie🔧 You are really missing out on the best human feature
I'd say any species advanced enough to halt natural selection processes will find a way to cure or exclude the proliferation of genetic defects within a few generations.
We tend to look at it from a compassionate bias, assuming they wouldn't do what a few silly Germans did in the 1930s-40s. But before they did what they did, Eugenics were a pretty popular topic in the scientific comunity back then. To varying degrees of radicalism. From simply promoting healthy lifestiles and partner selection all the way to forced sterilization of people below a certain IQ.
Would they ask the same moral questions we do or would pragmatism win over?
On another hand, a way almost completely free of moral dillemas would be genetic editing. Still in the realm of scirnce fiction, but what if we could eliminate all genetic predisposition to diseases? Maybe even tweak out a few quirks with in vitro genetic editing? Would that be evolutiin or genetic engineering?
i cant remember what the theory's called, but any advanced civ would presumably reach a point of salvation or self-destruction if left to continue. what if we are on a head-on collision path with our planet's destruction? have any intelligent species survived this? or have all that reach that point died or now dying? so many questions!
I applaud you for changing the original thumbnail of large headed humanoid extra-terrestrials, to something a bit less ridiculous.
I just never know what you, as subscribers, might find most interesting!
@@astrumspace For me it could be just a black rectangle. I see Astrum, I click.
It is useful to fine-tune thumbnails to attract new subs though!
I must confess I don’t recognize it. Hints?
Ya, I mean we are apes, why would aliens from a different solar system evolve into ape like creatures as well?
@@astrumspace One alternative to Kardashev was suggested by Carl Sagan in Cosmic Connection when he wrote, “But there may be more significant ways to characterize civilizations than by the energy they use…An important criterion of a civilization is the total amount of information that it stores.” He proposed a lettered scale from A - Z where each letter meant an order of magnitude increase in the volume of information a society holds. When he wrote the book in the early 70s, Earth was an ‘H’ on the scale. We are now somewhere around an ‘R,’ and are continuing to move rapidly on down the alphabet due to exponential increases in computer speed, along with data generation and storage technologies. Though in principal not a bad idea, Sagan seems to have underestimated how rapidly we are creating new data, with a projection that the world total could hit 173 zettabytes (a zettabyte is 1 with 23 zeros after it) by 2025. It is also difficult to determine what data should count. For instance, if a million copies of a best-selling book are printed, does every letter in every book only count once, or a million times? Or if a digital picture is shared widely, perhaps as part of a viral meme, does it count once or is every new share a piece of data?
I remember Sagan saying something like there are at least 5 species advanced as us in the universe. It is not a matter of where they are as much as when they are. Thanks, Alex, for the thought provoking video!
I used to believe that, and clearly Sagan was brilliant, but I'm not so sure we can be that confident any more. It's seeming more and more like our configuration of a solar system is pretty rare. Plus we aren't even sure how important things like a large moon are.
I'm not at all saying we know there's nothing out there. I'm only saying I think we need to seriously consider the possibility we are the only instance of an insanely rare phenomena.
@@1three7 is a large moon really necessary for life to exist?
@@skan5728 while it might not be a dealbreaker, a large enough moon stabilizes a planet thus making climate more constant and mild. Meanwhile a planet without a big enough moon or no moon will experience big climate swings due to the planet’s unstable orbit and tilt
Edit: forgot to add how important a mild and constant climate is for life, view it as a slow burning controlled fire to cook your food vs a fireplace that randomly either flares up or just dies down a little; the food is more likely to get burnt or get undercooked. Not the best analogy haha but you get my point
@@skan5728 I think the sentiment is more to do with how rare our setup is, we have life that we haven't seen elsewhere and an unusually (as far as we know) large moon so perhaps there's a correlation. Personally I think it's a bonus, but not a certain requirement.
@@1three7 It's a simple function of probabilities. When considering how many star systems exist in the observable universe (more than 10 x 10e100...), what might be thought of as "rare" becomes exceedingly likely to exist in many places, even if we cannot communicate or discretely observe them.
The three body problem has exactly this idea! The trisolarans can hibernate or “dehydrate” to survive the three body system of their solar system. And they are nearly mirrored bodies so during eras when the heat is intense, they reflect most of the heat. Great book!
It's also an interesting example of how an alien logic may differ from ours. With trisolarians, they lived as a hivemind of sorts, so they couldn't comprehend a concept of lying.
One of my main concerns with alien life is understanding. Even if we can somehow translate our languages, what if that is not enough? Our logic processes may simply so dissimilar that they are incompatible, and lack of understanding would likely cause war.
I think the movie "Arrival" tries to tackle this concept of alien logic. I liked that movie, the idea of a different system of logic changing your perception of time that drastically is a little absurd but the basic theme of the movie in my opinion is the valid concerns about our ability to comprehend another species' logic or their ability to comprehend ours.
I haven't heard of a form of logic that is incomprehensible to humans but is that due to limited possibilities or limited imagination?
Obviously you are not a cat owner.
I find the idea incredibly unlikely. Animals on our world have been shown to have intelligence in a similar method to ourselves, much like how we can team cats and dogs to use the toilet or octopuses literally leaving their tanks to eat the fish in the other tank and climb back in their's. Intelligence doesn't come out of nowhere, it's iterated on.
