Are Pulsars Really Natural?

[@huggniceman4975]

Please never stop making videos

[@JohnMichaelGodier]

Never fear, I won't. I really enjoy making these videos.

[@toddmiller8243]

That sounds like a good topic for a video. How people can live forever.

[@iamFegor]

awesome. I really enjoy your content. thank you for your work.

[@rickb06]

​@@JohnMichaelGodierI don't think he will, thus far he has been rock solid. :)

[@NewGoldStandard]

you've done it. you've taken a casual watcher on your channel and turned them into an actual buyer of your novels... I can only assume that was your plan all along. you're won this round, Mr. Godier...

[@JohnMichaelGodier]

*Twizzles moustache*

[@finally_startingtopost]

How great is this channel??? I love this guy

[@jamesodom4980]

Great video, no nonsense, no ridiculous intros, just incredibly interesting and thought provoking content.

[@JJMHigner]

Yes. Thank you!

[@ArkadiuszM]

Your channel is one of the best science/astronomy channels here on KZbin, along with mr. Isaac Arthur. I watch every episode of yours. I contemplated idea of pulsars being ETI beacons some while ago, glad to see someone thought about that as well.

[@tylerjohnson4825]

You make me think John. I appreciate that.

[@Scorch428]

ME USE BRAIN BIG TIME VROOM VROOM

[@beta700a]

I think I finaly found another human who shares similar ideas that at least some objects we see in cosmos are of artificial origin. Thank you for your existense, your intellect and your work.

[@Greenhead24]

man i love your delivery,so easy to listen to....same interesting to listen to on the same level as Kaku and Tyson for me.

[@rigomrtz]

great rate of uploads lately john ,keep em coming , always a treat

[@JohnMichaelGodier]

Thanks. I'm trying to stick to a standard of 4-5 videos a week.

[@bozo5632]

If they're not natural, then I doubt they would be made for navigation. They're so far apart - whoever could make them would already have to be pretty good at traveling around the galaxy, just to get started. And it's serious overkill. Idk what else they'd be good for though - over-elaborate comms? (Maybe it's a landfill for aliens who have problems with rotational energy pollution? Joke.) Do galaxies have widely varying numbers of pulsars? If there's an unaccountable variance, then maybe some or all might be artificial. But I bet 100% of them are 100% natural.

[@stefanr8232]

Bo Zo, They could suck at traveling around the galaxy. Suppose they started spreading 1 billion years ago. The sun orbited the galaxy 4 times since then.

[@czarpeppers6250]

I'll only eat pulsars that are 100% natural!

[@EditioCastigata]

Your premise is flawed. More than one entity could've recognized the benefits of the setup and contributed by modifying or creating "their" nearby pulsar for the benefit of everyone in "their" visible universe.

[@DrinkyMcBeer]

But the milky way is 100,000 ly wide. This means it would take at best 50-75 thousand years before they would ever be known to these disparate pockets of civilization. So the first group to make one would have to wait that long before others saw it and made their own (hand-waving the difficulty in making a super dense and quickly rotating star). Seems like a ton of work to create a thing, with no payoff to you, in the hopes that other creatures that may not exist or have the ability/inclination to create another. And then you would need to hope for a few more of these groups to exist and make their own before any of them are useful to anyone for navigation.

[@differous01]

Artificial pulsars don't seem likely; their constructors would have to be both interstellar AND intergalactic; the nearby Magellanic cloud has them too. If they occur only in certain chains of galaxies that would suggest a network, but we'd need more sensitive equipment to discern them in galaxies further away.

[@JRead0691]

You make the best space videos ever. Love'm!

[@nathishvel5725]

I was recently brought to a radio telescope in Tasmania for a uni class in Geodesy. When my professor said that we calibrated our own earth-based GNSS (e.g. GPS) by tracking Pulsars it just blew my mind. Given that there were theories that these were possibly extraterrestrial position beacons, that we humans were linking our own positions on earth down to the millisecond against cosmic objects. I also drive a Nissan Pulsar so I admit that I think about them more often than I should.

[@MycketTuff]

Hey, just what this sunday evening needed!

