Humans are the First Aliens. Here's Why.

[@nothosaur]

Actually, aliens know about us. But they don't want to visit because the reviews of our solar system show only one star.

[@ronniethepope]

lmaooooo lol xd haaaaaaaaaaa rofl

[@ronniethepope]

underrated comment brodogski

[@guardsmanom134]

Hey... two drums and a symbol just fell off a cliff... did you hear that?

[@tumaprints]

That's hilarious!!!

[@tumaprints]

Wonder what our Yelp reviews say.

[@andrewjohnson6716]

The second assumption is questionable. Consider: 1) The universe has been capable of supporting sentient life for billions of years 2) it took 14 billion years for our planet to get to the point where it has a single civilization capable of being detected from space 3) after less than 100 years of having a civilization detectable from space we appear to be about to destroy that civilization 4) we are currently scanning less than 3% of the night sky for alien civilizations 5) we hav been doing that scanning for less than 75 years. It would be mathematically more likely for two people at opposite ends of a pitch black football stadium armed with pistols to shoot each other bullets out of the air in a single try than for us to be in exact the right time and place to detect an alien civilization using the methods that we are using.

[@mr.curious1714]

I agree with your argument, and its so satisfying, based on the points u gave. r u a scientist? your arguments and way of explaining suggests this.

[@thaddadeodead]

I agree and commented somewhat along those lines. Capability to detect and actively trying to detect are two different things.

[@cherrydragon3120]

Thats a smart take on it. I thought of it inna way that IF we are alive at the same time as an inteligent alien species.... what makes us think they have ANY interest in communicating with us?? What reasons would they have to contact us? Humans are already in mass anti social these days... why would an alien species want to talk to us? If they picked up ANY images or footage of War from us they would like to stay away from us as far as possible

[@TheFinalChapters]

(1) is extremely misleading. Evolution, especially from early life to multicellular life, takes an immense amount of time. Just because sentient life technically could have existed for billions of years *doesn't* mean it spontaneously appeared on planets. Rather, it would take billions of years of evolution and be subject to all the dangers that the galaxy poses to life. As for the rest, if you assume we're looking for civilizations at the same technological level as our own... yeah, that's not gonna happen. However, a type II-III civilization would be trivial to spot with even the technology we had 100 years ago. Imagine looking at the Earth from, say, Jupiter. It would be blatantly obvious that non-mineral activities are going on, which would result in a higher focus on confirmation on the Earth and relatively quick realization that there is not only life, but a civilization there pulling the strings. That's about how obvious it would be for us to see a type II civilization somewhere else in the galaxy. There would simply be obvious indicators that, by virtue of their energy consumption, would reveal them. And before you bring up the "dark forest" hypothesis, that doesn't make any sense. Any civilization that came before us would realize they are "the first", and rather than try to hide their presence from a hypothetical threat, would spend their energy growing, as civilizations do. This isn't a trait unique to humans... on the contrary, it's necessary for any species at the top of the evolutionary ladder.

[@eriknelson2559]

@@TheFinalChapters Detecting an advanced civilization would be impossible if they chose to make it so :) Nothing is "trivial" across millions of light-years Only in Hollywood can NASA detect Cybertrons inbound at a third the speed of light from across the galaxy (and that was with Arecibo :)

[@ChrisHalliganLaw]

The most mind-blowing fact is that Fermi's friends gave him the credit posthumously.

[@tim40gabby25]

Did Crick and Watson similarly acknowledge their debt to Franklin.. not so much.

[@causaestmalleus4605]

It goes toward their integrity.

[@someed3702]

I'm not so certain of that. This is one of those potentially career ending topics, or at least it was. Given how well talk of extra terrestrials were received at the time, the most mind-blowing fact is that they felt secure enough in their careers to admit that their esteemed coworker thought about these things. Note that they didn't admit that they had all been talking about aliens when Fermi asked the question until after it became clear that they weren't going t be shunned for it. They're all certain that's what he was talking about, but they don't admit to enough context for them to have intuited it. "Just knowing who he was" means that he clearly had talked a lot about aliens in the past, but they didn't give details on those prior conversations. Eventually, it became clear that being associated with theoretic alien discussions wasn't going to be the end to their credibility, so they were more forthcoming on things. However, given that caution, I wonder if it really was Fermi who actually asked the question, or whether they were simply attributing the question to him as a way to check if it was safe to come out of their closet. (To be clear, I'm not trying to say it wasn't him, merely that I could see them wanting to blame him for the question that they were wanting to publicize. If he really did pose the question, that would have been particularly convenient for them.)

[@PhillyHardy]

That’s the least surprising, u only get credit when can’t benefit from it. And it also assumes we are intelligent life! No comment, I see orcas living and whales doing well and we’re the idiots who think pain is the enemy, 😢they’re living we are existing

[@AF-S1N1A1]

Plot twist, with a choose your own adventure plot.. Fermi secured his name because he.. A: Was secretly a serial killer B: Roofied & blackmailed his competition, I mean his fellow scientist only to steal their ideas & present them as his own C: It was actually his idea, therefore that's why it's named after him

[@ynkybomber]

I love the concept of 20 galactic years. That is so easy to articulate to people. Sub earned.

[@user-tp7gy4dj4l]

Earth can't vote, drink, drive or marry yet.

[@PtylerBeats]

@@user-tp7gy4dj4lin what jurisdiction can a 20 year old not get married, vote, or drive?

[@Nefylym]

She may be a biologist, and he may be a physicist, but it's the chemistry between them that is the most endearing. I wish I had that kind of marriage. Bless you both!

[@BigDaddyDru]

Awesome comment! And awesome username! Keep your heart upon and you’ll find someone.

[@spankynater4242]

She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.

[@spankynater4242]

She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.

[@spankynater4242]

She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.

[@spankynater4242]

She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.

[@TheLEEC]

The problem with “communicating” is the assumption that a large portion of the signals are detectable. Earth discovered radio more or less yesterday and since then our use of information technology has exploded. We are already transforming our technology from large inefficient broadcast signals to tiny low-power digital cells and optics that barely leaks any signals at all and, if they do, looks a lot like noise. At that point, we need to put efforts into making ourselves heard to stay detectable. Learning from our own progress, we might need to add to the equation: Civilisations who choose to search and communicate with other life.

[@SpaceCowboyfromNJ]

Exactly along my thoughts, based on our technological progress, we ourselves from not being detectible, to detectable, and are now rapidly becoming undetectable in a span of 150 years. If that progress is normal then the idea of catching someone exactly within 150 year window right now becomes kind of absurd.

[@filonin2]

The equation already takes this into account as L is the length of time a civilization is detectable by human means. The reason their detectability ends doesn't change the equation. It doesn't matter if they become quieter by design or by necessity or if they extinguish themselves in war. All of that is accounted for in L.

[@filonin2]

@@SpaceCowboyfromNJ Broadcasts are not the only way to detect civilizations though. Artificial gasses in their atmospheres give away an industrial age for centuries and if they become spacefaring many megastructures are detectable from many light years, ie. Dyson Spheres and the like, extending L. Outer worlds in their system being mined or "terra" formed would also be detectable as dust rings and extra infrared emissions, etc.

[@voxorox]

@@filonin2 (sigh) Dyson spheres again. Gigantic fictional structures that claim to be able to solve problems that would have to be solved before it can even be built.

[@willmfrank]

@@voxorox So... We've gone from the Fermi Paradox to the Dyson Paradox.

[@Shadow_Enz]

I keep geeking out and gushing over this video over and over again. Love the dynamics between you two, and meshing biology + physics is just so fun here.

[@kr0b1486]

Why? It's scripted

[@Shadow_Enz]

@@kr0b1486 Even something scripted can be cute.

[@ankokuraven]

I think the solution to the Fermi Paradox is the inspiration to the Fermi Paradox "There is so much universe." Like you seemed to come to the conclusion of, it's a detection issue, but I'm not sure it's one of lack of tech on either end. It's the analogy of dipping a bucket in the ocean and wondering where all the fish are. We have to look in the right spot in the ocean at the right time if we want to scoop some fish. For the Drake Equation, When it comes to "habitable planets with life" I'm also, as a biologist, comfortable setting that value near one. We only have one data set for abiogenesis, but earth has a multitude of extreme environments and all of them still end up with life. It may not have started in those environments, but it's additional data points saying that if life can, it will. The biggest issue I have with the way we use the drake equation is the "number of habitable planets." This is where we assume far too much that life will be like us. Number of planets inhabitable to us and inhabitable are different values. As such I think life is more likely than we give it credit for. As for the number of habitable planets for life like us, id set the likelihood of intelligence near one. Convergent evolution almost demands it. And when we have several very very different species with near human intelligence, many with self recognition, and atleast one other with theory of mind on our own planet in very different environments and niches, I think the real limiting factor is time. It will EVENTUALLY happen. It's too beneficial a survival strategy to not. It's like eyes. How many times did those evolve independently? The one galactic year time point I think is still missing is genetic recombination, sexual reproduction and other means of swapping DNA. This development accelerated genetic diversity, and gave natural selection much more to act on and "quicker" to us looking at the timeline.

[@davidwuhrer6704]

The universe is old. It could have supported life long before our galaxy formed. Maybe it did. That makes the Fermi paradox all the more puzzling. There is so much space and so much time, it seems ludicrous that we should be the first or the only ones. So where is everyone? The fact that multicellular life is relatively young might provide an answer. It is just an experiment that the prokaryotes have started recently. They may shelve it at any time, nothing of value to them would be lost. Meanwhile, we, who as a species wouldn't be able to detect ourselves if we were just a lightyear away, are looking for life communicating at human time scales. Bacterial colonies, forests, fungi, starfish, corals don't do that. And furthermore, why should they want to communicate with us? We're not even part of their biosphere.

[@spky999]

Superb presentation. Love the scientific teamwork. Being a "radio person" I think the detectability is an issue. From the first low and medium frequency "spark" signals around the year 1900 which did not escape Earth's ionosphere, over the course of the next 100 years we developed (at least here in Europe) million-watt UHF TV analogue transmitters which sprayed out their signal in all directions easily punching their way to outer space. These signals would look structured to even quite casual examination.This era has sadly now passed and we are in the digital age which tends to consist of vast numbers of very low power signals which overlap and mix, and basically sound or look like random noise at any distance from the source - if they even appear in the radio spectrum. The internet for example started on old-fashioned copper telephone wires, went patchily and briefly to (radio) satellites then mostly migrated to fibre-optic cables. Some satellite usage is returning with the likes of Starlink and Oneweb but again these are digital signals and will be just contributions to the "galactic mush" when observed beyond the solar system.

[@ScienceAsylum]

This is a good train of thought.

[@Priapos93]

Does the heliosphere interfere with signals escaping the solar system?