For humans, it's believed our intelligence formed as a side affect from better visual processing and threat detection. Our brains became tuned heavily to process images even in dark or bright lighting and even produce new data in our peripherals and blind spots. It's very likely any other intelligent life also formed intelligence as a side effect of a survival instinct.
The main ways I see it could be different is using say smells or touch for communication verses eyes for us, but seeing how often eyes formed here, it seems unlikely they also wouldn't have eyes. Even bats have eyes. I'd say our main concern would more be about syntax and general communication structure. Even if I know a few worse in Japanese for example, they're phases tend to be disorganized verses English so saying a direct translation is basically speaking the sentence backwards to them. It just doesn't sound coherent.
@@Skylancer727 So you're saying our intelligence and capacity to do, think and communicate the way we do as a species is more so unintentional? Or a byproduct of evolution?
@@tobycooper9218 Well yes evolution isn't intention. More like happy accidents.
@@Skylancer727 I could be wrong but I thought our intelligence came from communication? Our ability to warn others in tribes and passing down of knowledge. That could've came after eyes. Do you have a video I could watch? Cause I love this stuff.
I think if an alien civilization could colonize the galaxy they wouldn’t need earth’s puny resources. I also doubt they would find us boring, many humans dedicate their lives to the study of bacteria.
They may not need but if they grab all the resources they encounter they will expand faster. And it's a bigger risk that we will encounter aliens that expands faster than slower.
I don't know if alien visitors would find us boring, we may study bacteria, but to know of our culture and our science, the aliens would have to study us!
@@Steyr6500 You know what a bunch of bacteria growing on a Petri dish is called?
True. Resource wars are very terrestrial concept that doesn't apply if you have access to the basically endless resources of space. The only thing on earth that might possibly be of any particular interest to an extraterrestrial would be our biology. Life can make some amazing things, like silk, honey etc that might easily be unique. Anything mineral or chemical you can find in excessive abundance elsewhere, if you're capable of getting there.
I think alien bacteria would blow our minds
I agree tool use is important. One other intelligent animal we might look to though is octopuses. Tentacles would be fantastic for manipulating things. Those might only work in liquid or dense atmospheres though.
YES! I’ve been saying this for YEARS! Total aliens 👽 🐙 👽
Why do you think some scientists think Octopuses are aliens?
The problem with aquatics is that electricity doesn’t work in water so real technological advancement would be problematic.
@@jlee1014 while I agree, I'm not sure that water is their only habitable environment. They "explore" coastal areas now. It's not hard to see them evolve into a land form.
I mean, think of elephant trunks. They work just fine in our atmosphere, and they're pretty much just a tentacle fused with a nose.
7:18 A species that relies on echolocation vs visual sight would have a hard time developing astronomy. It might even be impossible and therefore would be incapable of having a space program.
Nah, science isn't limited to the given sensory equipment a species has, they can know about stars perhaps as random concentrations of EM Radiation in the Void They might want to measure their sun and end up measuring the night sky by accident.
Try making a computer for a person who can't see. I mean a computer useful for real scientific work of all types.
tough to smelt metal under water too! ;D
@@ronschlorff7089
Echo location also used by bats in air.
They seem to "see" very detailed info.
@@oneshothunter9877 Yes, I know that well, I'm a retired wildlife biologist. I had many colleagues who did field studies on them, but as a precaution they all had to have rabies vaccines to protect them from the disease!! ;D
It's weird how it seems more disturbing finding aliens that look exactly like us, than aliens that look monstrously terrifying
maybe its bc we have things here on earth that look monstrous and terrifying but we keep them in zoos lol, humans much scarier
BRUH
el que salio de la alcantarilla:
@@vereor66
I’m surprised no mention on how us humans are even here because of the meteor that wiped out the majority of life during the dinosaur age. How different would the evolution of life occurred if that never happened…
Dinosaurs would still rule lol there have been five global type extinction events that we know about in Earths history. The last one being what eliminated the predators and allowed mammals to rise from the ashes
I’ve seen an alien, it’s actually my sister. The stuff she does defies logic for any normal human being.
Alex thank you so much for this videos, thank you for helping understand a little bit better the stars and the cosmo. I know Sagan would be so proud of people like and your team for inspiring others to learn about ourselves and the cosmos.
I've been watching your videos for a long time now and the quality only improves each time. You pick such interesting topics and clearly have some understanding on what WE as viewers would like to watch. I'd also like to point out that I appreciate the fact that all the sponsorships are actually useful products/services I want! I've purchased a handful of things via a sponsorship ad on this channel. It just works! Keep going! Don't ever sell financial services :') lol.
Thanks!
The galaxy is so immense and the distances so vast that we may as well be alone, and considering how we've interacted with other creatures on this planet it may be just as well.
I had a dream last night about an alien planet. The early life on that planet somehow merged together to form complex life much sooner than ours did. So essentially, one creature covered their entire planet. It developed something similar to photosynthesis for energy. By the time I discovered it in the dream, the creature believed that it was the planet. We were faced with the decision of mining into the creature to see the rock beneath or taking it on its word. The creature had no defences since it hadn’t come from survival of the fittest. So it was a moral question of curiosity vs harm - was it worth damaging this thing to learn about its world?
Very strange dream and interesting to see this when I woke up from it!