[@christophercarr5865]

I was happy to learn of your upcoming collaboration with Issac Arthur. That should be lots of fun. And you are going to get tons of new subs. :-)

[@Scorch428]

Thats how I found John. Through a colab with Issac

[@snipe69r]

I’ve been binge watching your videos all day. Awesome channel! Thanks for the amazingly interesting videos!

[@wreksangel]

Thank you for bringing us this channel, and your content. IMO, yours is one of the absolute best channels up. Keep up the magnificent work!

[@chadtrump7009]

I enjoy all your videos and especially look forward to your humorous final statement at the end of the video. Jeff in Ohio 🇺🇸

[@CodeLeeCarter]

I've often thought this myself, though I admit, It's unlikely, however, the idea of an Alien race tweaking them for navigation is intriguing, to say the least. Thanks, John, for these compelling stories.

[@stevenpilling5318]

Historical note: That British admiral was Sir Cloudsley Shovel, who was lost aboard his flagship- HMS Association- when it was wrecked on the Scilly Islands due to navigational error.

[@alphacrusaders6535]

Your videos give me so much inspiration and ideas for my sci-fi original works. Absolutely fantastic!

[@bozo5632]

Natural or not, that's a pretty good bit rate... You could send a zillion different messages in a zillion different directions, using one pulsar and a swarm of modulators. If all we get is the dial tone (steady pulsar blip, instead of a message), it just means we're not on their friends list.

[@nanopicofemto]

really good point on millisecond pulsars. I like your videos too John

[@phapnui]

The more I watch your channel, the more I want to watch your channel. Thank you for your stimulating and fascinating information. Also, I note comments are generally intelligent and offer some robust debate. Do a search "youtube comment section is" and one can see how many channels seem to attract the "shrill, boorish specimens of the lower Internet phyla". Do you delete the obnoxious comments? Also, as some others have mentioned, your excellent presentation and editing shows attention to detail and my next step will be to check out your novels.

[@vmj361]

Another point, since pulsars were supposed to be the neutron star remnants of a supernova it wasn't thought that planets would still exist in the system but some exoplanets have been discovered orbiting pulsars.

[@DrayseSchneider]

I've always thought we were using the Galactic Position System regarding pulsars. Of course, I still think it's more likely that they're natural. It's just damn convenient how useful pulsars are for navigation in interstellar, and perhaps intergalactic, space.

[@EditioCastigata]

We're actually using positions of known stars (in *star trackers* ) to determine attitude, and *ranging* for distance from earth in space probes. Similar to *polar coordinates* in math. Not, at least currently not, pulsars.

[@sutepaiapetus]

Great channel, Thanks to SFIO for pointing me here

[@mr_peach7704]

Doing a deep dive, it’s so jarring to hear JMG say the final word ‘live’ and not draw it out 😅

[@roidroid]

Arnt pulsars directional tho? They pulse because they spin and the beam wobbles across our solar system afaik. So cant you only really see them if you find yourself in the beampath? It doesnt sound like a good positioning system if its not omnidirectional, i mean, armt they otherwise practically invisible other than to those in the beampath? How do you draw a map with invisible landmarks?

[@unknownfact4466]

You have mentioned potential new fields for SETI recurrently in your recent videos, so I've been thinking if you'd be interested in making a video specifically for them. Could be interesting, many of those fields you mentioned were completely new to me.

[@fredjackson8408]

Lol fuckin imagine some aliens sitting around one day being like "bro....what if we crank that fuckin star over there into overdrive? Hold my beer"

[@saiyaniam]

Whats the benefit over just visual navigation?

[@kkgt6591]

saiyaniam Many benefits, if you have a precise signal electronic components can pick it up just like our GPS and you can automate navigation, visual navigation is hard from middle of space I don't think you can always identify which star is which.

[@michaelwynn8763]

John Michael Godier a man talking sense which makes a nice change. would a natural signal repeat its self and would an artificial signal coming from so far away only be heard rarely the chances of picking up a repeat signal must be very low

[@bradleyrwerner]

Why is it unnatural for pulsars to be as accurate as atomic clocks? Are atoms not natural?

