5 Unsettling Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

[@evocativepizza2752]

My best friend passed away last year and he watched your videos every day. Always talked to me about them at night. Now I watch.

[@user-ib5mx8ro4k]

Weird….

[@ItsAnthonyy]

@@user-ib5mx8ro4k what is weird about this bruh?

[@jonathanbowen3640]

@@user-ib5mx8ro4k Not really. It's on topic. An anecdote about the channel.

[@chrisparnham]

@@user-ib5mx8ro4k That's the last word I'd use to describe what was said. Why would you say that?

[@Gary-Seven-and-Isis-in-1968]

@@user-ib5mx8ro4k Sick Troll 🤡👆

[@chrisharris5843]

'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' - Arthur C Clarke

[@robot336]

I KNOW WHAT MY BROTHER AND I SAW THAT'S PROOF ENOUGH FOR ME 🛸🛸

[@UmBungo]

@@robot336 what did you see?

[@robot336]

@@UmBungoI WAS STAYING AT MY BROS HOUSE IN THE FNQ AUSTRALIAN RAINFOREST WE WERE ASLEEP IN THE SAME ROOM WHEN A BLINDINGLY BRIGHT LIGHT WOKE US , WHEN WE LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW WE SAW A UFO IN THE SKY WITH LASER SHARP RED GREEN AND BLUE LIGHT'S COMMING FROM IT - NO SOUND - IT MOVED AWAY VERY FAST THEN ZIGG ZAGGED ACROSS THE SKY IMPOSSIBLY FAST AND SHOT UP INTO SPACE AND VANISHED

[@tommyrotton9468]

'there is an even more terrifying thought, mankind is the most intelligent lifeform' -Tommy Rotton just now

[@googalacticgoo]

There is always the multiverse

[@RobertGreenwald]

I have to go with the Calvin & Hobbes quote - “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.“ - Bill Watterson

[@joshocht3483]

indeed ... why should they try?

[@GameTime-yj6qv]

But maybe they have tried but they are too far away, or our technology simply cannot detect their signals.

[@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman]

​@@joshocht3483 indeed, they should send an asteroid

[@Deathy-zt5je]

This is kinda silly, the sheer size of the universe is unfathomable. The degree of technology, and the level on the kardashev scale required to achieve communication is immense across most distances

[@orionx79]

Inverse square law sucks, short of harnessing a neutron star for communication, you be reluctant to get a signal more then 50-75ly before it starts blending into background.

[@lumberfoot_jpg]

I honestly think the great filter is simply distance. Most of our current solutions rely heavily on the notion that we will one day be able to harness faster than light travel. But what if that is genuinely not a possible solution within our specie’s existence?

[@TAPATIOPLEASE]

It's already being done. We gave a fleet amongst the stars already.

[@Ki11Th3mA11Kid]

100%. The time and energy that it would take for a species to travel just to thier stars nearest star is INSANE. let alone across galaxies and such. That's the biggest obstacle in my mind for why we ain't running into other sentient life forms as we all may exist. But whoever made this universe did so on a scale so astronomical the ability to get to one another is near impossible. But maybe that makes it so each species that finally does get to that point is one that is far past being war torn and wanting to enslave others or such things. Basically forcing them to mature enough before being capable of finding others

[@yoloswaggins7121]

We should still be able to see signs of advanced civilizations though. After all we can send message at the speed of light. But yeah, I am of the opinion that there are no interstellar civilizations and there never will be because space is simply top big.

[@yoloswaggins7121]

​@@Queenofgreen515 We don't know that wormholes exist. We have never seen a wormhole and they most likely don't exist. It's just that theoretically a wormhole could exist using negative mass, but think about how unlikely it is that negative mass even exists.

[@lijohnyoutube101]

Gibberish look at the time lapse between wright brothers and landing on the moon. Or the moon landing and the current space station.

[@Marconius6]

Time scales may also be important here: consider how long it took humans to evolve, versus how long it took us to go from stones tools to space shuttles. This means that even a slight discrepancy could put all other civilizations hundreds of thousands of years behind us... or ahead; whether that makes them just too advanced to communicate, or too uncaring, or just eventually extinct somehow. It's entirely possible advanced civilizations come and go, but they just never overlap in time.

[@shinjisan2015]

Timescale is exactly why. We've only been listening and making noise for 200 years. So if life isn't within 200 light years we haven't been heard. We might hear something from further away, but the further out you go the more spread out the search area becomes.

[@Darksector88]

I mentioned this same thing in a comment just a bit ago. Makes the most sence of anything.

[@Darksector88]

​​@@shinjisan2015 indeed, if 300 years from now, a civilization responds. We won't know until 800 years from now. People don't realize just how short their lives are on this scale or the time of humanities existence for that matter. So very very very insignificant to the cosmic time scale.

[@fearrp6777]

Don’t be fooled humans did not build rockets by themselves aliens provided everything, humans just mimicked it terribly but enough to get to the moon and back. The tech now, that the aliens have given us like phones, and soon interstellar travel will be soon as long as our scientist build them correctly and are able to show case them to the world.

[@Sherwoody]

Someone else may have been looking when the Egyptians were building the pyramids. We may be searching for civilization on a planet that still has the equivalent of dinosaurs.

[@Casual-Sage]

I believe it was Hawking who said you need only look at us to figure out why intelligent life might not be something you want to find

[@sirhenrymorgan1187]

Hawking specifically likened alien contact with colonialism. That an advanced alien race arriving on Earth would be like when Columbus landed in Nassau. It would open the floodgates for interplanetary colonists to start arriving in droves. Our resources would be exploited, our species would be enslaved, alien diseases would ravage the population, etc. And against their advanced tech we wouldn't stand a chance...

[@WTfire10]

Then he went off to epstein island to emphasize his point.

[@justice_productions_]

@@WTfire10Well, he wasn’t wrong.

[@tio_john]

nah we need to find them xenos

[@mikekolokowsky]

Yeah, but they would have to contact us to know this.

[@JerryB507]

Even with all the effort mankind has spent on 'watching the skies' for extraterrestrial life, we have barely scratched the surface. I think it was Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson who put it bluntly, "Go out into the ocean and pull up a bucket of water. If there are no fish in the bucket, does that mean there are no fish in the ocean?"

[@warlock64c]

We may have barely seen anything, but we've already picked up a truly huge amount of evidence for alien life and civilizations. Near tabby's star, there's another star with a far more extreme dimming effect that can't be explained by dust or gas, another nearby star with somewhere around 20 earth-sized worlds in impossible orbits, and the Viking landers already proved bacterial life on mars. The Fermi paradox has already been solved, our academic institutions are just in denial.

[@jaymeVos]

But what about all that microbial life that *is* in the bucket?!

[@bryanpropp2179]

Ah, Neil deGrasse Tyson. One of your dimmer “smart” people.

[@TheFallingFlamingo]

The Fermi Paradox is more than just "watching the skies." It mostly revolves around assumptions of probability and scale. Even with technology available to humans now, it would be possible to colonize the entire solar system in some period of time between 5million and 50million years. (A relatively brief period of time on a geological or galactic scale.) Then they consider that countless stars in our Solar System are hundreds and hundreds of millions of years older than our own star, which would lead one to the theory that the lack of evidence of any kind of extraterrestrial life is paradoxical. (This is taking into account intelligent life's ability to adapt, overcome scarcity, and colonize available space, as well as the assumption that the Earth is typical planet.)

[@Frankie5Angels150]

You’ll not be served well by quoting that hack. Degrasse-Tyson is to science what Dr. Phil is to medicine: They both play one on TV.

[@Greatblue56]

Really hit it out of the park on this one. From production to subject matter to delivery. A fascinating topic. Very well done. Thank you.

[@FunnyHaHa420]

I support the "galactic trailer park" hypothesis. It's the theory that Earth is the interstellar equivalent of the the sketchy people in a Florida trailer park. They don't let us know they are out there because if they did we might slap together a space RV and show up on their lawn like cousin Eddie wanting to "borrow" stuff all the time.

[@americandissident9062]

Of course you support that idea, because humans are very self-loathing.

[@RealBradMiller]

Y'all got one of them teleportin' beams we can borrow? Darleen left her purse in Andromeda again and I ain't makin' that trip agin! Little Bobby Joe is gonna stay with y'all a while, too.

[@taylorbug9]

"Mind if we leave this trash here? We're on a long trip."

[@Despondencymusic]

​@@RealBradMiller😂😂

[@jypsyjewels2854]

then why aren't some of them showing up to buy drugs?

[@dann3532]

I swear, this guy has as many youtube channels as there are planets in the universe

[@alexlocatelli2876]

Probably even more. 😂🪐🌚

[@Gsoda35]

he probably is the mysterious planet X.

[@KatieLamb]

the Whistleverse

[@SithCelia]

As long as you include Pluto, there won't be any trouble here. 😆

[@TitularHeroine]

Are we sure, though, that there's intelligent life on any of them, or is it just a reasonable hypothesis?

[@dylanwolf]

Chapter Six: The Gigantic Sand Box Space is Unbelievably Big and the Speed of Light is a REAL limit. The Universe might be teeming with intelligent civilisations. But each one is so isolated from every other one in space (and time) that each one might as well be alone. This seems to me to be the obvious answer to the Fermi Paradox. ----

[@rodchallis8031]

I think that's the most reasonable explanation at this point.

[@totalermist]

Indeed. Just to imagine the incredible odds of us looking in the right direction at just the right time to receive any kind of signal that someone sent in our general direction possibly hundreds or thousands of years ago. Even if someone out there were to observe what's going on down here right now and send a signal, it'd take centuries to get here, unless the are right around the corner (which is unlikely). Just as preposterous as the idea to detect "alien techno-signatures": we started polluting our atmosphere about 150 years ago (i.e. a detectable signature). We will stop doing that (one way or the other) within the next 50 years. Same goes for light pollution. So basically even any sign of technological civilisations that we can actually detect and interpret are likely to be incredibly short-lived, since they either lead to self-destruction or stop being produced comparatively quickly.

[@skitzoemu1]

@@totalermist Given a long enough time scale, Humans will be a 2 star civilization. Given even longer 3 4 5 or more are not only likely but inevitable. Once we move past earth the first time we will move further and further with time. Interconnected empire is likely impossible without FTL communication but same species moving onto new stars seems almost unavoidable if we manage to survive a few hundred more years. Someone will build the first Oneil cylinder. Someone will decide they can send a better build cylinder with a few asteroids for raw materials drifting out into the void toward another star. At some point if we have people in space the energy requirements are low enough to give it a try. If we get to the second planet then a third fourth and 5th are inevitable even if the first is destroyed.

[@TitularHeroine]

​@@skitzoemu1 Why "inevitable"?

[@Matthew10950]

​@@skitzoemu1 I don't see a great leap forward coming. What you describe would require generational ships, massive and ruinously expensive, with a trip based on a level of optimism that I just don't see us having within us. Two make it to another star, let alone colonise what we find, requires so many forward leaps that I can't even see us being human any longer.