There are ways to detect rock below water without needing to touch it directly, or even see it. Assuming similar fundamental biological processes to terrestrial life, I’d suggest some form of sonar or radar, maybe x-ray backscatter if it’s particularly resilient. All you need to know is whether there’s an interface between creature and not-creature, and if so, what that interface looks like with different diagnostics.
I had a dream last night about your little brother.
Celestial bodies in dreams represent greater wisdom and knowledge. Dreaming about planets is a sign to open yourself to the most profound meaning of life indeed. Your mind moves to a higher level of awareness.
This would make a great sci Fi novel
That’s one weird dream
I feel like civilizations could be way further behind us on some planets because imagine a planet where dinosaurs don't get extinct and the impact that has.
Maybe dinosaur-like creatures start a civilization. Hadrosaurs had a very high EQ and were bipedal ornithopods that lived in the late Cretaceous. Maybe Star Trek wasn't too far off with the Voth.
very nice - no horror just facts and QUESTIONS!
I think efficiency will become extremely important before interstellar travel. Being able to break apart any element into the smallest base parts before reassembling it into the one needed. Reusing absolutely everything in an infinite cycle.
I’m not convinced by the “aliens wouldn’t have fur” statement. The main reason humans don’t have much fur is because they evolved in a hot, tropical savanna environment and were above a certain size. Elephants and rhinos evolved in the same environment and also have very little hair or fur.
A human who lives in this environment won’t have much need for clothes, and in the past extensive clothing wasn’t developed until humans spread out of the savanna and started occupying regions with harsher weather. It’s worth noting that many human societies who stayed in similar environments traditionally did not wear much clothing. Clothing is universal today mostly because of cultural and religious edicts brought on by colonization.
So if sapient aliens evolve in, say, a cold climate, they probably will have heavy coats of fur to protect them from the elements.
God im just not looking forward to alien furries
@@hexapodc.1973 Or "skinnies" if they have fur already
you make sense
That's pretty much my problem with this video. He fails to recognize a lot of the little ways that our path was influenced by our specific environment
@@ambiguousparadoxyes!!!! even a little change in the environment a species lives in can totally change its features. humans look like we do because of VERY specific conditions, like the group of species we previously evolved from, the environment (including climate, atmosphere and vegetation), the other animals that lived with us, our diet and lifestyle, even gravity affected it
The insight into the development of same characteristics among different species is great! I never thought about convergent evolution before this video. Astrum never fails to impress! Thank you!
@Adolfizzz0 WTF
Convergent evolution. I'm skeptical. All these different eyes function more or less the same and are positioned roughly where one would expect to find eyes. The basic plan is shared from a common ancestor. Locomotion, reproduction, digestion, senses etc are roughly speaking very similar among all species of organized life on Earth from the earliest examples to the present.
@@parmmohan4603 it's some kind of spam. Hope you didn't read all of it.
@@pakde8002 You are missing the whole point. All these traits have adjusted with precision to their environments. The details of these adjustments and requirements is the key.
It's fascinating to think, given the unbelievably immense scale of the universe, that it's entirely possible there is an advanced civilization somewhere out there...............that look nearly indistinguishable to us humans.
That's really amazing to think about. And they could live on a planet that we would be able to walk around on unaided, breathe their air, etc. And yet....they would be SO FAR away....we'll never ever know about them. But imagine visiting such a place!?
The sense of uncanniness would be overwhelming I imagine. So much would seem the same....and yet literally everything would be different enough. What would their sense of humor be like? Would they have novels? Art? Movies? Music? Bands? Would they have fashion? What would their social lives be like? Would they have bars? Would they use drugs? What about their religions? Would they have crime...and how would they deal with it? What about diseases and medical care...what would that look like?
It's really humbling to think about the very real probability of such a place....and what it would be like.
And existentially quite sad to think we'll almost certainly never know about those places and those beings....
I loved this video so much. It made me also think of the various points raised by folks like Larry Niven when musing on what aliens MIGHT be like. Niven also pointed out something that I found comforting: while expanding ever outward in search of more resources IS a very likely pressure to send a species into space, pure curiosity is the MOST likely thing to make them look to the sky at all. So beings that evolved on some other planet will almost certainly be as curious as we are, even if they are also as aggressive as we are. Curiosity means listening. Listening means a chance to communicate. And THAT means, a chance to make peaceful agreements. A purely warlike culture would never even think to negotiate unless and until their opponent wins a battle. (At least, that's the kind of pattern we've seen in our own history, and a type of logic does lie in such an attitude.)
There's another thing mentioned in here - that beings may evolve in the water. Such a thing might mean they are VERY intelligent - and have absolutely no inclination to leave their home! After all, the eyes that evolve for dealing with water, don't necessarily detect starlight at all. Why look at the sky and question if you're alone, if you can't really see the stars in the first place?
One last thing: humans are not just masters of our environment. As Niven pointed out in the same essay about what they might be like...humans are already masters at communicating with aliens. Because we aren't telepaths, and so we MUST communicate with beings that do not necessarily understand us - sometimes with animals, like understanding that your dog needs to go outside. It's not like the dog speaks human-language words! But even between other humans - what if they don't speak the same language as you? We find ways to manage! Heck, even when you speak to your own child, you are talking to an alien: the child's lived experience is necessarily not identical to yours, and if they're still LEARNING language...