[@brunodeandradeful]

best channel on youtube

[@amelliamendel2227]

They could be used as a cosmic lighthouse regardless of origin, great video.

[@billxx188]

What about the distances between pulsars...are any two pair similar to others, it perhaps their location relative yo other objects? And the pulsing....are any two or more pulsars identical?

[@christianbuczko1481]

No on both questions. They can be similar, but not actually identical because that would imply an exact match on star type, mass and spin speed, and to get two pairs at equal distance would I assume involve actually moving a star into position. That's not a credible idea, you could alter a stars course by using a large mass to adjust its course using gravity, but fixing it in a position to create an exact match wouldn't be possible unless you used a larger mass than the star your struggling to move to start with. Basically to do that, would be harder than moving the star to begin with.

[@stuartbrownlee3108]

Even if all pulsars are natural phenomena, I'm pretty sure that not so long ago I heard about them being potentially used as navigational beacons for getting around our solar system once humans are capable of deep space exploration without hopefully the dangers of cosmic radiation & the sun having a bit of a paddy. Hopefully at some point radiation shielding won't consist just of bags of human waste...heck, it'll take a certain amount of time, but...we have 500 million years or so. I think this channel is wonderful, by the way.

[@meme-px2wu]

You should do a video on FRB signals. Would be interested in hearing your take on them.

[@antifusion]

*hoists a glass in the air* Cheers John and have a great week

[@Master_Therion]

If pulsars are used as GPS (Galactic Positioning System) then there goes the basis for the TV series "Lost in Space." Side note: I recently discovered and subbed to your channel ^_^ Also, I tend to write puns and joke comments, I hope that is okay.

[@WestOfEarth]

One thought I had raised by your vid. Maybe an advanced civilization could use some manner of reflector to re-align/re-direct a pulsar signal to be more useful to navigation if the natural pulse direction is undesirable.

[@Gustavo-lz5mi]

Your voice is amazing!

[@emeraldcitycs6662]

Most shocking thing in this video is the fact that you even think you have a CHANCE at a napping gold.

[@LastPrecent]

Hey John. You put up a good quality videos. Great job. Got a question- do you know in what kind of frequency does Pulsars emit FRB? Could it be from 4-8 GHZ,something like our sattelites emit? Correct me if im wrong.

[@JohnMichaelGodier]

Oddly, 4-8 Ghz is where FRB 121102 is currently emitting. The main hypothesis for FRBs are pulsars of some sort.

[@barrys3300]

Wow yes your last point sent chills down my spine x

[@pyne1976]

Look forward to more videos John, keep up the amazing job! What do you think about nested black hole universes? IE: were in one and can see them in our universe and more exist in those as well.....to infinity

[@bozo5632]

Idk, this universe seems to be x-sized, so the BH that contains it would have to be xxx-sized - really, really big; and for that xxx sized BH to be contained in a still larger BH - omg the scale. And then you want to go up again, and again? Til when? Is it turtles all the way up, or is there a real universe that contains everything - and where did that come from? And what's with all the nested BH universes? And, how much room is there to put a nested universe inside of a BH in our own universe? (Not much, it would seem.) So are we at the bottom, or in the middle? More (of the same) questions than (new) answers.

[@randallpetersen9164]

You misspoke. On the Pioneer plaque, the positions of the 14 pulsars are relative to our sun, not the center of the galaxy. Only one line relates to the center of our galaxy; the horizontal line passing through the human forms.

[@TheGodlessGuitarist]

Intergalactic disco lights is the most likely explanation

[@spencerkimble3824]

In a strange, but very real way- pulsars resemble lighthouses

[@Cambria399]

Yes there are good models but what does it say about our physics that pulsars were not predicted? Or for that matter KIC8462582? The only prediction for that one came from Jason Wright, right? And his is not one of "the Aliens of the gaps"! Just saying

[@magicsinglez]

If a spacefaring civilization can’t tell where they are, simply by looking at the stars. . .then their technology isn’t as impressive as that of 14th Century mariners. . . Pulsars way be artificial, but they certainly aren’t designed to help spacefarers navigate.

