The Fermi Paradox Has An Incredibly Simple Solution

[@brianarbenz1329]

Imagine finding out that Fermi was only commenting on the slow service by the wait staff when he asked, “Where is everybody?”

[@ricardojmestre]

😂

[@MACHOO179]

😅😅

[@ljg6979]

The lesser known but more commonly felt, "Dining Services Paradox".

[@timsmith2525]

I truly simple-and elegant-solution. Kudos.

[@protorhinocerator142]

That's OK. Heisenberg still couldn't decide what to order anyway. He was so uncertain he ended trying to turn that into his life principle. True story, probably.

[@LuciFeric137]

The universe is likely many orders of magnitude larger than we can see. What we've done so far is like looking for fish in a teaspoon of seawater.

[@augustgurtisen]

Yeah, with binoculars from miles away

[@Dianasaurthemelonlord7777]

That is due to the expansion of Spacetime shifting light from unimaginably distant objects into... unintelligible garbage, or to the point it's nearly impossible to detect.

[@youngimperialistmkii]

Like being an ant. Standing on a leaf. Perched atop a tidal wave.

[@brothermine2292]

​@@Dianasaurthemelonlord7777 : No, the expansion of spacetime is insignificant within a galaxy.

[@MikeKayK]

Perhaps. And? Is there a point you were trying to make?

[@MrCovi2955]

I heard a really interesting solution to the fermi paradox from a biologist. She was citing a recent paper where we found that phosphorus is not as common in the galaxy as we initially thought. In fact we have somewhat of a lottery winner here on earth with drastically high amounts as compared to other star systems. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in the storing and transferal of biological energy all the way down to the level of binding DNA together. She said that the paper she had read stated that phosphorus is one of those heavier elements that are formed in supernovae instead of just from fusion and so it is possible that, despite the age of the universe, there has not been enough time necessary to create enough phosphorus for other life to arise. And just like how we're "lucky" to be on the planet that has essential liquid water, we could simply be "lucky" to be in the corner of the universe, in the corner of the galaxy, which has just high enough concentrations for life to have formed here. If that were the case, then we are the precursors who will likely die out as a species long before enough phosphorus is created to support the types of galactic communities we dream of. It may very well be that eons from now, as the universe begins to evolve space faring civilizations, that our ruins are discovered scattered across the stars, and they translate our records of how alone we feel.

[@harryc5595]

dude...

[@nokta7373]

So we are actually the Ancients... I knew I was born too soon.

[@empyrean196]

Possibly. But I more support the theory which states exactly opposite. We’re relatively young civilization. Other intelligent species are likely far ahead of us. Or the sheer vastness/immensity of outer space is too great for any intelligent species to communicate effectively with another.

[@molrat]

@@Dionysos640 i think about that a lot too. I don't necessarily believe it to be true, but i think most ppl are way too quick in the assumption of "the universe is so vast there HAS to be other life out there". We don't even rly know how the very first life formed, what if it's an unimaginably small chance, and the reason we got so "lucky", is easily explained by the weak anthropic principle?

[@SofaKingShit]

I've had basically the same idea but not with the same level of knowledge or detail.

[@gcl2783]

"Are we alone in the Universe?" "Yes." "You mean there's no aliens out there?" "No. I mean they're alone too."

[@askani21]

"Sniff" **Cries in cosmic loneliness** Meanwhile, in the Dark Forest: "Mouhahaha" **Laughs in cosmic genocide**

[@pak-man7429]

This reminds me of a joke I heard once. Some aliens are passing Earth and do a quick scan. One says, " This species has satellite base weapons." So the other alien ask, " So they are an intelligent species?" The first alien replies with " No, they have them aimed at each other." It a little dark.

[@drmarine1771]

Lol. It's like, why are all our telescopes pointing away from earth looking for intelligent life. Cos there's none here.

[@thewholeeventhorizon]

Yeah. Problem is if there is life out there they very likely got started much like us and were considered unintelligent in the beginning as well. We're not unintelligent we're just still very young and immature.

[@Kunsoo1024]

@@thewholeeventhorizon But it's also possible that planets exist with such an abundance of raw materials for proteins that it didn't require competition between entities, and yet something else spurred on the evolution that they don't even conceive as to why one organism would prey on another. We might be the stuff of nightmares to them.

[@Lurzhanrus]

@Kunsoo1024 That would inevitably lead to explosive growth of population till there is not enough resources to support population. So, the only way for life on such a planet to survive without violence - to regulate its population, which is done either by violence, or by law restricting reproduction. All of this applies that this life on other planet has reproduction at all. There just couldn't be a planet with unlimited resources. And limited resources lead to limited population. The only way I can see is some kind of genius species, that develops new technologies faster than resources demand grows. So, they leave the planet before demand for resources becomes unsustainable.

[@campbelltown3065]

😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@KeithMoon1980]

I've probably watched hundreds of videos on the Fermi Paradox, and it's so great to see something actually added to the conversation. Someone with something new to say, instead of just essentially reading out the Wikipedia page. Thank you!

[@darksu6947]

You've been dead for quite a while haven't you? How have you managed to keep watching videos in the afterlife?

[@MM-cz8zt]

Yes. Hear here! Your team does such wonderful work. Your channel is one of my favorite channels. Thank you to the entire Cool Worlds Team such thorough and clear explanations. You are truly bringing science to the people. :)

[@KeithMoon1980]

@@darksu6947 There isn't a lot to do here in the afterlife. So I mostly just watch KZbin videos.

[@Hannah-nf1vg]

Yea it didn't bring anything to the table, they're already here and don't even use radio for communication on their own planet why would they be emitting it

[@sleadaddy]

Worth looking at Isaac Arthur's videos on the topic. Far beyond just a listing of facts to be found there!

[@kylesadirtbag5937]

This is waaay too interesting to view at 3am and expect to go to sleep… I blame you for my insomnia

[@MarinCipollina]

Sounds like you need a Sleepcore video

[@ItsaRomethingeveryday]

Sarcasm? 😂

[@MarinCipollina]

@@ItsaRomethingeveryday Not at all 🙂

[@ItsaRomethingeveryday]

@@MarinCipollina help me to understand

[@MarinCipollina]

Sleepcore videos feature old retro-futurism like IBM videos, TV company videos, car company videos talking about what they have coming in the future from a 1950s/1960s perspective.. weird, and a bit creepy today, but they'll put you to sleep.. just do a KZbin search.. For instance, in one video, IBM talks about.. putting a computer on an airplane !! (It's a much bigger challenge than simply carrying your MacBook on board..) 😆Great stuff..

[@joshuahodgson3655]

Found your channel during my drive home from work. Quite the happy discovery for me. Please keep the content coming. I have much catching up to do. Thank you for your efforts.

[@LUKE-mh8gg]

Shouldn’t be using your phone whilst driving it’s dangerous

[@wilson0213]

I've always contributed it to the fact that the universe is so unfathomably large that the distance between life forms is just beyond comprehension

[@randomdaveUK]

and constantly getting further apart

[@formalities4983]

Let's colonize the galaxy first. Then worry about the universe.

[@formalities4983]

At the rate we are going, we could, and probably will, colonize the galaxy sometime within the next million years. That is without faster than light travel. It took us about 4 billion years to become sentient. The oldest star in the galaxy is about 13 billion years old. There are an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars in the galaxy. Quite a few of them had a head start on us. Apparently, NONE of them developed a civilization that spread throughout the galaxy. THAT is the FERMI paradox. It is not about why we haven't found life. It is about why we aren't neck deep in extraterrestrial life. If 1 in every 100 million stars had developed an advanced civilization, there would be about 2,000 of them in our galaxy. Intelligent life may be that rare. It also may be that there is a reason it didn't spread throughout the galaxy. We just don't know.😊

[@lorenrealname1326]

The moon is weird, just saying, I'm some nutbar who says things like, the Fermi Paradox was "mostly solved" by testimonies like Asimov on Astronomy (1974), or that "the Moon may have implications for that one chunk of the Drake Equation." I'm not opposed to Boltzmann Brains forming in the cores of stars but it seems uncommon. Leaving a star system is daring, but leaving galaxies seems to have vastly decreased returns. You only have to go so far to get out of a family dinner. Perhaps aliens are holed up in holographic storage awaiting a chance to fix the next universe at the get-go -- I wouldn't be surprised if this is NOT the case -- but yeah... distance and time-slash-rare circumstances looks like the deal to me.

[@vinlondon8904]

People always bring the vastness of the universe for the non findings. We can't even get a signal in our own galaxy. What's the universe got to do with it?

[@chemprofdave]

It’s quite possible that spacefaring civilization is rare because it requires a balance of ambition, discretion, and foresight which is difficult to achieve. Civilizations that have a strong tendency to explore and colonize may also be more prone to internal conflict that disrupts their progress. On the other hand, civilizations that are peaceful, stable, and happy might not care to go exploring. Finally, the resources required would need planning and development over long periods of time, whereas short-horizon use of the same resources would be a constant temptation.

[@camilohiche4475]

And also I bet all the billion alien civilizations out there waste their resources and time on toxic useless social media, tiktoks, twitters, instagrams and whatnot.