So I find it reassuring to think about these factors. Aliens will almost certainly be entities with which we can, eventually, communicate, and once we get them talking, we stand a better than even chance of making friends. Because at our heart, despite the bloody history we share, humans are the best at exactly that. Making friends.
But they may instead develop Virtual Reality into something that removes the desire to risk the hazards of interstellar travel.
evolving in water, a species could easily explore the land with 'land' suits. the newly found land resources might allow them to explore space. water life forms may not be hindered, but possibly at an advantage since their first leap out of their natural environment is relatively easy. keeping in mind the difficulty of space exploration - gravity, vacuum, radiation - all which require extreme protective technology.
Yes, all well and good what you say, but, the aliens may simply want to come here "to serve man"!! LOL ;D
Ok but I feel like the U.S. Military would probably shoot them down or something
Very well said, I completely agree. And we risk a self-fulfilling prophecy when we overstate the difficulty of communicating or finding common ground. Another historical parallel…
On the scale of life and advancement, remember this: Can a single cell perceive and/or find evidence of a human being?
If they can make tools absolutely
I find your vlogs exceptionally informative and inspirational! Thanks for your efforts!
This kinda reminds me of the tv show “Farscape” they have a humanoid species. They have expanded and settled many many galaxies, solar systems, and space it’s self. They look like us, so we assume that we came from them as well. It’s a pretty cool theory and a great show.
I Also believe it would be impossible for aliens to not be able see, have hands able to work with equipment, or a way to hear. Without seeing, you can’t really make electronics (we discovered electricity through lightning) without being able to hear, we couldn’t really communicate easily. And without hands we couldn’t manipulate objects, become self aware, and progress
Since galactic nebulae are each literally vast enough to produce hundreds of solar systems, I imagine that life might well exist in swaths of similarity throughout different regions therein. For example, I don’t think it should be surprising to one day discover not only other forms of life in our galactic neighborhood, but life with many specific similarities to our own within nearby solar systems that could rightly be considered sibling systems to ours (i.e., systems that also originated from the same nebula from which ours did). Travel much farther away, and perhaps there exist neighboring regions to ours that originated from other molecular clouds and which therefore (and yet likewise) contain life with many more intra-regional similarities than inter-regional ones. In the end, however, I think the most intriguing part of discovering other forms of life will be whether they evolved via DNA, something similar to DNA, or something as yet unimagined by human minds.
We I were to entertain it, if lifeforms that are pure energy are real, they definitely don't use DNA.
Stars don't stay grouped like that unfortunately. Galaxies are like coffee and milk mixed together so maybe nearby galaxies would have similar life types but.... Star systems don't stay near other star systems they are born with often
Technically I believe there is only one Solar system. The one that has the star named Sol in the middle, also referred to as the Sun.
This such a “head ahh” message bro don’t even know what he talking about. Literally preaching ‘youtube shorts’ knowledge. Stop trying to sound smart gang 👍
Check out Robin Hanson’s ideas about sibling panspermia. You may find it interesting given your above comment. I learned about him on Lex Fridman’s podcast.
Responding to the video title - an illuminating example was right here on Earth itself. We had a time when life was completely different to what it is now during the time of the dinosaurs. Had life continued on the path it was on without being interrupted, my guess is that mammalian species would not have come to dominance, and therefore we humans would never have come about. If any species gained some sort of higher intelligence as a product of necessity, it likely would have been on a branch of some reptilian species - which would have been the much more prolific format of higher-order life-forms on Earth. This is all kind of like the "Butterfly Effect" - and adding on completely different planetary conditions would be one hell of a wing-flap.
I remember hearing that some component of sight, I forgot what specifically, evolved only once while the hardware like a lense evolved independently multiple times. I say this because sight outside of earth may not be as common as it is found here on earth.
I can give you one good reason that most dominant species will develop something similar to sight, and that is because light is the fastest way to transmit information. That's why it dominated here when hearing has so many other advantages over light.
Sound is omnidirectional and carries much more information than light, but since light moves SIGNIFICANTLY faster, using light sensing organs gives organisms a longer lead time to respond to that input. Faster response time almost always means a higher survival rate. Hence why light-sensing organs developed so often.
@@housellama It's even more significant than that. It's strongly believed we are only intelligent at all as our mind became tuned to image processing. It's why we see more detail in our peripherals than is actually visible through the eye itself and even have detail in our blind spot where there is literally no image at all.
We are also exceptionally good at spotting small subtle difference in berries, fruits, dirt vs contamination, and even moving brush from the wind vs an animal moving in grass. These are huge pressures to have better processing and are likely one of the primary drivers of our intelligences. Another of course is our naturally weakness. Obviously if we were as capable as a bear needing to spot predators would be less significant hence why apex predators are rarely that intelligent vs lessor predators.
Sure evolved in very simple animals as skin cells became sensitive to light Any organism that evolves where electromagnetic radiation is present would likely develop an ability to detect and interpret it.
@@housellama Just because there's a logical advantage doesn't mean its likelyhood won't evolve again. And besides there are other things besides light that move just as fast such as electro sensory organs. There are also other variables where the majority of life exists where the environment is different to our own.