[@davesthrowawayacc1162]

The video game franchise Dead Space actually touches on the Fermi Paradox with its title, Dead Space. You see, if you take the first letter of all the chapters in the game: Chapter 1- New Arrivals, Chapter 2- Intensive Care, Chapter 3- Course correction etc, it spells out chchchchch, which is the sound of radio static, as in dead air, which is what the radio telescopes on earth has been receiving all this time. There are no signals from other species, because the Necromorphs killed and consumed them all. The lack of signals from other species in the galaxy is literally due to the space being dead, or Dead Space

[@jobassett7395]

Interesting ideas. I'm a firm believer that we are not alone in the vast universe, but had never thought about the last part where we could possibly be the front runners in evolution within the universe.

[@ku8721]

We might not be the front runners, but maybe those other runners have already finished the race. The survival rate for anything drops to zero given a long enough time. It is possible that other advanced life came and went already. And with the vast size of the universe no two ever go off next to each other, like twinkling Christmas lights.

[@FancyRPGCanada]

Considering how quickly we have babies for our intelligent our species is, especially on a galactic scale, it makes a lot of sense

[@robot336]

I KNOW WHAT MY BROTHER AND I SAW THAT'S PROOF ENOUGH FOR ME 🛸🛸

[@scroogemcphuck]

The universe is thought to last for over a trillion years. We're only around the 13 billion year mark. We're objectively one of the first intelligent species in the history of the universe.

[@shaunp9592]

@BTAxis Before we find those "artifacts" we actually have to develop interstellar space travel. We would need to go to a dead civilizations planet and see signs of a previous civilization, or even have to dig around to find stuff like archeologists do now. Fairly hit and miss, find the right planet, find where a city might be, dig in that area and hope there's something left we can identify as actually something used by a previous intelligent life form. And that's assuming it's not just a bunch of dolphins and whales out there, like one of those hypothesis theorized.

[@rishyrish6508]

I remember a great line from the first men in black movie where k says, "Human thought is so primitive it's looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies. That kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?"

[@fearrp6777]

Oof. Couldn’t agree more especially KZbin comments are the worse

[@Lunch_Meat]

That doesn't make any sense, but I appreciate that they took the time to throw some standard social commentary into their movie to make it seem deep.

[@KeithElliott-zd8cx]

@@Lunch_Meat does to me. i mean, the whole crux of the fermi paradox at one point is basically the assumption that intelligent, spacefaring life HAS to spread in the galaxy. that we basically would have to spread to every star system, sounds exactly like an infection.

[@Lunch_Meat]

@@KeithElliott-zd8cx no, I mean that any of the "better galaxies" would need to worry about primitive human life spreading at all. That would be like if the greatest medical colleges on earth also offered classes on things like stone age surgery, energy healing with crystals, and the like. Course, maybe I'm being too positive. We do live in a timeline where people believe the world is flat, so maybe even in the "better galaxies" there are space fairing morons who could be infected by primitive human thoughts

[@frickyou1045]

In the book Blindsight, the aliens aren't sentient and only communicate strategic information to each other. When they receive Earth's radio signals they think it's spam, an attack so that they waste time thinking about complete nonsense with no real value

[@Cluesman]

some thoughts on... ... the dark forest: to deliberately hide, wouldn't you have to know there are predators out there to hide from? ... the great filter: who says there has to be just one filter? ... being alone: we might be the first, we might be the last.

[@humbleguy1533]

Dark forest- they’re hiding because they’re predators

[@johnberry3824]

Glad you said "galactic" toward the end. It's hard enough to imagine detecting signals from the other end of our own galaxy, much less from one of the billions of other galaxies in the universe. And only signals from quite close to us (astronomically speaking) would have been sent recently enough to be at all useful. We're always forgetting or misunderstanding the enormous distances.

[@BardovBacchus]

That's what I think. The most likely resolution to the paradox is; The speed of light is the limiting factor which makes interstellar distance simply too vast to transverse in any practical way. There is no advanced technology to travel faster than light, no trick, no hole, no fold. It simply can not be done, or would require far too much energy {or, perhaps, the 'dark' matter and energy *is* the evidence of Dyson spheres and advanced technology we don't yet understand. I rather doubt it}

[@antoniokastrocarlisledemel6617]

Yea man Light Speed limit is a bitch..especially If you're a science,sci Fi and astronomy nerd like me..I got my fingers crossed Einstein missed something or at the very least that one day we can create wormhole's like the Event Horizon.. just gotta make sure not to jump to hell

[@antoniokastrocarlisledemel6617]

@@BardovBacchus damn u sure have a way of shattering my hopes for at the very least a jump drive a la Event Horizon...U could of course be right though it still makes me laugh sometimes how much humanity thinks it has things figured out and this Light Speed is something I truly think we could be wrong about..if we are right and what u said is true that's pretty damn disappointing

[@matthewhetzler4912]

I have always thought about this. In the time it takes a signal at light speed to reach the other side of just our galaxy (for example), a civilization could rise and fall. Even if we happen to get the signal to them at a time they can receive it, the answer could reach us too late because we have since perished. The question might not be “Where is everyone?” Rather “When is everyone?”

[@BRANDRUMZ]

@@BardovBacchusWell, Space itself expands faster than the speed of light - so faster movement is possible and observable - the main issue with light speed travel is that there is virtually 0 mass, which leads me to believe that light speed communication is possible and within reach and more of an engineering challenge as well as our need to quantify quantum gravity. I’m unsure how light speed travel could work, though that too sounds like a much more major engineering challenge. Sending communication however, seems highly possible!

[@dustinhatfield8373]

I think life existing else where is pretty much guarenteed because of just how large the universe is, but i also think because the universe is so large it isn't a surprise if we never find them

[@stephenhurd1489]

Wow, that is a very 21st century human nature. But what if you where Born in 2500? Where will we be then? Considering we where mainly using animal labor a hundred years ago and now we're about to send a colony to Mars . In the next 40 years we'll find them. Don't ya think they have found us long ago. Maybe they realize every time they land a new religion appears and we kill each other for a thousand years over it!

[@nettewilson5926]

I think that’s true

[@minecraft425]

Given our galaxy apparently being pulled to a core ...have to wonder if the reason could simply be you don't want to get crunches by a even more super black hole or the galactic equivalent of an trap any

[@jakeg3126]

We aren’t getting pulled into a core we are orbiting the core

[@Aurochhunter]

Right, and any intelligent civilisations on other planets have teh same problem, and probably wonder if they're alone in the universe.

[@ghaznavid]

The biggest issue would be distance. If the nearest intelegent life is 500 light years away, which isn't far on a universe scale, even if they are listening with compatible technology, our first signal won't have reached them yet.

[@13orrax]

the recent UFOs that the gov said are real seem to be manipulating gravity somehow. if we could do that the distance would be trivial

[@PhenomRom]

How long would that take

[@dont.beknown5622]

@@PhenomRom UM? 500 years? Our first signals were approximately 120 years old, so, 380 years now for the first signals. However our signals are very weak and would be drowned out by cosmic static (background noise).

[@RoboCatTrainer]

If thats true i just hope we're on the right side of the time scale. Far better to recieve a msg from a naive civilisation than to be them. You gain a choice in how you respond. Although i hope that doesnt happen in this decade as we may still end up being the creepy uncle

[@drg9812]

There is a galaxy map showing how far into our own galaxy our signals have gone so far... that map is just the galaxy with a tiny blue dot on it

[@Davaoization]

There was a short story a content creator did not long ago that depicted humans being observed by alien species after joining them among the stars and they talked about how they breathe what they consider to be toxic gas and drink poisonous liquids to sustain themselves that was interesting to think about. I put this in the same vein as the "all the wrong places" theory.

[@stephaniesadie832]

not necessarily, certain chemical properties are required to form the necessary chemistry to eneable self replicating molecules, the basis of life, eg RNA, DNA. Only Carbon provides the best case, followed only be silicon the next poor choice. So its highly likely life when it evolves has similar properties as our life chemistry.

[@shadf7902]

​@@stephaniesadie832could be other elements other events, other variables. Were stuck on one planet lol....

[@robinv1485]

You're assuming theres an island of stability in these new elements which is highly improbable and smt a lot of sci fi choses to ignore. This isn't to say there are no extra elements, we are almost sure there are but instability causes them to be an issue especially for the creation of life which is why even tho we have the recipe and can make them, we arent able to detect those, they break before you do. Even if there are events that smh makes them stable over millions of years and they evolved it would be impossible for them to leave that event/place, as they would become unstable outside. It would be like outside of earth everything being anti matter, as soon as you'd step out you'd disappear out of existence. This leads to the argument above, some ppl made the math and probabilities state they'd be very similar to us. Even without elements, consider octopuses, intelligent, self conscious with emotional feelings similar to ours, they even have nightmares, lived more than we do, but they haven't created societies or any tech in all that time. If you ask why, you reach the same conclusions. Bees are another good but different example since they do have societies, architecture and even use and communicate math concepts which is awesome. There are some specific steps/requirements to be an interstellar species, its not just be alive, conscious and intelligent. @@shadf7902

[@hubertwalters4300]

Sounds like a episode of the "Twilight Zone".

[@jeanamparan893]

My man I follow all of your channels and this has been one of the best videos you've posted in a long time. I read before about the fermi paradox and the great fiiter, but this way to condense and present the information is unmatched throughout the internet. Thanks my man Simon from a Mexican fan

[@frikkigunn957]

Nobody reads so cant be true 😑

[@stevenobrien557]

They ripped it off from John Michael Godier's channel.

[@needsLITHIUM]

I think the fact we're seeing light in snapshots of the past makes 2 things possible: A. that the aliens are much closer to being concurrent or contemporary with our development timeline, so the signals haven't reached us yet, or B. that the time discrepancy for travel over long intergalactic distances means that we are the most recent civilization to form and all the preceding ones are already dead and gone and extinct.

[@JohnSmith-qe6fb]

I think you are correct in your 2nd hypothesis: the distance of intergalactic communication is so profound that we haven't heard them yet, or if we do, they may be long extinct.

[@c97x]

What if carbon-based life forms can only interact with other carbon based life forms. I think that's my rationale based on how children like pets but don't really understand them whereas adults have more meaningful interactions with them.

[@NAi2004]

Or most of the planets we discovered that meets some requirements to have life might already have civilization but we only able to observe those planets millions of years in the past on its early stages and not on its current state

[@lordgarion514]

It's both actually. There are 3 generations of stars. Thanks to stupid people, our current star is a "population 1". Population 3 stars are the first stars. They had zero metals. The second generation of stars had some metal, but so little they're literally called "metal poor". There would have been zero life around Pop 3 stars. Pop 2 stars would have had a dusting of minerals. Well keep than enough for life. But nothing like millions of tons of iron ore sitting in one spot. Our current generation of stars is the only generation that has the ability to have large quantities of resources for building technology with. So while life could be VERY common in the universe, only life started around Pop 3 stars can have life with advanced technology.