[@rushthezeppelin]

Pulsars are just closer galaxies with high intrinsic red shift, therefore the astronomical power levels of a pulsar are not needed. They are usually connected to larger galaxies that are obviously closer (and sometimes in front of said galaxies despite being of a higher red shift). See Halton Arp for the observations that shoots down the Hubble red shift theory that relies purely on the doppler effect (even though Hubble himself considered that there could be other reasons for red shift).

[@coreydoyle4702]

Frankly, if the astronomical community does not accept his hypothesis, then why should we? He is but one person, with insufficient evidence to convince the astronomical community, therefor why should we accept his word as fact?

[@ancogaming]

This debate is nearly sixty years old. Time has moved on and so have our methods of observation. This Hubble Telescope in orbit isn't just there for shits and giggles. Sorry for Dr. Arp... but even Fred Hoyle had to admit back in the days that there was more strong evidence for Doppler related redshift and expansion than against it. The steady state theory collapsed long ago and so did Arp's ideas. For decades, we know that there are other effects which cause redshift in light and are able to include them in distance/movement calculations of galaxies without changing anything in our standard model of Astrophysics. But of course! 100 years worth of observations and calculations just coincidentally happen to fall into place but are fundamentally wrong and one nutjob with his merry band of brothers have it figured all out with a single 5 meter mirror telescope which they've used back in the day. Last but not least... Zeppelin gets it all mixed up. Let me be clear about this: No one ever said that Pulsars were galaxies. Well, Arp didn't. Clearly they're not, they're just neutron stars, as can be seen in their spectrum even by hobby astronomers today. What this dude above means are probably Quasars. Quasi-stellar objects, which emit a huge amount of light and other radiation but are in fact black holes that fire off jets of radiation and plasma so fulminantly that - to an observer with only a shitty and earth based telescope - can be so bright that they first appear to be a whole solar system and more crammed together in a rather tiny space. There is no "intrinsic redshift" other than caused by general relativity and light does not get tired. Believing in this at this day and age is like saying the earth is fla... oh, wait! :D

[@No_OneV]

I always found pulsars to be a suspicious objects.

[@lean84]

I Love your channel!!!

[@joshuaprime2042]

Thanks for the cool vids

[@Ultraviech5000]

lol, htop at 2:55 apache,nginx,mysql... looks like a webserver

[@jch8376]

Pulsars are distant alien rave parties . 👽🔊🎶

[@DataJuggler]

Naps are so under rated.

[@irastone1508]

A very interesting topic. Thank you! Dr. Paul LaViolette has a book about decoding the message of Pulsars. He gives a good break down that suggests they are likely artificial and are being used as a GPS system.

[@koriko88]

A pulsar and a main sequence star walk into a bar. The bartender comes right over with a gin and tonic for the pulsar and asks the K-type what he'll be having. "How did you know what J0437-4715 wanted?" said the K-Type. "Well, he's very regular," said the bartender.

[@stevenpilling5318]

Using natural occurrences for navigational purposes is common enough. If more was necessary for a spacefaring civilization, they would likely be broadcasters of much more limited power for more localized shipping. I hope our DEW Line radar pulses from the Cold War didn't mess things up for someone... like wreckers setting false beacons to lure ships aground!

[@nosajghoul]

Why would you need galactic GPS? If you have a ship, you know where it started, you know where youre going. You also presumably have incredibly detailed maps and sensors. Say youre taking such a ship on a 200 light year journey, and you sleep the whole time, wake up at the end, and wonder where you are. You can still navigate by stars you are familiar with. No need to create a galactic network of pulsars. The only way it makes sense for a ship to say 'Where am I?, I need GPS!' is if the ship suddenly appears in a random place, or if the distance is so huge that you dont cant have a detailed map beforehand. So, if you have a ship that can cross universal distances, youd want a GPS, and at that point you can probably make pulsars as well. The problem here is, you would have had to make them a huge amount of time ago, so their signal would have time to propagate across the universe. Also, if aliens did create rotational pulsars, theyre no longer maintaining the system. 99% of all neutron stars no longer pulsate. When they spin below a certain threshhold, they stop pulsating.

