Beautifully done. I don't think "there's no life out there" is the simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox. "The universe is too effing big for us to expect evidence of life to have reached us" is the simplest answer.
@Butt Cube Thats definitely what I think too. Like maybe we're underestimating just how unlikely it is for a planet to evolve life like we have today. I think it's almost certain *some* form of living thing exists somewhere else, like microscopic bacteria-like forms. But the chances of life like us being able to exist, evolving properly, not being rendered extinct due to many reasons (climate, resources, catsstrophic space event etc) isn't like a 1 in 3 chance. It's incredibly low. Every planet is unique and so throws up its own obstacles, what if Earth is the only one that allowed this kind of life to happen? Like if Earth was just slightly different, we'd not survive. If it was just a little too close to the sun or if there was no water or gravity etc.
@@SaintPhoenixx Yeah but what we know about life doesn't have to be the only option. Us not surviving a condition is just a result of the conditions we evolved to.
And the universe is hostile. I haven't watched this video yet but most planets can't sustain life because most planets live in cosmic dust clouds. When you look at the milky way, everywhere you can see light inhabitable. That light is literally radiation. We live in a dark spot
@@dear-madame-artist1561, don't be shy Artist. Come on out and say it, because I'm dying to know what the "L" stands for! (Logical? Likable? Luxurious? The suspense is killing me!)
Why is not being alone terrifying, thats what everyone expects. We wouldn't have to figure out all of the rest of science by ourselves once we find anybody who has been around for longer. That would be awsome, not terrifying.
@@CUXOB2 Presumably, it's because he suspected that other races existed, but subsequently went extinct, meaning if we are alone, we might be headed for a similar extinction event, one that no one so far has managed to dodge.
Cheburushka He meant that if our small insignificant dot in the universe is the only place where complicated life has evolved it means there is nowhere else to go... this is it, our planet, the one we’re currently destroying is the only place capable of life. Scary thought huh?
Or maybe the 95% of the Universe that we explain as Dark Matter/Energy is life in the Universe, just so advanced it is beyond our technology to detect.
*Out of the 4.5 billion years the planets been around we have only been detectable for 0.00000000000001% in a radius of 100 light years, so we are going to have to look at A LOT of planets to catch that small percentage*
Exactly. We've been around for less than a heartbeat in the life span of a galaxy. In the next heartbeat we will probably be extinct. If a civilization from another world ever did or ever will reach earth, it could be a billion years too early, or a billion years too late to encounter mankind. The same holds true for us encountering intelligent life somewhere else.
It’s a lot like taking a thimble of ocean water, not seeing an life in it, and deciding that the ocean must be lifeless. I heard an analogy; if the universe is all the water in our earth’s oceans, we have searched barely a cup of that seawater. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth many times over. “We haven’t found anything and we are never going to,” is a ridiculous statement. Hell, in order to see the American flag on the moon, you would need a lens AS BIG AS PLANET EARTH to see it FROM earth! People just have no clue how huge the universe truly is… A lot like was stated in melodysheep’s video Timelapse of the Future, even after all the stars in the universe have died out and have been swallowed up by black holes, in terms of a human lifetime, the universe still hasn’t even left the womb!
Stable rocky planets haven't been around that long. Gamma rays and supernovas every few millennia, most stars being unstable, idk it's rather unlikely that if there ever was such a thing that early, a planet life sustaining, it would've lasted long enough for it to even matter.
You can go to a library lend books on Geo Physics, astro physics and bio chemistry , thats what Joe has done. All adds up to a creator who is maintaining his handiwork.
agreed. I feel like I neeed to learn how to communicate science to others from Joe. His skeptical-sounding second-takes at his statements feels like the perfect way to get typically non-critical minds to actually question the substance of a claim.
Sebastian ioan, Yeah, and he always likes comments that praise him, he seems to be addicted to approval, and that's the main reason for his work here. He craves that surrogate of love.
@@azatmingalimov Ugh...I was joking earlier. I love this channel. Joe works hard and he deseves the praise. Honestly I think he might one day land a job in PBS or something.
I think it'd be neat (if not slightly depressing) if we actually were the only intelligent life to exist so far. That means that if we somehow manage to live long enough for other species to finally exist, we could very well get to be one of those super mysterious/powerful/ancient "elder" species that they always have in Science Fiction. Ha, the thought of aliens thinking of us as wise is kinda hilarious. Maybe someday! Edit: aww cute lol, pluto was lonely but she found a friend! I like the way you put that!
In the sixties and fifties aliens were wise. Because a lot of wishful thinking was going around. "They have to be wise and benevolent because if they were warmongers they would have eradicated themselves", something like that. Nowadays we see that the only reason to go to space is to make sure the enemy isn't beating us to it. Therefor, nowadays, writers are a bit more realistic about aliens. Nowadays they are depicted as locusts that swarm from civilisation to civilisation to gobble them up. Since competition is the driving force of evolution, why would that be any different for aliens.
Wow! I have thought of that idea for a book where time travelling ET's reveal that humans are the elder species of the universe. The travellers also reveal that they are from billions of years ahead in time and their technologies have 'never' detected life anywhere else within this dimension of the universe and that we are alone as a sentient beings and we expanded as far out as other galaxies.
I’ve watched this video many times and Each time, the ‘last sigh’ kind of sums it up for me. We are so so lucky to be here. Can we just take care of the earth and each other please?
@@3PercentNeanderthal I think it IS a dog eats dog kind of universe, but that they might still decide against it. If they are intelligent enough to get here by space travel, it is probable they have some euiqvalent of our scientific method, and then they might understand that for evey, say, million solar systems there might be only a few planets that actually harbor life, and that earth life is probably an interesting object of study. And if we developed on this planet only, as in, things like the pan-spermia hypothesis are false, theres a FAT chance that we (earth life) are very unique. and since numbers and logic are absolute, I think that they would see this too, simply because they would be able to count, and count planets and such. also, such xenophobia does not really seem 'intelligent' to me personally, say, destroying things because * aaah * they are different. if they were so xenophobic, they would miss a lot of data, and if data is not important to them, they might not ever have developed complex tech in the first place. so all intelligent life might really be peering out in the cosmos and conclude that, yes, life is really pretty rare (probably) but that is what i think. I might be very wrong, and get eaten by an alien tomorrow haha.
@@3PercentNeanderthal also, i dont really see how earth could be harvested for rare minerals and such if there are so many planets that are full of recourses, yet uninhabited. the one thing that makes earth unique is life. this might be a blessing, for they (dem aliens) might preserve the oddities of nature.... but it could be a curse indeed. they might get recrouses from human flesh, it just seems so unlikely to me. i dont really know any chemicals in the human body so rare that it would be proifitable to destroy the whole species for it, especially with such an abundance of lifeless matter in the universe that can be exploited.also, it is very unlkely that they would literally 'eat' us. if they feed, it is unlikely that they can 'digest' us, or even get any useful nutrition from us, as we are from a completely different planet. so yeah long comment, haha, but these are my reasons to believe that aliens will likely not destroy us at all
Sorry, but that's pure human centric arrogance. With 10s to 100s of trillions of galaxies the odds are against a human first Intelligence being humans. We're most likely created from "panspermia" or amino acids brought by an asteroid.
@@angelinarobert622 Incorrect and your line of thinking is why we always assumed there would be alien life. It seemed to make sense given the odds. However, what the Fermi Paradox failed to take into account was a great many "filters" that are extremely rare in and of themselves. When you add up all the extremely rare circumstances that all come together in combination here on "Rare Earth", you begin to understand why we are not finding life elsewhere, and we can see quite far now.
I was feeling so small throughout this video but then Joe was like "okay what is that" made me laugh so hard. I wish I had you as a teacher in school, I would've probably focused more. I'm so interested in any topic you talk about. Thank you for providing an A1 learning atmosphere for people of all backgrounds. I really appreciate it.
So glad to hear you say "other life that doesnt fit our definition, isnt composed of DNA or Carbon ". It drives me nuts to watch How the Universe Works and hear these scientists say how life would be impossible on [some exoplanet or moon] because of the absence of water. We evolved needing water because its present on earth. Life on other planets would evolve utilising elements and compounds found there. That's what evolution is. This moment of existential dread brought to you by..... Joe.
Life requires biochemistry, and the only element that is capable of the rich variety of chain and ring compounds needed for life is carbon. As Lawrence Henderson pointed out as long ago as 1913, water too is uniquely friendly to biochemistry. Supernovas pump out the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus that terrestrial life requires. We humans have observed 3 supernovas in the Milky Way over the past one thousand years. This translates to 3M Milky Way supernovas per billion years on our side of the galactic nucleus.
@@lylecosmopolite with so much that we dont know about the universe, its disappointing to hear anyone with a truly scientific mind use the words "only", "always" or "never" The ONLY time that word is correct is when saying "Only sentences that use absolutes are consistently wrong ". We evolved using the building blocks available on our planet. Another world having entirely different composition and available resources would evolve life using what is available there. Hasn't anyone considered that the Fermi Paradox appears to be true because we are looking right at life and dont even know it because it doesnt fit our narrow and conceited definition? Recent Pentagon declassification revealed not only objects that defy our known physical limits (of both body and technology) but metals in their posession that do not carry our local groups quantum signature and are not on our periodic table. Again, it's just my humble opinion that there is more that we do not know than what we do and every single day, that list grows. I'm just pointing out that it took our fastest spacecraft ever (JUNO) 5 years to get to Jupiter, less than 1/11 the radius of our solar system (sun to Ort Cloud) and we think we know the only kind of life that can exist in the universe? If a celestial body has organic compounds but no water, life is impossible? No wonder we cant find anything with such a narrow view.
Also, we once thought that life required water and Oxygen, then the Tardigrade happened along. We used to think that life couldnt withstand freezing and being reanimated, then Rana sylvatica came along. Life will find a way with whatever it has to work with.
It could just be us. And god could be real. Maybe this simulation is just that. A sims built works and then some. We go back to the source at death. Why why else would we be here. What would be the point! Is there a point ? Whatever is going on we are apart of the universe and not just a small part but a big part. Bigger than we can understand the now because off disinformation etc
It could just be us. And god could be real. Maybe this simulation is just that. A sims built works and then some. We go back to the source at death. Why why else would we be here. What would be the point! Is there a point ? Whatever is going on we are apart of the universe and not just a small part but a big part. Bigger than we can understand the now because off disinformation etc
The fact that you used punctuation and obeyed the rules of grammar, fetched you more likes & comments than Lukas Vasionis even though your comment was 6 months late? Life is fair, OR is it?
"The human brain is a very big place, in a very small space" - Also Carl Sagan, from the "persistence of memory" episode of Cosmos. All 13 episodes are on UA-cam still, at least they were not to long ago last time i went through and watched the series again.
We always bemoan the distances in space because we want to travel. But then you learn about near earth orbit objects and nemesis stars and gamma pulse bursts, etc.
A waste of space? I know of a 5 bedroom house with one occupant. It seems like a waste of space because the house could have at least 4 more occupants. But then, it would only "seem" to be a waste of space since the house was designed for more occupants. But since there is no design, there is no waste.