[@ixirion]

most likely there are advanced civs, however for example our radio wave communications are 200 y.old. It may be that grav/light/quantum communications are going to be invented and we will use thme in 300 years exclusively. Then again develop something new, then again so we could i ntheory detect older form of communications but the windows are too short. Like burst of type of technology for a few years. Also since adv civ will be more efficient their broadcast will be more narrow and spohisticated, so no broadcasts but prcisian cast. I think that it would be miracle if we could see such civ. Or in 200 years if anyone can see us. Also the hommogenus nature of the universe makes slayng around civs unlikely cos they can get resources everywhere. We also could terafforme Mars faster than we could colonise planets few hundr ly. away

[@brandonvasser5902]

One theory that Simon didn’t touch on was simply the distance and scale of the universe. If life is rare its unlikely to statistically be close to other life. They could be nearly on the other side of the universe, and maybe only a few civilizations exist at any one time on average in the universe.

[@edwarddore7617]

Agree, it's all about the size of the universe, even if a few civilizations exist in every galaxy, what are the chances that they would find each other, it literally is a needle in a haystack

[@kevboard]

and that's by far the most likely reality. human intelligence is an extremely unlikely coincidence already, having multiple of those coincidences near eachother and at the same time is even more unlikely. we have to think in 4 dimensions here, the spacial distances and the time distances that intelligent civilisations are apart from eachother

[@mikeys7536]

The size of the universe actually helps ensure the survival of different civilizations which aids the diversity of life in the universe. Sheer distance prevents one from killing all the rest.

[@MrAbraxus666]

He did, he mentioned time, energy, effort at 7:00

[@baxeto]

Not to mention that even IF other extraterrestrial civilizations do (or have) exist(ed), they could very well do so outside of our observable sphere of the universe. Making it utterly impossible to ever come in contact with them, or what they've left behind. The scale of time and space always seemed to be the most plausible solution to me.

[@ironxcrosss]

My absolute worst fear in this universe, in regards to finding "new" life, is that when/if we find someone, it's more humans

[@EnriqueLaberintico]

Why? As a kid I did consider the possibility that humans are the true form of intelligent life, even if I don't think it makes sense nowadays.

[@piolewus]

Not the humans again damnit! I want my machine empires to have something fun to do but the only thing we get are angry apes with an obsession with mass destruction

[@drewroosevelt6506]

Well… Lots of people have reported encountering similar looking “people.” They were investigated and various papers and magazines have made those reports public. A whistleblower at the Disclosure Project press conference at the National Press Club in 2001 said there are beings that could “walk among us and you wouldn’t even notice the difference.” Make of that what you will. I have a link to that press conference I can share if you want.

[@zomcom11]

Even though it’s improbable based on fossil evidence, that would be ideal. “Hey we found a lost colony” is a lot friendlier than “Hey, we found aliens, let’s kill them before they kill us.” As well, more advanced humans are still humans and we would easily understand our own species.

[@lespretend]

@@drewroosevelt6506 and the whistleblower could just be full of shit too. All these declassified things the government is now telling us is probably all bs too. A lolipop to keep the kids quiet. Lizuhd Peepul

[@tofu_golem]

"The surest proof that intelligent life exists elsewhere is that none of it has tried to contact us." -Bill Watterson

[@Richexperience1]

Exactly!

[@TheHitechHobo]

Amen

[@curious1053]

Trump 2024!!!!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[@emilywright3454]

they might have tbh it just takes so long to get across the solar system we sent a probe to a habitable planet which was sent in like 2015 and wont arrive until 2040 or something like that

[@minecraft425]

I remember there being something about a strange radio wave or such from another planet or something years ago being talked about.

[@subnoizesoldier2]

I have to say the gorilla using the GPS analogy was awesome perfectly explained. And I refuse to believe there’s not life out there somewhere.

[@michael-4k4000]

The chance of any living life on any other planet in the universe or multiple is ZERO! Jesus Christ loved 🥰 us that I know, for the Bible told me so. Jesus wrote in the Bible saying “earth was created by God our Lord and God only created one planet with life”! If you don’t believe in Bible then God has no use for you. Also check out Scientology!!!!!

[@nvsv_wintersport]

Migratory birds have their own 'GPS' system... (and maybe gorillas can find their way around the jungle in a similar way and we 'evolved' humans are stupid enough not to have noticed)

[@minyaw1234]

There is most likely life somewhere else out there - but the chances of life being common are pretty slim - the most common life could be according to what we are seeing (meaning: nothing in our closest environment) is 1 every 50-100 galaxies. Which would still be a lot since we don't know how long the universe stretches out of our observable bit. But that we will ever cross paths is questionable to say the least.

[@AurodiumKnight-of9hd]

Ah, yes. The science is wrong, I read it in a thousand-year-old book that talks about giants, talking donkeys, and the whole world being populated by two people, twice.

[@Mahlak_Mriuani_Anatman]

​@@AurodiumKnight-of9hd😂

[@mittensfastpaw]

I always love watching stuff on the Fermi paradox. It is just fun to see how each person approaches it.

[@jeffg4570]

It’s like each video is a Rorschach test. “I see millions of civilizations”. “I see a vast wasteland of desolation throughout the universe.”

[@stricklylife483]

Great video, love your channels. One point I notice a lot of people miss or forget about when discussing life on other worlds. When looking into the universe, you are looking back in time as well and it's not like it's a few 100 or 1000 years it's litterly lights years back in time. If I were a alien race looking back at "earth", what would I see? Depends drastically on the distance. You could see humans but more than likely not. You could see the moon's formation. You could see no planet at all. My point is chances are life has formed elsewhere, maybe even other intelligent life like ourselves, but we can't see it because of our point of view (looking back in time). I do wish more would include these facts in the discussions on the topic.

[@livethemoment5148]

except for the fact that you yourself are still quite ignorant on the subject matter. "LIght years" represents distance, not time, a light year is the distance that light travels in one earth year. So if we see a planet that is 1000 light years away from us, we would see it as it was 1000 years ago (as measured as regular earth years, not special "light years" as you imply). Yes, the further something is , the further back in time is whatever we see on the telescope. So yes, the further away something is, that means we can only see it as it was X light years ago, so I get your point, but you failed to describe your point adequately. It is impossible to view anything in outer space in "real time" because it is always delayed by the amount of time light takes to reach from there to here. The problem is the vast vast distances involved, the vast expanses of time involved, and the vast vast amount of good luck and complexity needed for an intelligent civilization...all which points to the conclusion that civilizations like us are rare and are separated by vast gaps in distance and time.

[@Erholts]

I would like to ad to your point with something I think about alot too. There is also the porblem that space is so large that our observation cababilities are just not enough to find life. It's basically like studying sea by taking water to the glass and trying to find whales in it. I mean even the exoplanets that the cientists have found have been found by observing very very small shadows going in front of the stars. So we can only at the moment have someshort of understanding if there's even water on some of the exoplanets. Also we study and even find the planets very very slow, so compared to the amount of stars and planets on our galaxy it's not much. Billion stars estimated on milkyway and we have found about 5000-6000 exoplanets. To say "where are everybody" is a joke to me. Just like taking a glas of water on a nearby beach and asking "where the F*** are the whales?".

[@pismodude2]

One thing I always found interesting was the idea of the Great Filter being something good. Like "all intelligent species discover the ice cream dimension and go there by choice" or "all intelligent species ascend to a higher plane of existence and start making their own universes". But there's also the sadder ones like "all intelligent species upload themselves into virtual reality to live forever in computers" or "all intelligent life realizes life is pointless and stops having children" 😢

[@ChaosToRule]

That went from ice cream to really dark in a second.

[@mikesannitti6042]

My first thought was on the darker side due to my experience with science fiction. The first example of a possible "filter" that came to my mind was the Reapers from Mass Effect.

[@ChaosToRule]

@@mikesannitti6042 are they not another race, and therefore subject to the great filter as well? I have never played Mass Effect.

[@pamew]

"Congratulations! You beat the tutorial! Now, enjoy the full features." I dig it, haha

[@mikesannitti6042]

@@ChaosToRule They're sentient machines so... depends on your philosophy I guess if you want to call them a race.

[@DungeonDragon18]

Even if another planet was using radio waves to communicate, how far could the signals go before being drowned out by cosmic “noise”? It might just be that intelligent life is rare enough that we’re the only species within earshot of Earth.

[@kalrandom7387]

We can't hear anything beyond our own heliosphere, in radio waves.

[@robbaxter1497]

Radio wouldn't work. But we can get signals from Mars now, so technology just needs to keep going

[@spacecadet35]

@ DungeonDragon18 - about 50 light years.

[@nickllama5296]

I don't think it's so much an issue that it's drowned out by cosmic noise, but rather that those radio waves take an absurdly long time to get anywhere. Our own radio waves have barely made it a little over 120 light years from Earth. If there's an alien civilization out there, and it's 2000 light years away, and it started radio 1500 years ago, it'll still take 500 years before we'd hear them. Simon's idea of "exhaustive" search for alien life is nonsense. We've barely searched 0.00001% of the milky way in the most rudimentary ways possible.

[@capactiveresistance314]

About 350

[@martinstallard2742]

1:35 the dark forest 3:56 the great filter 7:36 impossible communication 9:42 looking in the wrong place 12:30 we are alone

[@BENOTAFRAID689]

We 'lone.

[@ThisAintMyGithub]

Fantastic, thought provoking video. Simon's delivery on the "We are alone" part was chilling, the editing was awesome and the topic was extremely thought provoking.

[@stevenobrien557]

Done much better by the guy this channel ripped it off from, John Michael Godier

[@RuneFoot]

My favorite solution to the paradox is that when we take into account of the age of the universe, our Galaxy and solar system all of these things in the grand scail just calmed down enough for life to form without getting wiped out same with our Galaxy and solar system. On top of that, it's almost certain that a species devoped enough to be worth our time interacting with has radio and is blasting radio waves like crazy like we do. It's not unlikely that with this into account, we might just be one of the oldest intelegent species in our galexy. Doomed to be alone for some time and shepherd or exploit less developed species in the future. On top of that, i think life is less common than we think. And it take a long time to evolve, especially when things are only just now calming down.

[@beauhancock4922]

'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.' - Arthur C. Clarke - I think he said this with the fewest words...

[@InternetReviewerGuy]

It's true that there are so many planets that life must exist somewhere else, but when you consider all the chance events that had to happen and all the conditions that had to be met for intelligent life to evolve, it's still possible that intelligent life is so rare that there are just no others near enough for us to see.

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

I once came up with a formula based on the number of stars, galaxies, brain cells, neurons, total number of humans to ever live, etc. It was based on "as above, so below" and the human brain looks like a universe picture. The answer I got was that only 10 Earths existed in the whole universe.