[@barefootalien]

I question the 'casual examination' descriptor, but I like the general line of thinking. It's interesting to consider that digital signals would basically just look like noise without knowing the exact frequencies, data rates, and decryption algorithms. I'd considered that in a more nebulous sense, but not quite as clearly as you put it here. But even those high-powered analog signals, from far away, competing with the entire EM output of the Sun I'm not at all certain would be detectable above the level of noise, regardless of how they were structured. Inverse square is a b*tch... even barely out of our own heliosphere, we can just _barely_ detect the signals coming from our own probes... and that's knowing exactly where to look and what to look for. From even farther? I just don't know... Even to our most vast arrays of radio telescopes, acting as planet-sized interferometers, a planet in even a very nearby star system within our "radio bubble" is basically the equivalent of a single pixel. Sure, it might be a very _bright_ pixel that flickers in a suspiciously unnatural way... but it does so maybe a couple of pixels away from a _star._ How much power does the Sun put out in the UHF band?

[@Life_42]

@@Priapos93 Great question!

[@wedkarzkosma]

Great point

[@polblanes]

I feel like many people think about evolution as a process of constant improvement towards "better" species, which in a sense it is, but only towards species being better adapted to their environment. Intelligence is not the natural endgame of evolution. I think intelligence, meaning a species being eventually capable to build a radio as you said, is incredibly uncommon. We can see species that communicate in some sense, species that use objects as tools, species that solve conceptual problems and puzzles. But what none of those have is the capacity to be self aware of their own instincts or behaviors or the ability to make objects out of their imagination. What evolutionary pressures would drive species into having those abilities? I just think we got lucky.

[@Ge1Ri4]

There are some other species on earth that seem to be self aware: chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, orcas, dolphins, elephants, magpies and even ants have all had individuals that have been able to pass the mirror test.

[@polblanes]

@@Ge1Ri4 self aware is not the same as aware of their instincts and behaviors as I said. I'm sure there are many more species on earth than we think that are self aware in the meaning you are refering to.

[@jaymkay7211]

Crabs. Nature is trying way too hard evolving things into crabs. Bet the galaxy is full of them.

[@peskyfervid6515]

Agree with you 100%. There is no evolutionary imperative for intelligence. The most successful species are bacteria, which is what most life in the universe is likely to be.

[@BradleyJSeattle]

I agree that many/most people misunderstand evolution as having a goal &/or "up-only" direction. But in the case of intelligence, I think it's generally true. If intelligence is the ability to predict future outcomes, it's easy to see how there's a selective pressure for it, especially in predators. Similarly, eyesight and flight are two other characteristics that keep popping up. Interestingly, lots of brains seem "overbuilt" (particularly humans), but to ever be technological, you need other parts to match. Dolphins & crows may be intelligent, but they don't have hands. Octopus may be intelligent & have excess manipulators, but they'll never develop radios underwater.

[@grapy83]

My God! I love when you two collaborate. She has got patience and intelligence to process what you explain! And she represents us audience when asking simple but important questions. Please do more vids together!

[@jd9119]

Other than to brown-nose, what purpose do comments like this serve?

[@TheRealReVeLaTioN]

I agree. I really enjoyed this video and she asked questions that I was either thinking or saying out loud. I’d turn to my son and say, “see, she’s asking that too!”

[@cjwrench07]

@@jd9119they serve to show the content creators that people like this format. On every single channel the people who comment are the vocal minority. So, these kinds of comments, and the reaction to the comment, give a reasonable approximation of the audience’s response.

[@FlamingRobzilla]

I love it when scientists stray into the realm of philosophy. I remember this question when I was taking my first Astronomy class in college. "Do you believe there is intelligent life in the universe, and why or why not?" It was posed as an essay question on my final exam. My answer was based in part on the geological principal of Uniformitarianism, expanded to cover other planetary environments specific to evolution of intelligence. In other words I looked at our own planet, and assuming the same evolutionary conditions existed on other planets, counted the number of intelligent species on it relative to all life. My conclusion also depended greatly upon the definition of "intelligence." To be brutally concise, based upon my observations I postulated that intelligence was not a binary condition, but one of kind and of degree. There are many intelligent species on our planet, but only one that has evolved the ability to think in abstracts to the degree that the human species has. So if that's the kind of intelligence we're looking for, it has to be a rare thing. My conclusion was that while life itself was probably common, the chances that a species would develop intelligence beyond the need to survive and reproduce is rare but possible, and that our very existence is proof. I got an "A" in Astronomy 101 by the way. ;-)

[@0307nis]

Would be nice if it could be proven more than once

[@malectric]

A key part of what makes us "intelligent" is having evolved a physiology that gives us the ability to shape (and unfortunately destroy) our environment. Dolphins, octopus et al are not able to manipulate their surroundings in the way we can.

[@FlamingRobzilla]

@@malectric What you said is true, however there is more to it than simply having the physiology that enables us to manipulate our environment. Our ability to communicate symbolically both in words and in writing to the degree we do, for example. The very concept of symbolism itself demonstrates a level of abstract thought found in no other species on this planet. And while we are not octopuses, we have very real physical limitations too. But here is where the big difference is: We can conceive of and create tools that allow us to transcend the limitations of our bodies. Language is one example, both written and verbal, and so is math, hammers, power sources, ships designed for water, air, and space. We are surrounded by our tools, and we use them so naturally we sometimes forget they are not part of us. But that's how we survived as a species. Most animals evolve to adapt to their environment. And that adaptation is part of their intelligence. Humans don't do that so much. We have survived because we can adapt our environment to us. Our intelligence has not been constrained by the vagaries of our natural environment. Rather, we use nature, and to what extent we can, we bend her to our will. That is not to say we are all powerful, we're not. I'm just saying we're the biggest fish in this fish bowl.

[@SaraevKS1985]

Human need to be very smart to survive in wild even 40 000 years ago (when our specy formed, whith no doubt). Then brain become smaller due specialisation or optimisations (why birds and ants "too smart"). Life couldn't develope mush earlier than at Earth because of radiation from black holes and so on. So we are one of the first. About evolution of culture on base of ability to transfer knowledge by abstract language (and so on) - books like "The WEIRDest people" by Henrich. The smarter one become the more it cooperates, move to "win-win" strategy, simbiosis and specialisation. Find "evolution of cooperation and altruizm". Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations. There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").

[@jeremyadrian233]

@@FlamingRobzilla So much ink, so little writing?

[@danojc4966]

I miss this stuff, been too caught up in pandemic noise for the last 2 years, but look forward to focusing on interesting things with you guys, thanks Nick.

[@muscledad90]

I think when most people say "intelligent life" they mean the ability to develop and utilize complex tools. Many animals use tools from nature for survival but they do not modify those tools such as sharpening stone into an axe that is strapped to a wooden pole to cut down trees, etc.

[@rruysch]

yes they do. New Caledonian crows modify twigs into spears and hooks, and chimpanzees also modify twigs and leaves in order to optimise their function, like fraying the ends of their sticks to fish for termites. Neither just find something and use it. They change what they found and then use it.

[@OnyxVortex.]

@@rruysch I think a more useful solution, which he should have originally said is the ability to work with metal. No animal except humans(I don't know if other hominids developed metallurgy, though I am pretty sure they didn't) can actually work with metal in a way conducive to developing potentially detectable communication.

[@randomcharacter6501]

@@OnyxVortex. Why is that the bar tho? Crows understand traffic. They can pick locks. So they understand complexities about our world that most animals don't. Communication wise there are many who believe dolphins have "languages" and learn to hunt and survive through "oral" tradition. They've been observed coming up with strategies and teaching those strategies to the young. When comparing animal intelligence to our own we forget humans have no natural defenses. We only survived the wild due to brain size which some scientists think only came when we figured out how to cook food and extract the most calories. Dolphins, chimps, crows, parrots and other intelligent animals have no need for this because the have natural defenses from predators and to help them find food.

[@danquaylesitsspeltpotatoe8307]

@@randomcharacter6501 Intelligence would have to be less than 100 years for us!

[@hockeyeverything4339]

Humans. The great paradox. Capable of the most amazing things. Just take a look around at any city, or superstructure, or our endeavors, such as getting to the moon, soon to be Mars.... Then, watch us. As we destroy our precious planet, let millions die from sickness, drought, war, famine, and turn a blind eye for money. Its absolutely unbelievable. We basically kill ourselves

[@TheRealReVeLaTioN]

I so enjoyed this video! When she brought up the intelligence of certain animals and asked him about whether scientists would see aliens as the intelligent life they’re looking for if they were similar to that of an octopus was such a great question. Begs the question of could the reason aliens haven’t contacted or made themselves known to us is because they see us as having the intelligence of an octopus? I believe there’s really one thing humans need to learn before being capable of detecting aliens (and it doesn’t look like a number of them want to learn it) but love the vibe you two have!!

[@sigmaelite40]

The one thing that was not mentioned was that we as humans have only been detectable for about a 100 year and now we are quite as far as noise in the galaxy so being at the same level of technology is the most unlikely answer to why we have not hear the other civilization

[@TheBatch62]

I think the "intelligent" life we're always talking about is when you reach the stage of metathinking - when you can think about thinking - and take your evolution into your own hands and determine the course of your population.

[@wulf67]

That's probably why intelligent life is so rare. Once you start thinking about thinking, you're already on the path to self-destruction.

[@TheBatch62]

@@wulf67 Also known as depression.

[@chaz706]

I prefer proof... in the form of metalworking.

[@alexhurlbut]

there's a single word for it; sapient. Sapient life.

[@OmniMale]

I put it as manipulating your natural environment.

[@PrometheusZandski]

I really enjoy when Mrs. Asylum joins. She's smart, she's entertaining and she will tell you if you aren't making sense. Thanks for the content. I think the real answer to the Fermi paradox is the mind boggling large amounts of time where no life or simple life exists compared to the infinitesimal fraction of time when intelligent life does exist. This along with the vast galactic distances makes the synchronicity of two neighboring intelligent species very very very small. Our current technology is only capable of detecting TV/radio transmissions to about 16 LYs.

[@Logarithm906]

What about when you factor in radars which are very high power, high gain/directional, and have very distinct waveforms which aren't typically seen in nature (allowing for match filtering to bring them above the background noise). I reckon that would push how far we could detect by quite a bit (well maybe ~50 LY or so).

[@jasonsahadeo5740]

@@Logarithm906 I'm no expert but won't that involve knowing exactly where to "point" or receivers/ transmitters and knowing what protocols they are using to transmit like an alien version of TCP/IP. Seems pretty unlikely to happen by chance.

[@absalomdraconis]

@@jasonsahadeo5740 : Also, 50 light years ISN'T that big of an area on these scales anyways.

[@absalomdraconis]

There's also the fact that our planet currently supports a fairly wide range of fairly intelligent groups (not just individual species, but whole groups of them, like e.g. the Corvidae birds), but only one group has reached our level of intelligence (apes or primates), and only along a single branch _of_ that group (Homo). When you compare the times/chances involved with _that,_ the numbers take another big dip.

[@chimp9465]

Is Mrs. Asylum the interviewer? To me they're probably one of worst interviewers I've seen in a while.