I kind of like this theory. It's simple. I find it kind of relaxing to think there's a whole universe to explore with very small chance of encountering more than rocks and radiation that want to destroy us. In some ways, I gotta wonder if life is sort of an accidental thing, like an infection. Once we leave this star of ours, universe beware!
@@joescott I got one here in Africa it has eyes for feet some weird shit or I'm high on malaria and overstayed cheap imported Indian medicine idk anymore😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@MTerrance now the good news about Trump.... his administration is heavily funding NASA. Which NASA had already reported the planet is rapidly is warming up sustainability.
precisely... we even have billions of years to go forth and multiply and who knows what wierd methods of transport may be invented in that amount of huge time considering we have gone from the horse to rockets in just a couple of hundred years
@@blancaroca8786 amazing, imagine how wars will be when we will have colonized the whole galaxy. Trillions of dead, planetary eradications, genocides... the galaxy should try and kill us while it still can before we become unstoppable LOL
But in our galaxy? It's unlikely we'd ever get out of the Milky Way or Andromeda ever in the history of the universe, so we only have iirc 100 billion planets to go through.
Actually no, that depends on the probability of having earth like conditions. Let's do some quick maths. Assuming there are 1/2 of the chance of each conditions that led to life. So let assume as simple as 5 factors, like rocky planet, glodilock zone etc.. The probability is about 0.03%. Which is alot considering the vastness of universe right? However, life is more complicated than this. Let's say there are 80 conditions you have to meet, having an iron Core, large moon, geological movements, stable enviroment. The probability is too small that the probability is lower than the number of planets there are in the universe. And I'm just being positive and assume each condition has a 50% chance of happening.
@@anomonyus-57 who the fick takes the time to well actually a 3 year old comment that just says there are probably many earth like planets in the vastness of the universe?
@@growbydoing7290 It's not that we can harm a planet. It's that we can alter our living situation enough that we can no longer get along on that planet very well... An older gentleman in my family claims that he has lived his life and is not responsible for anything in the future, that he does not have to care. It's attitudes like this man in my family has,, that make it so. The fact is, we can alter the environment. Not enough to kill the planet, but certainly enough to kill ourselves.
I was just watching some of your videos, letting autoplay do its thing, and when you started talking about a galactic Goldilocks Zone and planets forming in the core of the galaxy, my ears pricked up. It's pretty much a brief summary of my PhD research!
Scrolling quickly through the comments, I thought you wrote, "Ma'am, I love your channel." I thought, "Wow, that's a really perplexing mistake to make."
How I wish my science teachers as I was growing up we're more like you u make science learning so much fun and love ur joke's it makes it more interesting and fun learning thank u so much.
I agree. I had a science teacher. Fun dude, a bit of crank (would insult his students if we stepped out of line), but made science interesting and, most importantly, relevant.
I don't think that "life" itself is rare. but intelligence, that's a whole different ballgame. I mean, just look how long it took to emerge here on earth. and then it only manifests in one species. there are probably billions of planets with sponges and stuff, but very few with libraries
@@fcgHenden I don't count Neanderthals as a different species. for one we were both members of the hominids and secondly, we could (and did) interbreed. I'm talking intelligent fish or squid or bears, birds, reptiles etc. not just one or two species of ape-decendents. and I mean proper intelligence, not just sticks and stone tools. I mean like writing.
@@mystuff8602 I was supporting your argument that HSS and HSN are essentially the same population as regards evolutionary pressure, using, you know, science.
I think proving there isn't life out there is impossible but that proving there is life is possible but will never happen in our lifetime. In a few million years, whatever we evolve into will maybe figure it out, but it's arrogant of us to assume we would know by now. In the future, they'll look back at us and laugh at the dumb shit we did and believed and didn't know. Personally I think it's possible but not as likely as people say it is. But also its crazy to think we know or should know at this point in time. Like why now? Maybe we will in the future, but not now.
Theres no such thing as "simulation theory." Its the simulation hypothesis. Nothing more. Theres little to no evidence that we're living inside a simulation, and even if we were, there's no way to prove we are. There's no way to prove we arent, to be fair, but luckily, that's not how science works. If that were the case, I could say unicorns exist, and since you cant prove they dont, we slap the title of "unicorn theory" to it and call it a day.
@@joshuatraffanstedt2695 Schrödinger's cat, need I remind you is a valid argument here. So is Occam's Razor. Quantum Indeterminancy is also extremely popular. There's many valid arguments for simulated reality. The Rare Earth hypothesis is one of them, but String Theory presents another. The fact that we can tie everything about our world and quantum physics into a nice presentable package until it all falls apart with zero evidence. We can't find gravitons yet all the math and science points to it. That could be human error in the idea that we've just yet to discover it, but the tests we've done are *supposed* to find these answers. They should be where we look for them, yet they aren't. Inconsistencies Inconsistencies - they're everywhere. The simulation hypothesis explains all of this. Do I believe it per se? Meh. Is it extremely valid? For sure.
The simulation hypothesis is completely retarded. If we’re living inside a simulation, then what are our creators living inside? A real universe? That would even more unlikely than the earth and consequently us humans having formed naturally, since a simulation to that scale would warrant unimaginable computing power.
@@oldrrocryou mention life elsewhere as if it’s are some type of mythological creature, like a vampire or boogeyman. If life exists on earth, then life exists elsewhere. Calling alien life “fake” or “unrealistic” would be calling yourself “fake.” Alien life is *still* life, and we are *life,* aren’t we?
I watched this when you first released this video, after learning more about science and how life evolved it just clicked......... galaxies most likely have a goldilocks zone which may be between the spiral arms, the way you explain things is great love you Joe, you make me want to learn more more 🙂
For some reason you remember when it clicks, even decades later. I still remember exactly when the concept of natural selection clicked for me in high school, during a lesson about those moths during the industrial revolution. Same thing with the concept of gravity, when I realized that everything with mass has a gravitational effect. I still remember asking my teacher if that meant that even our own bodies have by gravitational fields, and when he said yeah, it was a great feeling. I remember a bunch of times like that. Not sure why. It must be just the feeling of satisfaction.
Bighoov1 That is the Fermi Paradox. If life is common....where is it? Even if it just had a head start of a few thousand years, we should still see some evidence. A few hundred thousand and it would have colonised the galaxy. So...either all life in the galaxy is at roughly the same level of development, within a few thousand years of each other, or intelligent life is really rare. That it took 4 billion years to move from single cell to multi cells implies that this step is at least one of the Great Filters. Further...assume that this 4 billion years is "quick" and that it normally takes 5 or 6 billion years. That would put multi cellular life developing just as the sun reached a point on its life cycle where it couldn't support life. Life could be all over the place...but as Fermi said, if it is then where is it? As said...the simplest answer is that life is not all over the place, and that it isn't out there.
Well they claim the starlight we see is old (millions of years?) So if that is the case, perhaps we should just stay tuned? I find this theory hard to believe, because it would mean anything we saw would be in the past. For example, by the time we see a civilization rise it has already fallen. If aliens are coming we’ll see them coming just as they arrive. Etc etc
As Joe said, there are millions of "Fermi Paradox/Are We Alone?" videos on UA-cam. That said, _this_ is the clearest, most concise, most informative and enjoyable episodes you'll see on the subject. This richly illustrates why Joe is one of the best science/ content creators on this platform. He doesn't go down any rabbit holes nor does he delve so deeply into science that you need an astronomy/physics/math degree to understand him. Here, he hits every major facet of the subject to fully flesh out the most important points. Just listen to how perfectly he describes the action and important of Earth's tectonic plate activity. Good Show, Old Chap!
I discovered your channel only today. I've been watching for 4 hours straight now, and I absolutely LOVE your content and your wry delivery on so many different subjects. This particular video totally pushed all my buttons. Thank you for FINALLY allowing me to find an intelligent You Tuber with wonderous content!
I don't really subscribe to the Rare Earth hypothesis per se, but I do think that the jump from intelligent, sentient life, to technological societies is much harder than we think. I mean think about it. If we didn't have something as simple as opposable thumbs, yet had the same brains, we probably couldn't have advanced to where we are now or it would take waaaaay longer. Maybe other intelligent races aren't lucky enough to have a body suited for using that intelligence in a meaningful way to interact with the environment or create technology. Or maybe mass extinctions wipe them out. We almost were wiped out from the Toba Catastrophe. Maybe events like that or asteroid strikes are common enough that intelligent races evolving in relatively peaceful times and with a long enough time span of no natural disasters to fully develop a technological society, is a rare occurrence. Or maybe the physical environment on other planets isn't as suitable for technological progression. Like an intelligent species involving in water or in the clouds of a gas giant may never be able to get to space or study the universe in any meaningful way (especially if they evolve in an under-ice ocean like on a body like Europa) Or the organisms in our physical environment. The Americas never advanced as much as the Old World due to lack of easily domesticated animals, especially horses for faster travel. Imagine if the whole planet was like that? No animals to domesticate or maybe plants being harder to domesticate for crop growing. We would probably be stuck in medieval levels of technology and society or even lower. And maybe in a lot of ways we just got lucky. Certain people being born at the right time having the right ideas to advance us ever so slowly forward. I wonder just how much progress was luck or just us naturally advancing, since things like electric cars and reusable spacecraft had to be pushed for instead of coming naturally. We could have been like the Chinese, stopping exploration just short of finding the Americas, if it weren't for certain people pushing us to explore further and maybe technology is the same. It taking certain individuals or groups of individuals to push the envelope forward. Our luck could even be pushed further back, what if eyes didn't evolve? Or what if organisms had stayed unicellular? Was the evolution of certain things a natural occurrence, in that it would happen on any planet with life eventually, or random chance, some planets may not even make it this far as Earth life has come? There's just too many variable honestly. While life may be abundant in the universe and maybe intelligent life, I feel like its a harder gap to overcome to go from intelligence to technology.
Roman Empire ruled for 1000 years, never even got close to a space-program. Not only do you need the intelligence, but you need to develop the correct culture as well.
You are onto something with the hands thing. That’s actually a pretty popular idea, to believe that the only reason we have made it as far as we are is simply because we have the tools to allow us to do so, and that’s hands with fingers. I mean, that’s probably the only thing preventing crows from becoming more technological... of crows had hands, we would probably be in trouble...
Sterling Archer uh that’s not really how it happened. Humans didn’t really start getting smart until we started throwing rocks, creating tools, and cooking meat. It was definitely hands that allowed us to do all of these things. Without hands giving us the ability to manipulate our environment, we wouldn’t have made it this far at all.
@@spuknoggin5273 Im not denying that. I was saying there must have been something, before opposable thumbs developes, where the mind of the animal was anticipating and trying with their current, unopposable thumbed hands. Evolution doesnt change work the other way. Repeated attempts from successive generations would then form the opposable thumb, making the physical action more efficient abd eventually, dominant.
I'm not sure planet detection has developed to the point where we can conclusively say that we live in an oddball solar system. Certainly there are vastly different solar systems, but I think we would have trouble detecting a solar system like ours with our present instruments, so we are biased towards the kinds of solar systems that are currently easiest for us to detect. The big waiting period between the two main events in the history of life on Earth - single celled and multicelluar organisms - is very suggestive though of multicellularity being rare.