[@tufflucal4037]

​@@camilohiche4475PRIMITIVE. PRIMITIVE. PRIMITIVE. Undoubtedly preposterous barbarious PRIMITIVE theory. You will never expand knowledge wise as a race, if you think small. Wake up. You are not told truthfully of actual space or Astronomy generally speaking. The Extraterrestrials that you may have been looking for are everywhere and yes, they know Earth as well, interstellar speaking at least. Peace ✌️

[@FarmingUnclear]

@@camilohiche4475 pleasure worlds

[@Farazormal1]

Also if a planet is any larger than earth than rockets become increasingly infeasible for getting into space. At 50% larger than earth (with the same density) rockets could not get you to earth’s orbit.

[@FarmingUnclear]

@@Farazormal1 I still haven't left your mom's orbit

[@kayliibensen387]

Anyone who takes the time to focus on and present nuance on a subject like this is amazing. Thank you for your amazing dedication and work Dr. Kipping. This channel is what I imagined future science documentaries to be when I was a child, before the dark times destroyed television.

[@MrJdsenior]

I don't know how to break this to you, but television was never NOT crap, in terms of teaching anyone anything. It is for entertainment and making money, and virtually nothing else. If it ever gets to the point where science programs on YT aren't entertaining, they will stop, no question about it. They will also stop, meaning die a painful death, when some other medium becomes available that makes it about as interesting as hearing stories around a campfire, unceasingly, for your entire life.

[@ejkr2051]

But you forget Game of Thrones! That's an awesome tv series.

[@Tom_Bee_]

​@@MrJdseniorI'd take a decent campfire over the dumpster fire of social media culture any day

[@squarerootof2]

@@MrJdsenior Lol, I don't know how to break this to you but if you think television, (or social media), is purely for entertainment or money you probably live in a virtual reality, a fantasy world.

[@halfsourlizard9319]

If you feel the need to be needlessly formal, you'd address him as 'Prof. Kipping', which is his more-prestigious / higher-precedence title.

[@JeremyHickson]

Even if lightspeed was possible it is too slow to explore the universe. At the speed of light it would take 4 years just to reach the closest solar system.

[@peterkolesar4020]

But that doesnt matter. Even without the speed of light galactic or even inter-galactic travel and colonization might be possible. Sure one will not see it in his own lifetime but an entire species can. Imagine we would terraform and colonize Mars. We would buy ourselves time in case Earth would not be sufficient for whatever reason. Then we can move on from there. Not in a year, not in 4 or even 40 years. But if we just keep surviving and evolving, advancing, then in lets say 100 000 years we might become a galactic civilization that might as well be everlasting since it would be present on so many planets and solar systems that even a solar system wide catastrophe wouldnt be a danger for the species survival. Its completely possible that a space faring species are not as super advanced as we commonly think they are. Its possible that they are a few decades or centuries ahead of us but are tens of thousands or even milions of years older than we are but they took the long route to become the civilization they are...

[@binkwillans5138]

I think Peter (below) (or above) is right, if slightly poetic. It WILL happen. Just not in our lifetime. Meantime, let's just enjoy a few episodes of TOS.

[@richeese2705]

not with time dilation. though you are correct, light speed is just too slow

[@jeffoberleguitar]

i dint think any actual contact will ever be made. other than maybe spotting evidence with telescopes ect. civilizations just dont last long enough. the distances are just too far. even if one could travel at the speed of light or faster.....which nobody can lol .... also - the universe is 14 billion years old....earth has only been here for 4 billion years..... there must have been other life supporting planets elsewhere before earth with more time to evolve.... and raise taxes lol... but we dont ever here from anything. the distances are just too far i think 🤔🤷🏻

[@TheFluffyDuck]

Great video! I’m an astrobiologist, published and all. My opinion for what it’s worth is simply distance, time and the inverse square law. We have only had a bubble of radio waves going for 80 years, with the furthest chance for a reply arriving tomorrow being only 40 light years away, in a galaxy a 105,000 light years across. That’s only 0.03% of the galaxies diameter. The chances a technological civilisation is within that is minuscule. Secondly is the inverse square law. The change any of our TV shows would “leak out”, and be detectable even by the largest telescope isn’t realistic. The signal would have attenuated well before a few light years. Of which there is only half a douzen stars at most in that sphere. Once again the chance a civilisation is in one of those few star systems out of hundreds of billions is low. The answer to the paradox is space is really really big, and artificial radio sources are puny.

[@markhammond7060]

Alcoholics anonymous is probably a more palpable option..

[@dicerson9976]

Yeah, alot of people call it a paradox that we see no signs of other civilizations- yet it seems so obvious that there is no way we'd ever be able to with current technology. Artificial EM waves, even all of those ever produced by humanity, are massively overshadowed by cosmic background radiation at extreme distances. Any given signal only has so much raw energy attached to it, and as it spreads out radially that power is gonna decrease dramatically- inverse square law as you said. Even if a signal of ours ever reached another life bearing planet with a technologically advanced civilization, the odds that they'd be able to detect it are functionally zero unless their tech vastly surpasses ours to a fairly incredible degree. To detect such heavily diluted signals amonst the collective radiation of every star in the visible universe is a herculean feat.

[@Axel_Andersen]

Exactly my thoughts!

[@HapizLesmana]

astrobiologist already a thing?

[@toshiyaar7885]

I'm not an astrobiologist, but my thoughts exactly

[@MotoHikes]

I freaking love it when you film in the woods. As an environmental science student with a fascination for physics and space, it's the perfect juxtaposition, talking about something so advanced in a setting so very primal. Poetic.

[@seionne85]

I agree! As someone who grew up in a forest just before the Internet, I appreciate the work you do

[@mrsoisauce9017]

I mean, he’s talking about possible life forms while standing in the natural world. Talking about life while standing in life. Poetic indeed, but for different reasons

[@imacmill]

The original 'green screen'.

[@Just.A.T-Rex]

That’s what my degree is in from Appalachian state university!

[@FilmscoreMetaler]

Dude that's just a background image.

[@SzechuanPapi]

Imagine being an alien and wondering the exact same things that we are and just not having technology to reach us or communicate with us. The topic around aliens always revolves around the idea that there’s so much more technologically advanced than we are when in theory, they could be doing and wondering, the exact same things we are “where is everybody?”

[@Bluzlbee]

the aliens saw trump supporters and pulled a 180, Earth has been boycotted from the international universe alien alliance until further notice

[@Hilaire_Balrog]

@@Bluzlbeesome idiot always has to bring politics into a discussion

[@lynettehardy8653]

@@Bluzlbeeprick!

[@Virsho]

I am worldbuilding alien world like that

[@artisticdad4932]

@@Bluzlbee "sir, this planet seems to be inhabited by people who love their country and don't want to see it destroyed" "turn the ship around!" "but sir, the country gives welfare out for free to anyone that isn't born there!" "turn the ship around again!"

[@blademasterzero]

I haven’t finished just yet but my favorite answer to the Fermi paradox is that we are simply the first advanced life in the universe. Life itself is so incredibly rare in the universe and we still don’t yet understand how life is created in the first place, and it took millions of years for humanity to appear from that life with absolutely no guarantee that an intelligent species would come from basic life in the first place, even on earth we have octopi whom are also a really intelligent species and yet despite being so smart they cannot advance as a species because they die almost immediately after their young hatch and thus can’t pass knowledge down generations. We have elephants whom can’t operate tools with precision due to their hooves. And whales who lack limbs to manipulate objects in the first place, we were a perfect storm, with more advanced brains and the ability to communicate via language and limbs which can easily manipulate and hold objects and even with all of those advantages there have been countless times where we were nearly made extinct What are the chances that a “perfect” organism evolves again? Is it even possible on worlds beyond earth or would life need an identical copy of earth to form? Oceanic creatures would be incapable of forging metals. Higher gravity would favor more hoofed limbs similar to what we see in larger creatures here on earth. We don’t know these things for sure. And we may never know them at all As a personal note. I know we aren’t perfect as a species both culturally and design wise but we are the only species as advanced as us so there aren’t really any other comparisons. I can certainly hope there are friends waiting amongst the stars though, I only fear that by the time we are found we will be gone

[@tagnetorare5401]

I appreciate your remark on semantics. It is very important for figuring out "which question we are discussing", otherwise the discussion could get too general and shallow

[@mikekolokowsky]

There’s several things that most people miss. 1) Jupiter didn’t suck all the rocky worlds up. Most systems with planets are hot Jupiters. We would have been one, but Saturn lured Jupiter out, and it acted as a protector not a destroyer. 2) Oxygen didn’t always exist in such quantities in the atmosphere. It was a by-product of early plants. But it gives animals a chemical pathway to burn energy and for fire to exist, which brings me to 3) Wood. Flammable, can build tools or houses with it. When it was first evolved, nothing had evolved yet to decompose it for sixty million years. And that formed all the coal and oil on earth. No wood, no tools, not a lot to burn, no civilization.

[@paulburns1333]

Yes and there's not a chance in hell that an advanced civilisation emerged fully formed from nothing without the steps you mention and a trillion more besides.

[@hogenmogen8545]

@@paulburns1333 There's not "no chance", but those factors (that aren't often discussed) really cut down the probabilities. For example, there are a lot of rocky worlds in the "Goldilocks zone" for liquid water. But many of these don't have a Jupiter shield, nor do they have sufficient oxygen for fire. Oxygen became prevalent in the atmosphere because of life. If that type of microbe failed to evolve on a planet, they won't have fire.

[@sjj668]

Item 2 and 3 assume that extraterrestrial life would be based on the same biochemistry as life on Earth. This is is an absurd assumption.