[@chopsueykungfu]

Based on our own species I make these assumptions. We’ve been detectable for roughly a century and great minds have pondered our extinction in another century. So it could be that most civilizations ‘out there’ may only be 200-300 years to be detectable. This would explain why we keep missing each other. A couple centuries is nothing in a sea of a million years, much less a billion years.

[@vagrantapartmentink1481]

THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD WATCH. I especially like the part about questioning what constitutes intelligence. Intelligence that might be geared in completely different fashions or motivations or ability and how that communicates is something we should examine before we regard any life as intelligent. We are only intelligent in what we as humans do and what is relevent to us. I loved this debate. Thanks for recording this.

[@athirkell]

"Either we're alone in the universe or we're not. Both possibilities are terrifying." Personally I think there is a lot of life out there, but not a lot of technologically advanced life. There are still a lot of humans here living off the grid lives that wouldn't be detectable to an alien, and it's perfectly plausible that whole planets exist with lifeforms at that stage. Maybe there's no metal or something I don't know on their planet.

[@Explivious]

well, I agree, but I also think something trivial like the metal comment is just wrong, namely because a planet having "intelligent" life, which I think the video indirectly described as basically a multi-celled organism that is visible to the eye/capable of some level of decision making, there will probably have to be metals and certain elements, based off what we know about ourselves and the Earth (there is metal in humans). A planet that is gaseous, like the other ones we have in our solar system, are very unlikely to contain life and if they do, are probably going to be undetectable by us forever. It is more likely that we just cannot reach the distance required to find the other forms of life, seeing as we can't even communication with our own solar system at all lengths reliably, or at all.

[@ja4nice]

Who here didn't make their own multicells?

[@Soken50]

A planet with no metals ? That's absurd, even far flung worlds in our solar system are pretty metalic, to say nothing of our inner planets which are almost exclusively made of the stuff.

[@danfontaine8179]

I think it’s more terrifying if we’re alone.. that means our lives are so precious there’s like no possible way not to be wasting our lives lol

[@jasonsahadeo5740]

@@danfontaine8179 this hit me hard. Wow. I never really considered that an option but I mean based on observations, at this current moment, we are alone so our lives really are precious and rare. We really don't appreciate how special things like individuality could be.

[@philipfahy9658]

I think the real solution to the Fermi Paradox is likely that radio is actually terrible for long range communication. It's good for long range planetary communication. But over the vast distances of space the signal gets distorted and eventually redshifted out of usability. Radio is simply too low energy to have signals convey useful information over inter-system ranges. I would guess most species only use radio for medium range communication. Depending on the nature of quantum reality, most species will default to instantaneous communication if that turns out to be possible. Otherwise, I would expect they either use a different method, or interplanetary society is much less interconnected than we expect based on modern society, simply due to the nature of the distances.

[@kered13]

No "instantaneous" communication is possible, the speed of light is a hard limit on how fast information can be transmitted. That means that interstellar communication is highly impractical. Any civilization that does choose to expand beyond their original solar system (which is something that I believe is pretty questionable to begin with) is going to have to accept that each colony is going to exist mostly in isolation. There would be some limited communication, but not the constant back and forth stream of communication that we expect from modern societies.

[@arunkottolli]

If a species can do interstellar travel, then it must be able to communicate via quantum space - via quantum entanglement, which is instantaneous and is not limited by speed of light.

[@kered13]

@@arunkottolli It is impossible to transmit information faster than the speed of light through quantum entanglement. If it were possible then all sorts of causality paradoxes would be opened up.

[@valletas]

@@arunkottolli thing is you cant really transmit information via quantum entanglement since theres no way to control it over a large scale All it tell us is what side the other particle is rotating with isnt really usefull for large scale communication nor is any information actually being send there

[@philipfahy9658]

@@kered13 Well you can get around this by allowing the information to travel through shorter paths than large scale objects can. Discovering a wormhole that is large enough to move a ship through and remain stable, that's fairly unlikely anytime soon. Discovering a microwormhole, warping space at the micro scale, or discovering the true nature of quantum entanglement could all be plausible directions for seemingly FTL communication. As we understand it, none of these involve actually transmitting the signal itself faster than the speed of light.

[@thomasjefferson1457]

If we exist, they exist.

[@amd8365]

That's like saying if I'm smart, you're smart. One might be true but it doesn't mean both are true.

[@keeboha43]

I've head scientists talk about the Fermi Paradox every so often in other videos, but useuely in relation to similar topics. I really enjoyed your presentation regarding the Fermi paradox. I actually learned more from your 20 minute video, than I have from previous videos I've watched. Thank you and to quote Dr. Ian Malcolm... "Life finds a way" 🖖🏻

[@europauniversalis5406]

The most amazing thing about this video is this couple's ability to have a logical discussion without getting into an argument which ends up with them not speaking to each other for a week.

[@gregallen1]

You know it’s a edited scripted video right?? Maybe not verbatim but definitely bullet point smh 🤦‍♂️

[@billharm6006]

I first learned of Drake's Equations in late 1977 (undergraduate astronomy class). I've grumbled about them ever since. I do not think the paradox is worth more than lunchroom debate (but it excels at that). Why? Several points (some of which the video at least brushed up against): 1) "Intelligent" must also be capable of creating technology. I believe that elephants are intelligent and sentient. However, their physical structures are ill suited to anything approximating technology as we understand it (there goes one of those bias thingies). I also believe that the great whales are intelligent and sentient. Ever try doing electronic circuits in a salt water environment? The list goes on (mercifully, I won't). 2) The alien's environment must be conducive to the use of electromagnetic signal transmission. A fun exercise would be to imagine an atmospheric composition and structure plus planetary magnetic properties and perhaps even stellar environment factors (winds of charged particles, etc.) that would produce an environment unfriendly to electromagnetic signal transmission. Could such an environment still support life? The signal problem presented could range from propagation failure, to rapid signal attenuation, to rapid signal scattering, to signals being overwhelmed by "natural" electromagnetic noise (there are some mighty noisy planets out there). 3) The alien signals generated must be strong enough for us to detect them. The signals must make it through the obstacle course of interstellar space with enough energy to be distinguished from the background noise of the universe. If there is a point source, it will sweep past us with amazing speed (yes... the trace of the signal's detectable pass could be moving a super-light speed). We have no reason to believe that this transmission source would be aware of our existence and our precise position/time address in order to focus a beam upon us. Thus, an intense point is unlikely to be detected. If an omnidirectional source is present, its signal strength immediately gets divided by 4 x distance^2 (surface of a sphere = 4 Pi r^2; broadcast energy assumed evenly distributed across surface of a sphere). With the shortest possible transmission distances measured in multiple light years, there won't be much signal left (don't forget additional in-transit attenuation factors and background noise interference). On the other side of the coin, assuming good local signal propagation, why would they use high power? 4) The alien signals generated must be recognizable. Pure AM signals are great for detection. But what if the signals used are all "spread spectrum" along the line of Bluetooth? Or perhaps they are heavily multiplexed? 5) Signals will move at the speed of light. That means that signals will take many years, even many human lifetimes, to transit our own galaxy (remember, our galaxy is on the order of 100,000 light years across). Any signal that we receive will be old (but it still would be very interesting if confirmed). This signal speed limit brings up the dependence of signal path on space-time curvature. The signal will be deflected by every mass it comes near. Thus, the actual path will be longer--so too the transit time--than would a straight line path. 6) Intelligent life could have evolved, developed appropriate technology, and vanished long before we had any hope of detecting its signals. Intelligent life could have evolved, developed appropriate technology, and moved on to other technological means currently undetectable by us, even using science unknown to us. 7) While I both "believe" and hope that there is other intelligent life in our galaxy, We must remember that our solar system is actually quite unique. I've read one article that stated that the proportions of heavy elements in our solar system (or at least on Earth) could only have come from the fragments resulting from the collision of two neutron stars. That precondition cannot be representative of very many systems within our galaxy. Heavier elements are needed to create life as we know it. Thus, not all star/planet systems will have the necessary ingredients. Should a term for "Proportion of solar systems having necessary atomic weights and concentrations thereof" be added to Drake's equations? (Boy have I thrown out a lot of meat for the lions!) (Edit to fix a couple of typing errors. No new content or change of message involved)

[@ynotds6205]

Great reading, thank you for that!

[@bobosims1848]

All that, in addition to time factors, makes it quite unlikely that we will ever find intelligent life in our galaxy, if it even exists. Humanity certainly doesn't meet the criteria to be called intelligent. We've developed some pretty incredible forms of energy generation, and what do we use it for? Exactly: to eliminate as many lifeforms as we can!

[@alexmcbride1186]

0k

[@Zift_Ylrhavic_Resfear]

I think wood is an underestimated factor. It's a great material that can be found in great quantities, qualities and shapes (it's hard to make bows and spears without wood, bones could replace it but they are harder to get, i'm not sure the quantity would be enough to sustain a tribe), and it is a great source of fuel, fire being an very important tool in the history of technology. Could we have developped to this point if trees hadn't evolved? I doubt it.

[@lovingkat5]

I couldn't of said it better myself :)

[@benthompson5390]

The hardest part about any of this is what is the point of elements forming into cells and molecules and interacting with each other to evolve in the first place.

[@mikew466]

The answer of why life acts the way it does or why anything exists is something we'll likely never get an answer for. That's like asking why the physical laws of our universe exist as they do, why gravity, etc.?

[@douglasperry8211]

It was brilliant bringing your wife on to the show! It changed my whole perception of everything else involved. Now, I even listen to the material.

[@kyleanderson7852]

I like that you used the term “habitable worlds” as opposed to just planets, because moons are also possible candidates for life. I fall in with the rare earth hypothesis folks only because there seems to have been a number of things or events that contribute to “Goldilocks” scenarios for life surviving long enough to evolve intelligence like how earth’s internal dynamo and heat both nurtured early single cell life and provided protection from harmful space born radiation. We talk about worlds being in habitable zones of their stars, but how exceedingly rare are worlds with strong magnetospheres, or with large tide causing moons, or axial tilts, or favorable galactic neighborhoods. etc.. All these things contributed to life’s evolution on our world. There is an almost never ending plethora of things that can be classified as great filters which can stop life cold… at least the kind of life we know of. That said, I do like the idea that there my be life so alien to us that we are yet still clueless how to even begin looking for it 🤔

[@carl_tuckerson9701]

Habitable for whom? I think this idea is flawed. There's a clear bias in the term "habitable ".

[@bryanergau6682]

Silicon based.

[@davidmorrison4164]

Cool

[@gabe687]

The world doesn't even need to be naturally habitable, looking at the plans for Mars, there are ways to get around that.

