The biggest EVER scientific search for ALIENS outside our galaxy | Breakthrough Listen Project

Go to brilliant.org/drbecky to get a 30-day free trial and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual subscription! Searching for aliens might sound like something from sci-fi, but there are legitimate scientific searches for signs of life beyond Earth in the Universe. Either through biosignatures in planet atmospheres, or for technosignatures of advanced civilisations. The largest ever search for technosignatures is being conducted by the Breakthrough Listen project, and this month they published their latest research searching for extra-galactic signals from beyond our Milky Way. Turns out this is getting harder and harder to do with each passing year as more satellites are launched into orbit around Earth. In particular, SpaceX’s Starlink is once again causing trouble for us astronomers…
Choza et al. (2023; breakthrough listen search for extra-galactic technosignatures) - seti.berkeley.edu/galaxies/ch...
Kardashev (1964; definition of Kardashev civilisations) - articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/p...
Gajjar et al. (2021; technosignature search in the centre of the Milky Way) - arxiv.org/pdf/2104.14148.pdf
Wlodarczyk-Sroka et al. (2021; Breakthrough Listen project for stars in the Milky Way) - arxiv.org/pdf/2006.09756.pdf
Tremblay & Tingay (2020; search for technosignatures in the Vela region) - arxiv.org/pdf/2009.03267.pdf
Klein et al. (1988; radio spectrum of M82) - articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/p...
00:00 - Introduction
00:59 - Biosignatures in the search for aliens
02:00 - Technosignatures in the search for aliens
02:53 - The Breakthrough Listen project
04:15 - Extra-galactic technosignatures
04:59 - Kardashev Type-II civilisations & Dyson Spheres
06:55 - The Doppler Drift search method
09:24 - The results from Choza et al. (2023) - no evidence for technosignatures
10:50 - Could AI spot anything that’s been missed?
12:00 - Radio Frequency Interference from satellites (like SpaceX’s Starlink)
13:51 - Brilliant
15:12 - Bloopers
Video filmed with a Sony Alpha 7 IV
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👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
drbecky.uk.com
rebeccasmethurst.co.uk

[@BigZebraCom]

I was going to detect Aliens outside our galaxy -- but then things got really busy at work.

[@BDizzleMySchnizzle]

Sounds like the name of a Frank Zappa tune.

[@bobespirit2112]

Nice!!! 😂😂😂

[@mandeepsingh-fd7mh]

Understandable

[@joshuakirkham9593]

Don't worry, Chosa and Collaborators was chosen as the back-up option after you couldn't.

[@clydem56]

Lol

[@archibaldoctavion3851]

A small boy says to an all knowing guru, "Are we alone in the universe?" The guru contemplates the boy's question for a moment and replies, "Yes, you are alone." The boy looks disappointed and says, "So there is no other life in the universe for us to converse with?" The guru looks amused and says to the boy, "There is, they're alone too." - James Miller, 2017

[@AdamWest-qp3yp]

Bro you have to cite your quote… you didn’t just think that up. And if you did, what the hell are you doing on KZbin?? go philosophize the world brother. Please 😅

[@colorbugoriginals4457]

alone together, together alone.

[@peterdrury5627]

The trick would still be, 'how to be alone together'!

[@aquaticape68]

The simplest explanation from this paper is that we are the only intelligent civilization in the universe.

[@Spillerrec]

@@AdamWest-qp3yp It is based on a shorter version written by James Miller (A Small Fiction) from what I could gather.

[@Sad_King_Billy]

The Three Body Problem taught me that we need to be quiet! Lol great video! I love that JWST is searching for life. I want to meet our intergalactic neighbors

[@michaellee6489]

Imagine finding intelligent life in another galaxy and none in ours.

[@chruszczow]

Sounds like a good motivation to find a way to get there.

[@ptrisonic]

I'm still looking for intelligent life here on Earth. Sometimes I fill like I'm an actor in a bad B-movie. P

[@DeeSmith001]

Intelligent species do not have their entire nuclear arsenal aimed at themselves.

[@killman369547]

@@chruszczow We're closer than you'd think. The earlier proposals for the Alcubierre drive needed more energy than all the stars in a galaxy, and it needed negative energy which we're not sure even exists. The most recent proposal not only works with regular old energy, you only need to convert the mass of a pickup truck into pure energy to make it work.

[@masstv9052]

@@killman369547 B.S. Stop listening to scams from people either trying to sell books or crowd fund money. Just like the "electric Universe". It's the flat earth equivalent for physics. There's a lot of people out here that like to use big words to people who understand just a little bit of things like physics, etc. In order to make themselves rich. If that really worked, a university would fund that program in absolutely no time..... So would Elon Musk, and the Larry & Survey from Google.

[@Khyranleander]

There's also 2 other fairly well-known factors Dr Becky didn't mention: 1) Sources that distant would have to already be Type II millions of years ago, 2) It's possible civilizations find better transmission modes than radio, maybe within a couple centuries. Either way, simple timing might make it even harder to catch such signals.

[@fredyair1]

We need sub-space communications.

[@biz6361]

@@fredyair1what does sub space communication mean?

[@eljay5009]

Yep. There is an interesting thought experiment you can do to highlight just how improbable it is for two advanced species to detect one another. Humans have had radio technology for 130 year (give or take). That means there is a sphere of radio transmission emanating from earth that is 130 light years in radius. Say we transmit for a further 870 years - then stop (either because we are wiped out or because we develop technology beyond radio). That means there is now a shell of radio transmission 1000 light years thick travelling through space centered on Earth. For a species to be able to detect us - they would have to become technologically advanced enough in radio technology - and be looking, just as this 1000 light year shell washed over their planet. If they were 1 year too late to the party, they'd miss our transmissions. Humans have existed on Earth for close to 300,000 years, yet we have only had radio technology for 130 years (0.04% of our existence) and we have been looking out into space using radio for even less time. Radio was invented by humans in 1896, so if a species similar to our own 100 light years away started to broadcast radio signals in the Earth year 795AD (in the middle of our Dark Ages) and continued to broadcast for 1000 years - then stopped, we would never know they existed from their radio transmissions - because their 1000 light year shell of radio transmission would have passed us by just one year before we invented the capability to detect their signals.

[@maisiesummers42]

@@eljay5009 It's probably less than 85 years, to be fair. Before 1936, all radio was AM transmission, which is heavily absorbed or reflected by layers of the ionosphere. In 1936 the first FM transmission was made, and that is probably the first to reach space. However, FM tends to be directional, aimed at the horizon, so by the time it reaches space it's fairly well attenuated. We're already turning inward with our transmissions, our noise level is dropping; in 50 years we might still be using radio for shipping, but not broadcasting to space.

[@brokeandtired]

Also why on earth would a species even need the energy output of a star? Its an utter waste of energy . The whole Kardashev scale is based om moron logic...Just look at mobile phones and cars, they got more energy efficient not less over time. Even an entire race of beings living in a VR super mind won't need a Dyson Sphere for the entire species let alone a world. Christ even Intel couldn't design a computer that would need that level of output and even Chrome Browser with 100 tabs open doesn't need a Dyson Sphere. Just because a species COULD build Dyson Spheres, doesn't need they would need to or would want to. And the Kardashev Scale is flawed because it assumes they would need to.

[@swistedfilms]

In the late 90s and early 2000s I had SETI running on my computer. I'm glad to see they're still running the experiment. I know there's life out there, it's almost mathematically impossible that there isn't. But finding it is a real chore! Thanks to everyone who puts in the effort!

[@robguyatt9602]

You do not know there is alien life out there. It is most certainly not mathematically impossible that there isn't. All you have is a belief. There can be no knowledge of alien life until it is actually found. I don't give a damn what the odds are.

[@STORMDAME]

I did this too. I don't know if it made much difference but at least it ruled a couple of things out.

[@sighfly2928]

Or maybe all these latest developments in US congress re: UAPs; is slowly edging toward a potential Zoo Hypothesis scenario…

[@johnmccallum8512]

This is from The SETI Institute what you and I had was SETI @ home.

[@dougaltolan3017]

That mathematical impossibility relys on some really wild stab in the dark data.

[@SimonSozzi7258]

Remember, we're looking back in time. They wouldn't see any technosignals if they were looking right at us and unless they were within 100 light years.