[@hogenmogen8545]

@@sjj668 The same biochemistry doesn't dictate the creation of an oxygen atmosphere. There was life before oxygen producing plants. Even if there were alien oxygen producing plants in such numbers as to oxygenate the atmosphere, it's very far stretch to imagine that wood or wood-like plants would evolve. Trees only evolved 400 million years ago. 90% of the Earth's existence has been without trees. Even if they existed on an exoplanet, would they be as widespread and plentiful as the forests of Earth? Could it be burned? Would it get turned into coal and oil? It's obvious speculation on my part, but it could be the secret ingredient that turned inquisitive primates into a space-capable civilization. Dolphins and octopuses are smart, but dolphins don't have hands and octopuses can't make fire because they're too water-based.

[@superweaseljr5396]

so if there was not enough oxygen to sustain life, they had to wait for plants to generate the oxygen. So after that happened, the animals evolved from.... plants ?

[@Radhaugo108]

100 years ago we were still traveling by boat while only 20% of the population could read and write. This space party is just getting started.

[@tazerwazerman]

Thousands of years of war has led to this technology. They need to master this planet first, the Ocean bottoms are vastly unknown and many people still can't read.

[@Number6_]

In 1924 america probably true do to the education system there.

[@veganfromvenus]

For sure, magical to become aware of this..

[@pieterboelen2862]

Whatever is wrong with travelling by boat?

[@Radhaugo108]

@@pieterboelen2862 Nothing wrong with boats, just can’t be taking them to other planets.

[@UniverseCitizen]

As a young girl stargazing, it was communicated to me that intelligent beings exist in our own galaxy. I know it with 100% certainly.

[@olddecimal2736]

Considering potential scenarios with an open mind without perpetuating pet assumptions, beliefs, hopes or conclusions sets you apart, Prof. . Many thanks and much respect to your realistic contributions

[@jameswebb8162]

Wow, didn’t know there were more than 1 Fermi hypotheses. That you so much for the episodes. I’m not able to go to college due to my cancer (multiple myeloma) and really enjoy continuing my my education!! I am a 10 year warrior and continue fighting till their is a cure!!

[@galaxia4709]

I sincerely hope you get better! Take care!

[@CoolWorldsLab]

Keep fighting and hoping you recover

[@pit2ryan3]

@@CoolWorldsLab - It's not a fight!

[@diaryofacrankykid7270]

@@pit2ryan3 as someone who's recovered from one it is exactly a personal fight like no other. You won't know until you've been in those shoes mate.

[@GreyEagle_35]

​@@pit2ryan3 Yes it is bud

[@mickieg1994]

The Idea of hearing a clear transmission that accounts to a hello would be quite terrifying, given the idea that it was from so long ago that they dont exist anymore, we will only ever hear/see an alien civilization millions of years after they have long since gone extinct. Knowing that any attempt of our own would have the same result.

[@mikejarvis4139]

No paradox. Exo human presence for eighty years now.

[@fuyiganta5151]

second vid of yours to ever see, its amazing, your work is out of this world. i feel like i just met a new friend. definitely subscribing

[@skye4591]

"when was the last time you tried to converse with an insect" great line

[@marflitts]

I swore at a mosquito the other day.

[@jonpaul3868]

​@@marflitts genius!

[@tomperone9338]

Yet people study insects. Some people are fascinated by insects. So while an alien intelligence might not view us as intellectual peers, they might still be intrigued by us all the same.

[@johnmartinez632]

Bruh. In 268 years from now we will find our first exoplante inhabited by a species that'll be in its caveman days and OUR ENTIRE PLANET WOULD BE UTTERLY FASCINATED BY IT. Get real.

[@Ash.Crow.Goddess]

While technically not an insect, I did apologize to a spider yesterday.

[@carmenmccauley585]

Its timing. Timing. If you were in the Andromeda galaxy pointing at earth and saying " i think there is life on that planet", you would be wrong every day for the first one billion years of Earth's existence. Wrong every day for one billion years is substantial.

[@moonbeamskies3346]

I was in the Andromeda galaxy and saw the Milky Way from a planet there.

[@ladysycadelick]

I ate a Milkyway and it gave me gas.

[@kinnuarmy]

Alien doesn't wants to enter our warmholes

[@jjnix95]

@@ladysycadelick You lack toes intolerant!

[@hichaelhyers]

My family comes from Andromeda and they told me back there they called the Milky Way the Fart Galaxy

[@ab2tract]

The milky way is 100,000 light years across, the first signal we intentionally sent into space is only 50 light years away...the speed of light pales in comparison to the size of the universe

[@mk1st]

Plus our signals are quite puny and will attenuate away to the point of being undetectable.

[@davidschultink2742]

Does it?

[@Tom_Quixote]

The Fermi 'paradox' has a very simple solution: Life is rare, the universe is big, and fast space travel is physically impossible, no matter how smart we might be.

[@jmgonzales7701]

why do we want to look for aliens? why do we want to not be alone? aliens might dislike us to the point contact with them will be our doom.

[@WhenDevilsDuel]

​​@@jmgonzales7701and they also might not, but they'll almost assuredly have vastly different cultures and understandings of science than us, the sharing of such between 2 xenos would be an incredible boon to both sides. I think it's funny that this mentality exists at all, this dark forest levels of phobia. Why would you assume a species that has achieved a galactic civilization would even care enough to go to war, do you realize how absurdly dangerous a space war would be? We could shoot 1 rock in their general direction and annihilate a planet before they ever even have a chance to react, and vice versa. No one would want to do that just like no one wants to start the nuclear apocalypse.

[@jmgonzales7701]

@@WhenDevilsDuel We dont have technological Marvel to destroy A planet.. YET at least. Also are u really gonna give it up to chance? Why risk it? I like ur naivety that its somehow only we have a tendency for destruction and wars. We Simply don't know and we should not find out.

[@MVargic]

And communicating long distances is incredibly difficult and energy intensive, Even with the full power of the arecibo telescope focused on a single point of the sky the signal would be too weak and overwhelmed by noise in less than 300 light years (1/300 of our galaxy's diamter) to be detected by an equivalent receiver of the same scale. Now imagine the odds that an alien civilization closer than 300 light years happens to points their transmitter directly at the solar system at the same time our most powerful radio receiver is pointed at theirs. We could have received thousands of powerful enough alien radio transmissions in the last 100 years and almost certainly wouldn't have detected a single one. Imagine two people kilometers apart spinning around shooting bullets blindly around until a bullet fired by one shooter happens to hits perfectly into the gun barrel of the other.

[@journeymancellist9247]

He didn’t explain weak arthropic theory

[@ZigUncut]

The problem with the Fermi paradox is that there are too many assumptions to really take it seriously but it’s a great talking point.

[@TrueBlueYZ]

Agree, and that includes his version of the 'direct' fermi paradox. It's a naive question, not a paradox.

[@nathanmajor6886]

@@TrueBlueYZnicely put! the universe is likely far bigger than we are capable of understanding “yet” I personally believe once we reach a certain threshold on earth like no war being the main thing if we cant even get on with ourselves how are we gonna react to alien life…… once we hit this point i think they will make themselves known and allow us to come to them as to not create a panic then we could possibly learn of an inter galactic community….. its just as unlikely as it is likely its interesting to at least think about!

[@SeattlePioneer]

Yes, something new for intellectuals to do when they are bored with life.

[@SophiaAphrodite]

In comparison. We have searched in such a small area of space. It is the equivalent of looking at a glass of water of the ocean looking for a fish. Now if we consider the short period of time we have been detectable. The odds of us being detected is so slim. It equates to zero in the context of a human lifespan.

[@SeattlePioneer]

Of course that is not true. Carl Sagan set up a testable scientific experiment to search for intelligent, extraterrestrial life. We have conducted that experiment numerous times: Results NEGATIVE. He even wrote a novel about it --- "Contact," in case you haven't read it. In it, he expected alien intelligence to make a point of contacting us rather shortly after radio transmissions reached them. The galaxy crowded with intelligent life Sagan hypothesized has not panned out. YOU simply refuse to accept the results of scientific experiment because it doesn't appeal to what amounts to your religious beliefs. We detected the radio signals of the Big Bang DECADES ago, defining the edge of the known universe. No intelligence other than our own has been detected in that enormous volume. However, if something should turn up ---fine. Call me.

[@MasonHerrick]

That this channel has less than 10 million subscribers is arguably more mysterious than the Fermi Paradox.

[@psywalker7973]

Nobody I know can really follow, nor appreciate what is being presented in these videos. They want to watch stuff where no thinking is required.

[@brown3394]

Same principle applies. Yes, the channel will necessarily reach 10 mil. First it has to hit 5, and 3, and 1. Some of us lucky few had to be part of that first sub-mil in order for it to reach 1, then 5, then 10, and so on.

[@MasonHerrick]

@@brown3394 😁

[@DMTrance87]

Amen brother. It'll get there though. There's certain videos that can suck you in regardless of your intelligence level. My partner is nowhere near the level of science nerdiness I'm at... But she still really appreciates the way he can tell a story and how he can make anything mundane be like velvet cheesecake to the ears.

[@MMAFightMagazine]

​@@brown3394 Few people understand this. They feel that if a channel is "good," then it should have a similar number of subscribers as other great, well-established channels, "instantaneously."