@@Skylancer727 I don't believe that to be the case. The general trend of increased intelligence among animals can be explained by competing with each other. Most complex animals are generally intelligent. Even ones that have little to no sight like river dolphins. Then you have mantis shrimp who have extremely complex eyes but despite some generally complex intelligence still aren't at the same level as something like an octopus. And even in humans we can rarely if at all access the processing power of sight for other uses such as math (one person famously did but he seems to be the exception rather than the rule). There are also Box jellyfish and scallops who have oddly complex eyes but don't have the hardware.
But this is odd because evolution of more complex intelligence due to a sense specialization does seem to be a thing for echolocation. My question is why? 🤔
I've always wondered how the Daleks got things done. How do they make those little metal tanks with the plunger thingy?
it was the Kelads!
@@ronschlorff7089 I had to look them up. I'm not as knowledgeable about 'Doctor Who' as I'd like to be.
@@lamegoldfish6736 yeah, two races had a civil war on a planet and the winners became little creatures that had to live in the big black shell called a Dalek, which was their name, Kelad, spelled backwards. See old Dr.(Tom Baker) in "Genesis of the Daleks". Fun few episodes. ;D LOL
Speculating about what aliens might be like is like wondering why we've never found Bigfoot.
I choose to believe somewhere out there, among the distant stars and infinite worlds, a pack of sentient velociraptors is unlocking the secrets of math.
But, alas!, They do not have opposable thumbs and though they are very smart, they cannot build machines to advance their culture.
It is possible dolphins are smarter than us but have no thumbs.
@@swinde What an atrociously insidious idea.... having all the necessary desires and faculties for limitless possibilities, but lacking the proper physical anatomy..... what nightmares wrought on such poor souls.
Our galaxy has shown us it can produce life because if it couldn't we wouldn't be here to witness it. I have no doubts its life all around.
Computer scientist and space fan here!
While I have not heard about the Sagan Scale until today, I can try to answer your question. If he found that we know 10^13 bits of information is about 1.14 tebibytes of data, which many personal computers computers contain. The internet is also transferring Zetta-scale information every year now. It may depend on what we consider "unique information" because most people in the developed have Windows and iOS, but it isn't unique. But if the data you were looking for is "What data is on this person's computer?" Then it can count twice.
I had a feeling that this scale would have become very quickly outdated, because we have no other reference to create a baseline. For the Kardeshev Scale, we can say "how much energy output is on a living world" and "how much energy can a star or galaxy put out?".
So alas, the Sagan Scale is extremely out of date :')
Wonderful video nonetheless! I like the way you make it interesting for the layman. When I talk about space, people think I am boring. You visualize it and fire off the imagination!
Keep up the good work!
There are many other factors that make certain traits much more probable then others. A few from the top of my head:
- Lifting and accelerating large amounts of liquid is expensive, so we are less likely to be visited by aquatic life-forms.
- You want your (primary) eye faing in the direction you are going, so it will be at the front.
- Olfactory and acustic sensors would also be more probable there.
- You want to have your main neural system close to your sensors, so a brain is more likely to also develop at the front.
- This makes having a head with eyes/ears/nose one of the most probable configurations.
- A practical digestive system is pass-through, and the entrance would also be close to the head. (Not necessarily on it, as we do.)
- If we rule out floating type civilisations (hard to get material for spacefaring in the middle of an athmosphere), then you will also need at least two legs, and at least two hands. (Above a certain level of development, you would not want the interchangeable, but specialised).
- Hand type appendages should also me closer to your senses, thus the head.
- There would be a "practical" range of aggressiveness.
There are many-many more of course.
The idea of convergent evolution, to me, feels even more special than total uniqueness.
The idea that we live within a system that operates on a specific set of rules feels very methodical and dare I say orchestrated.
There is that idea - that the universe itself is a living entity, and that the way we are forced to ascend, in theory, is carved out with purpose.
As usual, great video !!!
Thanks for making this videos, there is a pleasure to watch them
i love this channel so damn much. great work, Alex! now i'm gonna go pick me up one of those sick globes (maybe of Europa or Io) ☺️
Yup, I made my "terraformed Mars" from a big old Christmas tree ornament, 8" plastic sphere I got at Home Depot. Painted it up with spray cans and presto, Mars, as postulated, in a few centuries, complete with red brown and green continents and blue oceans/big lakes!! Easy, fun and cheap. LOL :D
I believe that everything is generally the same, no matter where it resides in the universe. Now, there more than likely are big and small differences depending on what was available when things developed. That’s why I believe all the Descriptions of aliens are basically the same design.
As much as I appreciate and like your videos, it's your voice and unique accent that really make your channel special
Since evolution is such a slow process, it's reasonable to assume that intelligent life = using tools.
And if that's true, these tools probably require solid-state matter (as opposed to liquids/gases).
So aliens probably came about in somewhat similar environments to our own. At least that's my theory.
I'm sure life could evolve to be very different depending in the conditions of their world but...I would also not be surprised at all if we met another alien civilization that are mostly identical to us. There's likely millions of worlds out there that could support life in some form or another. It's just a numbers game really and the math is very much in life's favor here.
One of the best and well balanced assessment. Kudos!
What's with "kudos"? For 50+ years I'd never seen nor heard the term. Now it's all over social media. I've never used it...ever. Where did it come from? Is it an American thing? Apparently it means praise for something achieved.