[@Ration999]

"Are we alone in the universe? Yes we are. So there are no aliens? No, there are but they are also alone in the universe." Forgot which famous scientist sad this quote but it always stuck whit me.

[@twoscoops2]

Even our own technosignature has only reached ~15,000 local stars. We are so far apart and our technologies could be so different it makes me wonder if we will ever hear anyone. :(

[@john-or9cf]

But, but, UAPs. 😂

[@twoscoops2]

@@john-or9cf 🤣

[@skierpage]

So where are the techno signatures from all the civilization that developed in the Milky Way to our level more than 10 million years ago? Where is the local probe that just one of their SETI programs sent to the Solar system a million years ago? The biosignature of life on Earth is obvious to it, so it should have been monitoring our planet and noticed the radio waves from our own primitive civilization.

[@curtissharpe7084]

We are also producing so many radio waves that we would be indistinguishable from background noise.

[@oscar278]

Not as long as the forest remains dark

[@olbluelips]

Thinking on an intergalactic scale is crazy. The Milky Way could be the entire universe and it’d still be a lot

[@frankowalker4662]

Other galaxys are so far didstant that you can see all of one at once.

[@JZsBFF]

We've come a long way since the dome with leaky holes.

[@hugegamer5988]

And there are even more galaxies in the visible universe than stars in the Milky Way. And we know the actual universe is at least millions of times bigger than what we can see based on gravitational curvature.

[@christophermullins7163]

Saw a flying saucer the other day. Crazy too.. I for some very convincing pictures.

[@thesuncollective1475]

If we have surveyed say 10% of A typical galaxy and found nothing, does that decrease the chance of Alien life. If so by how much?

[@BeardyBaldyBob]

I think the problem is using essentially super loud omni-direction radio for communication would probably only be used for a very short portion of an advanced civilisation's history. Pretty quickly I'd expect lower energy direct comms, maybe paired entangled particles etc or something we haven't even thought of yet to take over and the civilisation to go 'quiet'.

[@samimurtomaki5534]

If at all.

[@PhilHibbs]

Same with living on planets. If you’re a Type II you aren’t going to be living on rocks.

[@PhysicsPolice]

@@PhilHibbs What do Type II civilizations live on, then?

[@converdb]

@@PhysicsPolicethe internet, of course, which as you may already know, it’s a series of tubes

[@PhysicsPolice]

@@converdb cute answer. But where are the servers hosted from, if not on rocks?

[@jessicapauline83]

I always enjoy the bloopers and I’m glad you included those! Thank you Dr Becky

[@SpaceCadet4Jesus]

I like natural unintended bloopers, she mostly creates hers for the video which takes all the joy out of it. I don't watch them anymore.

[@erictwombly5902]

The interesting fact is to keep the forefront that, when we look for these bio and techno markers, we only recognize information that is limited by 'what we know of.'

[@kadewilliams7925]

It is impossible not to make assumptions, but I think most videos and people forget that we are making anthropological assumptions about aliens when we say things like civilizations, and technology.

[@MaverickLSC]

I don't think a Type 1 or Type 2 civilization would continue to use radio propagation as a means of communication. That's like assuming prehistoric peoples would continue to use smoke signals in an attempt to communicate vast distances, while those on the other side are using radio. What if a society advances themselves to the point of using communication based on new physics we haven't yet discovered or not yet mastered? Communication via gravity waves or instantaneous communication based on the tangled particles from quantum mechanics. We have to understand what communication a Type 1 or Type 2 civilization should have and attempt to develop alternate listening technologies that would receive such communication away from radio. My hunch is tangled particle or gravity wave propagation communication is what these civilizations may be using.

[@skierpage]

​@@MaverickLSC think of what the SETI program of such an advanced civilization would do. Why not continue to send out radio waves precisely to contact less advanced civilizations?

[@robo5013]

@@kadewilliams7925 It's not making assumptions it's science. For an actual scientific inquiry we can only use what we know is possible. Anything else is just fantasy.

[@kadewilliams7925]

@@skierpage that's another anthropological assumption. There may be other paths to distant communications that we may not have thought of. Which in turn would lead them to never consider radio waves as a form of communication

[@clydedecker765]

As a radar specialist in the early years of the DEW line and an expert on Anti artillery radars I can tell you that being able to get a "clear" signal that you "expect" is very difficult just to keep all the various systems at peak performance. I spent all my time syncing adjusting and tweaking the things that processed the signals, that moved the antennas, that sent the signals, that received the signals and that tracked the objects found, etc. VERY difficult and extremely sensitive for things here on earth for just detecting rebounds (echoes) of signals we designed and sent. There have been huge leaps in technology since then and the difficulty to tweak and sensitize the equipment has done the same. Now you are looking not for just the timing and character but the drift of an unknown signal... so weak in nature that it takes waiting between listening and combining the results of those periods - never mind. My respect for the effort is huge BUT it still takes constant monitoring and tweaking of every signal detected on so many frequencies by many people and computers ... Shall we put a monkey on a computer and wait until it types out a New Shakespearean play?

[@76rjackson]

My dad worked on the DEW line back in the early 60s. I seem to recall his title was sector superintendent and he worked primarily out of Pt. Barrow although he also worked at Goose Bay, Labrador. Our house was full of Inuit handicrafts. I remember one night sitting around shooting the breeze with some of my older brothers and their friends someone asked him about seeing flying saucers. He didn't say anything and the mood changed so the cozy little moment of storytelling was suddenly over.

[@laiya2758]

A job for AI?

[@deang5622]

​@@laiya2758Don't need AI for it. Procedural written code using Adaptive Filtering is all that is required.

[@masstv9052]

@@76rjackson All the videos the government released have been debunked by experts in they're field. When it a pilot, things look different when your moving in various directions at amazing speeds. But the people who understand what the cameras, infrared, and sonar, radar are picking up easily explained these away

[@heisaddison]

Haha. This guy thinks that these results came from a human monitoring the signals… this is all done through automation, ai, data crunching through the field of data science…. “Because I couldn’t do this and was doing this by hand…” good grief boomer… get over yourself…

[@teresafernandez2539]

You are very gifted with the way to explain this "techno" information to every high or lowly educated individuals. I do have a bachelor of science degree which gives me a highly appreciated energy to listen to you!!! Rock on your awesome energy!!! Happy New Year for what you accomplish during the 2024 time.

[@jozefdebeer9807]

Thanks for your hard work Dr. Becky!

[@InternetReviewerGuy]

The more I learn about physics, planetary formation, and evolutionary biology, the more I realize all of the fluke occurances that led to us existing (and not being annihilated). So even though there are a massive amount of planets, it could be that the number of planets that meet all the requirements for intelligent life is still an astronomically low percentage. The closest intelligent life might be so far away or so far in the past or future, that we will never find any evidence.

[@blacksage2375]

And intelligent life is still a long way away from a civilization more technologically advanced than us. Just see the variation in humanity, some of us are still hunter gatherers just like you'd find 10,000 years ago.

[@anoxie1301]

100%, odds go both ways, it's like soustracting infinity to infinity at this stage.

[@jonbraid2520]

You can't have learned much then.

[@atrelanor4876]

I agree in the sense that I do not think we will ever have definitive evidence: given all the constraints of what we can observe currently, this "proof" is improbable to obtain (at least for "intelligent life" beyond earth): we just don't have the sample size, and we may never have it, of all the stars and planets out there that we can observe for technosignatures and/or biosignatures to accurately predict that earth is the "only" place where "intelligence" exists (or isn't). However, regarding your statement about those "flukes:" I used to believe this too, but what really blows my mind presently is that it DID happen despite those "fluke" occurrences, and my personal inference is that life (even if it's just a single celled organism) is inevitable given that the universe we live in seems to operate under specific laws with specific elements: or, said another way, life not existing elsewhere (in whatever form that might take, so not necessarily "intelligent" in the way a human might define it) seems improbable to me even if the conditions for life seem to follow an improbable trajectory. For now, I'll revel in my inferences backed by the speculative/the imagination xD

[@bobrussell3602]

@InternetReviewerGuy I agree up to a point, yet think of the (almost) astronomical flukes that enabled our 'ancestors,' going right back to single celled organisms & beyond, surviving, & enabling you & I to be alive. Yet here we are along with millions of other human beings.