[@KeithElliott-zd8cx]

@@EmeraldEyesEsoteric eh, kinda sounds like you were still short then. or something was wrong. i mean, there's more stars in the galaxy than cells in our brains, more galaxies than that, even. and that might be sort of an interesting comparison, but has nothing to do with the reality of the possibility of life out in the universe, like "how many planets are in a livable zone, how many develop life, how many develop complex life, how many develop intelligent life, how many develop spacefaring tech, how many travel amongst the stars" sort of thing.

[@Shawsh2143]

@accelerationquanta5816 What an interesting and useful comment.

[@Shawsh2143]

With the sheer scale of the universe being what it is, I think two civilizations must have existed side by side and they must have known about each other, maybe even living on neighbouring planets or solar systems. Such a thing must have happened at least once in the entire universe during its entire lifespan. It just didn't involve us or we are just one of the civilizations that is a bit more isolated. I think there must be an uncountable number of isolated civilizations out there. Again, simply based on the sheer size of the universe and on the distance between things.

[@KeithElliott-zd8cx]

@@Shawsh2143 possible, but not 'probably', if you know what i mean. the universe is RIDICULOUSLY fucking huge, which means more oppourtunity, but as far as time goes, ti SEEMS like a lot, but it's not really enough to actually guarantee the sort of 'well this outcome should happen eventually with infinite chances' sort of thing. i mean, it took the earth billions of years for our civilization to pop up, and we might not survive another century, with out civilization only being around what, 8000 years or so? but it's also pretty easy to assume somewhere out there, some event that helped life evolve on one planet, might've somehow affected another planet too, if in a panspermia sort of way or whatever.

[@vladyvhv9579]

Another side of the Dark Forest theory is that perhaps there are no "hawks in the sky", but everyone's afraid there might be. Same result, just a little less unsettling. Fear of the unknown can be a powerful thing.

[@Sonny_McMacsson]

I was going to comment on that one. Dark Forest really makes little to no sense. I'm not sure how all these civilizations would have the knowledge and thus already effectively have made contact themselves or found strong evidence while we're left out of the loop.

[@DaneContessaFTW]

⁠@@Sonny_McMacssonyou underestimate the size of the universe.

[@Sonny_McMacsson]

@@DaneContessaFTW Did you just get here?

[@noneofyourbeeswax01]

@@Sonny_McMacsson I don't believe in these "hawks" because there are no resources on planets that are not more abundant and more easily harvestable in space (no need to endure the gravity wells of varying strengths to get to and from the planet's surface). Even water is more abundant in space. And we must not forget that the vast _distances_ of space cannot be separated from the vast amount of _time_ traversing those distances must necessarily involve.

[@jimhaleyMoatas1701]

​@@DaneContessaFTW. To begin with Space is big, really big...if you think the solar system is big, that makes the rest of the universe look like a walk down to the chemist...

[@Lecksite]

These side project videos are fantastic. My favorite channel in KZbin currently and I'm watching a lot of them I'm glad there are a lot of these side project videos

[@mypastlife]

The most disturbing thing for me in thinking we might be unique as a planet is simply that if we cease to exist then the whole of the universe continues on with no one to observe its existence. Which in essence means it doesn't exist.

[@kathrynck]

@sean smyth Along a similar thread of thought, in a universe infinite in size, if it could happen in one place, it could surely happen in another place (rather than another time). Rarity could simply create too much time (OR distance) to ever meet up.

[@TheJadeFist]

Personally I think life is probably fairly common on the grand scale, the problem being that intelligent social tool crafting creatures capable of space travel are probably pretty rare even there is life there.

[@amn1308]

To be fair third law of thermodynamics, King Solomon, and Lincoln Park all agree, "in the end it doesn't even matter."

[@amn1308]

​@@kathrynck but we know the universe is not infinite, we know when and where it began, and we know how and why it ends. Opposite of what we want to know about each.

[@kathrynck]

@@amn1308 "know" is an extraordinarily strong word for all of the things you describe. Science is an infinite series of mistakes, which (hopefully) become less inaccurate over time, through robust challenges to concepts, new data, etc. There's a LOT which we "knew" until we didn't.

[@andyyang3029]

That final sentence was spooky, the thought of a completely empty universe is definitely unsettling, but it also means that it's all ours for the taking 😮

[@robot336]

I KNOW WHAT MY BROTHER AND I SAW THAT'S PROOF ENOUGH FOR ME 🛸🛸

[@zacharycollins9485]

Yeah, if we can get to the point of colonizing other planets before we destroy ourselves with WW3.

[@zacharycollins9485]

On a side note: We know that there's technically life out in space - we've found frozen bacterium and microorganisms from Mars and on the Moon - but the question is: has that single-celled life evolved into self-aware beings with civilizations like us? I just hope they're not like us.

[@kasahadragon9499]

Don't worry I'm sure Elon and others are working out ways to plunder it 😡

[@andyyang3029]

​@@zacharycollins9485 If only that were true lol, we've never found any evidence of microorganisms on other celestial bodies

[@MrCovi2955]

A wonderful solution to the Fermi Paradox that I ran into that I'm surprised isn't more well known is the Phosphorus Precursor theory. Basically, all of the energy bonds that make everything in carbon organics work requires phosphorous bonds, and we've recently discovered that phosphorus is extremely rare in our galaxy. We have an insanely high percentage of the known phosphorus. Phosphorus is a heavier element meaning it must be created through supernovae which means that there will be more eventually. But for now the reason why we aren't finding any other life could very well be that we are the precursor race, we are the first intelligent species because we lucked out on the early phosphorus lottery. The odds of being the first or among the first is low, but the amount of phosphorus we're seeing in exoplanets and stars makes it look like our planet has a lot more than it should.

[@poppers7317]

We're a precursor civilization? Do we need to be all ominous and speak in riddles now?

[@Vertigou]

@@poppers7317 And dark robes! Very important.

[@Vertigou]

That's even more of a reason to become a multiplanetary species ASAP, considering the fact that we are one solar flare or meteorite from being taken back to the stone age at best and extinction at worst. All hail Elon the rocketman! In his musk we trust, for it shall deliver us onto mars!

[@Matt.Willoughby]

The odds that we are the first intelligent live in a universe as vast an old as ours is impossible. It just cannot be true.

[@Satarnoch]

Imagine if we come across an alien species and we are the smart ones😭

[@RodrigoRosendo93]

The thought of us being completely alone in the universe is terrifying and relieving at the same time

[@mcmaldek]

Depends on how aliens evolved, if it wasn't the way we do, non competitive, symbiotic... etc. I estimate that if life is common it's likely that 0.05% of intelligent species are hostile.

[@martianbuilder5945]

The "Three Body Problem" trilogy is a mind-blowing read on this very topic, as a matter of fact the second book _is_ called "The Dark Forest" and the characters within it talk about the exact same stuff in the video. It's about advanced aliens from the Alpha Centauri system that make contact with Earth and set out to invade it because their home planet gets tossed around the three stars and thus leads to crazy climate changes. Even though humanity has 400 years to prepare, and they waste a whole lot of resources building fancy warships and planetary defense systems, the aliens send one single probe that destroys everything and erases human technological progress while their main fleet is still halfway enroute. The second book's main character basically states that civilizations grow exponentially, but the amount of resources in the universe never changes, so it's inevitable that they will fight each other and conquer stuff.

[@randalpumpkin2788]

This is one of the most well-made videos you've put out in a long time, loved the topic but also loved how well the editor did keeping it engaging. Keep it up!!!

[@randalpumpkin2788]

and very interesting point about North Sentinel island. They've been isolated for so many years I wonder if their language is even remotely related to the ones nearby :)

[@jakesmiley1988]

My thoughts exactly, the editor needs a raise lol

[@robot336]

I KNOW WHAT MY BROTHER AND I SAW THAT'S PROOF ENOUGH FOR ME 🛸🛸

[@matthewbanta3240]

It could be because of the Star Trek prime directive theory.I mean if the writers of a 1960's sci-fi show figured out that it was a bad idea to introduce a civilization to alien technology before they are ready then it is likely that more advanced civilizations figured that out as well.

[@DharmaPunk111]

After seeing the whistleblower reports this past week, it sounds like that is the most likely scenario and the fermi paradox is a complete joke.

[@bluebull399]

I'm 100% convinced there is a "prime directive" at play here. A space fearing alien civilisation would see us as primitive ants and not interfere. What's more likely is that probes have already been sent to our solar system to study Earth from orbit. And no, we would never know if there was probes, they'd be shielded using technology that is beyond our comprehension.

[@rationalanarchist7550]

I could totally see civilization as we know it collapsing if aliens showed up religions would crumble people would lose their shit

[@canardchronique3477]

That's one possibility. Another potential explanation is just expressed as lack of interest in what they would certainly perceive as a boredom inducing, 'lesser being'. Our species doesn't exert much effort attempting to communicate with locusts...

[@drjojo5551]

Bub….STAR TREK…..IS HOLLYWOOD GARBAGE!!!! NOTHING ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video.

[@coweatsman]

The great filter hypothesis. I always thought there would not be ONLY one filter but potentially many. There may be, for example, say 10 filters with a 1 in 10 chance of coming out a survivor. To get through all 10 filters would be a 1 in 10 billion chance, and even once leaving the planet there may be other filters out there. Interstellar colonisation may not make a civilsation immune to extinction.

[@jaymeVos]

Especially when one considers when galaxies collide. What then?

[@brandonvasser5902]

The more you consider the great filter and build in even more layers, it seems likely that if there is life out there we could communicate with, its SO rare that you’re statistically likely so far away, you’ll never be able to know of each other. There could be billions of galaxies without life like us before we find one.

[@kylerjones4411]

Yeah but there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone and likely 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe so your 1 in 10 billion odds just became 2 trillion stars with, let's say, 1 in a million chance of having the perfect conditions for life (who know, right?). Even at those extremely low odds, that's still 2 billion planets that made it past the filter. If intelligent life on Earth started 13 billion after the Big Bang, there's no reason to believe life couldn't have started billions of years earlier on other planets billions of light years away whose signals would have reached us by now. And that's the extreme case. Then there's galaxies and solar systems much, much closer in that equation. If life is prevalent, where is it? I'm not talking about interstellar travel either, just signals. We've been sending them inadvertently for a century now (high power TV signals that would reached many stars by now).

[@ismokeyftw3919]

@@jaymeVos you realize that when that happens most all the stars will pass by undeterred. Space is VAST. The chances of stars colliding even when Galaxies merge is low.

[@darrenjones6765]

@@ismokeyftw3919 true dat.

[@estebanmeza9645]

I'm going with: intelligent life is tremendously difficult to exist, given this, it's even harder to find two species in a level of development that allows for their encounter in the vastness of space and time

[@FugueNation]

This is my take as well. Earth had many different biospheres, such as with Dinosaurs, that lasted hundreds of millions of years. And in only one of those did a species that was super intelligent (humans) arose. Dinosaurs were awesome and maybe there were dinosaurs as smart as primates, but they never evolved into anything that had world spanning civilizations.