@@toby9999 AFAIK it originated in Greece. Not sure its an American thing though. Its sparsely used by the academics and professionals in South Asia.
If we find life out there it's definitely going to look completely different than any other life form here on earth. Life changes to adapt to the environment it finds itself in so even the idea of looking for life in the Goldie Locks zone might be constricting. There are planets or moons out there that we might think there is no way life would develop there but then it'll surprise us.
Im ready to meet the creatures that live in the middle of stars.
yup, stay tuned for Europa's life! Or Enceladus', or Pluto's, or Ganymede's or.... Planet X's....
@@CrossWindsPat I'm ready for stars that live in the middle of creatures! LOL
As is water and carbon chauvinism. More and more scientists are opening up to the idea that, whilst water as a solvent and carbon as a building block, may be the best in absolute terms, that doesn't preclude other solvents and elements. Life on cold planets, with liquid methane as their oceans and silicon as their building blocks, may exist so slowly that we don't even recognise it. If we even look.
technological aliens will atleast look the same as us
In the movie Independence Day, I wondered how the aliens ever had the dexterity of hands to build with. They had those huge claws on the ends of their fingers. Difficult to build anything, particularly computer microchips.
Yes, there needs to be more research on estimating the types of possible lives that exist beyond our planet.
Where did the life come from? It doesn't just spring out of the mud one day. And definitely does not go from simple to super complex just by chance or natural selection. That's not how natural laws work in this universe.
Read any sci if book
We humans are just one example of billions of possibilities. Will we acquire or even have we the 'where with all' to 'See' or comprehend other forms.
They would look different for sure, but there would be 2 legged, 4 legged, 6 legged and 8 legged creatures and some might be intelligent. The intelligent ones would have hands or something similarly dexterous
not to mention: why have two arms? maybe they evolve complex tongues to use as an arm, or perhaps they use antennae!
@@projectguestyt844or maybe they have dexterous trunks like elephants
This is definitely my least favorite end of the Fermi "paradox". We start at human level intelligence and climb with wild abandon into delusion, when humans are by far the most advanced species to ever live on what is an almost perfect place for life. Billions of species here over the years, endless specimens, none with all the adaptations that make humans unique thus far. Apes have hands but no language, dolphins have intelligence but no hands, parrots can speak but have no language and octopuses have big brains but short life spans. It is an extreme adaptation we have, and we might as well expect aliens to be chameleons. A functional language capacity seems to be particularly unlikely. In many ways humans are their language, the physical body less relevant than for any other species.
Just look at apes: almost exactly like us, but not a peep. Traits aren't rare, but the combination of simple traits often make species highly distinct. Our combination of traits has happened exactly one time here in four billion years. So we already know it's rare. In fact this is one of the few things we actually know.
As for the morphology of limbs, we are shaped as we are largely by random chance. The first vertebrate happened to have four limbs, two eyes etc, so all subsequent vertebrates share that setup. But that doesn't make this basic body plan inevitable. This is what is called normalcy bias. A case can perhaps be made for four limbs because more limbs is wasteful, fewer limbs insufficient, but not eyes and other details. Any number of eyes would do the job. Again, a tiny little fish a billion years ago had two eyes. That is why we have two eyes.
Yes! So often Earth's vast and ancient biology is overlooked in these ponderings of what life would be like elsewhere. We are indeed rare and unlikely beings.
!ahhh our grandpa good ol two eye fish . miss ya pops ! thanks for staying alive back then lol
I imagined some aliens having 4 or 8 eyes evolving from some insect
Just the Milky Way alone is so vast that it's practically impossible to imagine its scale. We know life can exist because we are here, so there's every chance it has happened elsewhere. Say, if there were five civilisations like ours in our galaxy, they would be so far away we could never contact them. If there were even a million, there still wouldn't be another civilisation within 300 light years of us.
Brilliant! I had the same thought about convergent evolution and alien image. Glad I'm not the only one who's thought of this.
Judging by the diversity of life on Earth, the answer has to by a resounding yes!
I recommend googling Carl Sagan's thoughts on this topic. I agree with you, and so did Dr. Sagan. He said that, "the odds of anything resembling a human being, or even a starfish, on an alien living world, are highly unlikely." [edit] Note that starfish, and we mammals, have five appendages!
I read in a book that an Alien doesn't have any Human Characteristics it's very hard to imagine what Aliens would look like without keeping this in mind.
I would wager that since we're looking for life on planets as similar to ours as we can find and unless the laws of physics just work differently in a different part of the Galaxy it would not be surprising if we find that the first intelligent life form we encounter looks almost exactly like us. I know that seems like a Black Swan argument but it does seem that the Universe tends to one inefficiency and just like crabs keep involving in different species unrelated I would imagine that bipedal life forms with prehensile thumbs and opposable digits be the most likely candidate to evolve into an intelligent life form like us it's really makes me sad to know that I might never be alive to see any of those answers honestly sometimes that's all I really need to keep moving right I just want to know how the story plays out
The laws of physics are constant everywhere in the universe
If anyone want a book tip regarding this topic, I can highly recommend The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy by Arik Kershenbaum! He goes much more in detail exactly on what Alex discusses here. One of the better pop-science books I've read in recent times. I just love speculative space-biology stuff like this :)
I wish you a good day and good health. Keep up the good work. 👍👍🌹🌹
We should allow for all possibilities because our understanding of the universe at this stage in our evolution rests on a miniscule parcel of time.