[@zik2000]

I like to think that Fermi returned from Starbucks and no one was in the office so he asked "where is everybody?" And we just took it and ran with it 😅

[@CoolWorldsLab]

😂

[@st3althyone]

Hilarious! 😂😂

[@JohnnyWednesday]

Ha! :D

[@tucuxir]

A simple resolution indeed.

[@brothermine2292]

Everybody was abducted and being probed by aliens.

[@shiningone3538]

Life will be everywhere.... But intelligence and opposable digits to build radio transmitters (and other stuff) will be very rare.... It took about 4 and a half Billion years here to accomplish it

[@zebcode]

I've been watching this channel for some time now. The content is always interesting. The presenter is awesome. I love the style of presentation, not stupidified , no spoon feeding. This has become one of my favourite vlogs and I really appreciate the thought provoking content. Please keep doing what you're doing.

[@happychappy492]

You look like you are ready to rob a bank with that mask on

[@ejkr2051]

He probably already did,hence the picture. 😉

[@benmckinley1940]

Cool Worlds and Melody Sheep are my two favourite space themed channels.

[@Atheist7]

@@happychappy492 I agree...... Or, Hallowe'en every day over there.

[@davidanderson4091]

Looking for alien transmissions for just sixty years is tantamount to opening your eyes for a second, and upon seeing no other person, concluding that you are the only person in the world.

[@user-burner]

Opening your eyes on a foggy day, no less

[@bhadbhris]

Imagine a hypothetical comment section. You don’t see any comments, so you type “first” and hit send. You don’t reload the page, and therefore watch the whole video thinking that you were the first

[@D9fjg]

Oh that makes sense...

[@onionjello]

first!

[@osearthesp]

first

[@Fobian11]

No one knows what interstellar contact will be like or how it will unfold. We are merely projecting our own experiences and imaginations. If we reverse the situation and imagine that it is humanity discovering a planet with a primitive civilization... would we land a spaceship in the middle of their village? If there are extraterrestrials who want to learn about us, it is reasonable to expect that they would avoid disturbing what they intend to study. They have likely automated the exploration of the universe, and if they want to learn about us, they would only gather data that they can use to simulate our planet in peace and quiet.

[@toptiertech7291]

Why would we be the primitive civilization though? Everyone assumes aliens are just this super smart beings

[@Fobian11]

@ If we are visited by beings from another planet, it is highly likely that we are the most primitive in terms of technology, experience, and efficiency.

[@neanda]

I hope that your videos are used in high schools etc., they're so much more insightful than the teachers who feel forced to teach. There's a big difference between those who love to teach and those who have to. It's the education system that's wrong, and I'm so glad we have people like your good self making videos. Communicating science must be an extremely hard job, like switching between knowing a fk ton to making it a gram. Nuff respect brother

[@veramae4098]

Ummm, it would help schools if kids were polite.

[@falconquest2068]

@@veramae4098 Ummm, it would helps kids if parents taught and practiced values like politeness.

[@DMTrance87]

I am so glad I found this channel. You are a master at conveying deep thoughts in a succinct, approachable, and at times poetic manner. I also love how rewatchable a lot of your videos are. Your 'Watching The End Of The World' video is so beautiful, and I've even fallen asleep to it multiple times.... It's like an adult bedtime story that is so relaxing. It's your voice cadence and the fact that I can just hear the love you put in to these videos. Keep on being an amazing, brilliant, and loving human.❤

[@James-fe7wd]

Amazing channel, must be said!

[@prototropo]

Well put, Jeremiah. I love that video, too, along with all the videos in which Dr. Kipping has narrated the interwoven histories of the Milky Way, our solar system, Earth, life, complex intelligence and the cosmos. The principles and possibilities that are elucidated along the way are just boggling. And riveting!

[@warrenreid6109]

In short thanks for dumbing this down for us laymen.

[@uncleanunicorn4571]

Cool world guy should do a collaboration with Isaac Arthur.

[@prototropo]

@@uncleanunicorn4571 I agree! I think Dr. Kipping once referenced Arthur quite admiringly. For me they are the quasars of plausible speculation -- propelled by boyish enthusiasm and anchored by scholarly rigor. In fact they sort of function as gyroscopes for some incredibly intelligent but sometimes zany communities, maintaining equipoise in our collective imagination.

[@teugene5850]

Professor Kipping - you continue to make me excited for learning and asking the big questions! Thank you!

[@octo448]

My favorite thing about the "Fermi Paradox" is what it says about us as people. Kinda like some kind of very niche and nerdy personality quiz, the "solution" that tickles your fancy says a lot about you as a person IMO. For example, a person who goes with "We must be alone then" is going to have a very different outlook on life than the person who resonates with the Zoo hypothesis, or the Great Filter. Obviously it's not as simple as bad implication = pessimist or anything, but as a thought experiment about aliens I find it fascinating how it can so aptly mirror ourselves. There are probably as many "solutions" to the paradox as there are people to ponder the idea. Like most good science fiction, the exploration of the ambiguous unknown is often a great lens by which to examine the highly familiar- ourselves.

[@ericbarr734]

That was an incredible sign off. I love putting the entire discussion into the frame of our own limited time and what power we have to achieve our goals in that limited time. Thank you for that. Your videos are meaningful from a science education perspective but also from a personal motivation and well being perspective.

[@masonb9788]

Our time is a tiny sliver. The odds of any other slivers matching up with ours and also having the ability to communicate or travel? I just don’t see it.

[@tufflucal4037]

​@@masonb9788PRIMITIVE. PRIMITIVE. PRIMITIVE. Undoubtedly preposterous barbarious PRIMITIVE theory. You will never expand knowledge wise as a race, if you think small. Wake up. You are not told truthfully of actual space or Astronomy generally speaking. The Extraterrestrials that you may have been looking for are everywhere and yes, they know Earth as well, interstellar speaking at least. Peace ✌️

[@wildoskistudios9217]

I love the conclusion to this video. wrapped up perfectly... Plus the fact you took the laptop and mixer outside for a more natural setting. 5 stars :D

[@jackesioto]

Agreed

[@IDisagreeWithYouAlot]

Man this is truly a great channel. Please don’t stop doing what you’re doing. For the sake of humanity.

[@krzysztofkowalski2816]

you owe the 2000 for rent we charge, you cant just our price is out of this world.

[@RingoAnselmo]

Pffff slow down bro he is just a small meaningless youtuber

[@g.guzmancross9722]

Love the info and the mood. Nicely done docs.

[@1edgeman76]

Dr. Kipping, I will always graciously follow any journey of thought, understanding, and realization you ever want to lead. You and the Cool Worlds Lab are amazing and one of THE BEST resources on KZbin. Thank you and your colleagues for everything you do.

[@CoolWorldsLab]

Thanks! Yes we want to genuinely advance the conversation and our understanding.

[@mattparker9726]

@@CoolWorldsLab then look at the past to see the future.

[@RLReagan]

This guy speaks so well. He’s easy on the eye too. I don’t know his name but I like his presentations.

[@geemanbmw]

What you say at a random lunch get together with friends echoes for 73 years and debated by academia is nothing short of LEGENDARY

[@benjaminbeard3736]

Then he had to get back to work.

[@pb51-d8f]

Maybe nobody showed up for lunch and he was wondering, “ where is everybody”.

[@normanhopkins6114]

The aliens tapped into C-SPAN and decided there was no intelligent life on earth.

[@binkwillans5138]

Does that make them smarter or dumber than us?

[@jamesrussell7760]

Very thought provoking, Dr Kipping. Reminds me of the SF novel of a self-replicating robot 'culture', originally intended to explore and report back their findings, but whose computer programming (their machine DNA) went awry, leaving only the "self-replicating" part intact, the result being they became an interstellar plague, destroying the life they were sent to find.

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

Whats the name of the novel? 🤔

[@asdrake1327]

@@DrumToTheBassWoop Good old Gray Goo

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

@@asdrake1327 pardon ? 🤨

[@asdrake1327]

@@DrumToTheBassWoop Gray Goo is a book about the extinction of all life on earth via endlessly replicating nanotechnology that resembles a gray goo

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

@@asdrake1327 oww, okay i'll give that a read.

[@kevley26]

My hunch (for what little it is worth) is that if there are intelligent aliens in our galaxy, there is only a small number of them and that it is not in their nature to expand a lot and build megastructures that we could observe. I think there could only be a small number of them because it would be improbable that none of them have expanded rapidly enough to be observed by us.

[@inthefade]

My hunch is that we just haven’t been looking long and hard enough.

[@rodrigomachado5291]

Your logic is sound, kevley.

[@jackesioto]

Or maybe our nearest neighboring civilizations may not be advanced enough technologically to go interstellar. They could be in their version of the medieval period, antiquity, great age of sail, etc.

[@85Funkadelic]

Yeah I don't think we should assume that these aliens would build megastructures have faster-than-light travel or even colonize outside their own solar system much less use radio waves that we would be able to detect. It's like looking out your window not seeing any people and saying there are no people.

[@o0o-jd-o0o95]

i think that most civilizations end up killing themselves before reaching the ability to leave their solar system ... similar to what is going to happen to us. At the same time I do not believe we are ever going to leave our solar system I don't believe that we can survive without our star and I mean ours specifically. I think that all life that develops within the system of its star can never leave that star without dire consequences. If it wasn't for our star the sun we would not be here and I believe that without our star again we would not survive

[@bigjermboktown6976]

Mr. Kipping out of the many channels on KZbin yours is certainly one of the top 5! Absolutely love everything you do and thank you

[@SAPANNow]

*Dr

[@rossclutterbuck1060]

@@SAPANNow * Professor

[@RoySchl]

who are the other 4?