I think this is the truth of it. We can't observe the solar systems that are most likely to harbor life outside of our immediate neighborhood. The fact is those systems could be similar and we may not even know it. So until we have better technology for confirming planets we will not have an accurate answer.
I agree, but I also think the idea of the "galactic habitable zone" is compelling. Maybe the probability of "intelligent" life emerging is exponentially higher in a ring at roughly our radius from the center of the galaxy.
I came here looking for this comment! So far we can only detect wobbles and transits, which means we mostly only find planets orbiting red dwarfs, we can't detect planets like earth orbiting a non dinky star so we can't conclude anything about how weird our solar system is. Is our solar system different than that of a red dwarf? Sure! but that's a red dwarf which is a low mass low energy star so it formed under completely different set of parameters.
There are probably planets that have all the conditions for life but were just unlucky . The first cell here may have been stewing in a rock pool with all the chemicals being in the right place in a trillion to one coincidence but if a wave had washed over that pool at the wrong time or a gust of wind disrupted it then life may never have formed at all. However I agree that the fact that singular cellular life developed relatively quickly shows it may not be that difficult but again it could have just been an incredible coincidence.
It's because he is high. That's what got him thinking originally about all of this but he is smart than most people and can explain and remember/listen very well. Power of intelligence can almost explain everything but everyone just has to know how to function there own brains better.
The chance of intelligent life being “detectable” by us in OUR timeframe has got be be REALLY small - and rare enough that no systems within 100 light years or so have transmitted any radio signals. If we take time out of the equation perhaps we would detect other life - both in our distant past AND in our distant futures.
@@kethmarhkfy7luf.263 neither do you, so how can you call it pure nonsense when it's entirely possible this is 100% correct. Your comment is nonsense. Good day
would be a terrible waste of space if we were alone in the universe IMO, but then again one could argue that in that case it would be humanity's duty to populate it
Is the Rare Earth Hypotheses really just an updated version of the Drake Equation? We just learned there are sooo many more factors that really narrowed the odds down and point out how we might be one of one?
Isaac Asimov said in one of the Galactic Empire novels that every galaxy has one dominant life form to expand and inhabit it. It was an interesting theory. 😊
Daneel Olivaw also arranged for humanity to be moved to a "parallel universe" that had no alien intelligent life, in order to keep humanity safe. The zeroth law. “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
Joe, you really do an amazing job at bringing the existential dread in all of us. Something that I think allot more people should experience every once in a while.
'So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cos there's bugger-all down here on Earth.' M. Python
Life as we know it, always involves enormous amount of suffering. Only the very recent decades (and only in the western world) created relatively comfortable living conditions for most of the inhabitants (and that's only true for humans and their pets). But we still have plenty of diseases, we still age and die. There is also more and more suicides due to rising cases of depression. Aging alone is such a dreadful process, one should wish to never have been born. I (figuratively) pray there is no life anywhere else. How can you wish all this suffering we went, and are going through, onto anyone else?
We're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour; That's orbiting it's reckoned at 19 miles a second, a sun that is the source of all our power. The sun & you & me & all the stars that we can see are moving at a million miles a day, in an outer spiral arm, at 40 thousand miles an hour, of the galaxy we call the Milky Way. ... and our galaxy is one of millions of billions. Etc. (Thank you Mr Eric Idle)
The tectonics issue also presents the problem of becoming a technologically advanced species. You need a planet where heavier elements can come to the surface. When life began on earth, the moon was so close to the planet that the tide was a thousand feet high and almost every square inch of the planet was a tidal pool. Our moon also had, at that time, a molten core capable of creating a magnetic field linked to Earth's magnetic field. The book 'Rare Earth' is more than 2 decades old but most of what we have learned in those 20 years has upheld the hypothesis that simple life is likely common and intelligent, complex life is exceedingly rare.
Hey Joe! Man, your channel is really growing! I remember when your sub amount was only a little feller.. its growing into a giant now! Congrats! *Cheers* here's to a million more!
we realy dont have enough detailed information about any star to make usefull remarks about their planetary systems. we only have the ability to detect realy big planets close to their stars and even from them we only see the ones that happen to orbit infront of their star from our perspective. its like trying to make predictions about earths continents when you can only detect greenland.
Evariste Galois What if we are alone? What if we aren’t? Will we ever know? What if we disappear this evening, will the universe continue unscathed? Are we an attempt of the universe to understand itself?
One of the most compelling cases for the Rare Earth/Great Filter hypothesis is the time it would take for an intelligent civilization to expand across the galaxy. If we assume our galaxy is 150,000 LY to 200,000 LY across, then at the absolute minimum it would take a civilization starting at the center of the galaxy 75,000 to 100,000 years to colonize the whole galaxy. Now that's a bad assumption, given that a civilization isn't likely to start at the center of the galaxy, and they aren't likely to be able to reach light speed. But even if you start adding ineffeciences to that, at only a couple of millions of years you're expanding out at maybe 10%-ish of light speed (maybe more, maybe less depending on conditions). Once you start talking about those numbers, it seems more plausible. Simulations (ran with a 100,000 LY galaxy I think) using extremely conservative values got 50 million years to expand across the galaxy. And the universe is 13.8 billion years old (Adding this in real quickly, the entirety of the 13.8 billion years has not been suitable for life, although the amount of time is probably still measured in the billions of years, and longer than the Earth has been around). Aliens have had plenty of time to colonize the Milky Way, why haven't they already. EDIT: To add onto this, Kardashev 3 civilizations (civilizations which can harness the power of a whole galaxy, the step after colonizing a whole galaxy, which adds however long it takes to build a dyson sphere plus some more time onto however long it takes to expand across a galaxy) would produce waste heat and dim their galaxy, both effects being easily visible to us with current technology. And yet, we don't see any. We can therefor conclude that Kardashev 3 civilizations either do not exist in the universe (yet), or are so rare that there aren't any in our visible bubble of space-time. With this assumption combined with the above one that an alien civilization should only take a few million years at most to colonize the galaxy if they are being efficient at it, then there's only 3 conclusions we must accept, barring extreme coincidences, breaking the laws of physics and/or thermodynamics, and unknown or unpredictable factors: Spacefaring alien civilizations don't exist (or are rare enough that there aren't any in our visible bubble of space-time), spacefaring alien civilizations don't expand (or expand only a little bit to their neighboring systems. We can't detect singular dyson swarms with current technology, so for the moment they could have a couple and we wouldn't be the wiser), or spacefaring alien civilizations don't exploit the full power of stars, and are also here right now either in our own system or our neighboring ones. These are currently the only 3 good answers to the Fermi Paradox, as the rest require extreme coincidences or fall apart when logic or game theory is applied.
because you can't really calculate all those years as time they could've had to expand? I'm not super confident about this, but depending on what elements are absolutely necessary for life to exist (say something like potassium), then how long after the big bang did enough stars finish their life cycle and spit out these elements and how long, at minimum, would it take for these elements to find their way into stable parts of galaxies? That's gotta take out a few billion years from the 13.8 doesn't it? Who knows how many other such filters we might have to apply before we find out that conditions for life may only have been possible in the past ~4 billion years? And then you gotta figure out what happened for those ~3 billion years before the cambrian explosion... whether it was some rogue event or if it really does take 3 billion years for that leap to happen. If you consider all this, then that 13.8 does not look that intimidating anymore. We may very well be in the first "batch" of life that sprung up in the universe, possibly all within a billion years of each other. All this is ofcourse w/o the knowledge of how long it would take for galactic colonization tech to appear. We might be able to accelerate some objects to 10% speed of light in a few decades from now, but a colonization ship? that's a totally different story. for that we should have the tech to identify suitable targets for colonization, and then have the tech to not only accelerate but slow down. There's so many complications to that line of speculation, because we don't know how long after the rise of multi-cellular organisms does it take to invent galactic travel. This is of course assuming that it is even possible (for that particular civilization, not in general). for eg: a civilization that is trapped in a subterranean ocean, might never even invent fire and combustion engines, we can't even speculate if there'd be intelligent life, let alone their tech progression or how long it would take them to progress
@@psd993 I was kind of rushed to finish my comment and left out the part that they couldn't have existed for all of the 13.8 billion years. But the time they could've existed is probably still measured in the billions of years. As long as a star has enough materials of the right kinds in it's solar system for humans to build habitats with food, electricity, and water, and you have the technology to assemble rotating habitats in space (Which is probably a prerequisite to building a colony ship, unless it's a small DNA carrying probe), it's a colonizable solar system. The classic approach of looking for suitable planets is flawed given that you can just assemble your own habitats and not have to deal with gravity wells. And even if you can't get your colonization speed of the galaxy up to effectively 10% of light speed (you'd have to be travelling faster than that), do remember that 10% of light speed is in the range of a couple million of years. The slower you go, the longer it takes. That number is going to drop once you go into the 10s of millions of years, at which point you may be looking at an expansion rate of closer to 1% of light speed or less. The dinosaurs have been dead for a longer time than the numbers being talked about here. So the time it takes for a civilization to colonize the galaxy is probably a 7 to 8 digit number, while the amount of time aliens have likely had to exist is probably a 10 digit number. Which means they should've colonized the whole place by now if they existed. So if we assume alien civilizations are common, expansive, and build dyson swarms, then we should see them. Our observations to not match these assumptions, so one or more of them must be wrong (partially or effectively). And yeah, I'm arguing for the Rare Earth hypothesis combined with the Great Filter hypothesis here, if that wasn't obvious. Civilizations which can't invent space travel wouldn't count towards the Fermi Paradox, and neither would planets with life which don't form civilizations.
@@maxvanvijfeijken2699 If you read the full comment (with the edit part at the end), I'm making the case that one of those 2 things almost certainly must be false (and if neither are, then the dyson swarm building assumption must be false). If we assume those 3 things, that alien civilizations are common, expansive, and build dyson swarms, then we should see them both in our own galaxy and in others. And we don't. So one of those assumptions is false.
Hmm but that's assuming there is a speed of light barrier to travel which I don't. Were not that advanced and still pretty dumb regards physics and explaining where everything came from or how its made. 5% was the last stat about how much of the known state of matter we understand so there is a lot of room for some magical things to actually be possible and communicating faster than light has definatley got to be one of them and no I am not talking about electromagentic signals which is another reason we have not detected any super intelligent life as what super or more advanced life form would communicate at such a slow velocity across such a big universe. Were struggling to communicate with the planet next door... how basic and retarded is that.
I could be totally wrong here, but didn't the planet that hit Earth to form the Moon donate most of it's metal core to ours while forming the Moon out of its crust? If so, wouldn't that impact also be the root for both our extra strong magnetism and active plate tectonics (extra large metal core with relatively thin crust)?
@@frankmazzur5674 The idea that planets formed by explosions is not only false but ridiculous. NASA has all but scrapped the nebula hypothesis of how the solar system came to be and are actually without a peer reviewed "theory". Dont believe it because Utubers still espouse it. The S.SYSTEM was created but am not going to go into that here.