[@FrarmerFrank]

Never got the "goldylocks" thing as we are on a planet with a massive EM field or its size in an orbit ("shields at maxim" )between 2 planets wrecked by the solar wind because they have no EM fields able to keep the solar wind from ripping off lighter gases like nitrogen and oxygen It goes from absolute Zero in the Menosphere up to 750f in the Thermosphere, the moon Day side is up to 250f and just outside the Earth's EM is the 2500f-4000f solar wind(though its the cosmic and gama rays that will kill you in a improperly shielded ship)

[@shot.on.iphone]

YOU ALWAYS INSPIRE ME FOR THINKING SOMETHING DIFFERENT Your dialogue "It's okay to be little crazy" changed my life! 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

[@stevenfair3992]

The solution I like and dislike the most is the idea that we might be first. I like it because that means the dangers of space travel are likely to be all natural hazards. Some known, many unknown. I dislike it because I don’t want humans to be the only other intelligent life for now. Even if it doesn’t happen in our lifetime, it would be amazing if humans made contact with another intelligence.

[@oakvillian5]

The dark forest solution seems most realistic to me. For most of the time other civilizations are communicating, they have a strong interest in not being easily detected.

[@contrarian8870]

We need a distinction between "detectable" and a "signal". If bacteria, over time, cover some planet with oxygen, this life activity can be detected (via spectral lines). But intelligent life would need to create a signal (radio, gravity waves etc) which we can not just detect, but recognize as non-natural, created with intent, by an intelligence. This poses a question: can we tell apart non-natural signals?

[@viralsheddingzombie5324]

Give us an example of a "non-natural" signal. What is non-natural?

[@user-rh8hi4ph4b]

It should be added that the radio signals we leak out unintentionally into the galaxy are not detectable beyond a rather disappointing radius, of some single-digits number of lightyears. Humanity itself has yet to do something that, by its own standards, would count as "detectable" for the rest of the galaxy. That could be something like constructing a dyson swarm, colonizing the galaxy, or simply deliberately focusing an extremely energetic radio beam that's detectable throughout the galaxy at every star. The question for the filter ahead is, what it could be that it would prevent us from doing so. It might be as disappointingly simple as "lack of interest".

[@patelk464]

@@user-rh8hi4ph4b the problem is about technology and justifying the cost. We are unlikely to have the technology to transmit such sigal in the near future. Even if we could and also could identify some 1000 suitable target, the distance to the nearest target would mean that we are unlikely to receive a response for several generations. So I don't see why the public would support such costs when they, or their children are unlikely to get any benefit.

[@jasonsahadeo5740]

I think we're better off trying to find a way to travel between planets. If we're multiplanetary then innovations with come to speed up travel and communications. If faster than light travel/ communication exists, doing that would surely be the way to get the attention of other technologically advanced intelligent life. Light speed is just so slow.

[@findango]

I'm trying to wrap my brain around some factors, like the age of the universe (still relatively young) which means the 'when in time' is a huge consideration. The speed of light is an issue due to the size of it and the ability to travel, and the fact our radio signals have only been going for around 120 years, which is nothing. It hasn't travelled far enough yet. We can all continue to imagine though.

[@RS-ls7mm]

The 120 year radio number is irrelevant. No radio signal we have ever produced (with only a few exceptions) can be received past 1 light year. It drops below noise at that distance. Inverse square is the issue.

[@TrapperBV]

In either case Fin has a valid point and imo would likely be a good reason for us not to have received any signals also. I think the theory of emergence is in its infancy and will add a lot of better assumptions to the Drake equation once it finds its legs. I think we’re the first life to willingly leave its planet, and earth/sun has had the best factors to get life to this stage so far.

[@DeuceGenius]

I imagine we only have hope to ever discover anything else within our own galaxy. Anything outside our own galaxy is just cut off from our existence

[@Hecarim420]

It's easy that we almost for sure are alone. We got aliens all around 🌎 and any of them are not close to be TECHNICAL and won't be. EDIT It's really wishful thinking when u see where we are RIGHT NOW and we are so far away to be able communicate. Even intelligent 🐙🦑 /mother 🌎 no matter what it won't be able communicate if they gonna thrive in their environments they won't build tech anyway. We see that life don't need any understable intelligent (to make sense of world they in) to thrive or be dominant one. Our super calm 🌎 and 🌞 are not safe for us, so if u think that other forms of life can predict that done flare will kill, i don't get it why it's not obvious. WE KNOW THIS AND WE STILL END UP IN WARS ETC ETC. DON'T TRY TELL ME THAT IT'S BECAUSE OF CULTURE OR RELIGION (IT IS BUT ITS NOT A POINT), WE CREATE THEM BECAUSE WE TRYED MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AND LIFE TO EXIST DON'T NEED THAT AND WON'T GET DO MUCH TIME OR LUCK AS WE DID. Maybe we are first one, but with time going on we won't be able to communicate either because of vast distances and i don't think local group are big enough to makes other form of life (we would conquer them before it would happen). There is much more reasons i can think of but u will try anyway fit this info your worldviews. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's amazing to me that u still think that intelligence is special, it's not. Invented tools such as language and writing make US possible, but intelligence is not some ABSOLUTE that will conquer the cosmos, it's just POSSIBLE in our universe. U think to much about this in mathematical sense (it's the only way we can, even biology, chemistry etc etc) but we use other tools and imagination (do intelligence need that, every sensor in body etc is a tool). You consider so many things too literally and that's how SCIENCE work not LIFE (even most exotic u can think of). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@somecsguy9824]

@@Hecarim420 Communication/detection is the barrier so we can never know 100% that we are alone unless we can visually detect physical objects that cannot possible be natural.

[@vibhor1211]

Short haired Amy and bald sheldon having dinner conversations

[@MrHuNTeR_exe]

😂😂😂 accurate

[@swedebug2889]

It's fascinating to watch you two discuss really difficult stuff. My partner and I usually discuss what to have for dinner the coming day. :/

[@ScienceAsylum]

I love the way my wife challenges me 🤓

[@111111222223]

One thing that always bothers me when people talk about the great filter, is they assume there's only one big filter, but there could just as well be two big filters or more. So, even if you think we have passed a great filter doesn't mean we are save from big filters.

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

I feel like the very hubris of thinking that we've passed the great filter is the constant great filter. Thinking that we are any better than any other species might be another great filter. Cos, the very great filter argument feels weird when you compare ourselves with other mammal species.

[@numbersix8919]

@@aniksamiurrahman6365 You speak the words of truth!

[@numbersix8919]

All the Great Filters that we can think of (and also the ones we can't imagine) that really exist, all operate at the same time. Most scientists have decided that life similar to us humans really is very very very rare. This gives us a big responsibility to protect ourselves, for the sake of whatever Force created us, in case we have a Purpose.

[@adampope5107]

@@aniksamiurrahman6365 with climate change staring us in the face, it's pretty obvious that there's at least one great filter ahead of us.

[@rrmenton8016]

@Adam Pope Current events in Europe would suggest we're not out of the woods on the Great Filter of planetary nuclear suicide either.

[@ghosttwo2]

The most likely solution is the one rarely mentioned. That by the time their radio signals reach us, they're too weak to be detected. Even if a clone of earth existed around the nearest star, it would take all of the solar energy hitting their planet just to generate a signal as weak as the voyager probes by the time it got here. Double the distance a couple times, and even things like focused arrays and fusion power become a moot consideration.

[@matthewviramontes3131]

But what about more advanced species than humans? Like way more advanced. Why have they not come here to our solar system to contact us?

[@sprinkle61]

@@matthewviramontes3131 Either there is a great filter, or its likely another intelligent life or its stuff, is already here in our solar system, in some form. We took a ridiculous 1.5 billion years to reach our current state, but only like 10,000 years to go from agriculture to space travel. Theoretically, self replicating spaceships should be able to explore the entire galaxy in about 500,000 years. I think the best option is to stop wasting resources scanning for signals, and instead focus on finding and mining out every object and planet in our solar system. If we are not the first intelligent life, there is probably an alien probe or Von Neumann machine somewhere in our solar system, which may have completed its mission and gone inactive long before there was anything to see here intelligent life-wise. Finding such a thing would answer the question definitively, and probably contain some clues as to what our next move should be. Also, we are going to need all the materials in our solar system to send out our own ships/probes/machines, unless we do something 'space weird', like build a stellar engine and launch our entire solar system to another nearby solar system (!!)

[@KillerBill1953]

I remember a few years ago watching a science video on KZbin which stated that our signals, because they are not focussed, fade into the background noise after 2 light years. I've been severely trolled on KZbin because I can't recall the video I watched but I remember it very well. It was plausible and backed up with research data. I'm not a sceptic that there could be life out there, even intelligent and technologically advanced but unless they were sending a very powerful signal direct to us, how would we detect it. I would really like us to be visited by extraterrestrials but I don't believe we ever have been, after 50 plus years of studying the "evidence". Many examples taken as fact when I was younger have since been debunked. You have to rely on the integrity of witnesses and people want their 15 minutes. I believe that any unusual craft which have been seen were built by us. Anything unidentified is that. Changing the designation from UFO, the important word is "unidentified" to, UAP doesn't really make for clarity as the "Unidentified" is still the important word. The problem is that many people, generally ignorant of unusual craft or ariel phenomena, automatically assume that unidentified means unidentified extraterrestrial craft.

[@Chrissuit33]

@@matthewviramontes3131 That's assuming FTL travel is possible in some way that another species has figured out. Even if FTL is figured out, there's no saying how fast that would be. There may be hundreds of advanced civilizations out there that can barely get to their nearest neighboring stars and perhaps radio or radio like communication is the only way any have come up with. If no one can get here or be "loud" enough to hear then we will likely never see them. I think the only chance we have of detecting an advanced civ is if it's a sphere builder. That might make them visible to us.

[@cortster12]

@Christopher Suit There doesn't need to be FTL travel. It would only take a few tens of million years to colonize the whole galaxy at even 20% the speed of light. That's nothing in astronomical terms. Meaning if we don't see them in our solar system, i.e. the fact we exist and our asteroids don't seem to have been mined, then we can safely say no hyper advanced aliens exist in our arm of the galaxy and we have the chance to be the first.

[@chiefline7084]

Intelligent life takes so long to evolve that a planet has to have that stable environment for so many billions of years is the great filter.

[@ignassladkevicius9032]

I love that - "We don't know!"

[@williamblaker2628]

"The Great Filter" doesn't have to be only *one* filter. There can be several filters that restrict the numbers of intelligent species that can communicate long-distance. Also, this discussion didn't get into how L can affect our ability to detect life on other planets. Let's say that the equation spits out 1,000 planets with intelligent life that can communicate via radio waves. But, if L=150 years (the length of time that a species is able to broadcast). After broadcasting for that amount of time they may discover cable or point-to-point communication. So, if L=150 years, even if there are 1,000 species that make it, the chance of 2 or more existing in their L phase simultaneously is vanishing small, given that they could have begun broadcasting at any time during the past, say, 2 billion years.