[@ThatFreeWilliam]

I feel like the whole Kardashev scale and Fermi 'paradox' convos ended up creating a TON of weird unnecessary weird stress. A Type II Civilization is a BONKERS concept and even a Type I requires a level of cooperation that we never have and likely never will engage in. The fact that we're not finding them might be a hint that they're just fantasy ideas that nobody does in the real universe. It shouldn't be seen as some weird existential clue that we're all alone or something.

[@thomasdalton1508]

It doesn't necessarily require cooperation. It could be done through domination. When we look at megaprojects in Earth's history, like the Egyptian pyramids, they are typically built by autocratic civilisations, not cooperative ones. I agree, though, that the entire premise of the Kardashev scale could be flawed. There is no real reason to expect more advanced civilisations to consume more power. Even today, we are starting to move towards using power more efficiently rather than using more of it.

[@iiiiitsmagreta1240]

👏 THANK YOU!! These assumptions always bug me!

[@adamcummings20]

​​@@thomasdalton1508Domination still requires an overwhelming force of allied powers to subdue the rest of the world. As seen through history, vast empires can be shaky

[@thomasdalton1508]

@@adamcummings20 A big problem with large empires in history has been communication over vast distances. The Roman Empire split in two because there was really no way for Rome to maintain control over Constantinople (or vice versa) when it took a month for a messenger to travel between them (perhaps a couple of weeks in an emergency). That wouldn't be a problem for a civilisation that can communicate at the speed of light. Even with our current state of technology, it would be relatively easy for someone that achieved world domination to maintain that domination.

[@adamcummings20]

@@thomasdalton1508 True, also I just realised cooperation becomes obsolete if AI war machines controlled by a single person come into existence.

[@DavidRojas-fd2tb]

Just purchased your book! I’m looking forward to reading it… cheers!

[@34ccsn]

I would argue that the question of how life began is the biggest question IMHO.

[@rhymereason3449]

I am 100% convinced that with billions of galaxies there's no doubt other intelligent life is out there. But I find the fact that we can't find it comforting.. because maybe that means it would be very difficult for them to find us as well - especially given that our radio signals have only traveled a 100 or so light years so far... a minuscule amount in terms of our galaxy.

[@blacksage2375]

Our radio signals have traveled even less then that really. Like you can't pick up roaring 20s jazz being broadcast live a hundred light years away, the signal is just too weak to pick up. Assuming it didn't just bounce off the atmosphere in the first place. Actually contacting another planet would be a deliberate event but it's really not surprising aliens have better things to do then slinging that shit off just in the name of contact.

[@ronvanwegen]

100 % and no doubt. Really?

[@rhymereason3449]

@@blacksage2375 I get your point - but an alien race could be much more advanced and have more sensitive detection capabilities than us... thus I made the assumption that ANY signal level might be detectable.

[@Crushnaut]

I used to think the same. If you break it down though, it is actually not that crazy to think we are alone based on the odds alone. Think about it this way. There are 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 approximately stars in the universe. That is 2x10^23. Let's just call it 10^24. We often use the expression one in a million to describe some rare event. How many one in a million events does it take around each star to create intelligent life? If you said more than 4, then odds are we are alone. Four, back to back, one in a million events would happen one in 10^24 times. It could happen more than once, but odds are, it won't. We do not need to discuss just one in a million events though. If there are more than 8 one in a thousand events to create life, then we are alone. If there are more than 12 one in a hundred events, we are alone. Or any combination of the above. If you want to do the odds by each planet, lets give every star in the universe 10 planets. Now there are 10^25 opportunities for life. The odds have not really changed that much. If you want to do the odds by each large body in a solar system, lets give every star a million objects. Now there are 10^30 chances. In other words, 10 one in a thousand events or 4 on in a million events. It still is not insane to think the odds are not in our favour. Let's give intelligent life the benefit of the doubt though. Let's say that it take 3 one in a million events for intelligent life to form in a solar system. That would mean there are about 1,000,000 intelligent civilizations in the universe. If equally spread out, that would mean there would be an intelligent civilization in every 2 million galaxies (given an estimate of 2 trillion galaxies). Given the study that Becky is talking about, they looked at 97 galaxies. If each of these civilizations would have been detectable by this study then 99.995% of the time this study would not detect one of these civilizations. You would need to check 20,000 galaxies to have a 1% chance of detecting such a civilization, assuming every single one is detectable, 100,000 for a 5% chance, 1,500,000 for a 50% chance, 4,500,000 for a 90% chance, etc. Even given this many detectable civilizations our odds are slim and that was assuming all these civilizations lined up in time and were detectable, which they may not be. If even one of these civilizations then went on to become expansive and expanded only 1% the speed of light, but first started expanding say, only 10 million years ago then they could have colonized every star in their galaxy, 100 million years ago (age of the dinosaurs) then they would have colonized their home galaxy as well as any close neighbouring galaxies, 1 billion years ago at they would have colonized their local group of galaxies, 10 billion years ago and they would have colonized their entire galaxy cluster. If such a civilization did exist they should be painfully obvious. If you increase the number of civilizations in the universe then you also increase the number of them that would be expansive like this example. Having not seen an expansive civilization puts an upper limit on the number of civilizations possible in our universe today. We haven't done enough checking to completely rule out a civilization like this yet though. All this leads me to the conclusion that the best hypothesis is that we are very likely alone or first. The odds of intelligent life forming randomly are very likely much larger than the number of planets in the universe. If another intelligent civilization does exist then we are never going to see them because they would be rare and the universe is huge. If intelligent life was common enough to be detectable, we should have seen an expansive civilization by now, and we have not.

[@JustinOhio]

@@ronvanwegen 100%, NO DOUBT, that we already have alien craft, and alien bodies. YES, it's absolutely true. I have no idea why all of these KZbin channels and "scientist" like this woman act like this is still up for debate. It's not. It is established fact. Just because you don't know about it, I'm sorry.... It's been stated by several government officials, all with current high level security clearances. I'm so sick of this stupid stigma and ignorant people who act like this is still a question.

[@frasercain]

This was a really cool paper, and one of the first times astronomers have gone looking for this kind of civilization. Thanks for covering it! Glad you found one of the pictures I generated with Midjourney helpful. We've all had to use the same couple of pictures for years now,. :-)

[@zapfanzapfan]

Type III has been searched for with IR right? Excess IR would suggest many Dyson spheres/swarms around the stars of a galaxy.

[@AquarianSoulTimeTraveler]

You do know that our second chromosome cannot be genetically spliced like it is naturally this means that either an alien civilization made us or we have lost ancient technology that allowed genetic manipulation... this is 100% factual it absolutely has to be one of these two options...

[@frasercain]

@@zapfanzapfan It's been tried a little bit, but no comprehensive searches.

[@talkingmudcrab718]

Ok hai Fraser. I actually mentioned a guest you recently had on your podcast that pointed out that a more advanced civilization may actually be almost impossible to spot because of more direct and efficient technology for communication. It was a really interesting concept I had never considered!

[@seancstew]

Hey! Fraser, ya need to get Becky on the podcast again to talk about supercool things! Just, do not let her get going on Saturn, she will take up an ENTIRE 45 minutes about saturn.

[@DeathadderOne]

Dr.Becky, your videos are awesome. i'm starved for quality entertainment and your videos hit on all the sweet spots. thank you.

[@twonil1]

This was a thoroughly wonderful video! So much to think about but so exciting the possibilities.

[@racookster]

The nearest large spiral galaxy, Andromeda, is over 2.5 million light-years away. Even if we detected technosignatures from another galaxy, we'll never communicate with extragalactic aliens. Their signals would have left their galaxy millions of years ago, and it would take just as long for them to get a signal from us saying, "We heard you. Hi!"

[@Bildgesmythe]

When I first realized this, I ran into my mom's room and cried for hours. She was relieved when she found out what I was crying about. I was miffed when she laughed.

[@seancstew]

@@Bildgesmythe Yeah. Which is why I started my kids off watching science shows when they were toddlers. "Sorry kiddo, time to learn about how insignificant the planet is" Would really suck one day to find out that we live in a glass jar that someone is simply changing the background on.

[@chuckschillingvideos]

Hey man, quit harshing the vibe. Remember that the point isn't to find extraterrestrial life. The point is to be paid handsomely to search for it even though you will never, ever find it. This is all a grift. You're gonna break some dumb PhDs' food bowls!

[@SpaceCadet4Jesus]

​@@chuckschillingvideosEven PhDs have to eat.

