Unsolved Space Mysteries

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[@Sideprojects]

Thanks to Keeps for sponsoring this video! Head to keeps.com/SIMON to get a special offer. Individual results may vary

[@KGTiberius]

🤓 Grammar pet peeve: @5:40 between vs among.

[@BarbaricAvatar]

I can't remember what video you did it on but you'll never top the "Now for the most ironic sponsorship on KZbin.." intro you gave them one day.

[@Eztoez]

He's got to be squirming in his seat having to promote products that are either utterly unsuitable to him or just plain garbage. He certainly looks both embarrassed and disingenuous.

[@MindBodySoulOk]

Fascinating eggskull

[@xessenceofinsanityx]

I just imagine that whoever writes the Keeps briefs for Simon just sits down and thinks "what can we get the bald dude to say this time?🤣"

[@kingnaga619]

Kudos to Keeps for consistently going to the baldest man they could find for the sponsorship.

[@oracleofdelphi4533]

I don't know how he pulls it off. While Simon says the phrase, he doesn't really take the angle "Don't be like this guy". Makes me wonder how well he could sell the "Slap Chop"

[@schiz0phren1c]

He"Keeps" his beard...Its so virile it looks fake., Simon probably turns his camera or head upside down when talking to keeps...

[@kryw10]

And shout out to Simon for supporting those who still have time. Hairless Hero.

[@BoblopZmuda]

Tbf the day Simon turns up with a full head of hair I'll buy the product

[@nickrog6759]

Simon was never talking about his head 😅

[@kevinb9830]

It's always nice to find an actual person narrating

[@PhoenixRebirthed]

So many AI channels these days

[@rbgtk]

@@PhoenixRebirthed Too many yap AI's for cheap video production and reaping ad money

[@vostyok6030]

A lot of them regurgitate content from other youtubers. they just copy the video and redub it. report them and yeet them off this platform

[@ignitionfrn2223]

0:55 - Mid roll ads 2:35 - Chapter 1 - What is dark matter 10:20 - Chapter 2 - What is the great attractor 13:30 - Chapter 3 - What was oumuamua 17:30 - Chapter 4 - Is humanity unique ?

[@nickrog6759]

20:30 - Chapter 5 - No, just me

[@stfu_mango_baboon]

Chapter 1 - Gravitational frame shifts. Chapter 2 - the center of gravity of the local cluster. Chapter 3 - Ejected asteroid from a distant system. Chapter 4 - no there are others at similar levels to humans everywhere

[@ecocodex4431]

10:16 Ah, yes. The Great Attrtactor

[@TheGozzeh]

😆

[@neverbob]

This made me wince as well

[@dmonvisigoth1651]

19:06 Almost as cool as the Fermi Praire Docs

[@johntoe6127]

Apparently it attracts great typos.

[@allanmanaged5285]

You got that to a T.

[@matthewmerchant2038]

For me personally, the Great Attractor is a notifiction that Simon has uploaded a new video to the Whistlerverse. I always gravitate to his channels. Almost naturally.

[@razzle1964]

His spelling, less so. 🤔✌️

[@hibaakaiko3888]

He IS the great attractor.

[@midwestweirdo666]

I wonder how many of his viewers are dedicated Fact Boi Fan Bois and how many are just casual viewers that don't even realize how deep the beard of knowledge goes.

[@cdyearsley]

​@@hibaakaiko3888allegedly..... in my opinion.....

[@samuelgarrod8327]

He's a talking head, a face. There is no Whistlerverse. Grow up.

[@williamhardes8081]

Niel Degrass Tyson summed up his take on the fermi paradox with one with one question. "if you were to take a cup of water from the ocean, and it contained no whales, should we instantly assume there are no whales?" sheer fact that there is a virtual horizon beyond which we know nothing about, only makes this more poignant.

[@christiannyblom5727]

Also, just because we can’t detect it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there… Or hasn’t been there in the past… Or won’t be there in the future.

[@svenzverg7321]

Professor Tyson have only so much time to popularize science, so maybe he doesn't want people to focus on something that unimportant. The real scale of Fermi paradox cannot be adequately describe in such analogy. Think about that this way, for example. The process of living matter originating from non-organics is not very well researched, because it happen, like 4 billion years ago. We have some ideas, how it could happen, but we probably will never know how exactly it did. What we don't know is any particular thing, that would make it difficult on Earth-like planet. You have an Earth-like planet (with water, atmosphere, and temperate climate in parts, basically) - give it a billion years or so and you should have life on it, or so it seems. Now, there are statistically about 8 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way. That seems like a lot, until you realize, that they actually pop up with a rate of about one every 5 years (just years here) or so, which mean that there were more of them in the past. Now, the universe is 14-something billion years old, and our galaxy is not much younger. Some people will point out, that first stars had no planet and they had to die before planet would appear. Yes, but first stars were supermassive and had different stuff in them, so their lifetime was literally dozens of millions of years. We, with all our limitation, already found planets, which age is more than 10 billion years (e.g. PSR B1620−26 b). So not only we should have a bunch of people around now (we might indeed be not able to detect them if we imagine that they are on the same technological level), but we should have absolute bunch of people with billions upon billions years head-start upon us. And we are only, like, 150 thousand years old. These guys should be flying around, spreading radiation with their fancy drives like nobody's business, and building Dyson spheres and whatnot everywhere. And where are these? We observe not a tiniest trace of them for dozens of thousands of light years around us for dozens of thousands of years back in time. 1 billion seconds is 32 years. Imagine, what several billion civilizations developing for several billion years should produce. And compare it to deafening silence we witness. That is why a lot of scientist find Fermi paradox disconcerting.