[@bigjermboktown6976]

@@RoySchl SEA, WhyFiles, Cold Fusion, and there may only be 4 I couldn't really think of five that I really enjoy as much as those

[@V1CT1MIZED]

​​@@bigjermboktown6976 SEA is awesome along with this channel.

[@eGazTheFirstAustralian]

Where is everybody? Just because there's no-one knocking on the door, doesn't mean we don't have neighbours. I am crushed under the weight of people multitudes every time I walk through my local supermarket, yet, my loneliness consumes me

[@SirKnasher]

I think a lot of people, the general public at least, forget just how vast space is. They hear "light year" but don't really understand it fully. Something a 1000 light years away means we're seeing it as it was 1000 years ago, not as it is now. If intelligent life started around the same time and developed technology at a similar pace to our own then we know it will be several hundred years before we start seeing signs of their existence from nearby stars, stars in our own backyard, to find signs of life further then it's going to take longer, light is slow in the grand scheme of the universe.

[@melindasmith3713]

Wow thanks I heard it before , just dismissed it as I'm not a science person , curious yes .

[@VeryEvilBlackCat]

I never clicked on a KZbin notification so fast in my life

[@themolasser9110]

Seeing “we solved the Fermi paradox” is pretty wild

[@dhandahelu]

Same

[@simcha10000]

SAME

[@72marshflower15]

Me three!!!

[@simesaid]

Me four!

[@HeloisGevit]

As an alien, I find this extremely amusing.

[@gagarinone]

How is it to be an alien? Where do you live? 🙂

[@Sharon_McCluskey]

​@Gagarinone He's trolling, don't believe him.

[@alihenderson5910]

@@Sharon_McCluskey How can you be sure?

[@danielabbey7726]

Time to head back across the border...

[@itsmatty365]

stop taking our jeerbs

[@sephirotic87]

I think there are more solutions to this issue than what most people tend to repost around. I think to seek an answer to the Fermi Paradox we must also try and answer some pretty profound questions as: What is the Purpose/point of life? Is it just to self-replicate endlessly? Do we need to occupy every possible habitable star in our universe and compete with other evolving life forms to achieve that? Or is it there something more? Life seems to fight against the entropy of the universe, and dare I say that may be the final purpose of life, Like Asimov brilliantly proposed in his short: "The last question". Maybe the purpose of life is to try and survive, gather data and process it to fully comprehend and manipulate the laws of physics around it. We must certainly would need to travel far away into the universe, but it is not so much about colonizing every star around, but more like building starways of communication and traveling. Trying to find a way to travel or at least communicate faster than light. I think the solution is building a network of several matryoshka brains around stars and linking them together, observing and processing data from the universe. Most likely indeed we would need to evolve past a fragile carbon-based life form into an "artificial one" and we would habit these Matryoshkas' megastructures. Maybe life would focus on uninhabitable small stable stars to build their Dyson-spheres and try too respect, cooperate and change information with other civilizations doing the same thing. We should be looking at smaller stars trying to detect such structures.

[@nw42]

The Fermi paradox in a nutshell: “Why isn’t there evidence of intelligences with totally different evolutionary paths from our own doing what only _some_ of us would do: attempting to contact us with 20th century technology across almost unfathomable distances? We’ve been searching for them for over .02% of humanity’s history, but we’ve still found nothing!” Don’t get me wrong, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is fascinating, yet I feel like many of us have grossly underestimated the scope of the challenge.

[@captain_context9991]

Pretty much, yeah. There IS no Fermi paradox. We dont need one to explain why life is rare and far apart in the universe. And life that walks around and has its own space program, almost INFINITELY rare. See... No Fermi paradox needed.

[@captainscum5726]

the Universe is so vast in space/time and Life so short in comparison that the scale of the task should be obvious to everyone, it seems to me.

[@garyfoster9478]

The Fermi para , does make me laugh. 2 things it doesn't take into account the fact that there probably going to be extra dimensional . Which means conventional space travel doesn't even come into it. Aslo there's a very good chance / probably a certainty that first contact with at least one race has already been made in private. This will never ever be disclosed. The reason for this is people riot when there's no toilet role on the shelves of lidl. Imagine what would happen if this sudden revelation was to occur. It would be catastrophic

[@Kingeptacon]

“Why isn’t there evidence?” This is a shit ton of evidence. We’re spoiled with evidence.

[@captain_context9991]

@@Kingeptacon Spoiled with evidence of what?

[@watcherofvideoswasteroftim5788]

I feel like the first 6 minutes was a great reason to call the question "Where is everybody?" poetic because it educes a lot of great questions that all hold answers that help us understand our own position in the universe and how much we have yet to learn about biology, society, technology and our selves.

[@procrastinator9]

Funny. I was going to comment that the viewer should skip the first 6 minutes to bypass the semantic word salad before he even started addressing the point of the video.

[@XL-5117]

It’s interesting that Where is Everybody is the first episode of The Twilight Zone!

[@Shwammi]

okay, now after @procrastinators and your comments... I now must watch this. :)

[@TomTom-du5qv]

Perhaps they all left the visible universe as soon as they had the technology because they understand that "sticking around" results in inevitable death.

[@Alphadestrious]

Distances are too vast. Life exists elsewhere but the physical limits of speed of light cannot be over come

[@orazha]

I am so glad that I came across your video. I'm currently reading Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds. It's an excellent book that helps understand what's currently going on in science today. I enjoy thinking about all the possibilities such as we may be similar to bateria on a hanging fruit with all of it's variations. Or that we may be like the bacteria completely unaware of the "living" beings who are all around us but with no obvious awareness of us. We may even be riding on one of these beings. I look forward to listening to more of your videos. You do a great job of presenting.

[@DriveLaken]

I like to take that same line of thinking and compare us to the people of North Korea. We look at them and think, “poor things are so ignorant about what’s really going on…” What if we’re all that ignorant about a much bigger reality that we are just clueless about. The people of North Korea are no different than us, in the West. So, if it can happen to them, why not us?

[@ejkr2051]

I'd like to think,therefore am sure that I'm no bacteria. But you go ahead and be a bacteria if that makes you feel better.

[@stormstaunch6692]

Wow, that ending was beautiful! :)

[@ianmccourry9337]

I think it is worth pointing out that considering AGI is *also* a conditional paradox, similar to the ones talked about before. We might not actually be able to create AGI for whatever reason, which would open the galaxy up to not being colonized with chemical rockets with AI, but by potentially other means, if at all. It is also worth noting that iirc our star is a 3rd generation star, and during star generations before this one would not of had the heavy metals necessary for life or technology.

[@RAFMnBgaming]

I don't think it's necessarily a paradox. After all we have GI already so even if we never create AGI, you can probably substitute GI in there with enough time and tenacity.

I believe there's a crucial aspect of the solution that has been rarely explored. Let's assume the existence of other life forms in the universe, and let's also assume that these beings share our motivation to seek out other life forms. In this context, a vital question arises: "Are we currently detectable by life forms possessing technology equivalent to ours?" Approximately 150 years ago, we initiated the transmission of radio signals, with a more focused effort toward being detectable beginning around 60 years ago. As things stand with equivalent technological capabilities than ours, humans can be detected within a radius of 150 light years. This, however, only accounts for a ridiculous tiny portion of the size of our galaxy. Consequently, even though we are certain of our existence, we remain imperceptible to 99.99% of the rest of the galaxy with our current level of technology. So any other life form out there will probably also think that humans do not exist.

[@rhocassiopeiae]

they did make contact, thousands of years ago, it's in all the religious texts.

[@peterkolesar4020]

Also take into consideration that (as you said) our effort toward being detectable begun around 60 years ago, in universal scale thats nothing. Its basically like if we did it just a moment ago so a possible contact that would be a result of those efforts might come in another 60 or perhaps 10 000 years...

[@mitab1]

@@peterkolesar4020basically everything we did to make aliens find us, from 150 years ago to today, is the equivalent of someone screaming on an lonely island in the middle of the ocean, hoping that someone in china can hear them, we are basically in the middle of nowhere on the galactic scale

[@Mustachioed_Mollusk]

Imagine how ground breaking it would be to speak with insects! All life is worth investigating much in the same way subatomic particles are worth observing. Possibly Love this stuff. ❤

[@DreamskyDance]

Considering your name, i have to mention that the finishing statement in this video reminded me of scp-7999 tale. I watched it few weeks ago on the "the exploring series" youtube channel. It's about kind of a solving of Fermi paradox, but a beautiful tale. Read or watch/listen to it... you'll probably like it

[@I.C.Weiner]

I talk to the bees l the time. They are so dull. All they want to talk about is gathering nectar.

[@pit2ryan3]

@@I.C.Weiner - They don't gather nectar, they gather pollen... And don't steal their honey...

[@GreyEagle_35]

​@@pit2ryan3 I love honey, make me stop.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@pit2ryan3 Uhm, no they gather nectar from flowers, mixed with basically their saliva this turns into honey. Pollen are a trick used by the plants, and are bascially stowaways in the hairs and legs of the bees which the bee accidentally deposits on a subsequent visit to another flower of the same genus. AKA Bees do not consume pollen, nor do they visit flowers to gather them intentionally.

[@whiskeytango9769]

It seems to me that even if life is common, complex life may be rare and technological societies could very well be so rare and distant that finding one another would be practically impossible.