I think the start was a bit weird? With how optimized the human body is it is somewhat of a bad example (in my opinion) because we have many issues which emerged due to the massive change we went through for example our legs do a good enough of a job but they're really not ideal.
it’s not a bad example, i mean sure our legs maybe aren’t optimized for running, but they are really good at doing what humans need them to do, like support a lot of weight and walking while carrying things. that’s what he means. we evolved to use things. our fingers are dexterous for complex tasks like writing and typing, making art, and, ya know, fine motor skills in general.
If aliens visit us one day, I like to think being an advanced civilization would maybe gives us the chance to survive. Because if they happen to be a war mongering species, it will look like Bambi vs Godzilla. (Us being bambi here)
we are pretty ruthless though...hardly bambi.
I absolutely love this channel..
Alex u do am amazing job with these videos..👍👌
"You have a brain for thinking" - That's one hell of an assumption my man, but I appreciate the confidence nonetheless! 😅
The problem is, in collecting the energy of an entire star system by creating something akin to a Dyson Sphere or a Ring World, would require all the material of many other star systems. If we can travel to those other systems, it seems to me it would be more efficient and safer to simply terraform those other worlds and spread ourselves out into space. Confining ourselves to one huge Dyson Sphere/Ring World could result in disaster.
Well who’s to say they would be like us though? I mean for all we know it could be a bird that gained intelligence like us🤷♂️. It would be a different environment and all of that so it would really depend on where and how that planet would be made up of. Maybe there’s only certain places on a particular planet that intelligence exist in the form of fish, ppl, or whatever. Just entirely depends on the rotation, distance, and many other properties of the planet itself. It’s not as far fetched when you think of dolphins and ravens. Just based off the fact they can recognize and remember things while using their own form of communication. Just not nearly to how we are. If evolution did get us here then it’s definitely not to far fetched to assume on another planet, another species became the dominant one. Bc maybe humanoid beings couldn’t exist on land or whatever. Due to the planet being water or many other things. We truly just don’t really know and it’s all speculation. It’s amazing to wonder though and think of the opportunities.
Good point. What would Earth look like now if the dinosaurs had not been wiped out. Would they be building rockets and transmitting digital information? It's only by a fluke that we were given the opportunity evolve at all. I think life existing elsewhere is a statistical likelihood, but that it somehow evolved as we did, far less so.
@@PolyQuasi yeah “cool worlds” channel goes more in to depth of the Drake Equation and stuff but there is something else that’s interesting. The fact that we exist in no way means other intelligence has too. It could be just the fact that life hasn’t had a chance to evolve on another planet yet. This touch’s on the Fermi Paradox some as I’m sure you’ve heard of that. I’d absolutely love to see aliens in my lifetime but with our current technology we can’t even see a planets surface outside our solar system. Much less the insanely small light an animal would give off bc of its own sun. That’s the biggest problem
I doubt aliens would be humanoid, the body plan of an alien is dependent on what conditions exist on the planrt and what works for the species. For example there could be centaur aliens, multiple limb aliens, spider aliens etc. What i think is convergent are certain human cincepts like cooperation, justice, curiosity, playing etc. You can't build a space faring civilization without cooperating with other members of your species, inorder to become space faring you must have 'curiosity', to test an experiment with their understanding of physics. Justice is for aliens that commit a crime or unjust murder, these aliens are gonna have different psychology and culture but they probably would'nt like being killed so they may have some type of justice system.
Aliens that are technological are gonna have certain universal characteristics:
1.) A big brain.
2.) Hands that can manipulate tools.
3.) Eyes that can see fine details in color.
4.) A voice that can create complex sounds.
5.) Ears that can hear and comprehend complex sounds.
6.) Be land dwellers so they can use fire.
Without every one of these things, they can't develop a technological civilization.
The Kardeshev Scale was recently talked about by a couple of scientists, and they revised the scale and made Level 1 being able use the energy of the planet (plus a bunch of stuff). It was interesting, so I guess that I will have to find a link.
All of the conjectures in this video share a singular flaw in that they tend to be human/Earth centric. It's like assigning human characteristics to other animals or calling other cultures primitive or barbaric because they differ so much from our own.
Making the same mistakes all over again. Well I guess that's human too.
I always found it amusing (or naïve) that the aliens in popular literature are mostly roughly as intelligent as we are. But then I realized that at our intelligence level things like NHS and democracy and computers kick in and you stop evolving higher intelligence ( you might even regress from this point). That means it is actually highly likely that aliens will have a similar level of intelligence. There is of course also the viewpoint that you get to our level of intelligence, then you develop computers and AI and that is the end - no more humans, just AI.
Not gonna lie I already clicked like :/
Why would you say you aren't going to lie? Unless you habitually lie, and need to clarify when you're being truthful.
@@xmikemurphyx it's a goofy way of saying it, a goober wouldn't understand
@@xmikemurphyx If you honestly don't know, then I apologize for the poking. Ngl is something people have made something of a meme out of, it is used to express that this is something someone may not normally admit.
Your channel is so good bro. Yr voice is honest, and looks like so much work goes in to yr vids. Thanks. 👌🏼
fingers are not mandatory for exploring space. this is a classic case of thinking from an anthropocentric perspective.