[@dusermiginte4647]

Yes, I remember this.. 😃

[@elusiveDEVIANT]

Don't listen to that man. He's no better than the homeless nutters.

[@ElanMorin]

also, Tyson is a rabid lunatic. just saying.

[@Bubbaist]

When people ask why we haven’t found life outside the Earth, I imagine pre-contact Easter Islanders wondering why they haven’t encountered life from beyond their island. When you consider the unfathomable enormity of the universe, it’s downright silly to think we can make conclusions about it based on the tiny speck of the universe we have been able to examine. It’s like those Easter Islanders concluding that there is no intelligent life beyond their island because they hadn’t found any in the entire area they had explored.

[@JeeVeeHaych]

Completely agree. I've heard a lot about both the 'rare earth' hypothesis, or the other theory that states the universe should be teeming with life. But given the absolutely insane scale of the universe we're talking about, both in time and space... I liken it to a giant warehouse, filled with a penny dropping every 5 minutes on every inch of space. Every penny turning up heads is no life, every one turning up tails is microbial life. And every penny landing on its side is a planet with intelligent life. Taking that into account, how infinitesimally small are the odds that two pennies would fall on their side in each others vicinity and at about the same time?

[@glenchapman3899]

And to add to the mix. The Easter Islanders were not disadvantaged by time. On a galactic scale, we have 13 billion years of a couple Easter Island races putzing around trying to find someone else to talk to

[@miloszkraszewski3533]

Pale Blue Dot photo from Voyager is a good show of what we really are. A spec.

[@kenamoe86]

Your presuppositions fail because you're using your perspective in place of an actual Easter Islander, when you close extrapolate from other Polynesians. Is it like Easter Islanders (direct comparison) or "as if" (hypothetical)? I'm from pedantic because it affects your subsequent points so I want to make sure I'm understanding your argument.

[@jackcarterog001]

Absolute Nonsense. Those that first colonized Easter Island knew there was human life outside the island and passed this knowledge down through generations.

[@toddparker1204]

Your humility to advertise for keeps was awesome

[@aneonfoxtribute]

I've always thought the idea that "life can only flourish in a similar type of planet to Earth" to be odd. For instance, this statement: "Most planets aren't in the habitable zone of their host star, and that many of the planet that do live in this safe distance aren't even rocky, but instead gaseous" This is a true problem, but only if we look at it from a human perspective. But humans have evolved specifically for life on the planet Earth. Life didn't form on Earth because it had the perfect conditions for life to form. It's the other way around. Life formed on Earth in such a way that it can survive on the planet. We breath oxygen BECAUSE Earth has plentiful oxygen to breath. Earth's gravity is perfect for us BECAUSE we formed and evolved with the force of Earth's gravity. There is zero reason to believe that if life formed on a different planet, those lifeforms wouldn't be adapted for life on their planet. Like, for instance, Jupiter. Jupiter is not inhabitable for humans because it's too far away from the sun and its atmosphere is mostly hydrogen. But any life that forms on Jupiter would have formed under those conditions, so they would have evolved to breath hydrogen and with the colder heat as their natural heat. There's no reason to believe that Jupiter is unsustainable for intelligent life just because it's unsustainable for HUMAN life.

[@JariDawnchild]

Much less Earth life. :) This needs more likes.

[@williamslater-vf5ym]

That's true. But it still doesn't necessarily mean that the universe is teeming with life. Luck is more important than environment when it comes to forming life.