[@chuckschillingvideos]

@@SpaceCadet4Jesus Yes, they do. But perhaps they could do something USEFUL to that end instead of something that is utterly purposeless. They would be more useful standing on street corners and washing motorists' windshields than what they're doing now.

[@WifeMadeThaStew]

Wow I’m shocked they found no aliens for the everyeth time ever

[@GregorBarclay]

Stealing from another channel, “it’s not aliens…until it is.”

[@lukebentley3770]

Really loving your channel. Always held a deep interest in space and asyrophysics (I work in environmental consulting/ research). The way you communicate complicated concepts to an outside audience is second to none and I find all this stuff fascinating!

[@gravity0529]

Love this ❤️❤️ the research is amazing!!

[@RyanMatthewCampbell]

I think the fundamental flaw with looking for energy use from extremely advanced civilizations seems to be it assumes exponential growth in energy needs (and technology) continues forever. With our population looking to peak sometime this century, I think that may be a bad assumption. I also remember in 2007 taking a course in astrobiology, and we did some rough math using the Drake Equation to figure out how close the nearest intelligent civilization should be. We made some basic assumptions on the frequency of life-bearing planets which I think stand up to scrutiny today, and solved for distance in lightyears based on how long civilizations remain detectable. If the detectability window is ~2,000 years (maybe a reasonable assumption), it worked out that the nearest civilization is around 2,000 light years away. Something to keep in mind - our peers may just be a little too far away to detect easily right now.

[@iiiiitsmagreta1240]

Yeah, the whole concept of the Kardashev scale makes _incredible_ assumptions abt what _any_ civilization can sustainably accomplish.

[@GregorBarclay]

The population peaking thing is interesting. What happens if we end up colonising Mars and the moon, say, but there’s still only 8 billion of us. Do we end up with like 3 billion on Mars, 4 billion here on earth and a billion on the moon, or would the population expand once we’re spread out on multiple worlds?

[@kadewilliams7925]

This assumes that relative to us they experience the rate of time the same. Large gravity wells or the lack there of could slow down their rate of time or speed it up depending. Not to mention the actual size of the hypothetical intelligent aliens. They could be orders of magnitude larger or smaller than us.

[@ForeverMasterless]

@@GregorBarclay The current decline in birth rates seems to have very little to do with with space/resources and more to do with more and more women not wanting to sacrifice career, hobbies, and travel for the sake of raising a bunch of kids. 3 kids is the minimum for sustained population growth, 2 is the minimum to maintain current population levels. Right now the average is less than 1, so we're actually losing population, at least in the west. That trend is only going to continue as quality of life and overall wealth goes up everywhere else. I don't think colonizing mars would change anything. It's very possible that in a couple hundred years we've dropped back down to five or six billion people.

[@zahirmurji]

@@ForeverMasterlessdropping down to 5 or 6 billion is the best news ever.

[@peterdrury5627]

Excellent summary of SETI endeavors. The largest difficulty in finding real non-human technology signatures is RFI. Could the next major effort to overcome this problem be the installation of radio telescopes on the far side of the our moon? Should be an ideal shield against terrestrial and near terrestrial RFI.

[@atlantasailor1]

It can done with the transmission antenna on the earth side and receiver on the other side of the moon. Now we need robots and materials to build it. And a power source …😊

[@Soken50]

​@@atlantasailor1 You just need 2 satellites, one behind the moon and another a few tens of thousands of kilometers to the side to act as a relay between it and Earth. Maybe a third one near the Sun to microwave beam some power to the first if you want to also emit powerful radio bursts.

[@WorldT]

just discovered your channel the other day now going through all your videos very interesting just discovered my ever science interest again thanks for being here

[@Ylyrra]

Seems a bit weird to assume a type 2 civilisation, presumably having done something on the order of to enclosing its star, would be emitting from a single point source orbiting the star and thus be causing doppler shift.

[@nmarbletoe8210]

excellent point

[@nmarbletoe8210]

but i don't expect dyson spheres yet, not until the age of iron stars when heat/ radiation is actually rare. even so, your point stands. anything that big in energy is probably big spacially also

[@dantfamily9831]

I doubt that a type I civilization can or should exist. A type III civilization seems very improbable, and I have the same opinion about type II civilizations. The Kardashev scale is the problem as it reduces the options to absurd solutions.

[@eng-xv8bc]

I hate the Kardashev scale, it's a very arbitrary measurement that doesn't take into account energy efficiency. Also how can a type 2 civilization build a structure around their host star if generally a star is the biggest mass in a solar system, where would they get material to build the structure?

[@AndrewJohnson-oy8oj]

Well, They are also starting from the assumption that a Type 2 civilizations could have arisen tens of millions of years ago.

[@aperson2703]

Great to see you chatting about a negative result. More people need to talk about interesting experiments/hypotheses that return the null.

[@KapteinFruit]

I found your channel yesterday and I've seen a few videos by now. I like how you explain things. I like Astrum a lot and he is the one who got me invested in all of this. Keep doing your thing. It's fascinating.

[@masstv9052]

Becky is the best. She really puts it into layman's terms for us. While explaining the deeper details. I would recommend binge watching her videos especially on deeper topics.

[@GK-qc5ry]

It's one thing to look at signals in your own galaxy. It's mindboggling to think that we could look at another galaxy and find those signals though the noise.

[@arleneallen8809]

It would seem to be a possibility that any type 2 civilization would be beyond using the electromagnetic spectrum for communications. Our physics doesn't currently offer a potential home for that speculation, but then of course our physics is far from definitive. Seems like we are trying to catch some other civilization in the act of being similar to our last 100 years. Always love your updates.

[@EvenFive]

Maybe the aliens just don't communicate at all. Radio silence for thousands of years. Their culture might be as inconceivable to us as their forms of communication.

[@robguyatt9602]

That's just science fiction to suggest there are other physics than what we currently know.

[@dronevideos1872]

Aren't we already testing teleporting quantum information? "Dutch researchers teleport quantum information across rudimentary quantum network".

[@steffenbendel6031]

Electromagnetic waves might still be the best solution. But certainly not sending them uncontrolled in every direction. We are currently shutting down nearly all high intensity spherical emitters.So for aliens we are going dark.

[@Alondro77]

I have thought of a method for an abstract method of coding via entanglement. It's very complicated and would require an intensely sensitive apparatus to detect, but it IS a sound hypothesis and doesn't violate any known physics. Simply put, it takes advantage of the measurement effect to let the receiver know that a measurement has been made about a given particle. It gives no information about the particle's states, therefore no relativity is violated. However, if such measurements are made in two different pools of entangled particles, this could be a basis for a binary code. A measurement made in one pool constitutes a 1, a measurement in the other constitutes a 0. The universe is 'unaware' that this is information, since it's abstract and based on OUR interpretation, rather than the physics-based definition of 'information'. Naturally, this would be very slow to craft into a message and totally impractical for communications within the Solar System. However, given the established fact that the entanglement effect is virtually instantaneous regardless of physical distance, this would be invaluable for sending simple messages and instructions over a distance of lightyears. The problem comes from maintaining the pool of entangled particles, and the sheer number of such particles required for long-term communication.

[@BradyHansen81]

The problem with this is we are looking for a copy of us out there somewhere. We can’t comprehend how to detect an advanced civilization on planets where insects became the dominant species and found a different way to technologically advance. Looking for ourselves is kinda shooting ourselves in the foot. 🤷‍♂️

[@iiiiitsmagreta1240]

Even if you look at Earth, most human civilizations don't even resemble the kind of thing we're looking for. Conceiving of and understanding different human cultures is fucking hard - think of the culture shock an American might get moving to Japan, or vice versa, and that's _after_ the advent of globalization. I wish they hired more anthropologists at NASA and spent less time creating science fiction disguised as theory.

[@drdca8263]

@@iiiiitsmagreta1240do you know how many/few anthropologists they do have? (Or, like, whether or not they have any at all) I’m not sure that the “what if they are much different from us” argument really is that compelling, because, there are real physical constraints on how interplanetary communication can be achieved? And like, if you think “how much energy they use” is an us-biased measure, I don’t think so. Energy is a very real quantity. If you mean the talk of bio-signatures: there are some arguments for, “no, really, silicon-based life doesn’t work.” So, I’m not super convinced

[@thomasdjonesn]

We can only detect what we can detect. If an alien species is using some form of electromagnetic communication, we might be able to detect it. They could be using some kind of communication using some kind of yet-to-be-discovered physics, but if that's so, then it's moot. You don't know, what you don't know. Someone dependent on news from explorers and cartographers regarding the New World, for example, has no reason to construct a receiver for news from America via the BBC. Not only is such a person three hundred years ahead of their time, it is extremely unlikely that they will receive an intelligible signal.