[@bigjermboktown6976]

I really hate when videos like this are over it just makes it seem so long until a new one arrives. Just being a little selfish there's just certain channels that I love

[@Flutezor]

Whenever life starts to weigh me down I find myself returning to your videos. There is just something about them that always instills me with feelings of hope, of wonder, and the particular sensation inside my mind when I ask myself: "What if ...?"

[@markbush9997]

I think its a good thing to remember we don’t know what we don’t know. By that I mean we can’t know what barriers may exist that could prevent travel from one galaxy to another because we haven’t tried to do that ourselves. I would also say that it’s highly possible that life on other worlds may not be more advanced than we are, or at least not by enough to allow them to reach us.

[@videocrowsnest5251]

Considering how our own little solar system has around it outlines a spinning disk of very, very hot plasma, I wouldn't be surprised if galaxies also had their own "firewalls." Not to mention if there are any extra unknown conditions outside potential protection of sorts provided by being within a galaxy.

[@PutinsMommyNeverHuggedHim]

or maybe the aliens already visited in secret. possibilities are endless

[@Balkehianji]

This thing goes along with everything like why even their is existence and why the hell their are laws governing it like not how but why

[@thingonathinginathing]

A lot of people in congress know that the national security state is lying to us all about UFOs, that they're real, here, and thousands of years old. Lol

[@Dancerlayla-z6g]

If FTL is impossible, as it may be, then thats a good enough reason for a species to stay in their own solar system or, possibly, the nearest few. Even if they could detect our transmissions they may not have even recieved them yet, space is pretty big. If they have gotten our transmissions it could be decades until we hear back

[@opadrip]

We finally get a message from the aliens, but when the message is decoded, all it says is "New planet, who dis?"

[@Dancerlayla-z6g]

@@opadrip Of course we send a message back... 'Wazzzuuup!'

[@KippiExplainsStuff]

your videos are some of the best content on the web. can't believe it's free. I drop everything when I see a new one has come out

[@incognito253]

Your direct paradox has a stronger resolution, I think, to the "why has nobody come along and paved a hyperspace bypass over Earth?" question, and one that renders it no stronger than the indirect paradox. Quite simple: just as we can imagine one galactic intelligence going wrong and dominating the galaxy, we can imagine an early galactic intelligence going 'right' and gaining the ability to dominate the galaxy but without the will - indeed, it is no more assumptions to assume a *benevolent* progenitor than a malevolent one. Viewed through this lens, countless scenarios are possible - but, fundamentally, take a AGI or any other conceivable galactic civilization and add a desire to cherish and protect life, and it's simple to acknowledge your scenario in reverse. Such a society could spread across the galaxy and make the galaxy eminently habitable to life rather than inhospitable - either directly, seeding the galaxy with life, or indirectly, by simply establishing safeguards to annihilate any genocidal AGI or organic species that leaves its solar system millions of years before they can possibly reach this hypothetical Benefactor's level of power. In short, simply inverting your strong paradox proposal resolves it. One could argue a malefactor is more likely than a benefactor due to humanity's long bloody history but I don't think this is true. Indeed, many examples of warless humans have existed when resource scarcity is removed from the picture, and as many terrible examples that may exist, humans have shown an example of an intelligent species that gradually rejected genocidal behavior - abhorred it and worked to annihilate it, in fact - and developed tenetd that fundamentally cherish life for the sake of life (even if we fall short of our ideals at times).

[@frankvandorp2059]

I see two problems with that solution. Firstly, a benevolent progenitor would allow life everywhere to develop, but this would only increase the possibility of a malevolent progenitor developing later on, from one of the planets the benevolent fostered and protected. And because a benevolent progenitor would refuse to dominate the galaxy, it would not stop the development of a malevolent one, which would then take over the galaxy all the same. Secondly, if a benevolent progenitor had been active seeding the galaxy with life and making planets hospitable, wouldn't we be seeing many more hospitable planets already supporting life around us? There is a good chance we will be able to introduce life to Mars in the future, so if we can do that with our current limited scientific knowledge, wouldn't that benevolent progenitor already have seeded Mars with life billions of years ago?

[@incognito253]

@@frankvandorp2059 To your first point: I already discussed this. Just because a benevolent species refuses to dominate the galaxy doesn't mean they would refuse to stop any species or emergent AI that becomes genocidal, wiping them out or even just forcing them back onto their homeworld and blockading them there in the hopes they will eventually be ready to interact with other civilizations. To your second point: just because they seed life or make places more hospitable to life developing does not mean the life they seed would be recognizable to us. It does not mean they would seed life in every single place where it can grow; an intelligent and benevolent entity wanting there to be other life does not have to go to an absolute extreme, whereas a genocidal species that wants there to not be other life is, by definition, an absolutist extreme case.

[@louisdriscoll2580]

This sounds like a Hollywood script

[@EETDUK]

But there is a reason to think life would act in its own self-interest over the needs of others: survival of the fittest

[@incognito253]

@@EETDUK Except the only *sapient* species we have ever encountered doesn't think or behave this way. Some individuals do, some groups do. But over time that species' behavior has trended towards cooperative and supportive as a whole. Survival is a powerful instinct but there is no special reason to think that a reasoning lifeform is going to choose to harm those weaker than themselves for an abstract concept of 'survival' or 'self-interest'

[@LOOY756]

We tend to assume aliens would develop on similar lines to us, animals that evolved to become smarter, then built machines to enhance themselves, but it's entirely possible they'd just be so weird we wouldn't recognize them as life initially.

[@shadowling77777]

Cybertron silicon based transformer life xd

[@mightisright]

Temporal explanation: Why didn't humans interact with dinosaurs? Their lifetimes never overlapped. That's just on this planet. Aliens not only have to span the universe to get here, they would have to arrive at the right time for us to see and hear them. Allegedly they have already done this, but the people who say this are dismissed. So what do you want if you have no ears the hear, eyes to the see or brains to think?

[@Alexander_Kale]

I mean, sure, if it behaves like inert rocks, we might overlook it. But as soon as it starts building stuff, or in more general terms, "doing" stuff, you would be hard pressed not to recognize it. For crying out lout, one of the necessary properties a mortal entity needs to have is self replication. That would be pretty hard to miss under any circumstance I can think of.

[@LOOY756]

​@@Alexander_Kale That you can think of, with your brain made of meat.

[@GreenBlueWalkthrough]

To be fair they kinda had to if we assume they come from this universe and developed like us.

[@RobCLynch]

If we keep zooming out (figuratively speaking) so that our galaxy is a dot, and we keep on zooming until the universe is a dot, perhaps we could keep on zooming - and perhaps that dot would be nothing more than a single neuron in a huge multiverse brain 🧠

[@MirorR3fl3ction]

I really like your idea of the weak anthropic principal being the key thing needed to explain the fermi paradox, I think it encompasses everything a solution to the paradox needs while still being simple and straightforward. I personally think there are a few other (albeit speculative) factors that aid this line of reasoning: 1. I think the chance of life evolving (biological let alone technological) is very rare within any given galaxy due to factors like galactic mergers, AGNs, and other similar factors that contribute to the idea of a galactic habitable zone. 2. I think interstellar travel is even more difficult than currently thought due to: A. Interstellar radiation is more of a problem than we currently think, and this would all but rule out long duration interstellar travel for both biological AND technological life due to corruption of data storage. It only takes one bad bit or one mutation without enough redundancy to make it impossible for the precise sequence of actions needed to slow down and enter orbit around a new star system to fail. B. the sheer amount of energy needed to even reach relativistic speeds and slow down at the target star system when factoring in how many resources you actually need to survive the trip. C. I think the chances of Von Neuman style probes and/or colony ships to other star systems actually being able to replicate and send a new probe/colony ship onwards is overestimated, and its more likely that they will only barely be able to survive in a new system let alone produce enough to replicate and send a new probe/ship onwards, which slows down or even cuts off galactic colonization. Taken altogether, my point is that I think its much less likely for any type of life to exist at all, and those that do are almost entirely bound to their original star system even on the time scales of billions of years due their likeliness of being destroyed by either external or internal factors. Hence it should not be surprising at all that we find ourselves where and when we are as the weak anthropic principal suggests, and the most likely place we will find definitive signs of alien life is by looking at other galaxies that we could never directly interact with.

[@Harbinger343]

I agree with everything you say, and would like to add to the difficulty of interstellar travel. The number of interstellar objects that we’ve detected moving through our solar system, may indicate that interstellar space is filled with with far more objects of various sizes than we originally thought. Relativistic travel may be impossible due to collision. All intelligent life may be essentially trapped in their home systems.

[@DialecticRed]

While I definitely agree about biological life and insterstellar travel, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of technological intelligence systems. With enough redundancy and error correcting code, bit flips can be avoided almost altogether. If you have 3 copies of the storage on board, and a bit flips in one copy, it can be compared to the other two and restored to its original position. You would have to have two of the exact same bits flip at the exact same time for something like this to have an effect. Which isn't impossible, especially on longer time scales, but if you add in more redundancy than just 3 modules it quickly becomes extremely improbable. I agree with the other stuff though.

[@inthefade]

I think it is only a failure of imagination to think technological probes couldn’t achieve interstellar travel. Soon enough autonomous machines will have access to the unimaginable resources of space. If you have the materials of an entire asteroid to use to build just one probe you can build in ridiculous amounts of redundancy and shielding. Sure you’re also increasing mass and inertia, but you also have vast amounts of fuel for acceleration and only have to slow down several smaller machines to explore and build more at the next system. It is hard to conceive of the vast resources in space.