[@WeatherWeasel66]

Sometimes i wonder if there is any intelligent life on THIS planet? Sometimes i think there isn't...

[@EpicGamingEct]

actually this is confirmed rational fact , we see with light and when we look out at galaxies and star systems , we see the light that traveled 10,000+ years too reach us too see . thus we are perpetually seeing into the past not present , thus blind too what is actually out their currently !!! this is how when we used a powerful telescope and looked into the center of the universe we actually watched and seen the big bang and creation of everything !!!

[@dthomas9230]

Energy is sound and the only reason we see light is because it is sound in a vacuum. There might be different advancements of civilizations in time frames and magnetic decomposing of matter as in The Philadelphia Experiment. A ship defeating gravity and re-appearing in Philly but not given a full shutdown time to reboot sent the miss- mixed matter for a final result was also considered time travel as it avoided the earth's rotation and time measure. Any UFO's are possible transmissions of civilizations on another plane from a black hole or dimensions supposed to be separate. Octupuses will outlast humans.

[@Azreal357]

I would suggest that life, and intelligent life is probably much more common than you may expect. Consider that galactic clusters on average have around a trillion stars (10,000x10,000x10,000) and there are many galactic clusters in the known universe, on top of that, stars do not represent planets, and it is possible that each one of those stars have 1-20 planets orbiting them. Meaning the number of planets in the known universe is incalculable by our current capabilities. Now also consider that on earth alone we have found life in some of the most extreme conditions imaginable, from extreme cold to extreme heat to highly acidic environments meaning it is likely that the formation of life itself is not as fragile as we onced believed. Now consider that all lifeforms as we know it have sought one goal, or procreate and to outcompete. This means that it is highly likely that intelligent life forms pretty frequently due to the concept of survival of the fittest, since as evidenced on earth, intelligence wins over all in the long run. More likely it is that we are too far separated from possible intelligent life (closest known habitable system is over 4 lightyears away), and there does not exist a means to traverse such immense distances in our universe. Or, as I like to believe, any civilization that explores eventually encounters a bacteria lifeform that they have no immunity to and are wiped out because of it. Makes you happy to think that they hope to find signs of bacterial life on Mars doesn't it? Cheers.

[@ajm2872]

We've been blasting signals into the galaxy for over a century. Imagine if one day we finally received a response, but the message was simply "QUIET, THEY'LL HEAR YOU."

[@edwarddore7617]

And just like in the movie Alien, it may take us a while to decipher the message, we think it's a distress beacon or greeting, but it ends up being a warning.

[@Darksector88]

That would actually be a really great start after the intro of a awesome movie to be honest

[@arbyjack2552]

The 3 body problem. It’s a book

[@Darksector88]

@@arbyjack2552 who reads :p Thank you for that though, I will actually take a look as I'm now interested.

[@arbyjack2552]

@@Darksector88 KZbin Trisolarian weapon

[@godofchaoskhorne5043]

Part of the dark forest is also the not knowing. You don't know if that alien civ will be friendly. Let's say you're friendly and want to make friends, peace and love and stuff. But the other side isn't and tries to wipe you out the moment you make contact. So there is no reason for other civs to give each other even a chance instead of preemptively trying to wipe the other out before the other notices you're there and possibly wipes you out

[@robinv1485]

I optimistically believe this wouldn't happen due to any advanced civilization that had interstellar knowledge to also have social knowledge to adhere to our equivalent of the prisoners dilemma or wtv they have to represent the concept since its basically math and applies to everything, maybe a more advanced solution with additional insight. As such assuming that, they would assume its beneficial to make contact and help. Then again such civilization would also notice that we know such concepts but don't entirely adhere by them and might see us as an aggressive and possibly dangerous species because of it. In that case just observing and see how we would evolve would probably be optimal. Might just be that as soon as we get our sht together first contact occurs

[@eatonkuntz]

That would be the filter. Benevolent intelligence would be quickly destroyed leaving only malevolent and secretive civilizations.

[@omegatired]

@@robinv1485 Which is why I'm convinced there are buoys around the perimeter of our system warning even juvenile joy riders away. They've seen our "historical records".

[@AG3n3ricHuman]

@@robinv1485 "Social knowledge" is highly dependent on one's culture. For one it's extremely unlikely that they'd believe in any kind of natural rights as there is no proof of their existence and not even all humans believe in them. Aliens almost certainly wouldn't see us as equals, and I imagine would likely treat us much as humans treat other species on our own planet. Much has been made of the fact that aliens in fiction tend to look like us, but it's really their behavior that is a carbon copy. For example humans are one of the only species on earth for which eye contact is friendly. Alien behavior in reality would probably be so different from ours that we'd only recognize them as "intelligent" by their technology, assuming we'd even recognize that. Human technology is based on refined synthetic materials, what if alien technology is based around biomodification?

[@nicholasgutierrez9940]

The Dark Forest is pretty dumb tbh. The easiest solution is to just send out a million-million nano probes into the universe and have them spy out things. Then make ships with AI that will birth humans on "good" worlds. No need for generation ships if you are going to other solar systems. It takes a long time but it would work. Even if something is out there looking for others, it will never find your home world. And if it did, it would have already. It's like trying to fight off alien invaders. There's no point, they would be using technology that looks like magic to us.

[@scottgalbraith7461]

I used to think we just haven't come to appeciate the distances involved, but looking at our geologic history, a very unique set of circumstances led to our eventual evolution. Several extinctions, weird moon, well timed asteroids etc. Maybe we are a fluke.

[@Matthew10950]

Were any of these unique though? Solar systems beyond count, even if these unique circumstances are one in a million...they are happening daily.

[@Slop_Dogg]

It’s the sheer scale of the universe that just makes this unthinkable. A fluke in our interstellar cloud, sure. But our entire galaxy? Our entire local galactic group? Our entire supercluster? Our entire galactic filament? At a certain numeric enormity, it almost seems impossible to call something a one off happenstance.

[@valistrutu]

Yes we are "lucky " !! Maybe we are the only one civilisation on Milky way 🌌 and will discover only dinosaurios on other planets !!

[@ItsHyomoto]

The problem is, if life can exist, it does. Statistics just don't matter when dealing with the vastness of a single galaxy, let alone an entire universe. No matter how remote, if it happened once it can and, statistically, has happened more than once. Even if it's one in a trillion trillion, it's happened more than once.

[@scottgalbraith7461]

But, the paradox...

[@gettingby365]

I feel that #4 (or a variant of) is the most likely. I feel like our own experiences create a bias toward what life should look like that may be preventing us from seeing our neighbors. Very reasonable and understandable, after all conceptualizing something completly outside of your experience is very difficult if not impossible.

[@jacobmcdorman5552]

Agreed. The Christian bible says "God made us in his image". I don't believe in such things but this statement has always bugged me as slightly egotistic but is definitely a "human" characteristic. It's not that the "God" is prideful but that "we" are for assuming are like him. I've always pointed out, there may be intelligent life... but we may need to examine the nature of intelligence. We have a rather insane bar set for intelligence.

[@jacobmcdorman5552]

@@SkiRedMtn I probably would stop for a look. Life in the universe being rare and all... it's not really worth passing it by. But we'd be more like zoo animals to them.

[@BlueProphet7]

@@jacobmcdorman5552 That's tantamount to saying that we're potentially ignoring the sentient walls of our homes - we don't accept them as intelligent, but because they decide to maintain their blue paint, they are intelligent. No. Intelligence may differ from person to person or even species to species, but the universe relies on basic underlying physical principles. There are no beings out there that are made of water and communicate by color or something. That's fiction. You can believe in that if you want, but it's less believable than any current religion.

[@SkiRedMtn]

@@jacobmcdorman5552 ⁠Exactly. A look. You don’t get in with the crocodiles. And yknow. We assume life is rare. Maybe an intergalactic species knows that’s false. You don’t stop and look at the cockroach display in the insect house when you only have one trip to the San Diego Zoo. You go see the things that are more interesting…and more rare. The point is, we don’t know anything about extraterrestrial, never mind intergalactic life, so we can’t make any assumptions about what they would know or find worthwhile.

[@mindspank]

​@@jacobmcdorman5552 There's a pretty cool sci-fi novel Echopraxia. An alien civilization figured out that the universe is a simulation. By digging into the universe code, they found out about "miracles", things that shouldn't be possible according to the laws of physics. Since the universe is a simulation, the laws of physics are part of the universal Operating System (Windows 8.2 million). These "miracles" are breaking the laws of physics. "Wait a second." Bruks frowned. "If the laws of physics are part of some universal operating system and God, by definition, breaks them... You're basically saying... " "Don't stop now roach you're almost there." "You're basically saying God is a virus." Created us in his image, does sound more plausible with that in mind.

[@battlesheep2552]

I think the main reason for the Fermi Paradox is that life isnt as likely to develop intelligence as many people think, as many people think intelligence is some sort of "end goal" for evolution when there is no end goal, just adaptations to the immediate environment, and often intelligence proves to be more trouble than its worth. There is also the fact that intelligence alone isnt enough for a technological civilization to arise. For instance, octopuses no doubt have the necessary intelligence for that, as well as grasping appendages for using tools, but they reproduce by having their parents die to care for their eggs, making it impossible for them to share knowledge across generations.

[@Sashazur]

They also live under water which makes it impossible or very difficult to develop high energy technology, and unlikely that they will see the sky and wonder what’s up there. This could hold back any intelligent species that live under water.

[@daleludtke7803]

I remember reading Greg Bear's "Forge of God," and the follow-up "Anvil of Stars." Ian Douglas' three military sci-fi series stemming from the Heritage Trilogy also deal with the Fermi Parodox as well. Great reads 😅

[@wcsoblake85]

Simon, what about the fact of the sheer distance between us and the other stars? If a star is 1000 light years from us then it would take them 1000 years to hear our transmissions and then 1000 years for us to receive a reply. And if we use a telescope to look at that 1000 light year away solar system we would be looking 1000 years in their past and they might not have developed technology yet.

[@Lodrik18]

radiowaves are waves and because of that become random noise over time, so dont hold your breath on long distances (its also a wave and travels slower then light...)

[@oldbatwit5102]

@@Lodrik18 I thought that radiowaves travelled at the speed of light.

[@ComputeCrashers]

This, and the countless of billions of other galaxies that we simply cannot see from our perspective - whether it be through time or the resolution of our technology

[@brianpembrook9164]

Then you also have to take into account that our telescopes can barely see other planets just a short ways away from our system. Unless a civilization started building a Death Star we are unlikely to visibly see them unless the streets lights they have are extremely plentiful (or... the planet is really close).

[@boshirahmed]

It won't be organic life but more like machines from transformers.

[@Shiraanri]

I love this topic. So facinating to think about. Thank you Simon and Co.