[@geodkyt]

There are actual *chemical* reasons to suspect that "Earth adjacent" conditions are far, *far* more likely than any other. Chemically speaking, a liquid water, hydrogen/carbon/oxygen environment is the one that works the best for the necessary types of chemical reactions for basic processes necessary to equate "life". Other combinations of chemicals don't hit that nice sweet spot of "chemical bonds strong enough to stay consistent" and "chemical bonds reactive enough to allow metabolism of any sort". Even one of the best alternate substitutes for oxygen (chlorine) has quite a lot of short comings as a life sustaining oxidizer. Temperatures significantly outside the range of liquid water either becomes far less reactive (losing down chemical processes that would be necessary for any variation of life, or the additional heat makes for almost instant chemical bond breakdowns and the degradation of complex chemical compounds that can readily change bonds to allow metabolism. Substitute silicon for carbon (silicon being the best alternate for carbon)? Unfortunately, silicon has far fewer useful compounds that could form the backbone of life in the same way carbon does. Water is almost the perfect solvent for the kinds of chemical compounds that would be necessary for any metabolic processes. TL;DR - Science (specifically the atomic structure of the candidate elements and their resulting potential molecular bonds) is what says that life is almost certainly going to be found in "Earthlike" conditions (which, note, doesn't even remotely mean "conditions current life on Earth could survive" - it means a handful of key chemicals in reasonable abundance, within an astronomically narrow temperature range). It isn't that "Earth is uniquely perfect for life", but rather, "Earth falls within a broad range of chemically similar environments where life is far, far more likely to develop," and while it is "average" for a life bearing world, it is still unusual compared to the universe at large.

[@kaseyboles30]

The great filter theory is why discovering primitive life is scary. It moves the likely timeframe of a great filter forward and thus more likely to be in our future. If we find zero planets with life then odds are we got lucky and got past the great filter. If we start finding crude radio transmissions, especially from multiple sources, but nothing more advanced, well that would truly be scary.

[@unthawedwater747]

The biggest flaw with the Fermi paradox is the assumption that alien life would have our technology or better otherwise we're alone when radio is only about 150 years old and has only gotten good enough for long distance communication within the last 30 years or so. There's probably hundreds of thousands of stone-age-esk civilizations we just have to wait for.

[@maikmeier5032]

The idea is if there are hundreds of thousands, SOME of them should have our technological capacity, and we do not find a trace. Indeed some of the great filters suggest that intelligent life will always eradicate itself.

[@davidmurphy8364]

Harambe in 2016 “Listen kid I haven’t got much time, the great attractor is….”

[@ssokolow]

Re: MoND and Dark Matter, I highly recommend watching some of Angela Collier's videos. For example, she explains that dark matter isn't an explanation, it's a somewhat misleading name for a collection of OBSERVATIONS... and that we're still trying to pin down the explanation.

[@hugh.g.rection5906]

is she hot?

[@callabeth258]

Do i think there is extraterrestrial life out there somewhere? Yes. Do i think we will ever find them? No, at least not in our lifetimes and perhaps not ever.

[@arianamaria_]

The existential dread that the Fermi paradox gives me is crazy. There’s a famous quote that goes “we are either alone in the universe or we are not, both of which are equally terrifying” and that pretty much sums up the dread I feel when thinking about alien life.

[@LuckySSU]

Read "The three body problem" books to add to it even more lol It's called Space horror for a reason ;)

[@williamslater-vf5ym]

It really doesn't matter that much.

[@BillAnt]

Nothing to fear, if they come they come, if not then life goes on like it did for millions of years.

[@sid1gen]

The one I dread is "Lights Out," when the last star in this universe goes dark. If there are intelligent, technologically advanced beings out there by then (maybe our descendants, what we will become when we are no longer human), what will they try to do? How will they survive? Reignite the last star? Create an artificial one? Kill each other in a fit of despair, like the people in Asimov's story "Nightfall?" (different circumstances, yes, but "world ending" to say the least.) For something that is not expected to happen until, what, ten billion years in the future? it still gives me goosebumps.

[@sid1gen]

@@LuckySSU I may be in the minority, but the China-centric Three Body Problem was a big "nah" for me: hyped, poorly written (or perhaps poorly translated, IDK), with the appearance of depth but the reality of shallowness, I just cannot understand the fandom it has developed. To each their own, of course.

[@JBrd79]

(10:18) "WHAT IS THE GREAT ATTRTACTOR?" 😂🤣😂🤣😂 Lmao @ 'Attrtactor'. From now on, I'm going to pronounce the word 'attractor' as "attrtactor" (pronounced: atter-tack-ter) 😂

[@corey57255]

I’ve been watching too much decoding the unknown cuz it’s weird to hear Simon read more than one sentence without going off on some tangent…

[@pretzelgtr]

original tangent channel is allegedly Brain blaze

[@joerocker237]

@@pretzelgtr Alegendly...

[@aneasteregg8171]

Honestly I prefer the channels where he includes the tangents and his own thoughts, it's more fun. Just reading a script gets dry

[@cheekyb71]

​@@aneasteregg8171same, for the most part! CC and DTU win though, because podcasts I can listen to in the car... I wish Into the Shadows was podcasted too

[@pretzelgtr]

@@aneasteregg8171 I like both

[@ItsHyomoto]

I don't think the Fermi paradox and Copernican principle are so incompatible. To me it just says we have a low sample size, and that makes it hard to figure out what the common elements are.

[@infidelcastro5129]

10:18 Dude, did someone fall asleep at the keyboard? 😂

[@Zaluskowsky]

😂😂

[@richardfredericks4069]

Ever thought the gravitational pull might be the universal "sink drain" and we're swirling into it?