[@andreafarina385]

I may be wrong but the second point you make is not entirely true. It is true that L is an important factor, but you need to remember that R (the first variable of the equation) is the rate of star formation which is dimentionally a number per unit of time. This means that when you multiply by L in the formula you get a simple number that indicates the amount of civilizations that are CURRENTLY detectable by us (not the total in history). However the fact that we can detect them at this point in time does not necessarily mean that they still exist as the signal may have travelled for thousands of years to reach us

[@aaronfraley1686]

Came here for this and happily found it up at the top. I think it's limiting to think of the filter as a single slot, perhaps more of a game of Plinko.

[@BlazinRiver1]

Funny how nobody is talking about the bright shinny filter that keeps our little planet warm. A super flare or micro nova will filter everything away....lol

[@ScienceAsylum]

For the record: Our final calculation in the video (~100 species) included two filters, one before and one after our current stage of existence.

[@aaronfraley1686]

@@ScienceAsylum love the content and quality. I'm no scientist and anyone who can do probability calculations fascinates me. It's more likely I'm wrong than I'm correct, but it seems to me the most common conception is that there is a single event that all possible species either overcome or don't. I'm inclined to think all possible known and unknown scenarios are potential filters, and they exist, reasonably, for all possible species. Therefore, every species that exists surpasses filter events until they either find an insurmountable filter or they achieve the ability to contact/be contacted. Then it would become the chance of another species achieving the same level, and finally as William Blaker said, those species exist close enough in space and time for their detection and communication with the other. I hope I'm making sense.

[@JustaGuy2.0]

All we have to know about aliens is in this quote: "The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star." - Carl Sagan

[@gray12566]

No one is out there to save us from ourselves..... Also by Carl

[@JustaGuy2.0]

@@gray12566 That i do not agree with. The thing is, i do not fall into appeal to authority from anything or anyone. I do not take that quote (the one i wrote) at heart because i agree with it but rather because it agrees with me, in other words, i came to this theory way before i knew about this quote and. This was my logic: > There are only two hypothesis, either the world and science is lying to us, there is no stars or planets out there - in fact, there is no "out there" to begin with, all there is is a giant worldwide cabal; or there are millions of alien civilizations out there since the idea that we are the only one between zillion of planets is just ridiculous. Let's go with the second hypothesis because it makes a lot more sense. So, what do we know after that? That we were never contacted or aliens ever came here (with an agenda, not on a vacation since the last one we don't know). So, what is the logical step after that? Either aliens don't know we exist, they don't care, or they know and they care but they don't intervene. All those hypothesis are valid, so let's put them on a shelf for now and look at another one, types of civilizations. There can only be three types of civilizations when compared to us: the ones less advanced, the ones at the same level, and the ones more advanced. The ones less advanced and the ones at the same level are irrelevant to the discussion since they can't have any interaction with us, just like we can't have with them, which leave us with the ones more advanced. So, in our human logic we will say that there might be the good ones and the evil ones. The evil ones are less logic since there needs to be some sort of utopia for an all civilization to partake in a unified ideology. And even if there are evil ideologies that on a conquest and destruction path across the universe, there needs to good guys as well. So, my take is, there are alien civilizations, they know about us, they care, but they don't intervene. So, taking my quote of Carl Sagan, if there are alien life, and we never found any no matter how much we search for, the logic is that we were born in an empty part of the galaxy, so we can evolve, grow and learn. So, going back to Sagan's quote of "No one is out there to save us from ourselves", i don't believe, and the reasoning is simple. If we destroy ourselves, we are not "just" killing everyone, we are ANNIHILATING AN INTERGALACTIC CIVILIZATION, the HUMAN RACE. And that i don't believe would be allowed.

[@matheus5230]

@@gray12566 Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general. Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever. I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's KZbin channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!

[@JustaGuy2.0]

@@matheus5230 "Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever." So, basically become gods......not going to happen...ever....i don't even know what that means. Unless we are talking about an artificial reality, in that sure, we made it and so we control it. As for "living forever", i have a lot of problems with that assumption. Not only it will never be possible, death is part of life and all, but i find it incredibly disrespectful for the zillions of people that died throughout history....even you and all of us will die before that will be a reality (which is never, but still the point stands).

[@matheus5230]

@@JustaGuy2.0 I hope we will be able to have total control over reality, reverse entropy and so on, no matter how long it takes. Such civilization would never go extinct. I know I'm not going to see it, regardless if it will happen or not. But it's not bad to hope. I don't think that wanting to live forever is a disrespect to all humans who died.

[@DonaldSettles-gq2rk]

Great show. Keep it up . I shared with my brothers !

[@RubenLopezG]

I'm leaning towards the difficulty of detecting alien life as the most likely explanation. Even if there were an Earth 2.0 somewhere out there in the galaxy, an exact copy of ours, so that we know what to look for, would we be able to detect it? How close would it have to be to us for us to detect life and/or intelligent life there?

[@tim40gabby25]

Like looking for a friend also lost at night in the fog on a moor - both with crappy little dim torches

[@helperdude8205]

@@tim40gabby25 but remove the torches because you two will be so far no even a 0.12% of that light wll be seen or make it and make the fog even mass up radio range

[@drewharrison6433]

How do we know that we aren't "Earth 2.0"... or 3.02...

[@wayando]

Yes. I wonder what the Earth would look like from 200light years, or 1,000 light years out ... Considering that the outer planets in our solar system are so so much bigger and would be the dominant thing to be seen from outside.

[@KyouzukaTakahashi]

@@wayando Well we have to look for the planetary orbital resonance because there will be time when the giants is not in transit and obscuring the inner planets. The outer planets orbit is very long compared to the inner planets so less frequent obscuration and this window would let them observe at the inner planetary orbit, it wouldn't be so difficult for them to detect that some object is orbiting closer to the star, although they may not get the everything right. The dimming will form a pattern if they let it record for a long time, with this they could calculate the orbital period, number of planets, the size of planet, distance, etc

[@colpul2103]

1) Life did begin early on Earth, but it only began once as far as we know. It probably isn't just a matter of 'water+Goldie Locks zone = life'. The actual catalyst for the chemical reaction may be fairly rare. Some factors we don't know were involved like having a Moon the size and distance (which was much closer then). We can't even guess at what specific factors caused the chemical reaction known as life to start. Maybe it has to start early as a planet cools or it can't start at all and maybe it rare that everything aligns. 2) The planet needs to be conducive to development of a technological spices. A water world for example is highly unlikely to develop a spices capable of harnessing fire. Too large a world and are things like body structures capable of producing spices biologically capable of wielding certain tools advancements. How common is the relative solar and system stability we enjoy? Many systems have gas giants closer to their star, how would effect the magnetic shield we enjoy? You have life but not the physical traits to develop tools and such. 3) Taking the early two into account; how likely is it then that a spices evolves that has 'technical intelligence', physical traits conducive to technological development, and sociocultural structures for a technical 'human like' spices? 66 billion years ago a big arse rock doesn't fall from the sky how likely is it that Technoraptor puts a Dino on the Moon? Throw the die again on the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction and maybe that techno-capable number doesn't come up again. 4) Time: there may be only a small window of say 100,000 to 500,000 years when an alien civilization is between a type 1 to type 2 civilizations on the Kardashev scale where they would be detectable to another species of our level. It seems pretty unreasonable to think we'd be able to detect a type 3 civilization as their technology would be so far beyond our level to understand what we were seeing. Even at that, were there a spices only a few score light years away of similar technologically development to us we'd not be able to detect them. Not only do radio waves need time to travel but by the time 'I Love Lucy' reached 5) There may be a limit to how far we or any spices can advance technologically, either to create or detect information from another spices. Not some 'end of the world' but by the laws of physics. Hyper space, worm holes, warp drives, inter-dimensional travel... may just not be possible given the amount of energy in the universe and/or its underlying structure even for a full on type 3 civilizations. And even if we can advance technologically ad infginitum things like the cosmic speed limit and constraints of getting around it with something like worm holes or warp space would require us to not have physical bodies. At that point what then would be the point? We be a virtual spices living in a virtual universe and probably undetectable to our current universe. We may someday send 'arcs' to distant star systems either with seeds or our world or as a desperate attempt with generational ships, but our current spices will never travel to them like Star Trek or Star Wars. This is why I don't believe we've been visited by aliens: if they had the technology to visit us they would have no reason to visit us. It would be like developing the technology to shrink yourself to the size of a bacteria then jumping down the petri dish instead of using that same level of technology to analyze the petri dish in far greater detail than a physical visit ever could. (And on a technical capability scale the distance between us and bacteria is less than us and a type 3 civilization. which begs the question even if it is possible does a star system capable of developing the request species have a life span long enough for that spices to develop the technical level to migrate to another star system.)

[@sertaki]

Regarding your last point:The development of species and their capabilities seems to be logarithmic, not linear. The time it takes for a type 1 civilization to develop into type 3 may be a lot smaller than for apes to develop into humans. We don't know. But judging by how quickly life exploded once it reached multi cellular forms, and how quickly technology exploded, once it reached engines and then when it reached computers, it's likely that tech breakthroughs will come quicker and quicker. There is a reason ai researchers are worried about hyper intelligent ai appearing out of nowhere and immediately overtaking is.

[@philippw4769]

@colpul2: What a great comment! I support every point. @sertaki: good point. Such an interesting topic, yet I feel like everything has been said. More discussions don't lead anywhere at this point. The only thing that would change that is faster than light travel. For now, we are on our own, and it looks like one intelligent species is hard enough to take care off.

[@jasoncolson3100]

Interesting comment. Apparently your spell checker is consistently replacing the word 'species' with 'spices'. I have to go to work, but I would like to rebut a few points that you made...Hopefully when I get back from work.

[@SolidSiren]

It "began" once as far as the dictionary definition yes. But life may have started and stopped more than once. The most recent research and understanding is pointing us more toward it developing more than once. We now have some evidence (selenium isotope ratios in rock) that oxygen increased on Earth, reached high levels, then fell dramatically low BEFORE what we thought was the time life first developed. This period was enough time for life to develop, but not enough to evolve intensely (at least based on our understanding of how fast evolution and speciation takes place) before being apparently wiped out by environmental changes. We know the conditions for it existed prior to the theoretical timeline for origin.

[@TheFinalChapters]

You've got point (4) completely backwards. Type III civilizations wouldn't just be obvious that they exist... they would have long since colonized the Earth. Imagine what a zoo looks like from the monkey's perspective. How could you NOT tell there's a "higher being" out there?

[@ericlondon2663]

I love how much the experts talk so confident about things they are 100% guessing about. We have no idea wtf is out there.

[@Anton-tf9iw]

Scientists. They only use physical senses and thus notice only physical forces, events. An Out of Body Experience could cure them one by one. We all get one when we die, but there is no return to this life, so no record. Extremely few people have such good memories that they rediscover past lives, but they do exist.

[@SaraevKS1985]

You aren't right. See what meens theory in science. Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations. There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math"). Any way it's about how all designed, not how to live life and why aliens may be kind - "evolution of cooperation and altruizm" and so on.