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So calming. Please keep this style of audio aesthetic with your videos. I just subscribed right now.
This isn't an easy question to answer. There is a lot of factors that needs consideration for an optimal body types.
Enviroment, gravity, type of host star, asteroid, comet, volcanos, plate tectonics, distance from large dieing stars, black holes, neutron stars, survival defenses, predatory tactics is just a few factors to a very long list of things to consider when it comes to evolution to an organism.
I've always said: "Perspective - use it or lose it" and this episode, above many others, certainly brings that into context. I hope there's more intelligent life out there, hopefully beneficial, who will come and make all our petty differences look like so much fluff so that we come to understand our truly unique position in the cosmos and thereby overcome our baser instincts, currently placing our species, and the entire planet, at risk. Thank you as always Alex for making things clear.
Not all of us "look down upon" bacteria, at least not "good" bacteria: I remember when I learned that good gut bacteria love to eat fiber, and at one point when I had been deprived for about a month of the types of huge raw salads I was used to eating... when I finally gained access again to that type of amount of greens (and roots like carrots, radishes and beets)... I noticed I was gorging on and loving the OUTER PEELS of those roots in particular. I thought to myself "What on earth is the difference between the insides vs. outsides of these??" The only thing I could think of were the probiotics on the outsides, so I got the impression the fewer good bacteria left in my gut were "calling for more friends" in the form of cravings LOL.
Are you up for further explaining your comment?
@@dexus-h8568 Sure- I was reflecting specifically on one phrase said in this video by the narrator, something about how "we look down upon bacteria" or something like that. But my point was that there are certain aspects of certain species of bacteria that I respect, since those help us.
@@sathvamp1 Yes, but how can we help a civilization that can casually move stars?
@@dexus-h8568 Admittedly I don't even remember where that topic came up exactly or how it was connected to that phrase / quote I had remembered... so my comment may have been quite out of context, lol.
he didn't say look down, just that we don't constantly think of them. Basically we kill them without even thinking about them.@@sathvamp1
There's also type 6 civilizations, that utilize the energy of multiple multiverses 😆
I think for sure when we find life elsewhere in our solar system the idea that life is rare will seemingly extinguish and we will grow accustom to the fact that life is most likely as common as there is stars.
Aliens look like humans except their hair comes in a variety of bright primary colors and they can't talk without screaming.
Lol!
I think about this question every day as I'm kicking sci fi ideas around in my head.
Wauw you skip all the errors most people make and go directly to awesome things I have not even contemplated very much. Thank you!
The evolutionary paths from beginning to advanced is limitless in number.
I have a MOVA globe on my desk. Neat to look at and a good conversation piece.
As an artist I find drawing the human form one of the best things to do. I always reflect on and learn a lot about what a magnificent adaptable thing is a human body and how we make our human world.
I definitely believe that two arms and two legs is a common form throughout the Universe.
Why?
If Convergent evolution on Earth is any guide, the aliens have a fairly high chance of looking like crabs.
4:11 Holup photosynthesis has developed dozens of times? What do you mean? I'm pretty sure quite literally all photosynthesizers on earth are either cyanobacteria, which developed once, or plants, which developed once from a cell eating a cyanobacteria. Photosynthesis evolved one time, like how the mitochondria was consumed by one cell and all eukaryotes are descendants from that one time a cell ate what would become a mitochondria. I'm not actually certain if it's all eukaryotes, but I know it includes all plants and animals and I don't think that's it, so it's probably eukaryotes.
I’ve had a globe like that for a few years. It’s of Earth, and I love it!
The existence of extra-solar life is as certain as extra-solar planets (estimated at 10^20 in the whole universe). Note that the discovery of the first extra-solar planet is fairly recent, at about 30 years ago (1992). Planets are just easier to detect, but detection of extra-solar biosignatures will probably come in the next few decades.
The reason that sound is better for location in the ocean isn't because it's dark. It's because sound travels further in a liquid than light does.
I would be interested in hearing more about Sagens classification system..
A very intelligent man...
I like the way Isaac Asimov described the inhabitants of Jupiter in his short Si-Fi story "Victory Unintentional" (1942) as having many tentacles but otherwise indescribable.
Form follows function is a very parsimonious concept, applicable to so many fields.
I love the globe idea at the end of the video. One thing that I wish that they could do with one of those is making the entire glove so that it could be like a full color changing screen that could display any picture or video over its entire surface so you could have any in real-time design of any planet. For example. if you had it set to planet earth and there was a hurricane going on you could see live footage of it as if you were looking from space as the globe spins in mid-air. All you would have to do is have an app on your phone and or computer and you could just change the planet or even create your own?
Well, how may species look like...
Something to get nutritions, something to get rid of the waste, something to find nutritions - these sensors might be better suited near the nutrition input.
Maybe something to be higher than the plants that cover the floor very dense if such plants exist. Something to move the whole being around to find nutritions and to hide from predators if there are any.
This still makes some models possible...
I think aliens could have a variety of different body shapes and anatomies, some more exotic than others, but would still likely have functional features that we could identify; like eyes, limbs for locomotion, a distinct head region where most of their sense organs could lie, and "hands" with digits that are firm but flexible enough to grip and manipulate objects.
Always amazing videos - explanations. Thought provoking and always a pleasure to watch. Thank you.