Will We Ever Find Alien Life?

[@Jop_pop]

"Gentrification" - now there's a word I'd never thought I'd hear in a space documentary video

[@tannlknin6926]

"Techno-Monkeys" is one of the best ways to describe humans ever

[@poopstain5216]

Sounds like a punk band

[@Xeno455]

Maybe not so much with the current political climate (at least in America). Calling someone a monkey of any kind would be rather disrespectful.

[@poopstain5216]

Brandon K. Stfu

[@JET7C0]

@@Xeno455 Not if you're applying it to all humans. How can that be offensive if everyone is included, and no superficial group or individual singled out? Creationists in the early 20th Century were offended by the idea we descended from primates on religious grounds, to the point there was a trial, but if people want to be offended by well-established science, that's on them and we can also see in such an example why the idea of holding back speech because it might be "offensive" to someone can quickly become destructive to reason.

[@Xeno455]

@@JET7C0 Alright, a few things. 1: Humans are not even closely related to monkeys. Your "established" science falls flat, immediately. Because YOUR science isn't based on real science. We're not even on the same evolutionary branch. At all. We're both primates, sure. Yet the difference between us is like that of grass and trees. 2: The creationist story that you told was all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a current socially accepted cancel-culture. I don't like it as much as you, and as an individual I do what I want regardless. That being said, I'm not famous. I'm guaranteed to not get canceled because of that fact. Yet a medium sized youtube channel is literally the perfect avenue for people that do accept it to attack. 3: I never made it a race thing. At all. I said "Someone". Your presumptions are ridiculous and you're arguing against straw men from that point forward.

[@levelfourteen]

I love Issac Arthur’s channel he really goes into the Fermi Paradox. Its problems and solutions.

[@Skeithization]

Was also about to suggest him. he's really thorough about explaining the various arguments about the fermi paradox. And about a lot of other stuff :D.

[@Deadlyish]

He makes a great case for his position of a combination of rare Earth and rare intelligence

[@inthefade]

Yes Isaac is incredible. It really takes a long amount of focused time to understand his arguments though. I've been reading about these arguments for two decades and he somehow still blows my mind with new insights when I really pay attention.

[@Skeithization]

He meant that he has knowledge, or have been learning about the subject, for two decades and Isaac still menaged to impress him. It doesn't take two decades of video watching to understand him :).

[@Cythil]

Correction. Possible solutions. The fact is we do not know yet why we can have not seen any other intelligence out there. But there are a lot of ideas. And the more we learn the more we can hone in on the right solution by discarding what we know is not true. (Like now we know that there are other planets around other stars and that there pretty common. Go back 50 years and there where still those that though that planets may be extremely rare. Maybe even so rare that only our solar system had them. But now we know that is not true.)

[@gonzotown9438]

I'd like to see one of these Fermi videos about how difficult it would be to develop recognizable technology on different kinds of worlds. If your gravity is too high, then getting things into space could be a big problem. If your species is aquatic, then how do you move past the stone age? What kind of air do you need to achieve combustion?

[@MG-ye1hu]

Excellent summary as always. However, there is one factor, that is probably underestimated. Most people don't have a real idea about the distances we're talking about, which are beyond huge. And with the hard limitation of the speed of light, the statistic probability of receiving signals boils down to next to nothing. It's like the probability of two little fishes jumping into the Ocean from two sides to meet each other in their lifetime.

[@punkypinko2965]

Exactly. And space is expanding so the universe is just getting bigger. Now add the vastness of time as well. What if one of those little fishies lived a a hundred million years ago. So yeah ...

[@josephhall5681]

It's more accurate if you use intelligent fish. Possibly more advanced than us by unimaginable amounts. I think they would probably have the capability to find each other, or in the case of one dumb and one smart the smart one locate their less intelligent future buddy

[@MG-ye1hu]

@@josephhall5681 In the end it doesn't matter how intelligent the fish are. The speed of light is the hard limitation of everything, sight, communication, any kind of wave.

[@Silverwind87]

@@MG-ye1hu Unless you can build a warp drive. Or an infinite improbability drive.

[@genzu6388]

@@Silverwind87 or just turn yourself into photons, smh

[@JonasSchewelius]

The biggest dream of mine is to be alive the day we discover life in the cosmos (if we do). i imagine myself sitting by my computer, getting a notification from any of the news-sites here in sweden saying "first evidence of life has been found". The media coverage will last for weeks etc.. imagine a photo from one of our great telescopes of a world where we can SEE the building of a advanced civilization, or like the movies, a giant alien spaceship enters our atmosphere to make first contact. These are the things that i want more than anything, to know, that we are not alone.

[@medexamtoolscom]

Yeah don't hold your breath. I find it quaint that you waiting for this is so similar to the religious waiting for the messiah.

[@Bisquick]

@@medexamtoolscom There might be a difference worth mentioning, which would be he's most likely not basing his current and future actions and beliefs on this hope. It's just a hope to be able to see because it'd be a cool experience of collective global excitement.