[@BradyHansen81]

@@drdca8263 meaning they could have taken a completely different route using different materials to do something we do; one that has a different effect to be detected and if you don’t know what you’re looking for you’ll glance over it. Or, they discovered physics we haven’t at this point and use communication and propulsion our society is completely incapable of even imagining because it’s so foreign to our minds. Hope this clarifies. Hell, there could be a species out there that developed near some black hole so they had to discover FTL (faster than light gravel) or their species would end and we have no way to detect such signatures. Looking for ourselves out there is like walking around the world trying to find your doppelgänger

[@kadewilliams7925]

​@@drdca8263until there is a real working theory of everything then no, you can't say with absolute certainty that we know anything. Scientific history is chock full of arrogant bureaucrats disguising themselves as scientists saying it can't be a certain way, only for the quirky weird scientists to upend everything. There is just too many unknowns anout alien evolution in a genuinely alien biosphere over billions of years. Our technology is a direct reflection of how life evolved to utilize and convert energy evolved here on earth to work here on earth.

[@TheFalrinn]

My personal solution to the Fermi paradox is something I like to call "the sustainability paradox". In short, the only way for the civilization to become advanced enough to travel the stars they must also achieve a level of sustainability that means they have no reason to take the risk of traversing the vast distances between stars. Meanwhile, any truly expansionist civilization runs out of resources long before they actually manage to spread to another system. The result is that spacefaring civilizations spread far more slowly and more linearly then what most theories suggest. It still happens, but insufficient time has passed since the dawn of the universe for anyone to reach us. And just for a bit of context on the Kardashev scale, it was written at a time human population was growing explosively with no sign of slowing down. Nowadays the rate of population growth has been declining steadily and some countries are dealing with underpopulation problems (ie Japan). Current estimates suggest that world population will NEVER top 11 billion even absent any catastrophic event. So we should probable reassess our theories on what the natural evolution of a species is in light of this new data.

[@summitap1]

Thank you for not going the click-bait route to get viewers on topics that are so ripe for it. Seriously! Thank you!

[@aliengreeter]

you mean the big "ALIENS" in the title while there's so much fervor about the subject thanks to government whistleblowers?

[@EmersonSecondary]

Your video recommendations are always an instant click for me.

[@dustinmorrison6315]

Another annoying thing is that governments are rapidly putting stuff in space without explaining what kind of signals it can emit.

[@kadewilliams7925]

Thats why repeatability is important in verification.

[@tabularasa0606]

What is more annoying is that private companies are putting more junk in space than governments, just so they can look cool.

[@johnmilner6419]

This is an incredible story that not many people know about.🎓 Thank you!

[@Crushnaut]

By my math, 7 in 1000 galaxies would had to have a detectable signal for this study to have had a 50% chance of making a detection. For a 90%, chance we need 23 in 1000 galaxies to have had a detectable signal. For a 99% chance we would need 46 in 1000 galaxies to have had a detectable signal. In other words, 0.7%, 2.3% and 4.6% respectively. This is without any false positives or false negatives, assuming every signal was detectable, and all galaxies are the same. At the higher rate, 4.6% of galaxies having a detectable civilizations, in a group of 15 galaxies, there would be 50/50 odds that one of those galaxies has two civilizations in it. Similar problem to the how many people in a room share a birthday, but in this case galaxies with two civilizations would be more common than the same number of people sharing a birthday. I think that is an interesting way to look at it.

[@lawrencesherman8435]

Thank you so much for explaining to your viewers that "AI" must be trained. And that the quality of the results from an AI program are only as good as the dataset on which it was trained.

[@andrewmurray1550]

so in otherwords, what the computer industry has known for years - Garbage In...Garbage Out.

[@DraconianEmpath]

Why not train the AI on all the signals we can identify and know things about? We have plenty of data for those. Then tell it to filter those out. What remains should be only things we can't explain based on known patterns. Might not be aliens, but it would probably still be interesting.

[@oystercatcher943]

@@DraconianEmpathyes probably the best you could do. Still highly difficult. This is basically anomaly detection. But you will always see things different to your train. The model has to distinguish interesting from non-interesting differences. To detect a signal we know nothing about. Not sure we can do that well

[@kevincurrie2052]

@@DraconianEmpathmy thoughts exactly. Get AI to filter out all the signals that we recognise, then look closely at the stuff we don’t recognise.

[@PhysicsPolice]

Except her explanation was totally wrong! This is science. They have an hypothesis they want to test. That hypothesis is associated with a model from which they derived synthetic data. That data, which she even showed highlighted in yellow (11:52), is totally good enough as a training set! Her analysis displays ignorance of both the computer science and philosophy of science.

[@daveincognito]

"Rimmer, there’s nothing out there, you know. There’s nobody out there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes with beehive hairdos who say, “Show me some more of this Earth thing called kissing.” There’s just you, me, the Cat, and a lot of floating smegging rocks."

[@grahamrich3368]

Excellent video Becky!! ☀️

[@stylepoints973]

Thank you Dr.Becky ❤

[@stephenmiller4948]

I used to live in Cambridge for a couple of years and I find it refreshing to listen to the British in your voice! I’ve watched many of your videos and am simply amazed by the shear depth, command, and mastery of your knowledge of cosmology. It’s wide and deep. I probably absorb 8% of your presentations - maybe some of this will stick in my tiny brain! 😊🤣

[@neoanderson7]

Always a joy to see your vids. Yes, there is life out there. Being able to find it however.. that's going to take alot of time. We simply lack the knowledge/technology to do so. We can speculate, but nothing definitive. Just hope that others out there are attempting to do the same. 🙂

[@ronvanwegen]

"there is life out there". Really?

[@1dgram]

​@@ronvanwegenThe chances that there is life elsewhere in the observable universe is pretty high. When we include the parts of the universe outside the universe (which may be infinite) then the chances of life approaches certainty

[@justinc4924]

​@@1dgramquantify these chances

[@1dgram]

​@@justinc4924take the Drake Equation with pessimistic estimates but over the entire observable universe, and then use what we know about the flatness of spacetime to derive an estimate over the entire universe

[@elviscera4661]

Very interesting discussion. Can't say I expected a different outcome.

[@revenevan11]

Love your portal cake pfp lol

[@cyberjarl]

The only thing with searching for signals in other galaxies is that you won't find alien civilizations that are currently emitting signals, but Type 2 alien civilizations that were emitting signals millions of years ago because light speed and all that. So any civilization that is younger than however many millions of years light takes to get from that galaxy to us will be virtually undetectable.

[@maraudercatt8564]

Love this! I think the tough thing to comprehend is that the signal we'd get from Canis Major would be from 25,000 years ago an 70, 000 years from Sagittarius. If a society evolved there at the same time and pace as here, we won't know (and vice versa) for 25,000 + years from now. I think... math is hard. Thanks!

[@kadewilliams7925]

There really is no time limit or frame for a civilization to exist. After a certain point billions of years ago life could have evolved anywhere as long as the right ingredients were there. But it is most likely the farther we look the more likely we will be seeing light and information from a civilization that went extinct long ago.

[@john-or9cf]

You do realize a constellation is just a pattern we see from here. There is no “distance” to a constellation.

[@galoomba5559]

That's nothing on geological/astronomical timescales. Civilisations could easily develop millions if not billions of years earlier or later

[@TheKhalamar]

My favorite explanation of the Fermi paradox is the Dark Forest hypothesis: of course there are many alien civilizations out there, but they are all hostile - and silent, to avoid being detected by their enemies. Meanwhile, we're merrily broadcasting all kind of sh*t in all directions.

[@12pentaborane]

For that reason I hope we're the first in the galaxy, ideally universe.

[@kadewilliams7925]

I think that explanation really only describes how future humans will be.

[@AbsurdAsparagus]

i prefer the converse. most space faring civilizations don't have any interest in conquering things. there is more than enough empty space and rocks to go around. critically, most war-like aliens kill themselves before they get to space. only species peaceful enough to not nuke themselves make it. most of those aren't really interested in being loud and disruptive of the natural order of things. so they tend to just blend in with the universe.