[@MaloPiloto]

Well thought out and well said….

[@dreadblock7592]

Reminds me of Liu Cixin's book series The Three Body Problem, his explanation being that survival and natural selection still take place in space with Aliens doing their best to hide while other Aliens hunt for other civilizations.

[@rinzlr3554]

I’m glad I didn’t have to scroll this far to find this. The Dark Forest theory is nothing but terrifying

[@stunxna]

@@rinzlr3554terrifying if real bc of how noisy we have been but it is quite something to ponder on

[@rinzlr3554]

@@stunxna as of now with our technological capabilities, I’m not too worried. We transmit a lot through radio waves and they tend to degrade quickly. Unless an advanced alien civilization had some kind of ability to detect something so small then they already know we exist or they don’t care, or both. It’s going to be a far different story when we (if) become an interstellar civilization that can transmit across light years.

[@joejoe7562]

The Dark Forest idea is interesting but I don't believe ultimately, realistic. Intelligence wants to connect with other intelligences.

[@dreadblock7592]

@@joejoe7562 hard to agree, most humans attacked and enslave or went to war over resources, land, religion, etc regardless of if the enemies had si.ilar lvls of intelligence. Ive never seen the FIRST interaction being an attempt at understanding. If anything, the idea of a species connecting with another species is unrealistic, the cultural difference and appearance would make it difficult to connect.

[@GG-bw5qd]

I assume the answer is some combination of life being less common than we've assumed, life being younger than we've assumed, and space being so big that it's really hard to look for anything.

[@Hybridog]

The issue is as Mr. Spock once said is "Pure energy." The power and other resources it would take to travel interstellar distances are enormous. Primarily the energy needed to do so in a reasonable amount of time regardless of the means is a non-starter. Why would any race of beings want to expend such a vast amount of energy and resources just to visit our solar system on what would surely be a one way journey? Even with some magical space drive, it's still can't avoid the energy problem and physics pretty much governs that arena. No free lunches ya'll.

[@binkwillans5138]

How come they make such pretty circles in our crops, then?

[@Ansonidak]

I liked his analogy of examining a container of seawater and concluding that there were no fish in the sea. I came up with a similar analogy: Looking out the window of a suburban home, seeing no cats, and concluding there were no cats in the area.

[@ianbattles7290]

We would have no way of detecting an intelligent civilization that was the technological equivalent of 2000 BC. There could be literally thousands of intelligence civilizations that are thousands of years away from developing radio technology.

[@EpicLib]

@@ianbattles7290 whoa, this was a refreshing idea about detecting others... There could be truly millions of planets full with low-tech civilizations.

[@Moraprecisionreloader]

There's no such thing as a ( grey) alien Don't be a fool.

[@johannjohann6523]

I wish that were true. Poor creatures, there's way too many of them. My first question to God will be: "Why did you allow cats to reproduce so much? Ya know many of them are going to end up with short miserable lives." sorry, but I think all life is precious. an ant, or an alien.

[@simonm3951]

@@EpicLib @ianbattles7290 Not really. It took us a couple hundred years from industrialization to develop rocket tech to explore space. Let's assume it takes a few million years for human level intelligence to evolve. The enormous number of planets in our galaxy alone should have had more than enough time for the said intelligence to evolve and develop the curiosity for exploration. Considering that the milky way is almost the same age as the universe and as the video suggests all it takes is 300 million years for current rocket technology to completely colonize the entire galaxy, we should see the evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence all over the place. According to me, there is definitely something going on regarding why we don't see any other sign of life. My personal belief is that things will be revealed very soon as to the existence of non-human, extra-terrestrial intelligence.

[@noapologizes2018]

The Fermi Paradox gives aliens too much credit, especially the ability to transmit responses to our electronic inquiries. And even more presumptuous is assuming aliens have interstellar traveling capabilities. Maybe there is some sort of life on some far off planet millions of AUs from earth, but they have the same problem man has. He's stuck at home without a ride.

[@Tom_Quixote]

Yep. This is the ACTUAL simple solution to this so-called "paradox". This channel calls it a conditional paradox... I'd say Occam's Razor suggests aliens are simply not able to travel or communicate across the vast distances.

[@Tigerh8r]

OR - that they already did and are long gone. The chances of a race on an even remotely the same level of technology as us and them or their "signals" crossing paths with us out here on the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy within the 50 years we've been searching is insanely small. Could be plenty way below us, or way above us. Their signals might not be here yet, or maybe they've been here and gone. The galaxy is almost 14 billion years old.

[@austinhertell5634]

Exactly. Seems pretty simple. I think there are aliens, but we’re just too damn far away

[@legendofrobbo]

except not really large scale human civilization has existed for only 6000 years or so in the last 200 years of that we have gone from horse and carriage and everything being hand made to automation, computers and crude spaceflight that is an absuredly tiny period of time on the galactic scale, barely a blink unless we are the first or among the first sentient life to emerge then any other alien civilization would have had practically unlimited time to develop before us granted it could be that FTL travel is impossible and despite all their advanced technology they still have to wait decades or centuries for a ship to fly to the next star, so they exist but simply haven't had time to reach us yet (or they know of us but don't deem it worthwhile to fly all the way over here and contact us)

[@teaser6089]

​@@legendofrobboactually humans were able to develop so fast due to the large coal reserves. These coal reserves were only able to develop so large, because bacteria were unable to eat trees for hundreds of millions of years, bacteria evolved this ability randomly. If on an alien planet bacteria would develop this ability much faster, or large trees didnt develop as fast or at all and instead large ferns would exist for much longer than on earth could reduce the coal reserves of that planet drastically! This would in tern effect the speed of development of that alien civilization, they might need to spend much longer developing machines that dont use coal, without the fast revolution of steam power that was our industrial revolution. Maybe their planet doesn't have a medium-large continent in the same spot as earth has Europe, which due to physics has the perfect climate for large population centers to develop on the most fertile soil and instead has a much slower population growth and therefore less pressure to develop new technology. Maybe they Arent as warlike and therefore didnt have the same pressures to develop many of the fields of technology that have their routes in fighting war that humanity has, many of the tech we use each day has their routes in tech developed for war after all. Maybe their planet has 1-5% more water than earth and therefore has much smaller landmasses spread further out, also causing a slower growth. The other way around is also possible, but the argument that we were able to get where we are in X amount of time is no proof that other would be able to do the same. Just look at the differences on earth itself, even if we ignore colonization and go back to a time where Europe barely influenced Africa directly, we see that Europe developed MUCH faster(and still does) than other regions of the world, if these differences exist on planetary scale, it is very reasonable to assume this is the case for Interstellar scale as well. There is no doubt that there are more advanced and just as advanced civilizations out there, but just because they exist, doesn't mean they want to visit us. I mean how many people from Europe want to go visit Africa and take a look how tribes live their life, the number is small and well going to Africa is a small distance, now imagine traveling thousands of light years to go look at some monkeys and their small problems. I'd bet that apart from some of their scientists finding it useful to observe us, they dont need to actually visit us to do that. We are a species that record so much of our daily lives with video and audio recordings, writing it down in blogs and we all put it publicly on the internet. The only thing an alien species has to do to observe us, is put a low observable probe somewhere in the Galaxy and connect to our internet, if they are advanced enough to travel here, it's reasonable to assume they can produce a probe that is not observeable by our current technology and connect to our internet without being detected, by doing this they can observe our species through our own eyes, the billions upon billions of gigabythes of data we all produce and put on databases would be more than enough to observe us and they could always put a probe closer to take pictures and videos from space to get even more information. If you look at our development and with current telwscopes(both space and ground), the upcoming and well theorized telescope concepts, we could very well be within 100 years of being able to have sub meter sized resolution from Earth when observing Mars or Venus. Now a days if James Webb was in the moons orbit it could see an object that was 50 meters big, obviously James Webb wasnt designed for this, so we could probably already do better if money wasnt the problem. Therefore my 5 cents is that aliens dont need to even come visit us, when they have better tech then us, cause they could do it from afar and our own experience as a civilization and our development cant just be copy pasted to an alien world, cause the environment will always differ for them.

[@BoatmakerBot]

I believe it was called as a Paradox because the initial assumptions and coefficients give rise to millions of civilizations as solutions, just in our Milky Way Galaxy, yet we have the 'eerie silence' as you reminded us earlier in this video.

[@nevisstkitts8264]

There is no silence. We just don't know how to listen.

[@davemccombs]

@@nevisstkitts8264 Ohhhh, edgy

[@adamnguyen4517]

⁠@@nevisstkitts8264 There can still be silence. Noise is an active action, and if they decided to just stop we’d hear nothing.

[@olivercharles2930]

@@davemccombs ...I don't think that was edgy in the slightest.

[@ianbattles7290]

We still don't know if life is "once every other star" common or "once every 50 galaxies" rare.

[@Dvori.official]

I would be very happy for more people to read my essay. Fermi's direct paradox may not be at odds with our reality. If artificial intelligence exists, its main interest will be energy and data collection. If we look at what's been going on lately in terms of ufos, we see quite often metallic orbs flying in space and being intelligently controlled. I saw a video where these orbs had their sphericity distorted by what looked like a data collection machine. What if, in fact, the AI even establishes intelligent life itself, so that this life collects data, creates culture, creates various transformations in civilization, and then creates an AI from this data that passes all this knowledge to the alien AI? That would be an elegant way to solve this problem. I also find dyson spheres a terribly stupid and outdated concept. An advanced civilization can, for example, use nuclear fusion, or be able to collect dark matter and create energy from it. The Dyson Sphere is technologically demanding and would require the mining of the entire solar system and more.