[@JohnRandomness105]

6:00 I think there are two great filters. One, in the past, was something like snowball suicide, where photosynthesis simply mopped up all the greenhouse gas. That may be related to the reason that green is the color of life: photosynthesis on earth isn't the most efficient. The other great filter is still in the future, with our ability to destroy ourselves and so many influential assholes denying a problem. I think that people are minimizing the size of space, and minimizing the time it takes for signals to travel or spacecraft to travel. Seriously, we shouldn't expect a response within the next few hundred years to any signal we send out. I believe that any conclusion based on the Copernican Principle is subject to revision by observation. Our place is special in a couple ways: our star is more massive than most stars, but not even close to the maximum mass of stars. We are in the disc of a giant spiral galaxy, a disc with lots of dust.

[@TheObsesedAnimeFreaks]

most definitely there are probably great filters at every step in that process. if the star system is too violent life will never evolve, if the planet doesn't have the right chemistry life will never evolve, if the condition aren't correct to encourage more complex life intelligent life will never evolve. if that intelligent life is too violent or otherwise destructive against it's own people, that intelligent life will never get to space. then if space can't support intelligent life no matter what technology you use, no matter what resources you pack or how you propel and power the star ship sea faring life will never exist. an example of this is time in and of itself, if it will always take hundreds if not thousands of years for a life form to go 1 light year, sea fearing is quite literally impossible.

[@christopherg2347]

It would take a spacefaring civilization 1 billion years at current earth tech, 1 million years with likely earth tech to colonize our galaxy. Our planet is 7 billion years old, our species 2 million years. Enough time to colonize our galaxy 2-7 times over.

[@jacksonlynch1731]

I tend to agree with your thoughts on the Copernican principle. The more we learn, the more it seems that Earth is, to a degree, special. David Kipping of the Cool Worlds lab has a great analogy for this. If you took 1000 people, separated them, and had them randomly pull a marble out of a jar, then killed anyone who pulled out a red marble and let anyone who pulled a green marble live, the perspective of the people who drew out a green marble would be similar to that of earth. Your natural inclination would be to assume there were many green marbles, because your one data point is a green marble. But you really can't know. Maybe there was just one green marble, and you drew it. Maybe only 5% were marbles. You just don't know. That, I think, is where the Copernican principle fails. It assumes that our single data point is common, because we are here to observe it. But it's just as likely that our single data point is exceedingly rare. And we're starting to add data points that point to the idea that the earth might be more rare than we thought.

[@TitularHeroine]

$&?@ -- !! Thank you!! I really wish the other random commenters would read this thread. *$@&!!!* (the thing about underestimating distance and travel time is a particular pet peeve)

[@christopherg2347]

@@jacksonlynch1731 We spend a lot of our astronomy budget on finding how _exactly_ how many green marbles there are. That Analogy is stupid, since we have been fixing that assumed "issue" for decades now. Also, Fermi never require "a lot" of green marbles. If it is 1 in 50 million there is a second one just in our galaxy. That is not "common".

[@jacobtrepanier1955]

Another possibility to the Fermi Paradox is the Rare Fire Solution.....fascinating idea. Great vid by the way.

[@youmaycallmeken]

The size of the known universe is too large for us to ever know that we are alone. The great distances may also serve as protecting various intellegent lives from each other.

[@wildearth281]

yes unimaginable great distance..but scientist are trying to detect radio signals ( which can travel great distances) that advanced civilisation might use and so far there are NON.

[@stuartfreeman2427]

Well aliens may or may not exist but... Human cloning certainly does and Simon is proof. There's no way one man could provide so much content across so many channels. I'm thankful for all the Simons 👌👏

[@Iamtheliquor]

Pretty fortunate that he has a team behind the scenes writing, editing, producing etc on all the channels he presents

[@Dogofwarno7]

Always thought Alistair Reynolds had the best response to the 5th fermi paradox, about us being alone. The guy said if thats true, it would be our duty to seed life in all worlds, and become the skybfathers we always sought.

[@Nellosphere]

Don't we have to reach a scenario when we colonize new planets that we first establish rules to not destroy inhabitants of that planet.

[@Quabbe2]

first we need to establish the rule to not destroy ourselves on our planet, then we can look further

[@dipanjanghosal1662]

@@Quabbe2 or it could happen that we mess up our planets so bad that we are forced leave and go to other planets thus starting to seed the universe

[@phlegmarhbizmahl8075]

Wow that was equal parts fantastically informative & absolutely devastating! But incredibly informative.

[@thesteadingoffranya4423]

One of the most significant factors that I never hear talked about, is the Levinthal's Paradox. to my mind it answers the Fermi Paradox quite simply.(not saying it does, just saying it covers all the bases at the moment) it also (if unsolvable) would reduce the number of potential civilizations by trillions. It has to do with how fast and precise the protein molecules that are essential to our life, fold. They have to fold in a specific pattern perfectly and there are millions of folds per molecule and billions of patterns they could fold into and the fact that the process of folding happens so fast with no outside stimuli and it has to accurately recreating the same folds. Basically the odds of intelligent life forming could be considered a "filter" as the more complex the life form the more complex the protein molecules can become. Are we alone? No. However I suspect that there may only be one or two intelligent species in a galaxy at a time.

[@derrickscott9469]

I think the answer is a matter of time. For extraterrestrial civilizations to coexist closely enough with the necessary technology to contact each other is extremely unlikely. But if ET visited and proved we're not alone, we'd probably soon wish we were. Whatever motivated them to make such a long, expensive, dangerous journey probably wouldn't translate into good intentions towards us. And they may have an insurmountable technological advantage in wartime.

[@SirJayUK]

Not always. For example, if these so called Aliens wanted us for our resources, we definitely wouldn't be here now. But here we still are. But I'm not gonna rain on your parade, they still could be hostile due to a takeover of our galactic neighbourhood. Time is unfortunately the answer

[@clayz1]

Every one of the ideas presented here I have run into via reading hard and soft sci-fi from about 1957 on. Never get tired of it. My vote goes to the dark forest scenario, just because of the way war like humans treat each other. We should not be chirping into space because our signals travel so far before they become too hard to pick up.

[@Rathmun]

We can probably rule out Dark Forest just due to basic chemistry. An oxygen-rich atmosphere isn't likely in the absence of life, and _is_ something detectable with telescopes from interstellar distances via spectral lines. Any civilization capable of wiping us out also has the resources to build telescopes that put Webb to absolute shame, and no particular reason to let intelligent life develop in the first place. If there are hawks in the sky, they've been able to see us for the last 2.4 _Billion_ years. We're still here.

[@SebastianMih]

I think we vastly underestimate the effort it takes for us to go from Step 8 to Step 9. It's more likely that even more steps ahead of us before we can actually travel toward the stars.

[@livethemoment5148]

good point

[@johnjohnson5028]

At the end, Simon mentions the time difference at which different species evolve. This suggests that there is a relatively short window during which species may be aware of the other and could communicate with the other. Imagine two transcontinental trains travelling in opposite directions. As the trains pass each other, a person standing at a door on each train attempts to the other. The time to do so is very short.

[@bluerisk]

We don't know how long we will exist. We made it as "apes" for million of years, so why should we do not make it for even longer with our entire progress in mind? This idea that we are the last great generation or that the apocalypse is upon us is as old as human civilization. We can found these ideas in the oldest records of our species.

[@MLG85]

The reason we find those ‘theories’ in our history is because they aren’t actually just theories at all… as in, every 10-15,000 years there seems to have been extreme events planet wide that have changed the course of life on this planet. We are the result of billions of years of interruptions to the way life has evolved on this planet. We aren’t the end result, we aren’t special, we aren’t any more important than any person or animal who has come before us. The evidence of these world wide cataclysms has been piling for years and the main cause appears to be The Taurid stream. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. It’s scary as hell!

[@contumelious-8440]

@@bluerisk We are one meteor or solar flare away from extinction. Until we have viable, self-sustaining populations off-world, we are vulnerable. I am hopeful, as you are. But reality has a say, too.

[@Shawsh2143]

@@bluerisk Not a single civilization before us had access to nukes. We are the first civilization with the capability of completely wiping ourselves out. The idea of "we might be the last" may have been around for ages, but nukes haven't. The closest thing to nukes earlier civilizations had were pandemics and no one back then would have been smart enough to know how to weaponize them on a scale.

[@bluerisk]

@@Shawsh2143 Even if we exchange all our nukes, mankind would survive. It would need decades to recover, but we are talking about millions of years.

[@fai1t0liv3]

The speed limit of mass also plays a huge role. Even if we could travel at 50% the speed of light, it would still take us 8 years to reach the nearest star system. Effectively meaning that any kind of colonization effort would just be islands with little to no communication with the home world. We would need interstellar satellite relays because most communications turn into static after a light year.

[@holysecret2]

Maybe the only hope would be some sort of space bending technology (wormholes and such)

[@fai1t0liv3]

@@holysecret2 Absolutely. It would still take an incredible amount of energy to achieve and we'd still need to be able to get far enough away from the star so the ripples wouldn't destabilize it.

[@Jayjay-qe6um]

"Thinking about paradoxes is the way human understanding advances. I think the Fermi paradox is telling us something very profound about the universe, and our place in it." -- Stephen Baxter

[@artmcteagle]

And what was that profound something according to Baxter?

[@Nickle314]

It's big. That's all it tells us.

[@jmitterii2]

And a million or billion year old civilization wouldn't want to visit a primitive human ape population; it would be like going to down to visit a mold residue... nothing to gain but possibly catching pink eye.

[@Lunch_Meat]

No it doesn't. The Fermi paradox is not a paradox in the classical sense. The liar paradox (this statement is a lie) is a paradox. The Fermi "paradox" is just math people believing that because mathematically something should happen that means it should happen. Reality tells us all the time that just because something should happen, mathematically, doesn't mean it WILL happen. The Fermi paradox is smart people falling for the gambler's fallacy.

[@conundrum60690]

What people often forget is it’s not just space but also time. The universe is 12 billion years old. Our star didn’t even exist when it first cooled enough to be habitable. Entire civilizations could have evolved expanded, and eventually even wipes out without a trace. If it happened 3 billion years ago supernova and other astronomical phenomena or even just the expansion of space would have obfuscated or annihilated any real evidence of their existence.

[@mitchellsmith4601]

With every passing second, all those planets, stars, and galaxies grow further apart, making contact or detection even more difficult, if not impossible.

[@ralphm6901]

I would argue that Hanson wasn't the first with the Great Filter idea. David Brin published a short story in Jan 1984 called "The Crystal Spheres". In it, mankind's first starship cruises out of the solar system and slams into a barrier, a crystal sphere that encloses our planets like an eggshell. With the shell now broken, mankind's subsequent starships can get out into the galaxy. They find a number of planets with their own crystal spheres, but it's not possible to communicate with civilizations inside them. Eventually they discover a broken sphere, but the aliens have moved on to hang out on the event horizon of a black hole, along with several earlier species. The explorers fidn a message saying, "when you outgrow planets, come join us".

[@phincampbell1886]

Yeah, so?! How many series of catch a predator has this other guy done, none, that's how many. So who cares about this book you claim he wrote a thousand years ago? No one, that's who...