[@weronikaasomsson2404]

There will be two back to back, very destructive earthquakes in Alaska, first of magnitude 7.6 and the second 7.3. Shortly after that all the children will go missing. Jesus, our God has revealed all those details to his prophets right now and He is coming in promised redemption. But governments will say it was UFO. Now you have been told in advance, so do not be deceived.

[@Elayzee]

Thank you for covering the topics you do, and stuff like this as well. I do genuinely feel like this study is complete waste of time and money that could be spent on other more beneficial studies that can further our progress. It's a study that has no end goal, since if we did find any signature at all, there's literally nothing that will come of it. We cannot communicate with it. We have zero idea what planet/object it's coming from. We'll never visit there. And whoever sent that message out is long dead and there no way to truly confirm any of it. And we have not detected crap in our own galaxy yet they're claiming they may be able to detect these signatures from other galaxies. I'm open to both the idea that there may be other life out there, AND I'm also perfectly fine if we're alone in the universe. Hell, at distances like the one mentioned in this study, as might as well be alone for the same reasons I mentioned earlier.

[@glucid4222]

Before asking that question, we probably should first ask ourselves if we, as a civilization, will be OK with whatever the answer ends up being. Because our search will be underpinned by how we approach the question itself, and that also includes our very ability of defining what life is. Why? Because if we don't really know exactly what we're looking for, we may go about it the wrong way, thus distorting the answer to the big question we may end up getting, after all. So far, we only have our very own planet to show us what is a life form, and that doesn't exactly equip us with the kind of knowledge that would allow us to find life elsewhere, regardless of its...form. And if we're not equipped to find life forms elsewhere that we're not familiar with, then how are going to be able to find it, or recognize it for being that, or, for that matter, be able to interact with it in a way that it doesn't harm us or itself? In short, in our apparent haste of finding it, we seem to have missed asking ourselves beforehand whether we should or not. I can't help thinking that it's probably for a good reason why aliens are so hard to find.

[@MCsCreations]

Very interesting indeed! Thanks, dr. Becky! 😊 But I'm really skeptical about any search in radio frequencies. For many reasons... But mostly because we'd need to look at the whole spectrum, which isn't possible, but also because radio isn't exactly an effective way to communicate in long range... Not that there's anything better, but it's still not good. Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊 And happy holidays!

[@1dgram]

The electromagnetic spectrum in a volume is a limited resource. An advanced civilization is unlikely to waste a bunch of spectrum by sending powerful signals out into large swaths of deep space

[@oystercatcher943]

Narrow beam laser is much better but it’s not likely to be aimed at us. Looking is worth doing but tricky IMHO

[@PhysicsPolice]

"radio isn't exactly an effective way to communicate in long range" -- Yes, it is, or many of the things one might value such as design simplicity, transparency of the medium, or directional uncertainty. "Not that there's anything better" -- Tight beam lasers are more cost effective. Many signals in many civilizations will be limited by cost. But not all of them.

[@Walter-wo5sz]

I Love Lucy is now about 74 light years out. I'm shocked we haven't had any complaints yet.

[@mikehipperson]

Bill and Ben are out there too "Flobadobbing" to anything that is listening in. Maybe "Flobadob" is an insult in their language and the invasion fleet is on its way only to be eaten by a small dog! The answer is 42.

[@JZsBFF]

Fortunately there's the Square Cube Law to cover for any shortcomings in TV-programming.

[@bonysminiatures3123]

just wait till they get the birdy song ,intergalactic war for sure

[@JZsBFF]

@@bonysminiatures3123 Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo. Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo. Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo. Baby shark!

[@user-bb8jt5xh9o]

You are awesome, love listening to you

[@billyoung9538]

I personally can't imagine how a civilization would obtain the materials to build a Dyson sphere in the first place let alone doing so without jeopardizing their civilization in the process. Also the amount of time it would take to build a Dyson sphere even if one had the required resources in a single star system is also staggering. If we think about the size of our sun there is likely not enough material in our entire solar system to do this even if we had the tech to do so. So the idea that an alien civilization would ever reach the level of Kardashev Type-II seems almost fictional for the most part. This isn't to say some civilizations in some galaxies might have the resources to do this at some point, but the number is going to be an infinitesimal fraction of everything out there. The idea of a Kardashev Type-III civilization is 100% fiction as it would literally require harvesting resources from another galaxy, require a coordinated & unified galactic wide civilization (something we can't even do on our tiny little planet) with means to travel faster than C, and literally be popping out new children like fruit flies in a compost pile since close to the dawn of time in order to achieve such an unimaginably large populous. This isn't pessimism, it's just pointing out how little time and astronomically large a number such a feat would actually be.

[@lundsweden]

Have you calculated the amount of material needed for a Dyson sphere, or is your assertion or more of a guestimation? How thick would such a structure need to be? What would it most likely be made of?

[@olzenheimr]

Once again Dr Becky continues to expand my perspective of human's ongoing search in the extraterrestrial! Thank you, Dr. for your awesome video and joyous bloopers to boot.

[@CitizenRobertK]

Looking for either bio or technosignatures outside of our galaxy presupposes that the signals have had time to reach us; that those signatures were emitted millions to billions of years ago. Our own radio signals have barely reached beyond 100 light years.

[@JasRoss]

Not to mention our inability to isolate the (likely highly attenuated / dispersed) signal from background noise.

[@GregorBarclay]

Yeah, I don’t understand why a type 2 civilisation would be sending a signal of sufficient magnitude to reach us. It would be like using a cannon to pass the salt at dinner.

[@eviljoker303]

I would like to see radio telescopes away from the radio pollution of the Earth .

[@JD96893]

That is basically irrelevant. That chances of there being only 1 alien civilization and at our technological level are very low. The universe Is already very old, there is plenty of time for there to have been dozens of civilization far beyond our technological level. Look what humans have achieved in 10,000 years. That amount of time is miniscule on every scale. Even when compared to the short amount of time our species has been around.

[@srellison561]

@@eviljoker303 The far side of the moon might be a good location.

[@mahadevsurvase4329]

Thank you for such a beautiful topic

[@NataliePine]

This might be a really dumb question (sorry!) but when you're talking about signals from an entire distant galaxy, wouldn't the presence of lots of Type II civilisations cancel out the Doppler drift? Because for every planetary source moving one way there'll be another source moving the other way, too close for us to distinguish them?

[@elfboi523]

But what if no civilisation anywhere ever reaches Type I, let alone any of the other stages? What if every civilisation that reaches the Industrial Age inevitably collapses after ruining its biosphere due to the unintended side effects of its industries? How can we search for preindustrial or postindustrial/post-collapse civilisations?

[@shadoudirges]

From another galaxy, impossible, but in our galaxy it could be done by looking at biosignatures. Only problem would be checking the 100s of billions of star systems in the galaxy would take lifetimes.

[@martinwilliams9866]

I think what happens is that they discover plastic & eventually all drown in nano-particles.

[@elfboi523]

@@shadoudirges I'm more interested in technological signatures. Signs of industrial waste products and things like that.

[@elfboi523]

@@martinwilliams9866 This civilisation is committing suicide by a thousand cuts. We're in the middle of a complex multidimensional crisis. Greenhouse gases, toxins, nanoparticles, habitat destruction, species extinction, resource depletion, and an economic system addicted to growth.

[@josephfilm73]

It really depends on how difficult it is for life to get going on a planet. My hunch is simple life is out there, but complex lifeforms could be scarce enough such that the distance would make communication impossible. Generally speaking, the rarer life is, the farther away it would be relative to us. If they are 100 million light years away, it would take too much time to send signals. They might have already died off. There'd be no practical way to know of their existence. Perhaps earlier in the life of the universe, life was more prevalent due to more favorable conditions. Or it could be the opposite. Maybe we are simply one of the first "sprouting seeds" in a cosmic garden. We could be the ancients or the "first ones". That would make us special but not unique (one of a kind).

[@elio7610]

It seems clear that any form of life is incredibly rare, sapient even moreso. I think the only way we can expect to see multiple civilizations across space coexisting in relatively close proximity and timeframe would be for life to spread and colonise. Just think about how life on Earth all seems to trace back to a single point of origin. Life seems to reproduce and adapt a lot quicker than it takes for it to start, just as technologies are reproduced a lot quicker than it takes for them to be invented. It would probably take a from of life that already attained the ability to travel across the stars to ever even have the chance of meeting a civilization that formed indepently from it.