[@rodylermglez]

Speaking about the "spirit of this equation" I'd say that fi boils down to "intelligence capable of creating technology". Like, yes, many animals are certainly intelligent, beyond just being sentient, but when they start using tools, no matter what shape their appendages might have, now THAT is when it becomes relevant to Drake's equation.

[@kyjo72682]

Yep. Octopus may try as hard as possible but may never develop metallurgy..

[@assassinsfan99]

I’ve always watched these years after they come out lol

[@ugochukwuudeh6625]

Same

[@A-Milkdromeda-Laniakea-Hominid]

Except this one, you guys mean? I too am used to seeing "4yrs ago" under the titles but here I am only 3hrs late (or 2.85×10^-12 galactic years)

[@Skystrike70]

Same

[@joeferreti9442]

The thing with the Great Filter is that there are many great filters! Forming cells out of dead matter was surely one of them. Forming complex multicell organisms was another. Developing from animals/primates to modern humans that do very sophisticated science might be another. Not killing ourselves with nuclear war or human-caused climate change might be another. But the vastness and hostility of space and the finite lifetime of our planet and sun will maybe be the biggest.

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

You know, modern humans existed for about 300 thousands years. The people back then were not intellectually inferior to us, despite that our species spend most of it's time as hunter gatherers. After that another long period as farmers. Only about 8000 years ago did people invent writing. Then it took until the 16th century for modern science to begin. There was no gurantee that any of that would happen. We are just lucky that some individuals took the time to think and figure out stuff for the rest of us, if not for those few individuals who carried us along throughout human history, then we'd all still be running naked through the forests.

[@joeferreti9442]

@@maythesciencebewithyou Not sure what your point is.

[@matheus5230]

Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general. Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever. I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's KZbin channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!

[@P-7]

@@matheus5230 all it takes is one crazy leader with nukes to end humanity

[@matheus5230]

@@P-7 Putin won't do that. I have hope no one will. Nukes are to preserve peace and the worst conflicts. We are way past the worst of the threat, which was during the Cold War. Nukes are like doomsday machines: it's not a weapon that anyone actually wants to use. It's only as a threat.

[@audistik1199]

I think one has to consider that the FORM of life could affect whether intelligent life is constrained in progress. An octopus cannot see the stars, dabble with electricity, and so on. This would severely limit progress of communicating with species on other planets, using fire, etc. Same with dolphins (lacking hands and fingers.)

[@earlyrobotmind]

We circle the galaxy as water circles a drain. We pull closer to the black hole and stars become in proximity. We travel, and intermingle with the other galactic species that have survived. Our petri dish tells us there is growth, plateau, and decline. My fingers are crossed.

[@encinoman903]

I've always felt that the fermi paradox makes the assumption that we _know_ how these aliens travel around or they aren't already here and we can't detect them.

[@jeremymason8081]

Right! The assumptions are misleading at best

[@MrCmon113]

No. The question why they aren't already here. Even given they only travel at 1% of the speed of light.

[@encinoman903]

@@MrCmon113 how do you know how they travel?

[@SaraevKS1985]

Life couldn't develope mush earlier than at Earth because of radiation from black holes and so on. So we are one of the first. About evolution of culture on base of ability to transfer knowledge by abstract language (and so on) - books like "The WEIRDest people" by Henrich. The smarter one become the more it cooperates, move to "win-win" strategy, simbiosis and specialisation. Find "evolution of cooperation and altruizm". Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations. There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").

[@reghunt2487]

"It's a Fancy Bag" Sound of the Forest T Shirt!! Props!

[@theashenfox]

I'm no expert but I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I decided that Earth is just that rare. 2 or 3 intelligent species per galaxy seems reasonable to me.

[@user-pf2jg1ks8l]

Great conversation , glad I stumbled upon this ! Keep up the good work

[@JohnDupuyCOMO]

As to the detection issue: here is a data point we have with our own species: cell service. As spectrum is a limited resource, we are always _decreasing_ the level of transmission power. So, instead of 50000 2G cell towers we have 300,000 4G cell towers; for 5G there will be many millions. So, we ourselves are getting harder to hear with lower transmission power to increase density. Plus to speed things us we use compression, which removes redundancy to increase throughput. In other words, high compression sounds like random noise. So, ever lower power levels and ever more random-like signals. We not trying to hide, yet we ourselves are getting harder to hear in the radio spectrum; not less. Our blasting analog black & white I Love Lucy episodes in the 1950s was a *very* short window of time. I can imagine a more advanced species being nearly impossible to detect even if they are not hiding; at least with radio.

[@helperdude8205]

it still that one spaceship we send out many year ago to search but we lost touch to it i think and i hope it still working and not destroy

[@DarkNexarius]

@@helperdude8205 The voyagers probes but even they need like 40.000 years to reach the closest star.

[@duality4y]

@@DarkNexarius well we found it but thought it was a spec of dust

[@olbluelips]

Good point

[@helperdude8205]

@@duality4y really cool

[@colinslant]

Leaving aside the detectability issues other commenters have noted, I like the elegant solution to the Fermi paradox proposed by the science fiction writer Iain M. Banks. Any technological species will have discovered the scientific method. Being intelligent, they will want to assess the wisdom of making contact with pre-starfaring species, for the welfare of those species. So they will set up a controlled study. Species they detect will be assigned to either a contact group or a control group, and the consequences of either contacting them or leaving them to develop in their own time will be assessed. We have been randomly assigned to the control group.

[@shaun906]

Great theory...look up a short YT video on grabby aliens.

[@josephrittenhouse5839]

...by everyone? That is harsh.

[@RibusPQR]

If the galaxy was a simple narrative, the experimental group will have turned evil and we will have to defeat them.

[@jamesn0va]

A society capable of doing this long term would have to be totally unified or some faction could just ignore the rules. Knowing humans, this seems to be an unlikely solution. The great filter has to be universal and this solution would not apply to us, at least for now.

[@OzixiThrill]

@@jamesn0va "Knowing humans" While it is very human to try and empathize with others using our own experiences and there are likely several elements of psichology that all species capable of advancing technologically enough to become interstellar, it is worth nothing that assuming that they will be anything like us is foolish.

[@jaqua7732]

It never ceases to amaze me what people will say and believe.

[@s700wattsyoung8]

This is arguably one of the best episodes or shows you've done... and yes the great filter is ahead of us. In the spirit of drakes equations, I think an octopus would be a very good candidate for this reason, an octopus already has the ability to use tools.

[@raquelbennett436]

love the wife explains series! The thing that always stands out to me about the fermi paradox is everyone always focuses on the distance/space hurdles but no one ever mentions the time hurdles. Our radio capable timeframe is the blink of an eye on galactic timeline, why should we expect our blink to be simultaneous to the other blinks?

[@SolidSiren]

Yes but in terms of the universe, distance is time, in a way. Scientists include the time variable. It's part of the paradox's discussion: the fact that we may be existing very early in terms of intelligence developing in the universe and therefore, not only would the chances of us detecting a cosmically short lived signal be slim because the timing would have to match up just so, but we may not be seeing any signals because everything we see out there is relatively young in the grand scheme and most of the intelligent life forms have yet to begun let alone evolve. Distance and time are intricately intertwined in space such that you can't think about one without the other, hence our usage of the combined term spacetime. What's really crazy is this- we have no ideq how big the universe is. We only have information about our personal observable universe surrounding us. We cannot get any information about anything beyond it. We do have a pretty good way of calculating how long ago the big bang and recombination occurred, but we don't know how large it actually is. Within our observable universe, the paradox seems like a legitimate issue.

[@macmarle6209]

Time is not linear, it is looped without a true end or beginning. Constant flow. Time is only an effect of dimensional distance, just like gravity it's only an observation of ours.

[@3RAN7ON]

3:13 the Drake equation

[@jerryeberts]

A limitation on how many habitable planets there are - specifically with life similar to Earth's - is that we live in a double-planet system. Our huge moon has a lot of interaction with Earth & many of those interactions make life more probable on Earth than if Earth had no large moon. What we have detected around other stars are, so far, not that similar to our (double) planet. In fact, smaller rocky planets close to their stars seem the exception, with gas giants being dominant. We're all hoping the new telescope will reveal more Earth-like planets!

[@jellycoe1]

This is true, but it's worth mentioning the heavy measurement bias. We have no way of reliably detecting exomoons right now, and our methods are predisposed to reveal big planets that are close to their stars. Earth-size planets in the goldilocks zone are much less detectable. This is why we find a lot of "hot Jupiters" despite the general consensus that such a strange planet should be rather rare. Hopefully we'll get a more accurate survey of nearby planets soon.

[@jsnel9185]

Nor do we know that our moon earth system is the ONLY configuration that can produce a life sustaining planet. It is simply bias because that is where we find ourselves. I understand the long odds given over the past couple decades of life elsewhere, but we are discovering that the various contingencies may not be as tight as previously required. For instance, the goldilocks zone is given as a narrow band. However, there is more to the goldilocks zone than merely distance from the star. One of the many variable that comes to mind is the type of star the planet finds itself orbiting. Other factors, such as the fine tuning of the universal constants are more observations that factors. Until we know it could have been different we cannot assume a wide variety of possible universes just to decrease the odds of these constants being friendly toward life. Just as some smuggle in the multiverse to expand probabilistic resources (time and matter/energy interactions pretty much) others try to assume MANY possible universes and ours was turned to be perfect by an outside force. Both are assumptions.

[@jerryeberts]

@@jsnel9185... Pardon?

[@markvasile7515]

First of all, I love you guys! This is wonderful. Secondly, as an alien I can assure you the great filter has passed, we've worked hard to keep you occupied with your screens so you don't have time (energy) for wars. You're safe. Oh, and don't worry about the radio signals, nobody in the universe really uses EM waves for communication, they're just too slow. You guys are the only species who loves this stuff.

[@djjeeveslarue3499]

Humans have an affinity for antiques 😎

[@brad5938]

If aliens are the ones responsible for screen and cell phone addiction, that just makes me want to start a war.

[@BendApparatus]

@@brad5938 I agree! But this war has to be fought through these very screens and devices...with trolling and hurtful words like "butt hurt" and angry gasps at inappropriate slaps...oh...

[@DoctorPatrola]

It may be all true, but even behind of one of those screens my 12yo son have energy enough to explode the Sun and, at the same time, give you some disturbing news about your "female" progenitor.

[@logun24x7]

Out of all the species on Earth we are the only ones that made the choice that technology was a survival solution, so how many human like level of intelligent beings out their just chose to improve themselves instead of using tools to adapt their environment.

[@Aprilbird1991]

Once we fully understand wormholes and dark matter i think we'll be closer to truly understanding how life and the universe works

[@blade3615]

I tend to believe in the “Prime Directive” option. Any civilization advanced enough to traverse the vast distance of space would be advanced enough to cloak themselves from us until it is determined if we are a benefit to the galactic community or a threat. I hope for the former and fear the latter. If this is true, I’m sure they have been keeping a close eye out on us.