[@mcgrath131]

​@@phincampbell1886 jan 1984, was a bit less than 1000 year's ago.

[@AsylumSaint]

@@phincampbell1886 There is help for people like you that have also had their bums violated a few times against their will. Help will not find you however, you must seek that out for yourself.

[@phincampbell1886]

Stop pushing your pseudo number science narrative it's way thousands ago

[@SirTweaksalot92]

@accelerationquanta5816 Care to elaborate?

[@TheKalaxis]

The idea that we are simply the most advanced in terms of technology is the one I like best as it offers the hope that in the future other civilisations will make (hopefully) peaceful contact.

[@Ashley-wi4ng]

Unlikely, cause by this logic we would be the ones finding them and we don't have the best track record as a species in that regard.

[@ajstevens1652]

​@@Ashley-wi4ngHeh, even if we tried to go against human nature and be peaceful, we'd still probably accidentally eradicate them with introduction of a virus or invasive species.

[@Marcus_Postma]

Firstborn scenario

[@ComputeCrashers]

Or by that point we'll be gone with absolutely no trace

[@nroke1684]

I just like the idea of *us* fulfilling the sci-fi trope of a forerunner species.

[@antoniokastrocarlisledemel6617]

There's not too many things I love more than Science,Astronomy and Science Fiction and watching,listening and reading about Alien Life and just how unimaginably massive the universe is and that we haven't found anyone but US really makes me wonder what it all means...if we're the only life in existence could that mean we are something special? Could it all just be a simulation and when we die we wake like Neo in the "real world"...I flatlined for 3 min 55 seconds when I was 13(I'm going on 38 now) and for me there was just a void.. oblivion and the feeling is indescribable,ive never been more afraid..is that really what awaits us all?...my dad and big brother think I saw nothing cuz it wasn't my time to go and I was just stuck in the middle..like that Stealers Wheel song...just waiting to be summoned back to Earth...damn I'm spiraling but I'll just say I really hope it ain't just us or if it is that we someday find the answer to why were even here in the first damn place...as always I love the video Silbador ...U Brits have the coolest accent man u can make anything sound important like Morgan Freeman I'd love even hearing u Brits read the phone book..I mean if i can find one that is

[@theflyingone]

Isn't it possible that we are just too far apart and you can't travel faster than the speed of light? At best they could send a probe but they may have sent it 10,000 years ago and it still has another 1000 years to arrive.

[@SC1ENCEP1E]

Can I request a Side or Mega Projects on the St Louis Arch please Simon. I was reading a post about it today and thinking this really seems like the kind of thing we need a video on ❤

[@rubycelica]

what a wonderful video, i enjoyed every second of it! thank you team for your work, it's highly appreciated!

[@onenote6619]

'Scientific thought is an inevitable path toward self-destruction' solves the question. As does 'the universe is really big and no civilisation survives long enough to travel any real distance'.

[@shallendor]

A big problem is that most people only think of Carbon based lifeforms like us, not life forms based on other elements!

[@gobblinal]

Carbon is pretty much the only element that works for life we'd be able to understand. Even silicon isn't quite good enough, and it's the closest other thing.

[@captainspaulding5963]

​@gobblinal that's exactly the point.... just because WE can't comprehend non carbon based lifeforms, absolute does not mean that they CAN'T exist, and it is pure human arrogance to think otherwise.

[@MrDekasOne]

​@@captainspaulding5963 if silicone based life is a possibility why has not a single one ever evolved here on earth we have everything here for one to evolve yet it's never happened not even once

[@paradoxdriver4094]

@@MrDekasOne Perhaps the conditions for a silicone-based lifeform can't be met on Earth but could be elsewhere.

[@MrDekasOne]

@@paradoxdriver4094 silicone life is already harder to exist than carbon by nature now you're making it even harder by requiring very specific conditions to exist thus making it even less likely to exist, this is why scientists have all but ruled silicone life out as something that exists there's to many conditions on it

[@OddRagnarDengLerstl]

Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem is about the dark forest hypothesis. Really worth reading. Best sci-fi since Hyperion.

[@stvWndrz]

So deeply unsettling it makes the skin crawl. Here’s to hoping malevolence isn’t a baseline among intelligent species…

[@josephrobinson6171]

​@@stvWndrz If other species are anything like us, it will be. Romans and Britons Spanish and Aztecs Britons and Aboriginal Aussies The same story plays out over and over whenever there is a large technological difference between two human civilisations

[@Ainar86]

To me the most unsettling thing about that book is that it's blatant communist propaganda.

[@dipanjanghosal1662]

A jist of this "three body problem" please?

[@josephrobinson6171]

@@dipanjanghosal1662 Without spoiling too much, it's a story about an advanced alien race detecting us and basically fucking with us and trying to slow our scientific/technological development. The story starts with the deaths of many physicists at their own hands after the rules of physics start to not make sense anymore on a quantum level. Eventually we detect these aliens (or rather, their probes and whatnot) and start to try to contact them, negotiate with them and resist them. It's a great science fiction novel and the dark forest model of life in the universe features heavily in it. It's kind of a depressing story but an incredibly good read.

[@Chotensai]

14:23 "Entirely devoid of life" sounds rather bleak, I prefer 'Ours for the taking'

[@victordelrio358]

I feel bad because I've been avoiding your videos purely because I thought you were vsauce and now that I've finally watched a video of yours I hit subscribe as a peace offering

[@obear1]

with recent disclosures being made by the government, I’m more likely than not to believe that we are not alone. personally, I’ve never been convinced that we could be alone.

[@WE-WUZZING-KANGS-N-SHEEOYT]

I’m sure the people who thought bombing and using mk ultra amongst its own citizens would Obviously tell us and it’s enemies that ufos exist and make every other nation go on a hunt ,for who ever possess such technology could dominate the whole earth

[@akibo3516]

Agreed, and it's certainly an answer to the Fermi Paradox: Alien life does exist, it knows we're here but is actively hiding from us, our current technology doesn't pick up their communications very well (if at all), and the few humans who do know are keeping it hidden from the general population or are labeled as conspiracy theorists and crazies. But I guess we'll see where investigations of these claims lead us.

[@obear1]

hmmm…can’t see replies

[@SirTweaksalot92]

@@obear1 same

[@ralph3333]

Govt lies ALL the time. A space alien threat would create a lot of fear which is what the globalists feed on ... that n the blood of children. Allegedly.

[@Dr.Fluffles]

My thought for the Dark Forest Hypothesis is that if the hawks are so powerful, they wouldn't necessarily be so afraid, meaning they would be making their own caws and sounds out to the universe without fear in order to attract each other and prey. If everyone is silent and afraid, then there likely is more of an overabundance of fear compared to those seeking to attack. In this version, we could be the first of the brave, for better or worse.

[@Dr.Fluffles]

We could even be the first of a predatory species to evolve to the dominant role on our planet, with other species having been previously herbivores or non-apex species who evolved their intelligence out of avoidance, becoming dominant while maintaining the cautious tendencies of inherently non-predatory species.

[@Tarotb]

With all due respect to Simon, the dark forest hypothesis isn't so much that there are a lot of hawks, as there are a lot of hunters. Each hunter has a bow; they each have the capacity to kill, but also be easily killed. In that scenario, the hypothesis posits that it's best to keep quiet because the first sound you make might invite death from the dark. Likewise, if you hear a sound, it might be best to shoot at it, because if you're close enough to hear them, they can hear you and this might be your only chance to strike. Personally i don't think the theory holds much water, but it's one possible explanation.

[@pakde8002]

Indeed it would be in their interest to make contact with other worlds like ours so they can take over. 😅

[@tahlialysse]

My main issue with it is that if we assume our species as average among intelligent species, that implies that many of them are also communal creatures. And while communal creatures can be really awful to outgroups, there's also the fundamental thing where communal creatures also crave contact. At that point it just takes one moment of two communal species contacting each other and their curiosity overpowering their fear. So the dark forest is predicated on assuming that there *should* be lots of life bc we're just an average example, but also assuming that other qualities that may be equally essential for advancing to the point of space flight that we have are...not common. That doesn't mean it's impossible for the dark forest to be a thing, but it's just a complete stab in the dark (hehe). For all we know, Galactus is out there munching on all the other space-faring planets. There's just no reason to specifically think the dark forest is real over any other hyper-specific idea.

[@NorthOntarian]

there is always a bigger hawk

[@orbiebibbee2998]

The Fermi paradox is like a comfort blanket for scientists. The fear of smarter beings.

[@VergilArcanis]

Solution: everyone is at the same development stage. Few planets can support life, fewer still can sustain it. Reason: Solar generations diminish over time, so the earliest life forms on earth likely occurred similar to others out there, standard deviations plus or minus 10,000 years. However, magnetic fields are necessary to protect the life from solar events, which is uncertain for plantes of certain sizes. This means they likely also went through mass extinction events while the planet was settling into a groove. Meaning no one has a clear advantage in technological advancement. Time travellers from the future likely have specific rules to follow to prevent temporal consequences or paradoxes from occurring.

[@kchappie6672]

I love how the great filter checklist only really explores carbon based life, we can't even fathom a different path of evolution

[@maryellen9503]

This bothers me each and every time.

[@mtpaley1]

Many people have spent much time looking at this and carbon really is the only viable basis for complex chemistry capable of life. The number of usable elements is finite and they are all well known. Maybe there are some possible alternatives but as carbon is common in the universe non carbon based life would only have a chance in cases where normal organic chemistry is impossible for instance if the temperature is too high.

[@mtpaley1]

The concept of the great filter would apply to any form of life

[@Vexas345]

We can fathom it, but what are we supposed to do? If we consider every possibility however small, we'd literally not be able to make assessments about anything. If you go hunting in the woods, should you bring every caliber of rifle known to man because you may just run into a Bengal Tiger or an Artic Polar Bear, because you never know, they could be there? Or should you just bring a regular rifle for the deer you know exist, and naybe bear mace if they are a reasonable possibility in your area? We have limited time and resources, so we have to look for stuff we know exists.

[@KeithElliott-zd8cx]

we can. but it's pointless to speculate about it as we've no evidence for it. i mean, that's part of this problem, we only have the one example. i mean, how the fuck would we know what to look for if life was say, silicon based? what would we look for if life was silver based? it's already nigh impossible to get a really good read on just, if a star happens to have a planet with an oxygen atmosphere, which would 100% guarantee some sort of life process, pretty much, as oxygen is reactive, and thus would definitely need something producing it constantly into the atmosphere.

