Would Life Really Develop Differently on Another Planet? | Convergent Evolution
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- 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.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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’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
@@lunarcowboyyes!!!! 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
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.
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!
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.
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 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.
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
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'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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
If Convergent evolution on Earth is any guide, the aliens have a fairly high chance of looking like crabs.
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.
As usual, great video !!!
Thanks for making this videos, there is a pleasure to watch them
As much as I appreciate and like your videos, it's your voice and unique accent that really make your channel special
I definitely believe that two arms and two legs is a common form throughout the Universe.
Why?
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
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
Meanwhile, halfway across our own galaxy 50,000 light years away, aliens are saying “so far as we can tell, we are the only intelligent life in the galaxy, maybe the universe” (not in English, obviously)
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.
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.
I absolutely love this channel..
Alex u do am amazing job with these videos..👍👌
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.
The evolutionary paths from beginning to advanced is limitless in number.
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 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.
I would like to challenge the assumption that alien life sapient or otherwise would look like life on Earth. While I won’t deny that convergent evolution is a strong force in shaping life science also says that life always follows the path of least resistance. What that means is that it would be more efficient for life to use what it already has available to take on a different but more easily attainable form.
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.
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 feel like one of our problems is that we look into space and ask where the ancient alien civilizations are, when it’s entirely possible that we’re one of, if not the first massively intelligent species/civilizations, at the very least in our own galaxy. And if that’s true, it’s kind of a weird thing to think about. Like we’re very used to having ancient civilizations before us and them being very large and powerful, it’s (for lack of better words) uncomfortable to think that it’s possible that we are the ancient Sumerians of our galaxy or even universe.
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.
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.
Generic alien would be capable of a long childhood (for learning and for social dependence and interaction), bilateral body plan (for several practical and other reasons) standing, sitting, running, walking, carrying stuff, looking closely at stuff, a precision as well as a general grip, kicking, stepping onto something (smashing), stereo hearing/sight, being able to produce a wide variety of sounds, and have digits that may be able to counted on (base 10 is nice, but base 12, 8, even 16 might not be bad.
With those requirements, what would one imagine the whole package to be?
I remember looking at medieval artwork on dragons. They look so weird. One pair of wings and one pair of feet. Not like later renditions where you have a six-limbed creature with four legs and two wings. On the other hand, pterodactyls work on this concept and perhaps used their folded wings as a type of feet when on the ground. House of dragons follows this concept. This means that the medieval weird art was more accurate than the four legged renditions. Makes one wonder, if they saw fossils and this guided their illustrations of dragons and the cockatrice.
The six legged horses in Avatar look cool - but seems a bit inefficient to have the front two pairs so close to each other. How would the shoulder blades all fit? lol. If there was a longer torso that needed support in the middle it would be more functional. But then galloping would have to be re-thought. Spiders and other creepy crawlies with multiple legs don't gallop - maybe they can't?
So many different ways things can happen
So... It turns out, hypothetically, somewhere on the other side of the universe there may be creatures that look exactly like us? It sounds exciting and scary at the same time.
if the universe is infinite then there could be an exact carbon copy of you watching this video at the same time
oh god i know thats true as due to the universes infinite expansion eventually it might just copy stuff in a way with maybe slight differences, meaning this is a very possible thing, thats fucking terrifying@@theprehistoricnerd
The model of how life might be - form follows function- may fit with what is found on earth, but it may not fit for other life forms outside of earth.
I think the reason we don’t find a Type III civilization or above, is because the Universe is still very young! Maybe right now in the universe at the very best scenarios the most advanced alien civilization would be at 2.4..? Oh and btw, light is also very slow! Maybe there *is* a type III civilization, but it just hasn’t reached us yet.
Give it enough time like 10 Billion years from now, and then we might see some alien civilizations emerging.
I have a MOVA globe on my desk. Neat to look at and a good conversation piece.
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.
Life evolves to it's environment, so if there was a planet exactly like ours then there is a chance of a parallel evolutionary path. That said even slight differences in environment can cause drastic deviations over time.
I wish you a good day and good health. Keep up the good work. 👍👍🌹🌹
So calming. Please keep this style of audio aesthetic with your videos. I just subscribed right now.