[@jackcarterog001]

No becayse that would go against all observable evidence.

[@verhuzz]

Change gravitational pull with dark energy and you might have a leg to stand on there

[@micahfoley9572]

where is it draining to, in your model?

[@cmecre8629]

@@micahfoley9572 the great attractor?

[@micahfoley9572]

@@cmecre8629 yeah yeah, that's the drain, but i'm more wondering about the pipe and where they think it goes. cuz you hear people talk about "outside" or" before" the universe, and setting aside that such a thing is essentially impossible as far as we know, it's always interesting to hear what people think that would entail.

[@DungeonDragon18]

Combine the rare earth theory with the possibility that faster than light travel is truly impossible, and it might be that there is life out there, but we’ll never find it.

[@facetubetwit1444]

Couple that with interstellar travel might also be impossible for us life forms due to some unknown reason we haven't discovered yet, Like artificial gravity might not be the key we think it is. Or we need some magic secret sauce that only inner star systems can provide to survive. Which leads to ask why haven't we seen machine tech life forms then yet? Or maybe faster then light communications is also impossible rendering any advanced civilizations to stay close together until absolutely necessary to move on.

[@johnbox271]

I think a better qustion is why haven't they found us? von Neumann probes

[@kingofflames738]

​​@@facetubetwit1444 if I didn't misunderstand how cables work, ftl communication is technically possible, but it would require a connected wire to whatever we're communicating with. Because when the electrons in a wire push on eachother all of them push on eachother at once, meaning the end of the wire moves at the same time as the start. The information essentially doesn't have to travel any distance. Wireless on the other hand would be limited by the speed of causality (light). Communicating with people on Mars would already be hit with long delays. We're talking about having to wait almost half an hour on the phone to get an answer because it takes fifteen minutes for your message to get to them and fifteen more to get back to you.

[@somethinglikethat2176]

​@@johnbox271 first born hypothesis? It could be there wasn't enough metal (in the astronomical sense) for life to exist. And we're just early to the party.

[@arianamaria_]

Ah yes another existential quandary to add to my list of Things I Am Displeased To Read About™

[@DKforever24]

I am just waiting for humanity to find a monolith either here on Earth, Luna, or Mars so we can figure out which timeline we're in. For those who don't know: in Dead Space, humanity finds a monolith while excavating the impact crater in Mexico, which helped humanity advance technologically. in Mass Effect, humanity finds the Prothean ruins on Mars, which helped humanity advance technologically. in 2001: ASO, humanity finds the monolith on Luna, causing humanity to build a ship capable of travelling to Europa to investigate the message they received from said monolith.

[@samgordon9756]

5:15 "This particle would interact with mass, and therefore gravity, but not with light. A behavior that we've yet to see elsewhere." I see what you did there writer

[@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070]

explain pls

[@verhuzz]

​@@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070photons (light particles) interact with everything else, that's how we "see". That's the joke. The only thing photons don't interact with is with other photons, but as they don't have any mass, the joke still stands.

[@Ssgt02]

Time for our brains to become ever more wrinkly

[@y0sarian]

*gray matter jiggling intensifies*

[@TheKalaxis]

With our host Simon "Brain wrinkler" Whistler

[@joerocker237]

I have gained another wrinkle...

[@davescott7680]

... My brain must be full, they're forming on my face instead.

[@Smkpt42]

Psh speak for yourself, my brain is smooth af. 😎

[@justinanderson267]

0:18 It's been a long road, Getting from there to here.

[@GuntherRommel]

It's been a long road. But my time is finally here.

[@MORE_BEANS_PLZ]

Stroking it while watching this video and reading this comment

[@stereo-soulsoundsystem5070]

@@MORE_BEANS_PLZ horny jail. You're going to horny jail

[@andrewmcminn6192]

Worst theme song ever.

[@lukecreamer8426]

The assumption that large-scale cosmological structures are affected entirely by gravity and have net-zero charge is not necessarily valid, and we really have very little way of testing it at great distances. Electromagnetism is so strong compared to gravity, that even a slight net charge in the solar wind compared to stars/planets could lead solar systems to bond with each other like atoms, or at least experience Van Der Waals style attractions.

[@sadderwhiskeymann]

Not the latest space news but a collection of the most interesting! Perfect production as always! I ❤ it!

[@aaronmorgan9444]

Whenever i hear about the Great Attractor i always feel like its the start of a 'your mum' joke?

[@MisterCuddlez]

The marketing team at Keeps must be high out of their minds if they think that a completely bald guy is going to help sell their hair loss prevention snake oil.

[@arisaga822]

Oh, gee, my model of things doesn’t work, let me just make something up so that it does. I’ll remember that next time they tell me the Earth is going to catch on fire and explode whilst simultaneously not being able to tell me if two weeks from now the weather will be nice.