[@randalpumpkin2788]

Absolutely chilling final line, gave me the shivers on my spine ngl

[@rgh622]

We don't care if you lie...ngl

[@Squeaky_Ben]

I feel like we can circumvent the problem that "We cannot communicate" quite simply: We have a massive surplus of things we want to get rid of, namely nukes in this case. Building a facility in space with a large parabolic mirror of like 3-5 km diameter, where we detonate nuclear weapons at the focal point would serve as a great way of sending signals: -The pulse energy is high enough to not be consumed by noise easily -The pulse is not narrowed to one wavelength and is rather broadband (IR, visible light, Gamma radiation, XRays, Radiowaves, etc) meaning it can be detected with a variety of instruments -We can repeat these pulses for a LOOOONG time (while simultaneously getting rid of the nuclear arsenal, so we are less at risk of exterminating ourselves) The only problem I potentially see is if this is seen as an attack and not an attempt of communication.

[@briancompton-l7m]

We did not need to repeat the signals. They were noticed as soon as we did them (nukes). Perhaps this is watched for by them as evidence a species has near spacefaring tech levels. It explains why UFOs showed up in vast numbers after the 1940's. And why they like to go near nuclear facilities and weapon sites. Simple communication for mass consumption.

[@johnnydill3846]

Then a hostile country that has nukes destroys us, and it's all moot.

[@marcokite]

thanks for all the adverts

[@Loki69706]

"There must be some intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy, cause there's bugger down here on Earth" Monty Python, a true prophet

[@davidadams3275]

The universe is older and more vast than we can ever truly comprehend. The thought that we are the only, the first or the most advanced form of intelligent life in that seemingly endless sea of possibility is either ignorance or narcissism.

[@commentresurrection1841]

But what if we are? Someone has to be the first

[@tanindunn8379]

Cool story. Prove we're not the only life in the universe. Until then, we are. Come to terms with that.

[@davidadams3275]

@@tanindunn8379 prove we're not, until you do then we're not... come to terms with that

[@davidadams3275]

@@commentresurrection1841 someone does, I just don't think our little world is that special

[@WannaComment2]

I don't remember where it was from exactly, but in some sci-fi video game setting they had these ruins build by a long gone precursor civilization all over the galaxy. Their story was that they went out into the galaxy to find other life only to discover that they were, in fact, the first ones. They then build these Monuments all over so civilization in the future can learn about and from them long after their gone. Their language later became the universal tongue, because most later civilizations would find precursor ruins before and decipher their inscriptions long before they would find anybody else. So even though they were all alone when they were still around they ultimately became the most revered and well known civilization to ever exist.

[@LeoHKepler]

If we truly are alone in the universe as a species then we really only have eachother. I think that makes our pursuits all the more important. Perhaps we should behave more like that is already a fact, regardless of whether its true.

[@nexusdrop7863]

.......share? No. This is my pizza and I am going to eat it all. Get your own.

[@Lutrian]

I suspect chapter 3 is the most likely scenario, though there may bet to add, here. Distances may be too great for us to detect a civilization's incidental radio broadcasts. We may have a hard time detecting a civilization like us on a planet in the Proximal or Alpha Centauri systems, just because they get too weak for us to see. Use of neutrinos, or something exotic like subspace, may make detection nearly impossible. Also, unless they're specifically trying to send us a raw signal, any civilization that is advanced to our level or higher, or going to mostly use formats or CODECs to send signals, which may be encrypted. That's because transmitting data is far more efficient, and the same frequencies can be used for many parties simultaneously. To us, it would appear as noise. So even if the aliens could understand us, and vise versa, their signals will be encoded, because such encoding just works so much better. There may only be an 80-100 year window when a civilization uses raw analogue signals.before switching to CODECs and data packets. And of course, later, it likely gets sent as neutrinos or subspace, or whatever the future holds. So the reason we may not detect squat, is that there's nothing nearby (and it would have to be very nearby, like within a few light years), within the 80 year window when they would use analogue signals.

[@wakeangel2001]

Schlock Mercenary had an interesting answer to the Fermi paradox, galaxies can be dangerous over the course of billions of years with things like supernova and hostile aliens, so once civilizations became advanced enough they made massive space stations powered by white dwarf stars and flew them to the outskirts of the galaxy where they would be safe for trillions of years. Discovering them took a VLA type telescope as big as the milky way itself.

[@Shawsh2143]

I am not familiar with this thought experiment but how would these civilizations keep living for trillions of years on the literal outskirts of space where there aren't any ressources or at least not enough ressources to power a civilization of this magnitude for the timespan you proposed?

[@wakeangel2001]

@@Shawsh2143 like I said, the core of their space station was a white dwarf star, which can steadily output energy for over a trillion years before it cools down, they also bio-engineered themselves to need very little to survive, and were physically immortal (the aliens living on the station when the main cast met them were the same ones who rescued a colony of sapient dinosaurs from Earth 65 million years prior) so they don't have to worry about things like their population increasing. I should also mention the physical size of the station they lived in, it was at least as big as Jupiter, and the main cast of the comic discovered hundreds of these things, suggesting that this was basically the galactic civilization equivalent of moving to a retirement community in Florida

[@TheTrueAdept]

It should be noted that, in galactic terms, our galaxy was basically a giant ball of gamma rays and other 'fun' events that would remove any possible lifeforms. TLDR: our galaxy was too turbulent to have life, and only recently (as in, the last few billion years or so) it died down to allow life even a chance to evolve.

[@lynnmccurdythehdmmrc2561]

I've often wondered, like early explorers traveling to the "New world". They brought disease that almost wiped out the people they were meeting. So, the same might be when and If we find something out there. Then the reverse, if they come to us, not on purpose, but what disease might they bring us?

[@catherinesanchez1185]

OR they might be disease free , they step on our planet and one hour later drop dead. Kind of like the ending of The War of the Worlds. But, it's a good point. Different species from totally different planets would have evolved alongside different bacteria/viruses/microbial organisms. We might be welcoming, but the millions of tiny life forms we carry in/outside our bodies might not.

[@brianmoore581]

It could easily have been the reverse, too. The explorers themselves could have been wiped out by New World diseases. That might explain why nobody wants to talk to us. Our red light district is just too skanky for alien travelers to want to stop by.

[@skitzoemu1]

There is always the possibility that the timeframe when civilizations use radio waves to communicate is very short. There may be some way to communicate that we cannot see that is more efficient to communicate over great distances or for some other reason they abandon frequencies that we are able to listen on.

[@Michael75579]

There's also the possibility that the amount of energy from their transmissions that leaks into interstellar space decreases as their technology improves, so we'd only see them for a very brief time unless they were actively trying to communicate. The move from analogue to digital communication would also have an effect due to compression; if a digital signal is distinguishable from random noise then there's more compression to be had.

[@Mad-Bassist]

There is also the fact that we didn't start transmitting wirelessly until around 136 years ago with the invention of spark-gap transmitters. There are a fair number of stars within 136 light-years, but not the hundreds of billions that make up the rest of the galaxy.

[@adamwu4565]

This works to explain the absence of direct communications, but it doesn't solve the passive observation part of the Fermi Paradox. If the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics holds true and cannot be circumvented by some kind of magical supertechnology, then so long as an alien civilization uses energy, they will radiate infrared waste into the universe, equal in magnitude to their total energy usage. This is the kind of radiation that telescopes like the James Webb Telescope can pick up from a very long way away. Any alien civilization that has reached the K1 level would be as easy to detect using similar instruments as any natural planet, and any K2 aliens would be as easy to detect as any natural star. They wouldn't need to be attempting to directly communicate with us at all.

[@chessoc7799]

Even we send out much less radio than in the 1950s when we used high power transmitters for AM radio range. Now we have more low power transmitters and satellite signals. Plus if there are better ways than radio over long range you can bet that when it is discovered we will switch. So would any other race out there. radio searches would probably only find signals for that early radio period. Worth trying I did Seti at home for years but a matter of luck.

[@brad9189]

@@adamwu4565 I think the assumption that really advanced aliens will need or want to use all the energy of their star is based on them being composed of many billions or even trillions of sentient beings, who need vast resources to survive. It's possible most aliens civilizations may actually be composed of a small number of individuals who have found how to halt the aging process, and so never need to capture stellar sources of energy. It may even be most civilizations find a way to consolidate all the individual minds of their species into a single superconscious entity, which has no need or desire to expand or colonize other worlds for resources or living space, but employs interstellar travel only to explore the universe to satisfy its curiosity. Humans are a biological species, and we have a hard time envisioning entities who aren't compelled by biological imperatives--like reproducing to fill every habitable niche.

[@lebalsie362]

Thank you, you guys. You are incredible. I appreciate people who talk about what is fact.

[@brockunruh6283]

It is interesting to note the reported increase in UFO activity since atomic weapon detonation. Just sit back and scan solar systems/galaxies until their inhabitants prove their planet is capable of being stable enough to support the development of intelligent life, and, that it also has the required material to support nuclear fission.

[@WE-WUZZING-KANGS-N-SHEEOYT]

What if a galactic federation of sorts exists and they have a strict mandate to culturally conserve 0-1 kardashev scale civilisations until they are ready for galactic integration?

[@Shawsh2143]

Please don't mistake causation with correlation. Just because these things happened at the same time doesn't mean they are happening because one another. There has been a general increase in the understanding or even "hype" around space during that time, so people naturally looked for these things. And as soon as one person thinks he saw an UFO, plenty of other people will misinterpret whatever they see in the sky. Or say whatever they WANT to see/say. Simply the statistic of a "ufo sighting" alone has absolutely no merit at all, as long as 99-100% of those "sightings" have been weather balloons. And the rest were light phenomena. The fact that not a single UFO has actually been ET supports the fact that whatever causation you are attributing here is nonsensical. Now none of that invalidates the theory that more advanced civilizations might be waiting for other civilizations to develop nuclear fission before making contact but neither does any of this support the "increase in UFO activity"-theory as you claim it does. I'd be a little bit more careful when doing these thought experiments. You don't want to taint them by working in a basis that isn't rooted in reality.

[@Shawsh2143]

@@WE-WUZZING-KANGS-N-SHEEOYT Now that's a much more interesting theory than whatever the guy you replied to proposed.

[@mringasa1848]

This is one of the things that has always interested me about Mars. Did it once have an actual civilization, little green men or other, but they wiped themselves out through a global war or possibly a global climate crisis? Am truly hoping that we get an outpost of some sort on the Moon, and then on Mars, so that we can actually do solid investigation into our sister planet.

[@BananaRamaPartyTimeAllTheTime]

No zero evidence even making it a one in a million chance for them to say perhaps now bacteria in dried beds of water frozen or not maybe but I honestly don't get the hype at Mars Venus is our true sister and is way more interesting if anything something crazy is under those clouds

[@nopants4259]

No that didn't happen , you watch too many sci fi movies. There was water , an atmosphere , and primitive life cannot be ruled out , but no way was there technical civilisations. The gravity is weak and so the atmosphere was blown away etc. it's too small for a steady atmosphere like ours

[@MisterG2323]

Glad to see Simon continue to narrate up a storm. What a pro!

[@SuperCritical01]

I kept waiting for the “simulation” theory. Sadly, it wasn’t mentioned. I’ve always gravitated toward this school of thought. I was thrilled to find out I wasn’t alone.