[@burbanpoison2494]

your map is two hundred years out of date before you even leave earth. those familiar stars may not even exist by the time you arrive. how can you be sure that they will be in a reliably predictable position, or even identifiable at all, with a minimum 400 year lag time in all data you have about where you are going? for the electronics of a near light speed spacecraft, pulsars may be just as important for calibrating positions in time as for calibrating them in space. a reliable external measure of velocity, that can be checked on millisecond time scales, in and of itself might be an absolutely necessary reason to have them. I would have to presume that navigating a near light speed space ship would require the flawless synchronization of a great number of complex, high speed computer operations, and in the act of accelerating to those speeds there will be some differential in the rate of the passage of time itself between the front and back of the vessel. if you establish your spacial baseline relative to the pulsars, then you've got something in the universe that sits still in spacetime, and you can actually say with confidence where it is because its position is always position zero, and its clock can serve as your GMT, so your various instruments can make precise calculations to account for the effects of time dilation, with an agreed upon external definition of how long a second or a meter is.

[@Laenthal]

I don't think that pulsars are made by ETI - doesn't look like the energy well spent given the scale and variety of such stars already found by us. But they are a sure way to navigate the galaxy for a brief (tens of millions years) time.

[@daddyleon]

Hahaha GPS: Galactic Positioning System. LOVE IT!

[@joemarquez1169]

I was watching an old episode of Star Trek:TNG where the enterprise finds a Dyson sphere but the civilization is living inside of the sphere. I've Never heard of this. Is this what the Idea is with a Dyson sphere? I thought it worked more like a solar panel, harvesting energy and transmitting it to collectors of some sort. Ideas?

[@SvenTviking]

A Dyson sphere, as long as you have some form of artificial gravity, gives enough surface area for trillions upon trillions of people to live. If you can’t find some sort of artificial gravity, a Niven ringworld is the better option as it uses the spin of the ring to hold things “down” on the inside of the ring.

[@gregbrockway4452]

Wow, 7 views and I'm the first like? Wtf? Thank you John, really like your videos.

[@MrDuncanGilbert]

I love this... so much

[@Scorch428]

Pulsars are like looking head on at a red police siren.

[@Scorch428]

Maybe they're space cop cars!!!

[@andysmith5997]

Taking naps? I need one most days after lunch

[@TCBYEAHCUZ]

You know there are some pulsars that have varying periodicity right?

[@LaserGuidedLoogie]

Thanks John, interesting. I think the idea of artificially created pulsars kinda boggles the mind though. Anyone with tech like that would be god-tier, and simple "navigational aids" almost seems beneath them. -Ken LaserGuidedLoogie.com

[@mrWonderphilly]

Pretty sure I could challenge you for the gold medal!

[@ljdean1956]

I suspect pulsars are natural. If they are not, then every space fairing alien is developing tech in the same way by using pulsars to navigate at some point. That is to say, with so many pulsars out there, the chances of one alien civ developing them into beacons is remote in the extreme. Furthermore, with 3D tech such as astronomy software, it shouldn't even be necessary for an advanced civ to require looking at any star to navigate except to look at whatever ref star is being used in the astronomy program. If we can do this now as a "Barely able to send ppl into space" civ, imagine what we would be capable of doing in a century without the need to look at pulsars. That would apply to aliens, especially ones millions of years ahead of us.

[@dredrotten]

I noticed the galaxy at the end of the video was rotating anti-clockwise instead of clockwise? Do I detect a northern hemisphere bias? lol

[@j7ndominica051]

I see vertical stripes on the dark space animations.

[@SvenTviking]

The Kardashev scale is such a load of baloney. What if an advanced civilisation has advanced efficiency as well? Is that not too much of an outrageous idea? What if their industry, spacecraft etc don’t use vast amounts of energy? Like cross the Galaxy on a car battery worth of juice? Or that they inevitably have exponential population increase? In fact the richer and more “advanced” nations on Earth have lower childbirth rates. And yet the scientists, who seem to have a very childlike attitude to these subjects, automatically assume advanced civilisations need enormous amounts of energy for their out of control populations.