[@canuckinsk]

I think gravity scales in a way we don't understand yet. More likely than invisible matter.

[@markferguson5924]

MOND theories modify the strength of gravity at different accelerations - but they can't move the center of mass to make gravity's arrow point in other directions away from the visible matter, as the Bullet Cluster suggests.

[@louneissen1603]

Galaxies pulled towards a point in the universe. I feel a "Your momma" joke coming up.

[@sid1gen]

Great video, as usual. One observation: "Unique" is unique. There is no "more unique" or "less unique," than this or that. There is only "unique" by itself: it either is or it isn't. Unique is and absolute. And, of course, among trillions and trillions of galaxies, each of them containing from tens of billions to hundreds of billions of stars, chances for a few worlds pretty much like ours are not low, but shoot up into the millions, at the very least. The Milky Way alone contains more than 100 billion stars. We may be a Black Swan in our little pond in our vast Milky Way island, but with 100 million ponds to check in this island chances are there will be more black swans out there. Unique? Hardly.

[@awgates85]

I loved the slow pan to the alien in the corner 😂

[@bohdaicitta]

i like all your vids, but the last and 2nd to last chapters of this one were a fantastic 1 - 2 punch. really got me thinking, i appreciate it. hope you're having a great day.

[@allenellisdewitt]

It still feels like it's more likely that we just don't understand all of the math than there being some magical material that we can't see... :P

[@VoodooTrashPanda]

20:46 We also have Theia to thank for doubling up our iron core. We’re one planet, with two cores worth of iron. Without the impact of Theia and Pre-Theia Earth, we wouldn’t have as strong of a magnetic sphere. We are also the densest planet in the solar system.

[@andiyonotandang656]

Unsolved Space Mysteries: A bald man promoting a shampoo.

[@robertYTB78g]

Unlike some other KZbin channels I can actually understand Simon, so clear and concise, rather like SciShow. I also don’t think he’s nuts :)

[@priscianuscaesariensis7520]

"[...] this particle would interact with mass and therefore gravity but not with light, a behavior that we've yet to see elsewhere." Neutrinos only interact with gravity and the weak force, not with electromagnetism (photons, i.e. light) or the strong force.

[@alchristie5112]

Even if life is commonplace, civilisations can come and go over unfathomably long timescales. Each simply missing each other by a million years or so, passing each other between ticks of the clock. Couple that with looking from our little spec to find signs of technology that we can comprehend…

[@3RAN7ON]

I imagine if we ever make contact with more intelligent life than us and we try to explain our theories of dark matter to them, they will laugh their alien asses off at us 😅

[@TheBlackDeck]

The only reason we even have hair on our heads and faces is to protect us from impact blows. Most of us dont get hit in the head very often, hair is over rated.

[@DisAddict]

The Great Attractor is no longer considered a mystery. It is essentially the gravitational center of a massive supercluster known as the Laniakea Supercluster.

[@boboy1000]

I think having the diversity of life and environments we do was the crucial element for our level of intelligence, especially life above ground and not underwater. It required life to be prepared for many more things that other environments don't require.

[@codyfeisel6970]

The beard length difference between the video and the advert is crazy 🤣

[@metzli5797]

Omuamua isn't unsolved. It is time to send your writers back to the torture basement again for the lazy research.

[@DashhunterLP]

So instead of being an arrogant prick you could present us with the alleged solution?

[@ericthompson3982]

We're still in the infancy of our ability to develop detection technologies. It's reasonable to say there's a whole lot we just aren't able to see yet.

[@mitchellseibel2859]

This was really good episode thank you. That’s giving me a lot of food for thought!

[@mikebarnes9469]

Regarding discussion at ~5:00, if the center of spiral galaxies are massive black holes, or a singular massive black hole, would not the time distortions make the inner galaxy appear to move or rotate more slowly than the outer?

[@DarkZodiacZZ]

The Great Attractor is truly powerful since it managed to pull all Simon's hair.

[@martinfitzsimons5884]

Fantastic episode! Thank you so much to Simon et al for putting together this deep dive into some really interesting science!!! ❤

[@NITROexpress17]

***shows New York*** “about the size of a skyscraper” We all know what you meant there Simon 😂

[@EShirako]