[@lexivin34]

You're right. It's exactly what the Galactic Federation of Worlds and other benevolent Alliances follow to ensure the growth of a civilization as long as the inhabitants learn to get along with one another and respect other cultures to join in....

[@mrillis9259]

This would imply multiple space going groups, none of them being instantly dominant. Or else there would be no real union of groups. We are tucked out of the way in the galaxy. Maybe they just can't see us

[@Difdauf]

Do you cloack yourself from the ants when you go to your work ? Since when are we capable of detecting signals ? one century ? But the whole galaxy would be already aware of it ? Even then, shouldn't we able to detect signals emitted millions or billions years ago whith the distance between us ?

[@petermoodie6902]

Wouldn't you be keeping a close eye on the "thoughtful beings" here?

[@NarwahlGaming]

Alien 1 (watching): "What is that one doing?" Alien 2: "It appears to be pulling fauna from the ground and shoving it into its extra face hole." Alien 1: "Gross. Let's not talk to these ones."

[@roguegargoyle914]

While I'd say the "great filter" is always ahead of us, especially while we are a species who lives on a single planet. I also think that humanity, as a species, is capable and adaptive enough to survive through pretty much anything short of the destruction of our entire planet. Of course the chances of the entire species being obliterated will massively reduce if and when we get off our little blue marble and start infect... erm... colonising other planets.

[@bluntsimracing]

I would argue that any intelligent life that is technology superior to us, would have a vested interest in preventing human colonization. What if they have already decided we should be quarantined to this back water blue planet?

[@roguegargoyle914]

@@bluntsimracing Could be, who knows? However if they were concerned about our existence or see us as a potential threat, wouldn't they just great filter us?

[@sharonjuniorchess]

Our species is not well adapted to life in space. But machine are. They will be better positioned to do exploration in space and survive.

[@roguegargoyle914]

@@sharonjuniorchess You're most definitely not wrong but at some point humanity is going to have to move flesh and blood people to other planets or our species will reach its' expiration date.

[@platysmemes7663]

i have a question if your a physicist

[@tumaprints]

Love your videos! Making information fun. I encourage my grand children to watch them.

[@ScienceAsylum]

Awesome! Thank you!

[@tumaprints]

@@ScienceAsylum You are welcome!

[@HypSpector]

Great content for my first view of the channel, you guys are fun. My opinion is that there are a few of the Fermi Paradox 'answer' hypotheses in play. The evidence pointing to the number of factors that had to be just right for multi-cellular organisms on Earth (as we know it projecting to the galaxy and universe as a whole) to arise makes it reasonable to assume the Earth is rare as a cradle for life. This has been further supported by exoplanet research that shows the wide range of conditions that can exist. Prokaryote life may be somewhat common outside our solar system, but the conditions necessary and time it took on Earth seems to indicate at least one 'early' great filter has been passed. Still the number of possible instances is so large, that it is reasonable to think that if we passed that filter on Earth, than it has been passed on other worlds. This is further supported by the fact that the constituent matter that was necessary for life is seen no matter where we look in the universe. However the distances are immense. Even if there were multiple instances of species capable of producing techno signatures within our galaxy overlapping each other time-wise, the distances between them make that detection unlikely, at least for now (detection capability advancement plus time/distance involved). Other answers such as the Zoo and Dark Forest hypotheses are interesting but I believe that with the reasons outlined above it is very unlikely these come into play, yet. Another fascinating idea is that we may be one of the first species capable of producing techno signatures based on the age of the universe and recycling/distribution of heavier elements needed for such technologies to arise.

[@justsomejerseydevilwithint4606]

Given the size of our galaxy, and our location therein being waaaaayyyy out in the veritable middle of nowhere, it's estimated that whole kardashev 2 civilizations could have been born, searched for earth with all their interstellar capabilities they could spare, and break down and fall into obscurity WITHOUT finding earth, let alone humans. Evem the distance our radio signals have reached is comparatively TINY and at the edge of the galaxy. Not only that, our evolution on earth from proto-celular chemical patches to fully functioning sentient humans with still plenty of problens moderating our base instincts took 4 BILLION years, and a LOT of luck. Odds are, if sentient life is anywhere near our neck of the woods, it didn't/won't have our level of luck, and either could have died out, got stuck in feudal era wars, or even gone extinct, or just won't exist for another few dozen million years. We could be the first, or even just the first this far out on our galactic arm. As such, we have the responsability to get over ourselves and leave a good impression for the galaxy in our wake.

[@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012]

That also assumes that science and biology is correct and humans aren't the offspring of aliens who deposited us eons ago. I mean, just doing the Darwinian math would indicate we would have more than one competing intelligent life form on this planet, but the best we have are some fossils and theories. I'm not saying it's aliens, bro....but it's aliens.

[@justsomejerseydevilwithint4606]

@@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012 I believe mars was habitable before the ice age, and we grew and colonized it; but then humans being humans, went to war, mars prompted earth's ice age, and earth nuked mars, which would create a landscape as we see today, even assuming NASA is being truthful about its inhosptability.

[@tlpineapple1]

@@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012 We did have more then ome intellifent lifeform competing with us, we outcomputed or assimilated them. Other then that, theres no such thing as "Darwinian math". We fulfill a tool using niche and as far as we can tell, the biosphere would be incapable of supporting a competing tool using niche similar to ours. Even if another species independently evolved into that niche, the competition would have been fierce and one would have wiped the other long ago. There is zero reason to even consider the idea that biology is wrong to the scale that would completely sever us from the tree of life. If we were seeded by aliens, it would have been early single cellular life, or our evolution would have been influenced by aliens.

[@tlpineapple1]

A civilization could colonize the whole of galaxy in a few million years, and could explore it in a few hundred thousand years with simple probes. Given the scale and energy consumption of a type 2 civilization, i would find any argument of that nature to be unlikely. A telescope set up in a crater on the dark side of our moon for example would have the resolution to identify individual planets and would be well within the capabilities of a type 2 civilization.

[@Animal-Reaction-Clips]

You don't have any answers actually. I find it absurd humans think they know everything when actually we don't know anything

[@ZS-bg7jo]

Just finished the Three Body Problem series and... his answer is kinda scary. Anyone successful enough to be interstellar will probably be very aggressive. Being aggressive, they will expect others to be aggressive. So ... will evolve to a) hide from others and b) aggressively remove competition before it becomes a threat.

[@johntrek187]

There's a video of something moving into low earth orbit and then stops and Flys away at a different angle very fast. What following it is a large cylinder type object. This happend over Australia where we do have a very secretive base used for different functions and roles in space.

[@tomsaltner3011]

Would we recognize non-carbon based life?

[@jd9119]

What makes you think they'd be aggressive? And what makes you think they even bothered preparing their spacecraft for other aggressive lifeforms?

[@jd9119]

@@johntrek187 See I don't buy that crap. We have high enough resolution in our cameras that we can capture a fly wiping its butt from the surface of the moon, yet every one of those videos is so grainy that you can't really see what the objects are. And a lot of these videos come from the government. They of all people would have high-quality video, but instead give you worse video than on Bigfoot fakes.

[@DADela-ht6ux]

I'm almost through book one. Fantastic writing. Can't wait to read the next 2.

[@yank31]

This was surprisingly enjoyable, good job, ty

[@aarushjain2487]

Am I the only one who is watching this channel over 8 hours now

[@gene8945]

Not yet. WE haven't passed nuke annihilation yet

[@scienceium5233]

Lol

[@shadoudirges]

I don't think the expectation is advancement in an annihilation...

[@tim40gabby25]

Homo Sapiens is a too aggressive too recent species. Just saying.

[@balazsadorjani1263]

Wow we actually agree! I also think the great filter is behind us, this vast amount time that was needed for multicellular life to evolve is pretty convincing. Add the other thing, that it's just a miserably puny time window that we've been looking for signs of life out there, and our equipment is not THAT hyperadvanced, and it almost inevitably leads to the conclusion that it's not a surprise NOT to find anyone out there... yet. I think life is pretty common in the universe. Complex life however, is a whole other question. I'm really looking forward to see an expedition to Europa (I mean, the moon). I hope it'll happen in my lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised if we found simple life there. Heck, even in the clouds of Venus it's not yet ruled out. That would shape that Drake equation a lot.

[@dennisbarzanoff9025]

The universe literally just started existing, like 10b years ago. It will be around for trillions and trillions of years.

[@jonasdaverio9369]

Hahaha, I laughed when you feel you needed to specify you were talking about the moon. I wonder if there is some wierd conspiracy group in America thinking there is no life in Europe and planning to do an expedition there

[@BlazinRiver1]

What about our star? Is it not a filter? It is overdue to send us back to the stone age. How many other habitable planets have to deal with CME...super flares...or micro nova from their star? To ignore the sun would seem very, very foolish and reckless.

[@balazsadorjani1263]

@@jonasdaverio9369 Noooo! Please don't give them ideas haha! Btw I actually heard rumours about people believeing in that Australia does not exist, so... who knows?

[@balazsadorjani1263]

@@BlazinRiver1 Good point! But doesn't that fall under the category (or factor) of n(lowerindex)e in the Drake equation, aka number of habitable words per star? I mean, I wouldn't consider a planet habitable, if it orbits around a wild red dwarf that goes brrrr every several years. I'm not an expert so feel free to doubt my idea.

[@toddmusic]

Her insight is spot on. Great conversation. I imagined an entire planet ruled by Ravens.

[@Summer-kb2dm]

"All life is alien." ...I am that friend at the dinner table. And.. "All intelligence is artificial intelligence!" ...and that's when they don't invite me back.

[@bartbethlehem2645]

My feeling is that we only need to consider two factors: time and space... There is a lot of both! The chance that these factors line up for inhabitants of the Universe to meet one another is extremely small.

[@florianmagnusmaier6891]

Very eloquently put!

[@cortster12]

Galaxy. We're only considering the galaxy. Universe is too large. But for the galaxy, it's likely We're the first. If we weren’t, we wouldn't exist, as aliens would have already sent probes here.

[@13lacle]

@@cortster12 Even at the size of the galaxy, when factoring in the inverse square law I am assuming the radio signals get lost in the noise pretty quick. Of course you could use directional beams to negate this but then you have to know where to aim it which given the size of the galaxy would be very time intensive.

[@cortster12]

@@13lacle I said probes. as in, physical objects. It would only take a few million years at 10% the speed of light to send one to every star in the galaxy.

[@MrHichammohsen1]

I love the back and fourth conversation in this one! Great video as usual.

[@michaelbaltezore747]

It's very likely that there are many great filters and we have passed some of the hardest but not the last.

[@tellesu]

Aliens exist and are visiting us constantly, but their incentive is not to interfere while they mine the most useful and valuable resource in the Universe.

[@regi3756]

Love these discussions! Keep them coming! Thanks!