The idea that Jupiter is the only reason we have avoided so many collisions with life ending objects is so cool to consider. We aren't the really special planet, Jupiter is, and we're just a cool side effect of such a comparably huge object cleaning up our space in the universe. Crazy lucky that we are able to exist at all 🤯
@@ctdieselnut There is a 'Join" button that is basically Patreon for UA-cam. $5 a month to basically get the icon, discord access, and other percs. I don't really pay attention to any of them, and just wanted to support Joe. ANY channel on UA-cam that has a 'Join' button next to their 'Subscribe' button, will give you a channel icon next to your username if you "join"/"become a member". Did that make *ANY*sense..???
But at the same it raises other questions, like where did this 'mind' thing come from and how exactly is it possible that we're constantly producing new minds?
@@lonestarr1490 yes. Hard though it is one must try and experience the unfathomable power of eternity/infinity. The original question is how did an eternal reality become self aware? What is consciousness? A good explanation I heard recently was that Reality is a self resolving paradox
I honestly think it's a time problem. In the time that the light travels to meet our eyes intelligent life could have evolved, been wiped out and we would never have known it.
@@joescott you just gave the intelligent design movement a 100 facts to back them up. Suggest you watch a few molecular biology dvds on utube if you are atheist or agnostic.
if your brain was the size of a grain of sand, you could have been a cool parrot but it seems that your brain is the size of a abandoned germ and you reached just the level of a copy-paste featherless parrot.
your totally wrong, if the sun was scaled down to a grain of sand then our nearest star, alpha centauri (binary system) is 18.6 miles away on that scale, pls get your facts correct before posting
You gave us a lot of reasons why carbon based earth life would be so rare in the universe but we have to remember that things can adapt to live in different conditions, like more radiation
Life evolved HERE like that, but extremophiles only evolved here after life arose in the first place. There were billions of years of complex evolution that made that possible. And as far as life that isn't carbon-based, we just have no reason to believe it's even possible. We can speculate, but right now there's no reason to believe that.
@@joshshultz1250 yes its an assumption too, but it has some basis in it. We have evidence of carbon based life (here on Earth). We haven't seen non carbon based life anywhere yet.
People often say to me that it’s impossible to say that we’re alone in the universe because of its size but I’ve always maintained that it’s entirely possible that this is the only one. The only planet capable of sustaining an ecosystem of our complexity and duration. So many factors go into making earth a habitable place that it rules out nearly all the stars and planets in the universe.
It's not about just being habitable. It's also about the chances of abiogenesis actually occuring and all the critical evolutionary steps on the way from simple RNA-like molecule to complex multicellular organisms with brains. There might be many places that are habitable _for us._ But that doesn't mean that life evolved there, or that even if by chance it did, that it is any more complex than a simple colony of bacteria. Like our Earth was for the majority of history.
@@const1988 hello Sir/Madam. So you think the universe, shaped like a disc, with multiple artisticly shaped galaxies, organized clusters of galaxies, super clusters of galaxies, our solar SYSTEM with its 70 something moons all with fudamental laws coupled with super razor sharped "fine tunings" =blind dumb luck. Its origin unknown, lifes origin unknown. 2 thousand planets discovered but none , so the exoplanets specialists tell us,; are not habitable. Joe didnt quite go into all of that . The truth is DESIGN screams at you wherever you look starting with the super complexity of cells. So your question is: Has a creator done this of which has always existed or everthing you see, uncluding yourself with 100 billion neurons in your grey matter just an accident.?
When I watch videos like this I genuinely question if all this did happen because of some god like being, maybe some ancient species who wanted to experiment
1. When looking out at earth-like planets, we're looking back in time due to the speed of light to reflect off that planet and reach us. We're not seeing those planets as they are today, but as they WERE millions of (light) years ago. The same is true for an astronomer on another planet looking at our earth. They're not seeing the earth you & I live on, they're seeing our earth as it was millions of (light) years ago.
Trying to find another intelligent life in the Universe is like trying to look for a needle in the haystack and the haystack is just as high as Mt. Everest.
This is a very interesting video. It does a fine job of explaining the factors that are required for live to form on this planet. It does a fine job of explaining these factors in a way that can be understood.
If we look like living stick figures to a 5-dimensional being, what would a 5-dimensional being look like to us? Would it look a giant undulating space-time hydra?
Imagine an alien from a planet billions of light years away from us talking about the harsh condition of early earth making it unhabitable so theyre scientists ignores our planet.
Beautifully done. I don't think "there's no life out there" is the simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox. "The universe is too effing big for us to expect evidence of life to have reached us" is the simplest answer.
Graham's Number is big. The universe is very very small.
I would say 'no life' is simpler. Too big is another viable option, many Great Filter alternatives definitely exist.
@Butt Cube Thats definitely what I think too. Like maybe we're underestimating just how unlikely it is for a planet to evolve life like we have today.
I think it's almost certain *some* form of living thing exists somewhere else, like microscopic bacteria-like forms. But the chances of life like us being able to exist, evolving properly, not being rendered extinct due to many reasons (climate, resources, catsstrophic space event etc) isn't like a 1 in 3 chance. It's incredibly low.
Every planet is unique and so throws up its own obstacles, what if Earth is the only one that allowed this kind of life to happen? Like if Earth was just slightly different, we'd not survive. If it was just a little too close to the sun or if there was no water or gravity etc.
@@SaintPhoenixx Yeah but what we know about life doesn't have to be the only option. Us not surviving a condition is just a result of the conditions we evolved to.
And the universe is hostile. I haven't watched this video yet but most planets can't sustain life because most planets live in cosmic dust clouds. When you look at the milky way, everywhere you can see light inhabitable. That light is literally radiation. We live in a dark spot
You Sir, are a great communicator. That was 19 minutes of pure interest, fascinating, to coin a phrase.
"Mirror girl, Mirror boy, Mirror frog, Mirror man" - Don Van Vliet (1971)
@@dear-madame-artist1561, don't be shy Artist. Come on out and say it, because I'm dying to know what the "L" stands for! (Logical? Likable? Luxurious? The suspense is killing me!)
We gonna have to break some kneecaps
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Why is not being alone terrifying, thats what everyone expects. We wouldn't have to figure out all of the rest of science by ourselves once we find anybody who has been around for longer. That would be awsome, not terrifying.
@@CUXOB2 Presumably, it's because he suspected that other races existed, but subsequently went extinct, meaning if we are alone, we might be headed for a similar extinction event, one that no one so far has managed to dodge.
Cheburushka He meant that if our small insignificant dot in the universe is the only place where complicated life has evolved it means there is nowhere else to go... this is it, our planet, the one we’re currently destroying is the only place capable of life. Scary thought huh?
Or maybe the 95% of the Universe that we explain as Dark Matter/Energy is life in the Universe, just so advanced it is beyond our technology to detect.
I’d rather be alone then the possibility of the doomsday argument being reality. Soooo many more spiritual realities if we are intact alone.
The harsh reality is, theres a strong chance that none of us alive now will ever know if there is other life.
Pfffft
Give it a decade, we’re seeing government official UFO sightings, wouldn’t be surprised if they’re trying to ease the populace in.
Or indeed if anyone ever will know.
We'll know after physical death.
Try a CE-5 Protocol Meditation. And yeah, there's an app for that.
*Out of the 4.5 billion years the planets been around we have only been detectable for 0.00000000000001% in a radius of 100 light years, so we are going to have to look at A LOT of planets to catch that small percentage*
Exactly. We've been around for less than a heartbeat in the life span of a galaxy. In the next heartbeat we will probably be extinct.
If a civilization from another world ever did or ever will reach earth, it could be a billion years too early, or a billion years too late to encounter mankind. The same holds true for us encountering intelligent life somewhere else.
It’s a lot like taking a thimble of ocean water, not seeing an life in it, and deciding that the ocean must be lifeless. I heard an analogy; if the universe is all the water in our earth’s oceans, we have searched barely a cup of that seawater. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth many times over. “We haven’t found anything and we are never going to,” is a ridiculous statement. Hell, in order to see the American flag on the moon, you would need a lens AS BIG AS PLANET EARTH to see it FROM earth! People just have no clue how huge the universe truly is… A lot like was stated in melodysheep’s video Timelapse of the Future, even after all the stars in the universe have died out and have been swallowed up by black holes, in terms of a human lifetime, the universe still hasn’t even left the womb!
@@JanoyCresvaZero Dumb argument.
@@shirleymental4189
Okay. And what makes it a stupid argument?
Stable rocky planets haven't been around that long. Gamma rays and supernovas every few millennia, most stars being unstable, idk it's rather unlikely that if there ever was such a thing that early, a planet life sustaining, it would've lasted long enough for it to even matter.
I can't get enough of this guy. He's such a great story teller and he always has interesting subjects to talk about. Great job, Joe!
Thanks!
You can go to a library lend books on Geo Physics, astro physics and bio chemistry , thats what Joe has done. All adds up to a creator who is maintaining his handiwork.
agreed. I feel like I neeed to learn how to communicate science to others from Joe. His skeptical-sounding second-takes at his statements feels like the perfect way to get typically non-critical minds to actually question the substance of a claim.
Sebastian ioan, Yeah, and he always likes comments that praise him, he seems to be addicted to approval, and that's the main reason for his work here. He craves that surrogate of love.
@@azatmingalimov Ugh...I was joking earlier. I love this channel. Joe works hard and he deseves the praise. Honestly I think he might one day land a job in PBS or something.
I think it'd be neat (if not slightly depressing) if we actually were the only intelligent life to exist so far. That means that if we somehow manage to live long enough for other species to finally exist, we could very well get to be one of those super mysterious/powerful/ancient "elder" species that they always have in Science Fiction. Ha, the thought of aliens thinking of us as wise is kinda hilarious. Maybe someday!
Edit: aww cute lol, pluto was lonely but she found a friend! I like the way you put that!
In the sixties and fifties aliens were wise. Because a lot of wishful thinking was going around. "They have to be wise and benevolent because if they were warmongers they would have eradicated themselves", something like that. Nowadays we see that the only reason to go to space is to make sure the enemy isn't beating us to it. Therefor, nowadays, writers are a bit more realistic about aliens. Nowadays they are depicted as locusts that swarm from civilisation to civilisation to gobble them up. Since competition is the driving force of evolution, why would that be any different for aliens.
Pluto has a friend: What do you call Mickey?
We weren’t alone until we killed all of our hominid cousins.
You're using "if not" wrong
Wow! I have thought of that idea for a book where time travelling ET's reveal that humans are the elder species of the universe. The travellers also reveal that they are from billions of years ahead in time and their technologies have 'never' detected life anywhere else within this dimension of the universe and that we are alone as a sentient beings and we expanded as far out as other galaxies.
What’s more terrifying than being alone?
Not being alone, when thinking we are.
Agreed
One of the only channels I keep coming back to, simple informative and a likeable guy. Keep it up dude!
Thanks!
This is one of the best channels, shocking it has less than a million subscribers. Joe you rock!
yeah like I was so surprised. The content quality is so good, and joe is explaining so eloquently, should be way more popular.
@@kunalsingh4418 People are more interested in stupid cat videos or gaming videos to care about quality stuff.
“Where is everybody"? A better question, albeit a more troubling one, might be “What happened to everybody?"
I try not to think about that
Or.... Why is everybody ?
Or when is everybody
How is everybody, I hope there doing okay
If it look like a duck it’s not a chicken
I’ve watched this video many times and Each time, the ‘last sigh’ kind of sums it up for me. We are so so lucky to be here. Can we just take care of the earth and each other please?