[@bangyahead1]

Clearly, pulsars are made by garden gnomes.

[@ironcityblue]

Yes

[@francoislacombe9071]

You don't need to make pulsars to use them for navigation, just like people of the past didn't need to make stars to use them to navigate on Earth's oceans. They are there, they are easy to pinpoint and identify, all you need is a radio telescope and a good catalog.

[@bozo5632]

Unless they don't occur naturally.

[@libgermany]

That's true and thus we Ockham Razor it; however the possibility cannot be ruled out for extremely accurate/regular ones. I found John Michael's differentiated reasoning to be quite intelligible

[@coryknight7669]

you cant use a compass in space i wonder what does happen tho

[@bozo5632]

To a compass? It'll align with whatever magnetic field you're in, or just sit there inert if the field is too weak to move the needle. If you're in a spacecraft with a magnetic field, maybe it will point you to the engineering section.

[@Kikilang60]

Random numbers happen at regular percentages. You can analyze a group of numbers, and look for these percentages. If a set of numbers don't happen at the natural percentages, you know the number are fake, and are made by a rational mind. If you check the arrangement of distance of star from each other, they have to come in these natural percentages. If not, well they must be the artifacts of of rational minds.

[@stefanr8232]

Kiki Lang, Are you saying that the orbits of planets around the sun must be artifacts put there by rational minds?

[@christianbuczko1481]

I think he means that as an example, you have 10 numbers, 1-10. If you pick a number between 1-10, you get a 10% chance of getting each number. So if you looked at a few thousand samples, and you had 20% of one number, and about 9% for all other samples, you will know an intelligence was responsible. It's an interesting idea, but I don't see how such an analysis can work with things at random distances, because the universe is naturally lumpy. A simpler method is to see if those pulsars are spread through out the whole galaxy, at the furthest distances we can measure. If they only existed in a single galaxy, or area of the universe, that would then stand out as being strange. All information I'm aware of indicates the're natural for that reason.

[@stackflow343]

If you know the secret to winning naps, please tell us. Because I'm sick of laying in bed for over an hour just trying to fall asleep to begin with.

[@burbanpoison2494]

cannabis indica.

[@zigzagduck952]

;-)

[@alexprice104]

I always find deciding what job to get on with works for me.

[@merlinadams8797]

Just imagine in a galaxy far far away there could be being's that can get a good signal on their moby & don't have to pay through the nose for a rubbish service. Forget about communicating with alien's I just wish I could communicate with anybody.

[@dansuhanea4128]

Why would anyone unlike this video? I don't get it ..

[@captainaxlerod1297]

I wonder they will watch you channel in the distant future to see how right or wrong we were... 🤔💭

[@bakfixx]

maybe they're used to mark territorial boundaries

[@redomer91]

That would be pretty static.

[@bakiprinc]

Just what if.... In the future we found out that we are the first civilization, and everything we spoke about in these kind of videos, regarding aliens, was empty talk and wasting time...

[@xuevgermanist]

Then we'd have a plausible model of how younger civilizations can be expected to behave.

[@jarrodbarker5050]

Alien probes pulsate.

[@ruskimuejek665]

Pulsars are markers

[@remasteredretropcgames3312]

Its natural bro. Its plausible deniability at its finest. Alien style.

[@slickrick8444]

Pulsars are the traffic lights in this milky way,!

[@mycinematics8948]

What if Dark Matter is alive and sculpting the universe out of boredom. Baahaha would be funny if that was true.

[@hoyola1]

I thought this was a serious video.

[@whosurdaddy1975]

bah if the aliens can read your msg I am pretty sure they can find out where you are.

[@DAYBROK3]

Ummm naps👍🏼

[@richardbeard9391]

yeeee yeeeeeeeeee

[@TeethToothman]

🪐🦢🪐

[@iamjimgroth]

Getting bored of the end advert for your books? 😁

[@christianbuczko1481]

Ever heard of fast forwards???

[@buggeringfool7179]

Bollocks.