[@kath3832]

Life on earth is so insanely diverse, that I find it hard to believe even civilized intelligent life across our galaxy would use the same kind of communication. Plus they could be millions of years ahead of us and have technology and understanding of science totally unlike ours or they could be millions of years behind us and no where near technological yet

[@platysmemes7663]

Are you a physicist? I have a question? 🥺

[@MortalinaMortifera]

@@platysmemes7663 shut

[@platysmemes7663]

@@MortalinaMortifera what u meen

[@petermoodie6902]

Our, this galaxy... universe is teeming with all sorts of life. Some similar to us. Yet, we still haven't explored enough of this wonderful place. So many places in plain sight if you know how to bend light and blend. Things may be right under our feet and we never look correctly. Does one truly wish to find something that doesn't want to be found? There may be a price. Be careful what you wish for because you may get it.

[@passportpapi713]

Try taking a smart phone to a Neanderthal, that's us trying understand tech from intelligent life millions of years ahead of us. We will be able to realize that it's tech but understand it at a glance nah.

[@clarkclifford2338]

I’m of the opinion that life is the default. That being said, intelligent life, while inevitable, is totally dependent on environmental situation. Basically, the chart shows that once life starts, and it really wants to start, it mathematically will move forward up the scale and as it does, it will do so at an exponential rate until an apex being is shown to be dominant. Whether that being is the most intelligent of the lot is a competition that includes intelligence, strength, hardiness, etc. point being that if we faced off against certain animals, we may not win, and intelligence would diminish overall while strength and such would progress. Unless we could outwit them.

[@jackharkness363]

Awkward M is a national treasure.

[@zacchaeusmartin8685]

I think the filter is both behind us and ahead of us. I've always held the belief that our species has experienced a reset at least once in our prehistory.

[@VOIP4ME]

Why don't we see any evidence of that in archeological digs? If our current civilization ended and a future one began then once they dig deep enough they would find phones, cars, skyscrapers, nuclear waste, particle accelerators... We've dug pretty deep in places and don't find any of that

[@Demopans5990]

Multiple great filters in fact. The important ones to the future would be something along the lines of environmental destruction, and the one behind us could be industrialization

[@21kubes]

Hey I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the content you guys put out, it's all so interesting, simple yet comprehensive and entertaining. I can confidently say that this channel has, at least somewhat, helped and inspired me to decide in taking a Physics course in University by the end of the year! Thank you for it all :)

[@ScienceAsylum]

Good luck with your physics course!

[@visvivalaw]

Fermi's question wasn't why can't we detect alien civilizations. His question was why aren't they here? The time it takes to colonize the whole galaxy is small compared to the age of the galaxy.

[@fewwiggle]

"The time it takes to colonize the whole galaxy is small" You are making a ton of assumptions for that -- all of this is guess work until we have more data or technology.

[@asc_missions3080]

Not if the universe's expansion rate expresses as an increasing distance between everything that your local acceleration can't overcome. There is a theoretical point in deep space where everything is moving away from you so quickly that you seem to be (a) standing still in a void, and (b) getting smaller from the perspective of everything else. Or increasingly distant from every entity around you, as Robert A. Heinlein so eloquently illustrated (without explanation) in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), with Valentine Michael Smith's ability to make things "go" away.

[@visvivalaw]

@@asc_missions3080 Understood, but the expansion rate is too slow to be an issue.

[@cherrydragon3120]

Why aren't they here?? Here, let me clarify that for you. AHEM! Lets say 1 billion solar systems in our galaxy: 0.1% contains life = 1.000.000 systems. 0.1% has inteligent life varying from Ancient greeks to modern humans in inteligence = 1.000 solar systems with civilizations in our galaxy alone. NICE! Until you realize... that even 50% of them = 500 are capable of space travel of OUR technology OR EVEN SLIGHTY BETTER... It would still take about 50 to 100 years to LEAVE their solar system... LET ALONE GOING TO ANOTHER ONE WITH ENOUGH STUFF AND INDIVIDUALS TO COLONIZE THE PLACE... You can easily say that it might take Longer for said civilizations to Colonize 1 other Solar system then ALL of humanity has ever existed in terms of time.

[@cherrydragon3120]

Don't just assume all of them can travel space at ANY rate. Don't assume any of them can do it ALOT better then us. Space travel is fucking hard. And colonizing other planets is even harder.

[@kevinwolgamott3006]

A lot of the alien stories on Reddit and the like suggest that there are whole Galatic communities out there and they see us but they have their own rules about contacting species that have not breached a certain technological point. In most of these stories that technological point is figuring out FTL or Faster Than Light travel.

[@IanM-id8or]

My solution for the Fermi Paradox is that civilisations are only detectable when they are relatively close, and that there's a practical limit on the size an interstellar civilisation can get - that being set by the speed of communication. I don't think there are super high-tech civilisation out there, but it wouldn't be a surprise if there are many civilisations at about our level

[@necrosunderground]

Intelligent life is an interesting argument. In theory, you could make the case for intelligence being measured by a species learning to use tools, in which case, yes, we have a step up over other species here. But a factor in that is environment/how species adapt to that environment. As Mrs Asylum mentions, octopuses, dolphins, ravens, etc, are intelligent; but they're impaired by, for instance, octopuses and dolphins can't harness fire (because, aquatic), plus dolphins not having appendages that can manipulate objects. Same with ravens, in that sense. BUT, all of these species have proven problem-solving abilities and are shown to be quite intelligent, within their natural environment. Personally, I think the only thing really holding back octopuses is that they're aquatic. If they ever adapted to live for long periods on land, I think it's at least possible that they could learn how to use fire (way down the road, obviously). I'm of the opinion that there is intelligent life out there; whether or not it's trying to communicate, I don't know, but I think once we find it, it's going to blow our minds with how similar, and different, it is from us. Right now, we only have a sample size of one to work with, because life here is all we know. But once we start really being able to explore, it's gonna get all kinds of crazy.

[@TheFinalChapters]

I don't consider any species currently alive on the planet, with the exception of humans, to be sufficiently "intelligent". Why? Because none of them are capable of language or, more critically, culture. The entire reason humans were able to form civilization was because of their unique ability to grow and share information with future generations. This simply doesn't happen with other animals. There are a few that can understand simple sentences from humans, but none of them are capable of having that same conversation with another of their own species. This is the key difference between why humans formed a civilization and not the monkeys and apes we see around us.

[@eriknelson2559]

@@TheFinalChapters Birds, whales & dolphins, and even many fish have vocalizations which convey specific meanings, i.e. "language"

[@TheFinalChapters]

@@eriknelson2559 Grunts and growls are not the same thing as language. A wide range of variation is required for that.

[@eriknelson2559]

@@TheFinalChapters Birds and whales & dolphins have very sophisticated vocalizations, and even grunts & growls are the original roots of language All shades & grades, no "quantum leap", differences of degree but not of kind Other animals can also communicate complex color patterns. Humans have more language & more tool usage in more combination, but are not the only examples of any one criterion

[@kerwinbrown4180]

The great filter is technical development. Another filter is loss of technical development.

[@brothermine2292]

Assumption #2 in the Fermi paradox ought to be revised: "We are capable of detecting nearby alien civilizations if they communicate using powerful omnidirectional radio waves" (like we did back in Fermi's day).

[@numbersix8919]

You are correct. Nobody would use omnidirectional radiation to communicate between stars.

[@Hecarim420]

It's easy that we almost for sure are alone. We got aliens all around 🌎 and any of them are not close to be TECHNICAL and won't be. EDIT It's really wishful thinking when u see where we are RIGHT NOW and we are so far away to be able communicate. Even intelligent 🐙🦑 /mother 🌎 no matter what it won't be able communicate if they gonna thrive in their environments they won't build tech anyway. We see that life don't need any understable intelligent (to make sense of world they in) to thrive or be dominant one. Our super calm 🌎 and 🌞 are not safe for us, so if u think that other forms of life can predict that done flare will kill, i don't get it why it's not obvious. WE KNOW THIS AND WE STILL END UP IN WARS ETC ETC. DON'T TRY TELL ME THAT IT'S BECAUSE OF CULTURE OR RELIGION (IT IS BUT ITS NOT A POINT), WE CREATE THEM BECAUSE WE TRYED MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AND LIFE TO EXIST DON'T NEED THAT AND WON'T GET DO MUCH TIME OR LUCK AS WE DID. Maybe we are first one, but with time going on we won't be able to communicate either because of vast distances and i don't think local group are big enough to makes other form of life (we would conquer them before it would happen). There is much more reasons i can think of but u will try anyway fit this info your worldviews. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's amazing to me that u still think that intelligence is special, it's not. Invented tools such as language and writing make US possible, but intelligence is not some ABSOLUTE that will conquer the cosmos, it's just POSSIBLE in our universe. U think to much about this in mathematical sense (it's the only way we can, even biology, chemistry etc etc) but we use other tools and imagination (do intelligence need that, every sensor in body etc is a tool). You consider so many things too literally and that's how SCIENCE work not LIFE (even most exotic u can think of). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@brothermine2292]

@@numbersix8919 : Thank you. And they would need to be NEARBY.

[@mycount64]

Our signals are indistinguishable from background noise once your about 100 light years out due to the inverse square law and the rate at which signals fade. We broadcast much less now

[@brothermine2292]

@@Hecarim420 : Show us your math.

[@beeheart6529]

I’m obsessed with those earrings!! So adorable. 😍

[@iancowan3527]

Octopus! We're only the close 2nd!

[@beastemeauxde7029]

With this much time, there could have been millions or billions of species that meet the criteria that have already risen, thrived and collapsed before we ever began our first attempts to detect other life in the galaxy.

[@TitanTrigger]

I love to see how two different scientists get on chatting to each other; two very different sciences that are far enough apart that one is unlikely to ever earn a salary doing the other's job, but still effectively communicating and enjoying each other's company because they are also similar... Tis harmonious... :D

[@christophermeier8329]

The Battlestar Galactica theory! I love it.

[@CaritasGothKaraoke]

This isn’t a paradox. (And it wasn’t presented as one by Fermi.) It’s just a question: “why haven’t we heard from aliens yet?” It bothers me that so many people fixate on it as some great paradox. Maybe if we stopped calling it one it would help. Because, as Inigo Montoya says... Paradoxes (paradoces?) famously don’t have answers. This question has myriad possible answers. The simplest is just that we have, but we haven’t managed to realise it because there’s so much noise to signal. Another simple one is that we’re first. Another option is that the distribution of sentient life in the universe is low enough and sparse enough that, from each frame of reference, *everybody is first* (with perhaps occasional clusters opposing the average, but we’re not part of one). Our first radio broadcast was 122 years ago. That means we can’t have been heard by anything outside of 122 light years. That’s not a very big circle, all told. Moreover, we’re restricted to a 61 LY sphere if we want a reply. There are maybe 700 stars within 60 LY. So what we know from this is that if there is sentient technological life around one of these 700 stars, they didn’t notice Fessenden’s broadcast or didn’t care or otherwise refused to answer, or we didn’t notice the reply. There is no paradox at all. The only great filter is spelt “c”.

[@xer1222]

The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest. Love these books, interesting take on alien existence and communication.