No :3
@@lucipo_ wow so funny and edgy
@@bethancameron6283 I think your parents never asked any questions the way your name is missing the y
@@lucipo_I love you 😘🤔
"this moment of existential dread is brought to you by curiosity stream:
Best curiosity stream ad ever :DDDDDD
realy check internet historian epic
wxb200 is 6 months late yet he has more likes and comments. How do you explain that!
Intelligent life might be a bit kind. It would really suck to find out we're the cousin Eddie of the universe.
I fear we are the Eddie Bravo of the universe, look into it!
well if life truly is rare, chances are that, if we get discovered first, they would preserve and study us, instead of destroy us
@@rubenb8653 or they could be utterly xenophobic and driven to eradicate the competition. What if it's a dog eat dog kind of universe?
@@3PercentNeanderthal I think it IS a dog eats dog kind of universe, but that they might still decide against it. If they are intelligent enough to get here by space travel, it is probable they have some euiqvalent of our scientific method, and then they might understand that for evey, say, million solar systems there might be only a few planets that actually harbor life, and that earth life is probably an interesting object of study. And if we developed on this planet only, as in, things like the pan-spermia hypothesis are false, theres a FAT chance that we (earth life) are very unique. and since numbers and logic are absolute, I think that they would see this too, simply because they would be able to count, and count planets and such. also, such xenophobia does not really seem 'intelligent' to me personally, say, destroying things because * aaah * they are different. if they were so xenophobic, they would miss a lot of data, and if data is not important to them, they might not ever have developed complex tech in the first place.
so all intelligent life might really be peering out in the cosmos and conclude that, yes, life is really pretty rare (probably)
but that is what i think. I might be very wrong, and get eaten by an alien tomorrow haha.
@@3PercentNeanderthal also, i dont really see how earth could be harvested for rare minerals and such if there are so many planets that are full of recourses, yet uninhabited. the one thing that makes earth unique is life. this might be a blessing, for they (dem aliens) might preserve the oddities of nature.... but it could be a curse indeed. they might get recrouses from human flesh, it just seems so unlikely to me. i dont really know any chemicals in the human body so rare that it would be proifitable to destroy the whole species for it, especially with such an abundance of lifeless matter in the universe that can be exploited.also, it is very unlkely that they would literally 'eat' us. if they feed, it is unlikely that they can 'digest' us, or even get any useful nutrition from us, as we are from a completely different planet.
so yeah long comment, haha, but these are my reasons to believe that aliens will likely not destroy us at all
We could just be the first intelligent civilization
Maybe we’ll be the alien invaders of some distant primitive world
Or maybe the millionth time it's happened before it all restarted
The worst thing a less advanced civilization could have happen to it is for mankind to be able to reach them.
Sorry, but that's pure human centric arrogance. With 10s to 100s of trillions of galaxies the odds are against a human first Intelligence being humans. We're most likely created from "panspermia" or amino acids brought by an asteroid.
@@angelinarobert622 Incorrect and your line of thinking is why we always assumed there would be alien life. It seemed to make sense given the odds.
However, what the Fermi Paradox failed to take into account was a great many "filters" that are extremely rare in and of themselves. When you add up all the extremely rare circumstances that all come together in combination here on "Rare Earth", you begin to understand why we are not finding life elsewhere, and we can see quite far now.
😶
I was feeling so small throughout this video but then Joe was like "okay what is that" made me laugh so hard. I wish I had you as a teacher in school, I would've probably focused more. I'm so interested in any topic you talk about. Thank you for providing an A1 learning atmosphere for people of all backgrounds. I really appreciate it.
So glad to hear you say "other life that doesnt fit our definition, isnt composed of DNA or Carbon ". It drives me nuts to watch How the Universe Works and hear these scientists say how life would be impossible on [some exoplanet or moon] because of the absence of water. We evolved needing water because its present on earth. Life on other planets would evolve utilising elements and compounds found there. That's what evolution is. This moment of existential dread brought to you by..... Joe.
Life requires biochemistry, and the only element that is capable of the rich variety of chain and ring compounds needed for life is carbon. As Lawrence Henderson pointed out as long ago as 1913, water too is uniquely friendly to biochemistry. Supernovas pump out the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus that terrestrial life requires. We humans have observed 3 supernovas in the Milky Way over the past one thousand years. This translates to 3M Milky Way supernovas per billion years on our side of the galactic nucleus.
Yes, when they go looking for planets like our own suggesting ours is the only type of planet that can sustain life makes me laugh.
@@lylecosmopolite with so much that we dont know about the universe, its disappointing to hear anyone with a truly scientific mind use the words "only", "always" or "never" The ONLY time that word is correct is when saying "Only sentences that use absolutes are consistently wrong ". We evolved using the building blocks available on our planet. Another world having entirely different composition and available resources would evolve life using what is available there. Hasn't anyone considered that the Fermi Paradox appears to be true because we are looking right at life and dont even know it because it doesnt fit our narrow and conceited definition? Recent Pentagon declassification revealed not only objects that defy our known physical limits (of both body and technology) but metals in their posession that do not carry our local groups quantum signature and are not on our periodic table. Again, it's just my humble opinion that there is more that we do not know than what we do and every single day, that list grows. I'm just pointing out that it took our fastest spacecraft ever (JUNO) 5 years to get to Jupiter, less than 1/11 the radius of our solar system (sun to Ort Cloud) and we think we know the only kind of life that can exist in the universe? If a celestial body has organic compounds but no water, life is impossible? No wonder we cant find anything with such a narrow view.
Also, we once thought that life required water and Oxygen, then the Tardigrade happened along. We used to think that life couldnt withstand freezing and being reanimated, then Rana sylvatica came along. Life will find a way with whatever it has to work with.
Exactly!
If we are really alone in the universe then the universe is full of free realestate
Yes ! Taxable real estate ! Our first revenue stream , now copper an silver!
May I suggest you watch "the Privileged Planet DVD " on Utube re that real estate.
@@ralphgoreham3516 yes thank you , I may I will , I shall , a recommendation , and politely offered , thanks!
So does this mean I can have my own planet
Yeah, but if we are alone, chances are the realestate is not something we can ever reach.
"This moment of Existential Dread is brought to you by Curiosity Stream..." HAHAHAHA!!
It could just be us. And god could be real. Maybe this simulation is just that. A sims built works and then some. We go back to the source at death. Why why else would we be here. What would be the point! Is there a point ? Whatever is going on we are apart of the universe and not just a small part but a big part. Bigger than we can understand the now because off disinformation etc
It could just be us. And god could be real. Maybe this simulation is just that. A sims built works and then some. We go back to the source at death. Why why else would we be here. What would be the point! Is there a point ? Whatever is going on we are apart of the universe and not just a small part but a big part. Bigger than we can understand the now because off disinformation etc
Intelligent people are full of doubts stupid people are confident I like that good 1jo
The fact that you used punctuation and obeyed the rules of grammar, fetched you more likes & comments than Lukas Vasionis even though your comment was 6 months late?
Life is fair, OR is it?
You're starting to sound like one of those round earthers.
Earth is square,.
@@yomanyo327 donut
Earth doesn't exist
@@yomanyo327 It's a decahedron your tetrahedonic muppet!
Lol!
*“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”*
― _Carl Sagan, Contact_
👽👌
Can I suggest you watch "The privileged Planet Video" on youtube. It addresses all that space.
"The human brain is a very big place, in a very small space" - Also Carl Sagan, from the "persistence of memory" episode of Cosmos. All 13 episodes are on UA-cam still, at least they were not to long ago last time i went through and watched the series again.
"*human with opinion.*"
- insert random name here
We always bemoan the distances in space because we want to travel. But then you learn about near earth orbit objects and nemesis stars and gamma pulse bursts, etc.
A waste of space? I know of a 5 bedroom house with one occupant. It seems like a waste of space because the house could have at least 4 more occupants. But then, it would only "seem" to be a waste of space since the house was designed for more occupants. But since there is no design, there is no waste.
Well I guess it's Existential Crisis Monday again...
It's monday, m for memento mori.
'it's Existential Crisis Monday again'
lol,,, yeah
That's why I'm here.
I kind of like this theory. It's simple. I find it kind of relaxing to think there's a whole universe to explore with very small chance of encountering more than rocks and radiation that want to destroy us. In some ways, I gotta wonder if life is sort of an accidental thing, like an infection. Once we leave this star of ours, universe beware!
Isn't that every Monday?
5 views 25 likes
Proof of extraterrestrial life
The aliens love me.
@@joescott I got one here in Africa it has eyes for feet some weird shit or I'm high on malaria and overstayed cheap imported Indian medicine idk anymore😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@joescott the reason why we don't see other existing breathing planets because there always a generation of idiots like Trump blowing up the place.
@@AwesomeBlackDude So Trump is the great filter. I thought so.
@@MTerrance now the good news about Trump.... his administration is heavily funding NASA. Which NASA had already reported the planet is rapidly is warming up sustainability.
This video makes me love Earth so much.
Hey, think the good side of being alone in the universe: _It's free real estate_
precisely... we even have billions of years to go forth and multiply and who knows what wierd methods of transport may be invented in that amount of huge time considering we have gone from the horse to rockets in just a couple of hundred years
@@blancaroca8786 amazing, imagine how wars will be when we will have colonized the whole galaxy. Trillions of dead, planetary eradications, genocides... the galaxy should try and kill us while it still can before we become unstoppable LOL
Damn right.
Not like we are going to leave the solar system anytime soon.
Trump own ceres.
I agree with the final point that, mathematically, even a 'rare' Earth means loads of nearly identical planets.
But in our galaxy? It's unlikely we'd ever get out of the Milky Way or Andromeda ever in the history of the universe, so we only have iirc 100 billion planets to go through.
Actually no, that depends on the probability of having earth like conditions.
Let's do some quick maths. Assuming there are 1/2 of the chance of each conditions that led to life. So let assume as simple as 5 factors, like rocky planet, glodilock zone etc.. The probability is about 0.03%. Which is alot considering the vastness of universe right? However, life is more complicated than this. Let's say there are 80 conditions you have to meet, having an iron Core, large moon, geological movements, stable enviroment. The probability is too small that the probability is lower than the number of planets there are in the universe. And I'm just being positive and assume each condition has a 50% chance of happening.
@@anomonyus-57 we can let's just say any number of factors, but based on the actual evidence, what I said before.
@@crusaderACR I didn't say anything in your reply.
@@anomonyus-57 who the fick takes the time to well actually a 3 year old comment that just says there are probably many earth like planets in the vastness of the universe?
It's insane that we have to convince people to maintain the one and only planet we know supports human life. 😒 😒
you just gave 50 reasons evo is nonsense Joe . There would be another 100 reasons.
Michael, that's exactly what I was thinking. I was shaking my head.
Michael Howson it’s crazy you think we can harm the earth. That’s lunacy
@@growbydoing7290 It's not that we can harm a planet. It's that we can alter our living situation enough that we can no longer get along on that planet very well... An older gentleman in my family claims that he has lived his life and is not responsible for anything in the future, that he does not have to care. It's attitudes like this man in my family has,, that make it so. The fact is, we can alter the environment. Not enough to kill the planet, but certainly enough to kill ourselves.