Pretty solid logic, and indeed, a good overview of the life on Earth, if you were making such a thing, for say, a Voyager Probe.
Your analysis on certain civilizations looking inwards and becoming introspective / lost in their own virtual worlds, is an accurate prediction.
The hypothesis on "finding another civilization" and competing for resources in one way or another, and/or getting "steamrolled by a higher power", seems incredibly anthropocentric / human-history based/focused.
Remember: This would be an entirely different culture from your own. There's a possibility that warfare was never evolved, or selected for, in their natural living conditions -- what if they all came from a damp geothermal cave, of such, where the temperature and humidity was perfectly hospitable for all kinds of life, and there was a natural food equilibrium. This would negate any kind of competitive drive being evolved or selected for.
Third point of contention on competition for resources: It assumes some kind of scarcity. You mentioned the scales of bits needed for a Z-Type Civilization, as 10^31. So you are aware of the massive size of even a single galaxy/cluster.
The number of atoms present and the density therein (of gravity-laden space itself), makes "stealing" from other civilizations, a pointless effort. It is literally not worth the time, energy, resources, or attention to be hostile/attack anything else -- even if the technology (or means to do so) is available. Think about the scales and distances involved, simply to go someplace else, as an example. You could build "infinitely" many tall or wide structures and paperclips to satisfaction without ever extinguishing your local quadrant/domain of space of iron.
All "life" has to obey at least one fundamental law, of any action that it undertakes, to result in a net energy positive -- as all life is an *entropic process.*
The destruction of life, would only accelerate entropy, and for an advanced civilization - you can clearly see why that would be considered a kind of "primal sin"/illegal action to certain ethics-based cultures.
So either from a resource (close to infinite), competition (lack of scarcity), or ethical (energy/entropy) perspective -- the impetus for "space war", I think, is a completely human one. No properly established self-sustaining spacefaring civilization would ever "go to war".
One caveat I'd like to note about evolution, it isn't always pretty or perfect. The blood vessels coming out of the heart *work* to distribute blood but could have been done better. The sensory part of the human eye is backwards, which is why there is a hole (the blind spot) in it to run blood vessels and nerves. Alien life might have odd properties that are just vestiges from their development, or could have an adaptation that is unsustainable or destructive over the long term (like an invasive species). Evolution also eliminates species that can't survive in the environment they are in (or when the environment dramatically changes).
Thanks for the video, this is such a fascinating topic.
Always amazing videos - explanations. Thought provoking and always a pleasure to watch. Thank you.
Kardishev scale is not a benchmark. Its based on technology that we think might work. However inter dimentional beings may not work like this. Terrestrial being also may have different tech to consume energy.
I think about this question every day as I'm kicking sci fi ideas around in my head.
Your channel is so good bro. Yr voice is honest, and looks like so much work goes in to yr vids. Thanks. 👌🏼
Speculating about what aliens might be like is like wondering why we've never found Bigfoot.
I have watched dozens of 40s 50s and 60s science fiction movies and I can confidently confirm that almost all alien life have the same basic anatomy as humans AND most of them speak English as well.
But what about the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs? That probably hasn't happened to every planet with possible life on it. But if it did, we don't know what it has resulted in for those planets
And feelings that don't make any sense but still there they are! Except for the fact they allow me to say "love your videos, i enjoy them a lot! Thank you!". I guess feelings do have a use lol!!
Oh cool I bought a mova Globe for my girlfriend last year!! We got a little moon, sits on our dining table. Beautiful little thing.
I believe, within reason. Convergent evolution is prevalent throughout the cosmos. Spear will always travel faster through the air in a sail for example.
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?
There's also type 6 civilizations, that utilize the energy of multiple multiverses 😆
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!
"Humans got smarter, so we had less need for fur..." Well, that's not true. The reason humans became hairless was an adapatation for persistence hunting in hot climates - running for long distances to wear out prey. We could sweat rapidly to cool off and then keep running, our prey couldn't. But of course, losing our fur meant heat at night escaped easier, so we had to compensate with fire and clothing.