I still hold that the "Theia Impact" is the core of what Earth is, which is the core of why any life exists on Earth. Theia was a Mars-sized planet that hit the Earth, 'splashing' a portion of the crust/mantle into the sky to make the sun, likely fracturing the rest of the crust from the impact even where it wasn't literally re-melted, and quite crucially A) Adding Mars' hot inner core' to our own, thus giving our world more energy in its heart than usual because a good portion of the lighter mantle material was thrown into space to make the moon at the same time, changing our "Core to Mantle" ratio and also upsetting the calm, even-overall cooling of our crust. The core stirred, the mantle stirred, so instead of having 'fractional distillation of the earth's various minerals', it all gooshed in strange and exciting ways, had a HUGE hole to well up in and lots of cracks to push open...and thus our plate tectonics were born. If not born, at least 'the stage was set for it to happen later'. Rising and sinking magma from the blasted-open mantle would settle into flow-patterns, making 'magmatic-ocean-currents' inside the Earth, and even when it closed over again from the crust cooling, that changed nothing, our 'mantle-ocean' had currents, lumps and unevenness, stirring and smooshing and convection, and the flows continued, eventually settling into the 'dynamo of the earth's magnetic field' and skimming the continents around atop their 'stone-ocean' like boats of inconceivable size. Life arose where either 'white or black-smoker' magmatic/hydrothermal/mineral-based upwellings concentrated crucial minerals and energy for seeding the pre-biotic soup with 'more exciting things to do'. So maybe life requires a planetary impact that doesn't destroy the world, and maybe it even needs a 'Theia-Boost core' to let the core keep the mantle 'doing exciting things'. So basically, I think a "Theia-plus-core-dump" needs to happen in the right 'partly-cooled era' of a planet to set off plate tectonics, which is why Venus doesn't have any continents despite being otherwise very akin to the Earth in size and composition, and yet while it has a few AMAZING volcanoes, no continents that we can detect so far.

[@MumRah]

Q. How was the universe created? A. Nothing went bang and viola. Here is everything. Q. What's the Great Attractor? A. IDK. Can't see it. The Galaxy is in the way. 😂

[@spaceageGecko]

Thats not a good comparison at all.

[@pbjandahighfive]

About the partial argument against MOND being that "they constantly have to tweak it to account for issues": Okay, but they also do literally the exact same thing with "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy" as well for that matter. None of them are perfect predictors and all of them have major issues. I mean, there are even serious flaws found with the "expanding accelerating universe" narrative as well that established most physicists refuse to even acknowledge instead also opting for continual "tweaks" and when that doesn't work instead resort to coveniently brushing those issues under the rug while declaring those who point them out as "pseudoscientists" regardless what their actual credentials might be.

[@glenchapman3899]

Well so far no one has come up with a better theory. When they do, there will another paradigm shift will occur and all the pseudoscientists will go after that. Electric Universe or even the Steady State theory. Tell me how they are holding up?

[@shodan6401]

1. Dark Matter: Mainstream scientists and astrophysicists refuse to acknowledge that every object in space is embedded in a Cosmic Network of ionized particles, and these particle streams are themselves rotating (plasma does this in the lab as well). And this additional force contributes to galactic rotation. That's why they get it wrong. 3. The Great Attractor: This may be the result of the alien - above the giant toilet bowl that we're in - hitting the "flush" lever. Hang on, we're in for a ride!

[@thalastianjorus]

Concerning Dark Matter - our galaxy, and most others, are contained within megastructures. Dyson swarms of absolute enormity.

[@multiyapples]

I want these mysteries to be solved ASAP.

[@Jayjay-qe6um]

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." -- Wernher von Braun

[@shoeonhead]

We know what the great attractor is Simon. It’s a supercluster of galaxies just moving in that general direction. There nothing special about it, and it’s not unsolved. The Shapley supercluster is located beyond the supposed great attractor and in fact, attracts the attractors space region itself. Which is in turn attracted to the Laneakea clusters central gravitational region. All superclusters will eventually fall apart though due to Hubble flow, so it’s not like we don’t know what’s going to happen to it.

[@aaronsouthard8366]

The MONDS theories have already been dismantled in a pair of studies released last month. Anton Petrov covered it

[@timbo5053]

How Simon keeps coming up with new material is a mystery...

[@theonecalleddoc]

Heard a weird skip in Simon’s voice while saying “mass” now I’m convinced Simon is AI.

[@theonecalleddoc]

His love of chatGPT makes a lot more sense now…

[@Strydr8105]

The real problem with figuring out how the universe works is... the ultra micro particles of the universe are so small that there is no way to study or even see what is going on in this unknowable aspect of the universe. Until we solve this problem we can only speculate and that my friends is the issue!

[@andrewshandle]

The biggest issue I have with Ch 1 is rather than just saying "at galactic scale we don't really understand how gravity works" they made up the term Dark Matter and treated its existence as a matter of fact, not a speculative cause of an observed result. Kind of anti-science when you think about it.

[@Skanking-Corpse]

My answer to the Fermi Paradox is the First Born Hypothesis. The thought here is that humanity is among the first if not the first intelligent life to emerge at least in this galaxy. If you really think about it our universe isn't that old, it's somewhere around 12 billion years old, maybe slightly older depending on various estimates. Now our planet is 4.5 billion years old so it's about a third of the universes age, and even to get to the point to where a large amount of gas needed to collect to form the solar system in the first place would have taken billions of years. And then you have to think about how long it took for all the elements to be created in the amounts to form our planet and you quickly could end up with billions of years of time necessary to even get this point. Because of that life may genuinely not be common yet, but in the distant future it could be more common. You also just have to consider the shear distances involved in the universe. Let's say there was an intelligent civilization 1000 light years away, how would we ever know? We would be looking a thousand years in the past and unless that civilization was significantly older than us it would just be another planet. And this works the other way also, how would any civilization a 1000 light years away know there was intelligent life here when they would be seeing us a thousand years ago? We were a primitive civilization then with no advanced technology, there's no way you could tell.