@@growbydoing7290 Wow. Just wow. Do you actively avoid all news about everything? Livin' in your own Private Idaho, eh?
The idea that we're totally alone. Just makes me feel even more lucky and special. It doesn't get me down.
It's sad, it makes me think that the universe is random
I was just watching some of your videos, letting autoplay do its thing, and when you started talking about a galactic Goldilocks Zone and planets forming in the core of the galaxy, my ears pricked up. It's pretty much a brief summary of my PhD research!
Anything to add? It's always great to get more information. 👍
Pray tell!
"If you like my channel"
Ma man, I loooove your channel
Scrolling quickly through the comments, I thought you wrote, "Ma'am, I love your channel."
I thought, "Wow, that's a really perplexing mistake to make."
How I wish my science teachers as I was growing up we're more like you u make science learning so much fun and love ur joke's it makes it more interesting and fun learning thank u so much.
Godzilla had a stroke trying to read that and fucking died.
I agree. I had a science teacher. Fun dude, a bit of crank (would insult his students if we stepped out of line), but made science interesting and, most importantly, relevant.
Whenever I want my Science Fiction dreams crushed, I just come here. Still, very well done.
I don't think that "life" itself is rare. but intelligence, that's a whole different ballgame. I mean, just look how long it took to emerge here on earth. and then it only manifests in one species. there are probably billions of planets with sponges and stuff, but very few with libraries
There used to be two intelligent species on this planet but you bullied the other out of existence. 😐
@@fcgHenden I don't count Neanderthals as a different species. for one we were both members of the hominids and secondly, we could (and did) interbreed. I'm talking intelligent fish or squid or bears, birds, reptiles etc. not just one or two species of ape-decendents. and I mean proper intelligence, not just sticks and stone tools. I mean like writing.
@@archenema6792 ???
@@mystuff8602 I was supporting your argument that HSS and HSN are essentially the same population as regards evolutionary pressure, using, you know, science.
@@archenema6792 ah
i dont have anything to say but i still want to comment for that algorithm boost
I appreciate that. :)
I think proving there isn't life out there is impossible but that proving there is life is possible but will never happen in our lifetime.
In a few million years, whatever we evolve into will maybe figure it out, but it's arrogant of us to assume we would know by now.
In the future, they'll look back at us and laugh at the dumb shit we did and believed and didn't know. Personally I think it's possible but not as likely as people say it is. But also its crazy to think we know or should know at this point in time. Like why now? Maybe we will in the future, but not now.
I would really LOVE to see a video on alternative forms of life; like ammonia- or silicate-based life.
Yes!
Imagine discovering life from the moon Europa. Europeans...
LMFAO good one 😂
I killed a bunch of european lifeforms today, if you're interested. I went out to our garden and pulled out some weeds.
Now that’s funny right there!
man wonder if the planet america would collapse already
Mind. Blown.
this is exactly the kind of theory which gives rise to the simulation theories
Theres no such thing as "simulation theory." Its the simulation hypothesis. Nothing more. Theres little to no evidence that we're living inside a simulation, and even if we were, there's no way to prove we are. There's no way to prove we arent, to be fair, but luckily, that's not how science works. If that were the case, I could say unicorns exist, and since you cant prove they dont, we slap the title of "unicorn theory" to it and call it a day.
I'd be happy to live out my days as a Sims 4 character
@@joshuatraffanstedt2695 Schrödinger's cat, need I remind you is a valid argument here. So is Occam's Razor. Quantum Indeterminancy is also extremely popular. There's many valid arguments for simulated reality. The Rare Earth hypothesis is one of them, but String Theory presents another. The fact that we can tie everything about our world and quantum physics into a nice presentable package until it all falls apart with zero evidence. We can't find gravitons yet all the math and science points to it. That could be human error in the idea that we've just yet to discover it, but the tests we've done are *supposed* to find these answers. They should be where we look for them, yet they aren't. Inconsistencies Inconsistencies - they're everywhere. The simulation hypothesis explains all of this.
Do I believe it per se? Meh. Is it extremely valid? For sure.
The simulation hypothesis is completely retarded. If we’re living inside a simulation, then what are our creators living inside? A real universe? That would even more unlikely than the earth and consequently us humans having formed naturally, since a simulation to that scale would warrant unimaginable computing power.
"Do you want an Olympus Mons? Because that's how you get an Olympus Mons. " Really good Archer reference 👌
Ever wonder who the first person (or people) to climb Olympus Mons will be?
@@garyoesterle8807 Might be easier than climbing Mt. Everest, once we have the technology to actually get someone to to the base of it.
Can someone explain the context of the original quip from Archer? I'm uncultured.
⁶dd& to p ct G81 c c P⁹]q
***Edit: fell asleep reading comments. Leaving it here because it's funny. 😉❤
@@jeffbenton6183what is a what huh? What are yall talking about??
There could be civilizations like us out there looking to the stars wondering the same thing we are wondering, “are we alone” and “where is everybody”
Nope! not there...
Next topic: is there a God? Nope, for us though, there is the Sun.
@@oldrrocryou mention life elsewhere as if it’s are some type of mythological creature, like a vampire or boogeyman. If life exists on earth, then life exists elsewhere. Calling alien life “fake” or “unrealistic” would be calling yourself “fake.” Alien life is *still* life, and we are *life,* aren’t we?
Why is this channel so addictive
I click play for the chair spin and the bongo intro, and then just end up watching the whole thing.
Having fun, mr. president? Cuz the country's dying.
@@whocares2087.1 If I changed my name to Bill Gates would you believe I was him too?
Did you really kill Osama? or was it faked?
It's the extra nicotine.
I watched this when you first released this video, after learning more about science and how life evolved it just clicked......... galaxies most likely have a goldilocks zone which may be between the spiral arms, the way you explain things is great love you Joe, you make me want to learn more more 🙂
For some reason you remember when it clicks, even decades later. I still remember exactly when the concept of natural selection clicked for me in high school, during a lesson about those moths during the industrial revolution. Same thing with the concept of gravity, when I realized that everything with mass has a gravitational effect. I still remember asking my teacher if that meant that even our own bodies have by gravitational fields, and when he said yeah, it was a great feeling. I remember a bunch of times like that. Not sure why. It must be just the feeling of satisfaction.
Or life could be all over the place and we don't see it because we're seeing the past out there.
I agree
Yeah but why would life arise everywhere at the same time? I guess that's no crazier than it only being here lol
@@joshuatraffanstedt2695 Well its had a very long time so far to do so, but whose to say were not the first.
Bighoov1 That is the Fermi Paradox. If life is common....where is it?
Even if it just had a head start of a few thousand years, we should still see some evidence. A few hundred thousand and it would have colonised the galaxy.
So...either all life in the galaxy is at roughly the same level of development, within a few thousand years of each other, or intelligent life is really rare.
That it took 4 billion years to move from single cell to multi cells implies that this step is at least one of the Great Filters.
Further...assume that this 4 billion years is "quick" and that it normally takes 5 or 6 billion years. That would put multi cellular life developing just as the sun reached a point on its life cycle where it couldn't support life.
Life could be all over the place...but as Fermi said, if it is then where is it?
As said...the simplest answer is that life is not all over the place, and that it isn't out there.
Well they claim the starlight we see is old (millions of years?) So if that is the case, perhaps we should just stay tuned?
I find this theory hard to believe, because it would mean anything we saw would be in the past. For example, by the time we see a civilization rise it has already fallen. If aliens are coming we’ll see them coming just as they arrive. Etc etc
As Joe said, there are millions of "Fermi Paradox/Are We Alone?" videos on UA-cam.
That said, _this_ is the clearest, most concise, most informative and enjoyable episodes you'll see on the subject.
This richly illustrates why Joe is one of the best science/ content creators on this platform. He doesn't go down any rabbit holes nor does he delve so deeply into science that you need an astronomy/physics/math degree to understand him. Here, he hits every major facet of the subject to fully flesh out the most important points. Just listen to how perfectly he describes the action and important of Earth's tectonic plate activity.
Good Show, Old Chap!
Nice overview Joe; balanced, thoughtful and thorough without driving off into the weeds of all the absolutist theories. Thank you for keeping it real.
the careful thoughtful awareness you bring to every topic you cover is why I sub you on patreon, thank you
Joe just substantiated Genesis and the work of the creator.
Good morning Joe! I will always be alone in the universe lol
This is why I got a cat.
@@henkbarnard1553 So the cat can ignore you, and then you can be alone, and ignored.
@@davidmlong63 yep
Omg yes
Naw, there's other people.
I discovered your channel only today. I've been watching for 4 hours straight now, and I absolutely LOVE your content and your wry delivery on so many different subjects. This particular video totally pushed all my buttons. Thank you for FINALLY allowing me to find an intelligent You Tuber with wonderous content!
I don't really subscribe to the Rare Earth hypothesis per se, but I do think that the jump from intelligent, sentient life, to technological societies is much harder than we think. I mean think about it.
If we didn't have something as simple as opposable thumbs, yet had the same brains, we probably couldn't have advanced to where we are now or it would take waaaaay longer. Maybe other intelligent races aren't lucky enough to have a body suited for using that intelligence in a meaningful way to interact with the environment or create technology.
Or maybe mass extinctions wipe them out. We almost were wiped out from the Toba Catastrophe. Maybe events like that or asteroid strikes are common enough that intelligent races evolving in relatively peaceful times and with a long enough time span of no natural disasters to fully develop a technological society, is a rare occurrence.
Or maybe the physical environment on other planets isn't as suitable for technological progression. Like an intelligent species involving in water or in the clouds of a gas giant may never be able to get to space or study the universe in any meaningful way (especially if they evolve in an under-ice ocean like on a body like Europa)
Or the organisms in our physical environment. The Americas never advanced as much as the Old World due to lack of easily domesticated animals, especially horses for faster travel. Imagine if the whole planet was like that? No animals to domesticate or maybe plants being harder to domesticate for crop growing. We would probably be stuck in medieval levels of technology and society or even lower.
And maybe in a lot of ways we just got lucky. Certain people being born at the right time having the right ideas to advance us ever so slowly forward. I wonder just how much progress was luck or just us naturally advancing, since things like electric cars and reusable spacecraft had to be pushed for instead of coming naturally. We could have been like the Chinese, stopping exploration just short of finding the Americas, if it weren't for certain people pushing us to explore further and maybe technology is the same. It taking certain individuals or groups of individuals to push the envelope forward. Our luck could even be pushed further back, what if eyes didn't evolve? Or what if organisms had stayed unicellular? Was the evolution of certain things a natural occurrence, in that it would happen on any planet with life eventually, or random chance, some planets may not even make it this far as Earth life has come?
There's just too many variable honestly. While life may be abundant in the universe and maybe intelligent life, I feel like its a harder gap to overcome to go from intelligence to technology.
Roman Empire ruled for 1000 years, never even got close to a space-program. Not only do you need the intelligence, but you need to develop the correct culture as well.