[@tinkerstrade3553]

Tadpoles morph into frogs at about the same time all across a pond. In cosmic turns, that might work out to a "new frog" every 100K years. We may be first, or third, or the four hundredth, it might not matter. As long as we weren't the last to perish in winter. Long ago, we thought space and time were two seperate things, till Uncle Albert taught us different. But since space time is a single concept, curved space tells us that time is malleable. And that which is malleable, will be manipulated, as surely as flint was once knapped. FTL by evasion will eventually occur. We may not be able to ignore the speed limit, but we'll find a way through other routes. So when we meet our eight armed, six eyed, space brothers, we may be the elder race visiting a steampunk world. The question then will be not about their nature, but our own. Will we be a good elder brother? Or arrive like Cortez? With great power comes great soul searching. 👽

[@elio7610]

@@tinkerstrade3553 unhinged comment. Are space and time really the same, though? They do not seem interchangeable to me, they seem like distinct concepts.

[@tinkerstrade3553]

@@elio7610 We not long ago thought the atom the ultimate foundation. Now, with quantum questions resulting in everything and nothing, were on shaker ground. Thanks for admiring my level 'hinge' tightness. "Life" is to have the heart to swagger, even in the dark.

[@aftersexhighfives]

​@@elio7610do we not know how to differential calculate them based on known constants, like the speed of light?

[@auroraglacialis]

A classical assumption that most likely is just not true is that earth is a beacon of artificial radio waves that can be detected by anyone in the radius they have traveled. But consider just how much the signals weaken when they spread out with an inverse square function. Those weak radio signals we send from earth to the orbit and back will not make it far into interstellar space before they become drowned in the noise of the cosmic radiation. To get a civilization on another planet to see us thaw way, one would need to send a very high powered tightly directed beam directly at them, or where they will be by the time the signal reaches them.

[@bradleyadams4496]

My favorite technique for searching for extra terrestrial life is peering through the atmospheres of distant planets, biosignatures seem to kill two birds with one stone. I find it extremely hard to believe there could be a technological civilization which was open and liberal enough to be space faring, but oppressive, disallowing freedom of press. If the extra terrestrials have freedom of press, there ought to be radio signals even if they have better forms of communication. The Dr's right! We should focus technosignature efforts towards distant galaxies, and as a strategic counterbalance biosignature observation efforts of the Milky Way. I don't think you can attempt biosignature observation of planets from distant galaxies, and if we are receiving radiowaves from a distant galaxy, those radiowaves likely as old as the formation of our solar system. I'm sure we gain some technological theoretical research and development just trying to examine the architecture at the scene of the alien news broadcast. Kardashev doesn't speak of how difficult it is to obtain such powers without rule of law. The world is not yet governed by rule of law, and as humans become more powerful, evermore important becomes the requirement to attain greater feats is for everything to be consistent with rule of law. All rule of law need succeed at is the prevention of frauds, violence and war, then you can have a Kardashev I civilization. The aliens would have become a Kardashev I civiliation and next they can develop their markets and expand into the frontier. Kardashev is too pretentious to know which directions people go. They have people with different interest, but if there is to be a collective interest in the solar system, a.k.a. Kardashev II infrastructure, the interest in the surety of the government for the system being the governing body for the system is required. Imagine escaping Earth and growing wealthy in space. If everyone who escapes Earth to be wealthy in space are all in it for themselves, and since the line between weapon and utility purpose are blurry in space, space by its nature of being sparcely populated high risk high reward, pirate type activity. A rich young billionaire could behave unethically in other ways. The billionaire may get rich because the colony arrived to Mars, but a number of colonist might die before they can be extracted from the planet. If you are a colonist, and you arrived with all your agreed to kit and survived the landing, one lawyer might say the billionaire owes you nothing, another might say that the billionaire should have known that it was too early to try an colonize Mars. If Earth seems chaotic now, just imagine space with a population as large as what's on Earth today. All those people in space would have power to inflict serious harm on any country on Earth. To become Kardashev, you need rule of law established on the whole of the home planet, and you expand with rule of law beyond that planet.

[@geoffreyrhine8210]

Are we alone is both a location AND a time question, so looking for bio-signatures or communications from millions of light-years away may miss concurrent time and we might still be alone.

[@CheatOnlyDeath]

Absolutely. And advanced life may very well be so fragile, subject to inevitable self-destruction within a few centuries or at most millennia that even if we detected intelligent life "nearby" it would be unlikely we could conclude we were not now alone, but at least there would be hope.

[@Mike-qc8xd]

@@CheatOnlyDeath I have hope its just not in man.

[@STORMDAME]

i think 'techno' life is so far apart in time and space from us right now we're doomed to be alone mostly. Space is huge and eternal. We are small and finite ... kind of thing. I don't know,

[@Badbufon]

@@STORMDAME if the universe is expanding as we believe it, contacts get exponentially unlikely over time

[@hugegamer5988]

We will always be alone. You can’t travel through space, the universe ages out around you. Modern civilizations move at breakneck speed, seconds count, News flies around the world instantly. Just traveling across the galaxy and back would take an eighth of a million years. Society may not even exist anymore when you get back.

[@Tamamo-no-Bae]

For me the biggest issue with SETI is that it just focuses on radio signals mainly. Signals that we as a civilization are in the process of phasing out. And signals that degrade quickly in deep space and become noise.

[@robguyatt9602]

What other method is there?

[@EvenFive]

@@robguyatt9602 Humans are using microwave more and more frequently, but we have no idea what an advanced civilization will use. They might use something other than EM radiation to communicate altogether.

[@duality4y]

we are not at all phasing it out, how do you suppose your mobile phone works, the wifi, what the heck do you think starlink uses lol

[@JasRoss]

That's the big question. A couple hundred years ago, sending messages over invisible (radio) energy would have basically been considered an incomprehensible type of witchcraft. Now imagine a civilization that is possibly hundreds of thousands or tens / hundreds of millions of years more advanced than ours. Quantum entanglement or something altogether unheard of and beyond our perception at this point in time.@@robguyatt9602

[@brad9189]

My understanding also is that most of the electromagnetic signals we bleed out every day into space become imperceptible within a small number of light years. Unless an alien civilization deliberately AIMS powerful signals at us, could we detect their everyday broadcasts?

[@UKGeezer]

Not all is lost, every year we're finding hundreds of new species in our deep oceans. Most of them look like they come from another galaxy, I mean they're really weird and alien looking. Fascinating stuff.

[@rubberplantsandwich]

Hey Becky. What in your opinion do you think is the cause of the wow signal?

[@christophermullins7163]

I recent saw and took photos of a flying saucer. it was the quintessential physics defying silent metalic ship. Broad daylight from my tower crane. I am excited that i got to witness it but ive always know they were real since i was a tween. Cool stuff.

[@EnglishMike]

Clearly those photos don't show anything remotely convincing otherwise you'd be world famous by now. More smudges and blurs?

[@richardmetcalfe920]

​@@EnglishMikelmao, not you thinking that they'd be famous. UAPs are so common and no one cares. The schummer amendment for the US's NDAA 2024 has over 21 references to Non human intelligence and recovered technology. No on cares. The legislature to grant eminent domain to the legislative branch of the US government over recovered crash materials held by Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrupp grummen was stripped out and blocked by Senator Mike Turner, who's major contributor is... you guessed it Lockheed Martin. No one in the mainstream cares. They're like you, they won't believe it until some governmental institution says it.

[@BrandyBalloon]

Are we alone? Yes, and so are they. I think it's likely there are countless other advanced civilizations in the universe, and every one of them is lonely. The chance of being close enough in both space and time, for contact to be possible, is very small.

[@coreymiller6717]

Spacetime. Space and time are the same.

[@TheWtfnonamez]

I just learned about the Dark Forest Hypothesis. Maybe the universe is teaming with life, only they are smart enough to stay hidden.

[@Liv1981]

Hoping to detect signals from type 2 civilizations are quite a big bet. We don’t even know if such advanced civilization exists.

[@alexandercastleberry480]

Extragalactic communication would be as obvious to us as Radio is to a civilization that depends on smoke signals and lanterns. It should be obvious from our own growth but the kind of communication we currently use may only last for a century or two on any planet that develops it. When you try to catch a 300 year window in billion year time scales from quadrillions of targets…

[@harryjamessmithmusic7762]

They do exist. Unfortunately, I met some of them during my studies at the university.