[@sjaguartype]

Just to add to Simon’s doom and gloom for today, taking our own history for example, what happens when a technologically advanced society encounters a less advanced society??? Now imagine that on a planetary scale!!

[@Encephalitisify]

I am the great attractor. Watch me as I do the squats. Cha cha cha *runs fingers through his hair*

[@honodle7219]

We are here, so the universe can support life. To posit that life only arose once, here on Earth, seems unlikely. What IS likely is that we will never know, one way or another.

[@scottaroondog1502]

Space is much like a fluid, people fail to realise that. If you were born underwater, you'd never know you were in a fluid. Just because it can't actively collected like water, doesnt mean it doesnt share many of the same properties

[@dwaynejordan5898]

Does outter space have a drag on travelling matter?

[@Nik531]

Consciousness is the key. There is a super consciousness that is in control. Us humans need to respond and understand the power of super consciousness. It is the supreme

[@Jesse-cw5pv]

Wtf does that mean? It's very vague. What about consciousness is the key to which mystery?

[@Nik531]

@@Jesse-cw5pv Maybe where local planetary conditions are favourable biology and ultimately consciousness generally does arise. If it happened here, why not elsewhere in this immense universe? However, i think we should leave the door open to the possibility that consciousness might also arise in non-biological substrates. The full extent of Existence is likely way beyond our current understanding.

[@Nik531]

Quantum Physics of Consciousness

[@alisonhill3941]

The question of "how unique we are" primarily serves to ignore the meaning of the word "unique"...

[@stormycatmink]

Indeed, the entire foundation of the concept of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' were that the simulations we made did not match what we observed in the real world. The math had a gap.. as if there were missing mass. However, humans being human, egos sort of took the wheel and named it 'dark matter' as a catchy term that didn't imply that physicists didn't have the complete understanding of the universe. The problem is, that this has focused so much energy, perception and even new students into this concept that there must be some physical thing that we haven't discovered, and very little effort on 'Where does our understanding go wrong?', when that is indeed, what started the whole topic. As an engineering student in a school with a strong physics group, it was very frustrating to talk amongst the physics department about how things worked, because it was all about 'oh this is too complex' when it was more like they didn't know either. So much focus about finding new particles and the like, that no one wanted to focus on sorting out where the math went wrong. That's why MOND isn't popular... it starts with the assumption that the physics world isn't perfect, and digs into our flaws. Granted, it very well could be a combination of gaps in the math and new particles or phenomenon we've not yet discovered. But the problem is mostly one of the culture of science these days and the lack of interest and funds to scrutinize what we base our foundations on. Maybe it's just that I've spent my whole career in safety-critical work, where mistakes cost lives, and being skeptical is a way of life. But hopefully some of these new discoveries by JWST showing that no, a singularity is not infinitely small, will get more people back into looking at the less sexy work of checking our assumptions.

[@PneutaticDragonStudiosLLC]

Here's a hypothesis... what if Dark Matter is actually the universe itself or as big as our observable universe and that's why we can't detect it?

[@artdonovandesign]

Hello, Simon, Best Wishes from NY. As much as I am a fan of your great, informative and very entertaining science episodes, they also serve an important "off-label" benefit: Your genteel and fine narration feel like visiting with an old and trusted friend. Thanks for all of the wonderful work you do! Art Donovan Southampton

[@nicwestra2088]

The great attractor is the singularity at the center of the black hole that our universe is inside of.

[@dONALDBLOOD]

Humanity might be special, just not special in the way common people think.

[@yt.personal.identification]

The Great Atteactor is the first civilisation of the universe. Instead of travelling across space they worked out how to bring all of local space towards them. Resources delivered. Type 7 Civilisation

[@hydrashade1851]

if there is life out there, its likely not technologically advanced enough or has such different mechanics we cant detect them and they cant detect us, or they're just far away. like the other side of the galaxy, or hell probably a different galaxy.

[@crazedvole]

Life on Earth may be the opposite of a disaster. A lot of things had to go wrong for the Titanic to sink. Wind on the water, no hit. Moon is out that night, no hit. Ship going slower, no hit. Alot of things had to go right for life to form on Earth. Right kind of star, right distance, right rotation, large moon, large planet. One of those is gone and we never make it this far.

[@djdrack4681]

There are somewhat 'fine lines' between Rare Earth Hypothesis and the Anthropic Principle...Depending on what variant of Drake Equation is used (To account for var. Great Filters + 'lesser' filters), It can result in 1 habitable planet per galactic supercluster or less. Depending on all this: it does cause one to have to start thinking about Anthropic Principle, and debate the merits of it.