You are onto something with the hands thing. That’s actually a pretty popular idea, to believe that the only reason we have made it as far as we are is simply because we have the tools to allow us to do so, and that’s hands with fingers. I mean, that’s probably the only thing preventing crows from becoming more technological... of crows had hands, we would probably be in trouble...
I think evolution of Mind/brain came before evolution of thumbs... the Mind/brain sets the tone, as it were...
Sterling Archer uh that’s not really how it happened. Humans didn’t really start getting smart until we started throwing rocks, creating tools, and cooking meat. It was definitely hands that allowed us to do all of these things. Without hands giving us the ability to manipulate our environment, we wouldn’t have made it this far at all.
@@spuknoggin5273 Im not denying that. I was saying there must have been something, before opposable thumbs developes, where the mind of the animal was anticipating and trying with their current, unopposable thumbed hands. Evolution doesnt change work the other way.
Repeated attempts from successive generations would then form the opposable thumb, making the physical action more efficient abd eventually, dominant.
I'm not sure planet detection has developed to the point where we can conclusively say that we live in an oddball solar system. Certainly there are vastly different solar systems, but I think we would have trouble detecting a solar system like ours with our present instruments, so we are biased towards the kinds of solar systems that are currently easiest for us to detect.
The big waiting period between the two main events in the history of life on Earth - single celled and multicelluar organisms - is very suggestive though of multicellularity being rare.
I think this is the truth of it. We can't observe the solar systems that are most likely to harbor life outside of our immediate neighborhood. The fact is those systems could be similar and we may not even know it. So until we have better technology for confirming planets we will not have an accurate answer.
I agree, but I also think the idea of the "galactic habitable zone" is compelling. Maybe the probability of "intelligent" life emerging is exponentially higher in a ring at roughly our radius from the center of the galaxy.
I came here looking for this comment! So far we can only detect wobbles and transits, which means we mostly only find planets orbiting red dwarfs, we can't detect planets like earth orbiting a non dinky star so we can't conclude anything about how weird our solar system is. Is our solar system different than that of a red dwarf? Sure! but that's a red dwarf which is a low mass low energy star so it formed under completely different set of parameters.
There are probably planets that have all the conditions for life but were just unlucky . The first cell here may have been stewing in a rock pool with all the chemicals being in the right place in a trillion to one coincidence but if a wave had washed over that pool at the wrong time or a gust of wind disrupted it then life may never have formed at all. However I agree that the fact that singular cellular life developed relatively quickly shows it may not be that difficult but again it could have just been an incredible coincidence.
Your UA-cam postings are very interesting and well presented. This one, in particular, is exceptionally thoughtful. Well done.
Regards,
Geoff. Reeks
It's because he is high. That's what got him thinking originally about all of this but he is smart than most people and can explain and remember/listen very well. Power of intelligence can almost explain everything but everyone just has to know how to function there own brains better.
That's an unfortunate last name
Lucias The Goose Yes, what does he reek of?
Cheers Geoff
The chance of intelligent life being “detectable” by us in OUR timeframe has got be be REALLY small - and rare enough that no systems within 100 light years or so have transmitted any radio signals.
If we take time out of the equation perhaps we would detect other life - both in our distant past AND in our distant futures.
@@kethmarhkfy7luf.263 neither do you, so how can you call it pure nonsense when it's entirely possible this is 100% correct. Your comment is nonsense. Good day
would be a terrible waste of space if we were alone in the universe IMO, but then again one could argue that in that case it would be humanity's duty to populate it
Hell yassss
Hahaha! ... Duty. :')
We are the aliens: we just haven't got there yet.
So true! We can't even live here!! We need climate controlled environment, and clothing. Definitely, we don't belong.
@@carrieeloff2220 i've always wondered who dumped us on this rock
@@brookingsbeachcomber I know. Sick joke and there's no punchline.
@@carrieeloff2220 that is weird...
@@carrieeloff2220 some day we'll actually reach the perfect planet for humankind and kill all the inhabitants. good times.
Is the Rare Earth Hypotheses really just an updated version of the Drake Equation? We just learned there are sooo many more factors that really narrowed the odds down and point out how we might be one of one?
Isaac Asimov said in one of the Galactic Empire novels that every galaxy has one dominant life form to expand and inhabit it. It was an interesting theory. 😊
Daneel Olivaw also arranged for humanity to be moved to a "parallel universe" that had no alien intelligent life, in order to keep humanity safe. The zeroth law.
“A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
Joe, you really do an amazing job at bringing the existential dread in all of us. Something that I think allot more people should experience every once in a while.
My ears are burning.
Why ?
'So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
'Cos there's bugger-all down here on Earth.'
M. Python
Right then. Can we have your liver?
Meaning of life
Life as we know it, always involves enormous amount of suffering.
Only the very recent decades (and only in the western world) created relatively comfortable living conditions for most of the inhabitants (and that's only true for humans and their pets).
But we still have plenty of diseases, we still age and die. There is also more and more suicides due to rising cases of depression.
Aging alone is such a dreadful process, one should wish to never have been born.
I (figuratively) pray there is no life anywhere else.
How can you wish all this suffering we went, and are going through, onto anyone else?
We're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour;
That's orbiting it's reckoned at 19 miles a second, a sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun & you & me & all the stars that we can see are moving at a million miles a day, in an outer spiral arm, at 40 thousand miles an hour, of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
... and our galaxy is one of millions of billions. Etc. (Thank you Mr Eric Idle)
The tectonics issue also presents the problem of becoming a technologically advanced species. You need a planet where heavier elements can come to the surface.
When life began on earth, the moon was so close to the planet that the tide was a thousand feet high and almost every square inch of the planet was a tidal pool. Our moon also had, at that time, a molten core capable of creating a magnetic field linked to Earth's magnetic field.
The book 'Rare Earth' is more than 2 decades old but most of what we have learned in those 20 years has upheld the hypothesis that simple life is likely common and intelligent, complex life is exceedingly rare.
One of the best AWJ videos. Congrats.
Thanks!
Hey Joe! Man, your channel is really growing! I remember when your sub amount was only a little feller.. its growing into a giant now! Congrats! *Cheers* here's to a million more!
we realy dont have enough detailed information about any star to make usefull remarks about their planetary systems. we only have the ability to detect realy big planets close to their stars and even from them we only see the ones that happen to orbit infront of their star from our perspective. its like trying to make predictions about earths continents when you can only detect greenland.
Hopefully, James-Webb will help with that.
15:45 it’s not that no other planet has any of those attributes, it’s that few to none have ALL those attributes
“Are we really alone in the universe”
One of the most surreal questions a human can ask
Evariste Galois
What if we are alone? What if we aren’t? Will we ever know? What if we disappear this evening, will the universe continue unscathed? Are we an attempt of the universe to understand itself?
I don't think it's surreal at all, if we're going by the definition.
Nah, I have an even more surreal question : "is our existence the only one that it ever can be?"
No. Theres Justin Y and you.
Partout.
One of the most compelling cases for the Rare Earth/Great Filter hypothesis is the time it would take for an intelligent civilization to expand across the galaxy. If we assume our galaxy is 150,000 LY to 200,000 LY across, then at the absolute minimum it would take a civilization starting at the center of the galaxy 75,000 to 100,000 years to colonize the whole galaxy. Now that's a bad assumption, given that a civilization isn't likely to start at the center of the galaxy, and they aren't likely to be able to reach light speed. But even if you start adding ineffeciences to that, at only a couple of millions of years you're expanding out at maybe 10%-ish of light speed (maybe more, maybe less depending on conditions). Once you start talking about those numbers, it seems more plausible. Simulations (ran with a 100,000 LY galaxy I think) using extremely conservative values got 50 million years to expand across the galaxy. And the universe is 13.8 billion years old (Adding this in real quickly, the entirety of the 13.8 billion years has not been suitable for life, although the amount of time is probably still measured in the billions of years, and longer than the Earth has been around). Aliens have had plenty of time to colonize the Milky Way, why haven't they already.
EDIT: To add onto this, Kardashev 3 civilizations (civilizations which can harness the power of a whole galaxy, the step after colonizing a whole galaxy, which adds however long it takes to build a dyson sphere plus some more time onto however long it takes to expand across a galaxy) would produce waste heat and dim their galaxy, both effects being easily visible to us with current technology. And yet, we don't see any. We can therefor conclude that Kardashev 3 civilizations either do not exist in the universe (yet), or are so rare that there aren't any in our visible bubble of space-time.
With this assumption combined with the above one that an alien civilization should only take a few million years at most to colonize the galaxy if they are being efficient at it, then there's only 3 conclusions we must accept, barring extreme coincidences, breaking the laws of physics and/or thermodynamics, and unknown or unpredictable factors: Spacefaring alien civilizations don't exist (or are rare enough that there aren't any in our visible bubble of space-time), spacefaring alien civilizations don't expand (or expand only a little bit to their neighboring systems. We can't detect singular dyson swarms with current technology, so for the moment they could have a couple and we wouldn't be the wiser), or spacefaring alien civilizations don't exploit the full power of stars, and are also here right now either in our own system or our neighboring ones. These are currently the only 3 good answers to the Fermi Paradox, as the rest require extreme coincidences or fall apart when logic or game theory is applied.
because you can't really calculate all those years as time they could've had to expand? I'm not super confident about this, but depending on what elements are absolutely necessary for life to exist (say something like potassium), then how long after the big bang did enough stars finish their life cycle and spit out these elements and how long, at minimum, would it take for these elements to find their way into stable parts of galaxies? That's gotta take out a few billion years from the 13.8 doesn't it? Who knows how many other such filters we might have to apply before we find out that conditions for life may only have been possible in the past ~4 billion years? And then you gotta figure out what happened for those ~3 billion years before the cambrian explosion... whether it was some rogue event or if it really does take 3 billion years for that leap to happen. If you consider all this, then that 13.8 does not look that intimidating anymore. We may very well be in the first "batch" of life that sprung up in the universe, possibly all within a billion years of each other.
All this is ofcourse w/o the knowledge of how long it would take for galactic colonization tech to appear. We might be able to accelerate some objects to 10% speed of light in a few decades from now, but a colonization ship? that's a totally different story. for that we should have the tech to identify suitable targets for colonization, and then have the tech to not only accelerate but slow down. There's so many complications to that line of speculation, because we don't know how long after the rise of multi-cellular organisms does it take to invent galactic travel. This is of course assuming that it is even possible (for that particular civilization, not in general). for eg: a civilization that is trapped in a subterranean ocean, might never even invent fire and combustion engines, we can't even speculate if there'd be intelligent life, let alone their tech progression or how long it would take them to progress
@@psd993 I was kind of rushed to finish my comment and left out the part that they couldn't have existed for all of the 13.8 billion years. But the time they could've existed is probably still measured in the billions of years.
As long as a star has enough materials of the right kinds in it's solar system for humans to build habitats with food, electricity, and water, and you have the technology to assemble rotating habitats in space (Which is probably a prerequisite to building a colony ship, unless it's a small DNA carrying probe), it's a colonizable solar system. The classic approach of looking for suitable planets is flawed given that you can just assemble your own habitats and not have to deal with gravity wells.