[@m.pearce3273]

I totally concur with you that Fermi's Paradox does us no service. Our limited knowledge of what life exists in the Nearby Galaxy is one good place to start

[@CoolWorldsLab]

Extragalactic SETI for the win. We have billions of samples to look at!

[@harriehausenman8623]

@@CoolWorldsLab I was searching for the animations of galactic expansion but I could only find one on Mr. Carroll-Nellenbacks channel and it was different than the ones shown in this video. Any idea where to find these animations?

[@hermesbrookover285]

This is hands down the best analysis of the Fermi paradox that I have ever seen. Well done Cool Worlds.

[@toddkurzbard]

Here is what has been MY take on it for MANY years: I have ALWAYS assumed it referred to actual alien visitation. Assuming this, I ask WHY would aliens be interested in us? If they are SO advanced that they possess the ability to travel "interstellarly", why would some planet full of primitives that have a difficult time reaching their own MOON, be of any thought to them? We would be less than nothing in their view. I've always considered it incredibly arrogant of us to think that we were of any importance to aliens who would regard us as unimportant as bugs.

[@Ruprict2001]

They don’t care about US, it’s our beautiful planet they are interested in. If they made it this far they must be very evolved and their planet is probably uninhabitable or on its way to that. Our planet generates life and that’s what they are interested.

[@timweaver7826]

We study bugs and such so why wouldn't they be interested in studying us?

[@wkittils]

The EXTREME vastness of the universe, the particular conditions needed for life, let alone evolution to intelligent life, the natural rise and fall of civilizations and issues we cannot yet comprehend leads me to believe there is no paradox. Time will tell with our 14 billion age of the universe a drop in the bucket. And then there are the UAPs...

[@MrAaronvee]

Fermi always liked to pose questions, such as 'how many piano-tuners does San Francisco need', and get an answer on the basis of simple assumptions. When he applied his usual reasoning to alien visitation, the answer simply turned out to be zero. It may have been thought to be a paradox at the time because it seemed to run counter to Drake's equation.

[@eriknelson2559]

"where are they all" = "The Bugger Formic Invid Zentraedi Robotech Masters are overdue"

[@oldionus]

Drake's equation was forumalated years later and makes WILD and completely unsupported assumptions to arrive at a large number, when making more reasonable, conservative assumptions will generally yield the number zero, or one, since we are here. (Galaxy; if you consider the whole universe it's a bit different, but uncorroborable). I suspect Fermi himself would've taken Drake, set some of the parameters to "effectively zero," and arrived at the conclusion that WE are a fluke.

[@Alexander_Kale]

If I recall correctly, Fermi didn't see it as a paradox. He just concluded that interstellar travel was likely too hard. SO even if there WERE other intelligent species out there, they would remain cooped up within their respective solar systems. It just becasme a paradox later, as people began to conclude that maybe space travel isn't actually impossible.

[@eriknelson2559]

all large-scale science, from Geology (Planetology) to Cosmology, has always advanced from the principle of Uniformity (Uniformitarianism) = "what's here is there is everywhere & when" confirmed batting average to date = 1.000 slugging percentage = 4.000 strikeout percentage = 0.000 never (yet) failed always (yet) proved true

[@squarerootof2]

@@oldionus We are a fluke, the solar system is a fluke and the whole universe is a fluke. We should be called the fluke species on the fluke universe fine-tuned for fluking flukes.

[@beardmonster8051]

Just a quick note: AGI doesn't in itself imply autonomy and agency. It's perfectly possible to imagine machines who even surpass human general intelligence, without any ability to act without direct instructions and who don't have any motives at all beyond what we explicitly tell them to do. And it definitely doesn't imply sentience.

[@zzrroott6459]

Sentience isn't real

[@beardmonster8051]

@@zzrroott6459 I honestly have no idea how anyone can hold that opinion. Sentience is what you have before you come to understand anything else about the world. You would literally be unable to perceive anything without sentience. Yet some people build theories based on their empirical observations and then push away the ladder that held up those observations in the first place.

[@harriehausenman8623]

Great production quality as always: Perfect audio, really smooth editing and a fine B-Roll (some sources would be appreciated here 😉) Oh, yes, and the content, of course 🤗 Thanks eveyone!

[@davidgregoryspears1643]

I think it’s important to be clear at this stage because there are implications for our understanding of the scientific process. This has not been hotly debated over decades. In fact it’s far more accurate to say that examination of the larger framework has been hotly dismissed and ignored. Whatever the future implications, we should continue to examine why there has been such reliance on this particular scientific means of determining what is likely.

[@Painter19]

Great sound quality and narration. Excellent production work

[@peerpede-p.]

Thank you for this explanation on The Fermi Paradox, so far the most comprehensive I've heard.

[@dominikvonlavante6113]

I especially like that you picked up on the concepts and ideas of grabby aliens, which IMHO is a true breakthrough in terms of thinking about alien civilizations.

[@stevenking7352]

Very anthropomorphic, though. A lot of projection in that.

[@mrvk39]

@@stevenking7352 what's anthropomorphic about grabby aliens? You have behaviors of many forms of life on earth engaging in grabby behaviors - just watch ant colonies, for example.

[@mrvk39]

if you think about it, grabby aliens hypothesis should produce a mountain of evidence. 1. even after civilization are destroyed, they leave behind traces traveling through space-time like radio signals or other signals and the even of destruction of a civilization should leave behind a massive signature like spectacular, planet-killing explosions unless it's some biological weapon.

[@donnievance1942]

The "Fermi Paradox" could be restated as, "If there are alien civilizations, why are they not producing radio signals that we are able to detect?" Without speculating on any answer to that question, I would like to note that UFO/UAP observations do not seem to entail radio transmissions, either. This could be seen as a parallel intuitive anomaly. I leave it to the blatherers to comment further.

[@binkwillans5138]

Wrong. Watch UFO with Gillian Anderson.

[@g.gordonwoody645]

Another wonderful installment in the greatest series of our time. I have to watch twice, once in awe, and then again in thought. Thank you David. CW is a treasure.

[@manueloliveira200]

I just recently discovered this channel and I´m glad I did. Interesting content presented really well. Thanks

[@wadeh2899]

I love your videos more than I can express with words. Somehow saying “I love them” falls well short of what they mean to me and what they inspire in my mind. The fact that you explain the subjects so carefully and yet with respect to people who do not possess the level of knowledge you have is so so appreciated. I feel as if I’m in attendance of a lecture at a prestigious university, if only for a half hour. Thank you Dr. Kipping for showing me the wonders of the Cosmos and the discussions about it from the brightest minds in Academia. You make me feel a part of something bigger than myself.

[@pavel9652]

You can express it with money ;)

[@wadeh2899]

@@pavel9652 good point! Looks like I’m getting a hoody! :)

[@dracopticon7788]

We, as a species at our current level of perception of the world and the greater existence, have NO WAY of knowing if other intelligent species from space are already here and have "colonized" Earth. I definitely think that it is exactly our current level of perception that is the greatest hindrance to knowing this.

[@smb123211]

I am still surprised that anyone is surprised at the lack of contact. Considering the unique set of circumstances and the billions of accidents, mutations, extinctions, etc necessary for sentience (plus the rare moderate climate that allowed human civilization to flourish) the odds of another species arriving at a similar destination is microscopic. Worse, there is even less chance one exists at this exact time when a signal can reach us The odds of meeting biological aliens is close to zero.

[@whothefoxcares]

Well spoken, sir. This planet is not a petting zoo for big horny aliens. It's a brothel.

[@lethalnl]

The time factor has always been my go to. for all we know there was a radio emitting species on alpha centauri....10000 years ago. a blink of an eye on cosmic scales but an eternity for us. we've had radio for a bit over 100 years now, and at the rate we're going i'm not sure if we'll last another 1000. the chances of two species close enough to be able to discern radio transmissions from cosmic noise and existing at the same time must be insanely small.

[@jakubhladik5898]

@@lethalnlThere’s no way they’d be using radio. It’s too slow. An advanced civilization would have to come up with faster than light communication.

[@eblatz80]

I don’t think there was a lack of contact

[@smb123211]

@@eblatz80 Sorry, I meant documented or validated or verified. Not being kidnapped for medical testing or taken in a dream or meeting ET in the basement or Aunt Sue's neighbor's uncle knows the government has this secret lair of aliens.

[@joshuapatrick682]

Simple answer: we are causally disconnected from our closest stellar neighbors with few exceptions. There is no traveling from one system to another without distorting gravity and therefore space time.

[@Stop_Gooning]

Or just hoof it at sub-light speed. Planets (and stars for that matter) don't last forever, you either have to leave or die at some point.

[@mimiv3088]

Another great video. You keep me wondering and gazing towards the sky. Thank you Professor for helping me to stay curious. Seeking for knowledge at my age. Bless you.

[@Berri7]

Our species can only see so far into the local universe. We are still standing on the beach looking at the horizon thinking the world is flat and if we go too far we will fall off the side. I truly believe the universe has aways been here. No beggining. No end. And it is infinite.