[@hamiltoncouple01]

What if we are the first Aliens in our galaxy? There’s a possibility that in the next few thousand years, we will become so advanced, that due to necessity, we will have to venture out into the rest of the galaxy and populate terrestrial worlds. In time, these humanoids will evolve to live in their new environment(s), and our race will be alien to them, as they will be to us. The universe will last for many trillions of years, so we have still plenty of time, maybe.

[@Wix_Mitwirth]

Tribblons: particles emitted by interactions and non-interactions of real particles. All particles emit tribblons, including tribblons, because

[@zufalllx]

If something doesn't make sense, just make up something until it does make sense Even though you can't explain the thing you just made up

[@grumpyoldfart3891]

Th Keeps promo you put at th start of this video was brilliant, funny, and very well done. Kudos.

[@moohooman]

I have always thought the universe would make a lot more sense if it wasn't for us existing.

[@mrhassell]

The reason why we perceive that space is expanding? No. Just the reason why the milky way galaxy, is moving so fast. Dark matter? Inability to correctly detect gravity exerted by Sagitarius A*.

[@MH-fb5kr]

i always thought the great attractor was a “come hither” smile

[@gregorymeyer1798]

SIMON!!! Please please please read this... Unique means one of a kind, something can't be "very unique" and there aren't any degrees of uniqueness, I know this may seem like nitpicking but way too many people and too many KZbinrs say "very unique", ugh 😩

[@davidkelly132]

it's the same with "the best" and "the very best" in the end nobody gives a fuck

[@ai-dubb1355]

I hate it when people say "preventative" instead of "preventive". But, in the end, nobody gives a fuck.

[@matthewfarrell1763]

Look, it's a doggie dog world. You've just gotta grin and bear it, when people, make these kinds of misunderestimations about the Iq of they're audience and dumb things down to much. Irregardless, you and me are doing good to notice these small flaws.

[@gregorymeyer1798]

@@matthewfarrell1763 lol, that's one of the most well crafted comments I've ever read. Thanks for that. Made my day 😀

[@gregorymeyer1798]

@@ai-dubb1355 I know, I really do, but I literally heard 3 people say that in one day. Imma let it go.

[@geodkyt]

The other thing the Thea collision forming the Moon did was it is the *reason* for our plate tectonics, becayse we are basically missing a huge chunk of our crust - it is orbiting our planet in the form of most of the Moon. Likewise, the inpact also "donated" Thea's iron core to add to our own, and the effects of the Moon's gravitational pull, the plate tectonics, and an iron core much larger than average result in both a far stronger magnetic field around Earth that protects both life (from excessive radiation) and preserves our atmosphere from being blasted away by solar wind (as happened with Mars). Add in the outgassing from plate tectonics to replenish the slow loss of.atmosphere we experience even with a strong magnetic field, and you get billioms of years of development time for life. Then there is the shielding effect of the Moon. It isnt perfect, but there is a *reason* there are so many large meteor impact sites on the far side of the Moon - they hit *it* ratger than even more frequent major Earth impactors as we have sustained (and which are associated with several mass extinction events). These features all argue for a Rare Earth solution... although, a rare *rate* of occurances, in a sufficiently large sample size, still meams quite a few likely occurances.

[@ruspj]

laniakea is not converging on the great attractor aka dark flow. laniakea is the great attractor. the milky way is part of the local group which is part of the virgo supercluster. and the mystery was what the virgo supercluster was being attracted to. this mystery was solved when astronomers mannaged to see through the milky way (zone of avoidance) with radio telecopes and descover that the great attractor was an imense supercluster that the virgo supercluster was part of and named it laniakea.

[@chrisyoung9653]

I really enjoyed this video.

[@iancowan3527]

They don't have anything near an accurate calculation of the universe's matter mass!

[@glenchapman3899]

How can we measure it or even guess when we are only able to detect about 5% of the thing

[@iancowan3527]

@@glenchapman3899 Thank you! That supports exactly what I'm saying! When Sirius still doesn't make sense and they had the sizes backwards until just recently!

[@johntoe6127]

Simon didn't go bald... his hair just slid down.

[@MKahn84]

I derived the Rare Earth idea myself about 20 years ago, but I'm just a computer scientist so no one listens.

[@Jash0192]

There is without a doubt beings far more intelligent that humankind can ever imagine. It's a matter of time on how they realise how they can use this.

[@drbuckley1]

Time is another complicating factor. How long do advanced civilizations last? Maybe there was one close by spatially but far distant chronologically.

[@robertkerr4199]

The spiral arms spin faster than they should for the same reason galaxies move apart faster than they should. Space expands as the distance between massive bodies increases. The center of the galaxy is more massive than the spiral arm and there's tens of thousands of light-years in between. So the spiral arms move faster because space is literally bigger. I thought that was obvious...