And even if you can't get your colonization speed of the galaxy up to effectively 10% of light speed (you'd have to be travelling faster than that), do remember that 10% of light speed is in the range of a couple million of years. The slower you go, the longer it takes. That number is going to drop once you go into the 10s of millions of years, at which point you may be looking at an expansion rate of closer to 1% of light speed or less. The dinosaurs have been dead for a longer time than the numbers being talked about here.
So the time it takes for a civilization to colonize the galaxy is probably a 7 to 8 digit number, while the amount of time aliens have likely had to exist is probably a 10 digit number. Which means they should've colonized the whole place by now if they existed.
So if we assume alien civilizations are common, expansive, and build dyson swarms, then we should see them. Our observations to not match these assumptions, so one or more of them must be wrong (partially or effectively).
And yeah, I'm arguing for the Rare Earth hypothesis combined with the Great Filter hypothesis here, if that wasn't obvious. Civilizations which can't invent space travel wouldn't count towards the Fermi Paradox, and neither would planets with life which don't form civilizations.
@@noname117spore that's assuming that they even want to colonize the galaxy, and that they're in our galaxy.
@@maxvanvijfeijken2699 If you read the full comment (with the edit part at the end), I'm making the case that one of those 2 things almost certainly must be false (and if neither are, then the dyson swarm building assumption must be false). If we assume those 3 things, that alien civilizations are common, expansive, and build dyson swarms, then we should see them both in our own galaxy and in others. And we don't. So one of those assumptions is false.
Hmm but that's assuming there is a speed of light barrier to travel which I don't.
Were not that advanced and still pretty dumb regards physics and explaining where everything came from or how its made. 5% was the last stat about how much of the known state of matter we understand so there is a lot of room for some magical things to actually be possible and communicating faster than light has definatley got to be one of them and no I am not talking about electromagentic signals which is another reason we have not detected any super intelligent life as what super or more advanced life form would communicate at such a slow velocity across such a big universe. Were struggling to communicate with the planet next door... how basic and retarded is that.
I could be totally wrong here, but didn't the planet that hit Earth to form the Moon donate most of it's metal core to ours while forming the Moon out of its crust?
If so, wouldn't that impact also be the root for both our extra strong magnetism and active plate tectonics (extra large metal core with relatively thin crust)?
Does that make us a vulcan?
If you believe that idea , sorry to say you are naive in the extreme. The nebula HYPOTHESIS is almost debunked. The 5th in the line.
@@ralphgoreham3516 not sure what that has to do with planets running into each other.... Isn't that about how they form in the first place?
@@frankmazzur5674 The idea that planets formed by explosions is not only false but ridiculous. NASA has all but scrapped the nebula hypothesis of how the solar system came to be and are actually without a peer reviewed "theory". Dont believe it because Utubers still espouse it. The S.SYSTEM was created but am not going to go into that here.
@@ralphgoreham3516 I don't think Frank said anything about planets forming from explosions. He's talking about one planet hitting another.
The idea that Jupiter is the only reason we have avoided so many collisions with life ending objects is so cool to consider. We aren't the really special planet, Jupiter is, and we're just a cool side effect of such a comparably huge object cleaning up our space in the universe. Crazy lucky that we are able to exist at all 🤯
Interstellar travel isn't impossible, rocks do it all the time. However as far as we can tell, doing so within a single generation certainly is.
Why? About 0.1c? It's within current knowledge (science and technology)
4:12 It's the CAAAmbrian explosion. - Bill Wurtz
Why do you have a joe Scott icon after your screen name? Just an enthusiast?
@@ctdieselnut There is a 'Join" button that is basically Patreon for UA-cam. $5 a month to basically get the icon, discord access, and other percs. I don't really pay attention to any of them, and just wanted to support Joe. ANY channel on UA-cam that has a 'Join' button next to their 'Subscribe' button, will give you a channel icon next to your username if you "join"/"become a member".
Did that make *ANY*sense..???
Omg I felt that moment of existential dread 💯
Me having watched 100+ videos on the subject but still clicking and expecting to find new answers. 🤠
Read the Bible, Genesis chapter one.
@@josephmiller1224 lol
Philosophical Idealism.
If all is Mind, then our solitude in Universe takes on a different meaning
But at the same it raises other questions, like where did this 'mind' thing come from and how exactly is it possible that we're constantly producing new minds?
@@lonestarr1490 yes.
Hard though it is one must try and experience the unfathomable power of eternity/infinity.
The original question is how did an eternal reality become self aware? What is consciousness?
A good explanation I heard recently was that
Reality is a self resolving paradox
Thank you Joe! "Until that happens, let's do our best to treat this planet like the rare precious jewel that it is" 🖖
I honestly think it's a time problem. In the time that the light travels to meet our eyes intelligent life could have evolved, been wiped out and we would never have known it.
Timing is everything. What are the odds that intelligent life happens at the same small time period as ours..
Epic video Joe. Loved it. I feel your pain.
Thanks!
@@joescott you just gave the intelligent design movement a 100 facts to back them up. Suggest you watch a few molecular biology dvds on utube if you are atheist or agnostic.
If the Sun was the size of a grain of sand, the nearest star would be 2.5 miles away!
if your brain was the size of a grain of sand, you could have been
a cool parrot but it seems that your brain is the size of a abandoned germ and you reached just the level of a copy-paste featherless parrot.
your totally wrong, if the sun was scaled down to a grain of sand then our nearest star, alpha centauri (binary system) is 18.6 miles away on that scale, pls get your facts correct before posting
why is everyone here such a dick..? bottom line, the fact that the sun can be scaled down to a grain of sand, is pretty amazing...
David Coulter - Jesus goodness!! 🙆🏻♂️😲 And that’s just the nearest star! I wouldn’t even dare to imagine how far the nearest galaxy would’ve been.
You gave us a lot of reasons why carbon based earth life would be so rare in the universe but we have to remember that things can adapt to live in different conditions, like more radiation
Life evolved HERE like that, but extremophiles only evolved here after life arose in the first place. There were billions of years of complex evolution that made that possible. And as far as life that isn't carbon-based, we just have no reason to believe it's even possible. We can speculate, but right now there's no reason to believe that.
We don't have any evidence that non carbon based life is possible. Its always a good thing to keep assumptions to a minimum
@@dipanjanghosal1662 Keeping this assumption to a minimum is an assumption in itself
@@joshshultz1250 yes its an assumption too, but it has some basis in it. We have evidence of carbon based life (here on Earth). We haven't seen non carbon based life anywhere yet.
People often say to me that it’s impossible to say that we’re alone in the universe because of its size but I’ve always maintained that it’s entirely possible that this is the only one. The only planet capable of sustaining an ecosystem of our complexity and duration. So many factors go into making earth a habitable place that it rules out nearly all the stars and planets in the universe.
It's not about just being habitable. It's also about the chances of abiogenesis actually occuring and all the critical evolutionary steps on the way from simple RNA-like molecule to complex multicellular organisms with brains. There might be many places that are habitable _for us._ But that doesn't mean that life evolved there, or that even if by chance it did, that it is any more complex than a simple colony of bacteria. Like our Earth was for the majority of history.
You would be the coolest science teacher.
Would be? He already is. Not all teachers teach in schools.
So true
This moment of existential dread... lol. Great video as always. Loved it! Thanks Joe.
Joe has just given Genesis validity to atheists. Evo impossible
@@ralphgoreham3516 no he hasn't
@@const1988 hello Sir/Madam. So you think the universe, shaped like a disc, with multiple artisticly shaped galaxies, organized clusters of galaxies, super clusters of galaxies, our solar SYSTEM with its 70 something moons all with fudamental laws coupled with super razor sharped "fine tunings" =blind dumb luck. Its origin unknown, lifes origin unknown. 2 thousand planets discovered but none , so the exoplanets specialists tell us,; are not habitable. Joe didnt quite go into all of that . The truth is DESIGN screams at you wherever you look starting with the super complexity of cells. So your question is: Has a creator done this of which has always existed or everthing you see, uncluding yourself with 100 billion neurons in your grey matter just an accident.?
Ralph Goreham - So who designed the Designer?
@@ralphgoreham3516 maybe. or maybe not. i don't know. you don't know too. nobody knows. And nothing wa said in the video about it.
When I watch videos like this I genuinely question if all this did happen because of some god like being, maybe some ancient species who wanted to experiment
Study the Bible with Jehovahs witnesses, you wont get the the truth elsewhere.
1. When looking out at earth-like planets, we're looking back in time due to the speed of light to reflect off that planet and reach us. We're not seeing those planets as they are today, but as they WERE millions of (light) years ago.
The same is true for an astronomer on another planet looking at our earth. They're not seeing the earth you & I live on, they're seeing our earth as it was millions of (light) years ago.
If we are alone in the universe "that is terrifying"
If we aren't alone in the universe "that is terrifying"
That's how I look at it
I would say both are fascinating
either way, I am not getting out of bed today, hiding under the blanket will protect me.
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
Two possibilities exist,
EIther we are alone in this universe
or we are not
Both are equally terrifying
-Arthur C Clarke
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
- Arthur C. Clarke
Trying to find another intelligent life in the Universe is like trying to look for a needle in the haystack and the haystack is just as high as Mt. Everest.
much higher........
And there might possibly be no needle.
And the needle rusts...
Each galaxy is another haystack.
And the needle, if it exits, may be microscopic.
I've never enjoyed so much looking at someone talking
Must be my dreamy eyes.
Oml you replied 😃
some people still unfortunately believe that humans are entirely separate from animals
What if Joe didn't exist? Would _we_ exist? 🤔
The existence of the Other is non provable. So.. does Joe exist?
@@ranjaxwolf9725 Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we're all holograms, following a hologram Joe.
That's Joecentrism, I believe.
You are asking the question wrong. The question is, do Joe exist?
Who joe
This is a very interesting video. It does a fine job of explaining the factors that are required for live to form on this planet. It does a fine job of explaining these factors in a way that can be understood.
We have to pay 20$ to reach the next level and meet aliens.
I agree, life pops up and dies. We'll do that to. But we can extend our life if we try to take of our home.
some 5 dimensional being seeing us and saying „ok... what is that!?“
as if it sees a living stickfigure XD
If we look like living stick figures to a 5-dimensional being, what would a 5-dimensional being look like to us?
Would it look a giant undulating space-time hydra?
@@davidrosner6267 no a pencil lol
"Do you want multicellular life? Because thats how you get multicellular life!"
"B-But the Bible never talked about alien life!"
Maybe god is among earth or this solar system and other gods are among other solar systems or planets
1:31 not in the entire Universe, but Galaxy. I think we are alone in the milkyway.... because of the rare earth theory
Hey I just met you,
And this is crazy
But I’m from SETI,
So contact maybe?
Stop wasting your time and someones money. Study the Bible with Jehovahs witnesses and get contact.
It's a vast and [seemingly] empty wasteland out there, folks. Hug your pets.
As I read that my little dog slid off my lap, nooo Buddy!
I want an Olympus Mons. Is that so wrong?
Tom Gregory being able to ski out of space...
i also want an Olympus Mons
You're an Olympus Moron. Does that help?
As someone who first heard the word mons from anatomy, this tickles me.
@@nedinu9940
Venus mons?
Imagine an alien from a planet billions of light years away from us talking about the harsh condition of early earth making it unhabitable so theyre scientists ignores our planet.