Fundamental conditions on planetary and stellar scales could have butterfly effects on an entire planet's Tree of Life. Orbital patterns could determine climate and seasons, especially if the planet doesn't rotate like ours. Heavier/lighter gravity would transform anatomy on unfathomable scales, so would the type of starlight color/brightness a planet is exposed to. Atmospheric conditions like density and abundance of certain gasses could enable species to evolve way larger/smaller than otherwise expected. There's so many moving parts in natural systems that there's certainly going to be a surprise or two no matter how much convergent evolution preserves an overall sense of consistency. :)
Time is a major contributor in forming intelligent life. It takes millions or even billions of years of relative planet tranquility (no mass extingsion) to make evolution possible.
@13:00 One possibility is that the Universe itself is the 10 to the power of 31 single entity? And would therefore have more unique knowledge points than what we see within the Universe.
Before even clicking on the video my thoughts was "For life to evolve differently on other planets, other planets too will have to be formed differently from earth."
We havent seen anything or heard anything. We have been transmitting well over a hundred years. The distances and time differences are so great. The universe is finite. Perhaps we are alone after all.
I swear we will see life on another very soon and I hope it touches me
Hard and yet I can get inspiration at last
like on earth squid have the same type of eye we have but both have developped sepperate showing that the eye if seeing is needed is the best option to do do on earth
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
We on Earth are, for the most part, bi-lateral tubes. Almost all multi-cellular animals are built this way. Maybe that is the most efficient way to make an animal. So, if aliens are basic humanoid or quadrupedal, that would just be the most efficient way.
I always get a chuckle at the fact tha the guy invented the cartshive scale and made it so we were level 0, and even not truly close to level 1 anytime soon ether.
Just this week in New York State, we purchased a pound of pork tenderloin for $9.00 and a medium sized head of organic red cabbage that was $11.
Cool video!
I think the problem that we’ve had historically thinking about alien civilizations or alien life in general is that our understanding of the possibilities of what life could even be is limited to our understanding of what life is as we know it.
I think the “Type 1/2/3 Civilizations” is a pretty flawed way of thinking about what different civilizations could be and is rather anthropomorphizing what other civilizations would do with their energy consumption and to be advanced means to consume all available natural resources. This is obviously a very narrow way of thinking about civilizations. One that has its roots in the idea of “dominion”.
Humans aren’t the only intelligent animals on earth, we’re just the only ones to have invented technology. For most of our existence as a species we didn’t have much technology. This alarm colors how we envision how other civilizations would “advance” and communicate.
SETI keeps looking for radio communication signals from extra terrestrials. But that’s only because we use radio signals. Radio is actually a very poor way of communicating across interstellar space because of light delay. Quantum entanglement would be much more efficient and effective. But because we are just barely able to grasp the concept of it, we can’t really look for it. I’m not sure we could even if we wanted to. Same with traveling. We are bound by moving objects through space and are constrained by the speed of light. Imagine traveling through quantum decoherence, where you could instantly be anywhere. What if there were creatures that could do this naturally without the need for technology to assist them. Our understanding of the possibilities of life are too limited to know what the possibilities even are.
or,
to paraphrase Leo Szilard's response to a query about the Fermi paradox...
"if aliens were among us, we should expect them to be overly represented in
the arts and sciences, to have odd habits and ways of interacting with humans,
and to speak a language that is incomprehensible to the vast majority...
in short, they are amongst us, and they are Hungarians"
ps: Szilard was Hungarian
I subbed partially because I like the video and content but mostly because you got the number of neurons in the human brain correct when I watch the video yesterday about how it was just a unverified misconception to say 100 billion
I yearned for one of those Mova globes. But the shipping was a deal breaker.
It’s nice to feature dieter rams into this context as he is mostly a industrial designer, but „Form follows function“ apparently also is a thing in evolution. Would love to see a discussion by Darwin and Rams!
somewhere out there in the cosmos is an octopus/squid like intelligence speculating on how an upright ape like species could become intelligent
I really like those globes.
"If something works... nature tends to come up with it more than once". Exactly! Now the million dollar question: WHY DID CIVILISATION-INTELIGENCE ON EARTH OCCUR ONLY ONCE???
Remember - you're unique. Just like everyone else.