[@skruffy79]

I don't think I'm daft by any means, but the ambulance analogy was so clever and just blew my mind/made so much sense all of a sudden 😂

[@bubblesezblonde]

Love your vids!!!

[@kent5400]

Just a thought: what if instead of trying to train AI to search for specific markers and signatures, we trained it to play the Sesame Street game: "One of these things is not like the others" instead? Think of it as asking an open question so that we can potentially get more information. Then we investigate the outliers. Who knows what we've been missing because we've been looking for specific, predefined and limited cases?

[@michaelpettersson4919]

That is the problem with statistics based on samples. As soon as the sample contains anything less then the total, something can be missed.

[@MrPapamaci88]

To be honest, using only power consumption to categorize a civilization is very bare-bones. Of course, the other stuff is hard or impossible to measure from afar, but still, we need a proper scale so at least WE have a scale to measure ourselves to, the measurements we need to work out are: -the structure of society: from tribal through expanded hierarchical systems (we are still there, most democracies are still top-heavy) to post-scarcity -habitation and spread: living on one planet to living anywhere, even world we currently think unlivable -power sources used: how many sources they can use (just because you can build a Dyson sphere and harvest the power of a star doesn't mean you want to do it, if you are an efficient user of power, you won't need that much for literally anything apart from creating mater out of energy) -power consumption efficiency: how well one uses the energy harvested, if you are great at reducing energy loss, you can do a whole lot more, if you can minimalize your tech like we did with our computers, it also helps with power consumption, the end of this scale is the nanoscale construction -instinct: from predatory through docile to ascended, those who can ignore base drives and live as pure intellects -computation power: from the abacus and the like through computers to machines capable of simulating the entire universe and predict the future at a significantly high success-rate -the importance of art and self-expression: obvious, the greater the importance, the greater the culture -the importance of virtues and spirituality: again, obvious, this is a two-edged sword though, the higher it is, the more enlightened a civilization is or the more fanatical, I think it depends on the structure of society category and the instinct category These are the aspects I could think of that would give us a clear picture about how evolved an intelligent species is. We may find beings that are billions of years ahead of us in most aspects and yet they still choose to squat in forests because they choose to live in harmony with nature without tech or just using very little tech. You can also use this to measure an individual as well and that is when you realize just how horribly most humans would score. We are very-very far from being anything more worthy of than a footnote in the eyes of a proper, millions of years old, interstellar civilization. We need to grow a lot...

[@stephenconway4976]

A really great communicator.

[@hvitekristesdod]

Great video as always lovely Becky 😁

[@braunyman1]

Love your videos, information dense with minimal fluff! If we're looking at galaxies millions to billions of LY away, then any signals received would be correspondingly millions to billions of years in the past. Given our own civilization (admittedly not Type II) has only been giving off technosignatures for a little over 200 years and we don't know how stable advanced civilizations might be, perhaps we just have an unbelievably small window of opportunity to find such signals. Nevertheless, it is an amazing and challenging effort.

[@ThetaWindfall]

Quite the fascinating paper. We are really looking for a highly advanced civilization when we are looking for these signatures - and only for a very specific timeperiod. Really so much ground to cover to even get a chance to see anything,.

[@carldori6172]

Great video on an interesting subject, the far side of the moon would be a good place to place a radio receiver to scan for signals without the RFI from earth. Only solar system probes would interfere and those are all in known locations.

[@TheJulianFletcher]

When you mentioned the number of stars in the Milky Way, my mind immediately went to Monty Pythons Galaxy Song 😂

[@davidking-kw3fh]

Love your stuff 👍

[@AmericanPatriot1776AP]

We are naive to believe the entire Universe was created just for our amusement. Thank you Dr. Becky for all the great work.

[@yourmom-wb7yg]

A cool thought I’ve always had is that maybe once a civilization gets to a certain point (probably about a few hundred years from now in terms of our history), they become so advanced that they can just create their own universes in vr that are indistinguishable from real life. They would have no reason to stay in this universe when they can quite literally just make their own in which anything and everything is possible. Kind of like the matrix in a way but it’s more intentional. That’s the direction I see ourselves heading in, so I don’t see it as far fetched at all…

[@batcollins3714]

But you can't live on virtual food so how do you survive in a virtual universe.

[@yourmom-wb7yg]

@@batcollins3714 theoretically if we were able to get to the point in which we can simulate an entire universe, unlimited food would be the least of our worries. There might be biological solutions in which we never need to eat ever again. Or more realistically, a seemingly endless amount of nutrients that just flows into your system while you’re in the other reality. But then again, it’s all completely speculation so what do I know lol.

[@witchmellor]

Brilliant I loved this, I guess the algorithm threw it my way because a few hours ago I watched the movie UFO with Gillian Anderson. I'm going to subscribe because I've always been fascinated with the night sky though can't see too much from where I live at the moment due to air and light pollution. Great stuff cheers

[@PosthumousAddress]

Ha the algo serving me that UFO movie too

[@joyl7842]

13:09 if you think about it, it's actually foreground noise - which I think is much more difficult to deal with

[@MrCharlesdick]

that inverse correlation between distance and signal strength has got to be a factor. At this distance we would be lucky to pick up a single stray photon.

[@TheBub26]

ET has been sneaking about the earth for time immemorial

[@slizgi86]

50/50 Yes, there is life in the universe, in the places where conditions are met - carbon, habitable zone, water, tectonic activity, some radiation, proper chemical conditions, luck and time, and more probably. No, there is no life in the universe (beyond earth) because life here is a universe "mistake", an error in chemistry. Looking for a signal from the space, it is great idea, but considering the size of universe, we have to be extremely lucky to listen it in a proper timeframe... I personally would like the 1st scenario, so life is "fairly" easy to come and abundant, if some conditions are met (maybe there is only one solution, so it might have different forms, but same base biology and chemistry), but so far as I know anything we tried in the lab was unsuccessful. Advanced life, with technology, it is a different story, for ~300M years, big reptiles were walking on the earth, and there was no greater evolution in terms of intelligence.

[@YouTubeAlex666]

The best way to look for alien life is KZbin videos. Loads of them. Flying about. 😁

[@bentee2650]

We are looking for technosignature base on our current technology and knowledge, but if they use something like quantum communication systems or a kind a technology unknow to human kind, i guess we wouldnt be able to detect their signals with the current technology we have. Or maybe we are looking too far into the past to be able to see anything. Alien lifeforms biosignatures might be very different from what we know here on earth, so many possibilities. I hope in my living time-frame we will discover something ground breaking about life in the universe. Even if I don't have a clear opinion about the allegations some high ranked officer whistleblower claim recently about UAP and NHI, disclosure could also happen anytime soon or maybe not. I found this topic very interesting and its worth looking into it from a scientific point of view. Many scientific discoveries begin with observation and testimony. Thank you Becky for this great video!

[@Opinionteer]

We haven’t been technologically capable long enough for our tech to reach the ears of a civilization advanced enough to hear us. If we even heard from another civilization the age of the signal we get is no guarantee they even exist anymore. Same applies here. No guarantee we will be around by the time they hear us.

[@daverice3994]

A 2018 paper entitled "How Much SETI Has Been Done?" published in The Astronomical Journal by researchers (J.T.Wright, S.Kanodia, and E.Lunbar) from the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Penn State University concluded "...our current [SETI radio] search completeness is extremely low, akin to having searched something like a large hot tub or small swimming pool’s worth of water out of all of Earth’s oceans." The study that Dr. Becky cites probably just adds a small bucket of water to that proverbial swimming pool of search efforts.

[@My-Say]

Fact 1: Trillions of varieties of life exists here. Fact 2: There are at least 100 quintillion other earthlike planets in the universe. Fact 3: Earth is young on average to most other earthlike planets in the universe. Conclusion: Alien life not only exists here, but it proves either early abiogenesis or panspermia (which proves both). If panspermia is true, abiogenesis is still true. Since we exist here, it proves abiogenesis is true. And in fact, I often feel life itself can be defined as simply as metabolism, and this can happen simply by several chemical reactions, and would probably resemble something as basic as the construction of crystals. I'm not suggesting crystals are living things, but life is probably just as common.