[@allisterblossfeld9329]

media coverage last for weeks? Try years. If we find conclusive proof of aliens it will be the biggest discovery of humanity, although I could see half the population thinking it's some kind of government conspiracy. That would be incredible. I just want to be alive when that comet comes back when I'm in my 70s.

[@robertt9342]

My greatest hope is to see significant steps of our species moving beyond our basic tribalism towards something better. I agree that knowing that alien intelligent life would be cool, but I would rather see real growth of our species by more than just our technological progress.

[@JonasSchewelius]

@@medexamtoolscom i think you misunderstood things.. Just think that such an event would be so epic to bare witness of.

[@matthewgrotke1442]

I don't think the Fermi paradox is that paradoxical once you truly comprehend the vast distances involved, and the immense timescales it takes to send a beam of light across even 1% of this enormous galaxy. And the fact that we have not sampled enough space with a high enough resolution to make an informed determination. Terrestrial strength transmissions would NOT be visible past 4 or 5 LYs. You can find an online calculator for Free Space Path Loss (FSPL), and see about that after that distance, the signal would be indistinguishable from cosmic microwave background radiation. So no, there are no alien civilizations watching our I Love Lucy broadcasts. The ONLY transmission we would detect would be one deliberately aimed at Earth with very directional and very high-strength beam. And by the way, they would have to send a sustained beam for at least several years to hope that we would even notice it. Why would any civilization bother wasting so much power sending a sustained beam to Earth, which is just one of at least tens of billions of potentially habitable planets in the galaxy. Not all hope is lost. With better telescopic resolution, we could however infer alien life by detecting oxygen and methane in spectrograms of exoplanet atmospheres. We don't yet have the tools to see the contents of exoplanet atmospheres, so deducing whether alien civilization are common or rare in our galaxy is getting ahead of ourselves. The only thing that is still paradoxical about the Fermi paradox is the absence of Von Neumann probes. Yes, they could have spread throughout the galaxy by now. But it's not so strange that alien civilizations have better things to do than have machines spread out and potentially destroy the galaxy on their behalf, for no good reason. Von Neumann probes are of no tangible benefit to a planet-based civilization. Combine this with the fact that complex life may be rare and intelligence may be even more rare, and I don't see any paradox at all.

[@shortstacksport]

Von Neumann probes are, frankly, stupid. There's no reason to believe anyone would build them.

[@vakusdrake3224]

You're thinking far to small with regards to the benefits of Von Neumann probes. If you're reasonably advanced you've probably got AGI which you can get to act in alignment with your goals (if not then you've probably been replaced by AGI which are likely to be no less expansionist) then making Von Neumann probes which do what you want and can self replicate without diverging over time in values isn't hard. So given the very possible threat of being subsumed by other more expansionist civilizations and the fact expanding now lets you save more energy for pushing back the heat death of the universe (and you can do computing and thus run minds much faster in the degenerate era: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5LQZnWhja54nrM) there's very compelling reasons for an advanced civilization to expand and for them not to would require them to be extremely authoritarian since you need to be able to prevent any group or even just individual from going off and doing so. It's also worth noting that for a immortal civilization their population is going to increase exponentially, so particularly if they are forward thinking they will probably want to develop some real estate before that becomes an issue in millions of years (or likely less since those factions who breed the fastest will come to dominate future population growth eventually).

[@RedRocket4000]

@@vakusdrake3224 The Von Neumann idea is for unlimited exploration returning information thousands to millions of years after the deaths of the builders if not immortal. Yours referring to local area exploration at least at this time in Universe history so the probes would be limited in how far out they went if no faster than light travel. Probes also might avoid or stay cloaked traveling though occupied systems.

[@vakusdrake3224]

@@RedRocket4000 I'm actually thinking of the sorts of maximally expansionist Von-Neumann probes, which disassemble nearly every system they come upon to make more Von-Neumann probes as well as to turn the material into other useful stuff and store matter in a form that will conserve it for the degenerate era as previously mentioned. I'm very much not thinking just local area exploration since the probes may well transform nearly everything in that civs future light cone into stuff which is useful to the parent civ. As for being limited to lightspeed that's still pretty rapid over cosmic timescales so you'd expect any civilization we randomly saw to have already "consumed" most or all of their local galactic cluster since they would be unlikely to not have a head start of at least millions of years on us.

[@ACLozMusik]

@@vakusdrake3224 I'm not completely sure but as population grow goes, after a phase of exponential explotion it's likely that the number stabilizes after some conditions are met. This is already happening here, where develping countries still grow in population atva quick rate while more stablished ones like EU economic core or Japan are below the 2 children per couple (Kurzgesagt video on overpopulation). So, with some global planning, overpopulation is not an issue. For me, the strongest argument for colonizing other planets is to avoid extiction in case some natural or self-induced catastrophe strikes the original home planet.

[@joshuakahky6891]

Greetings from 2020! The JWST is still safe and sound here on Earth!

[@Growlizing]

Haha, was thinking the same thing 'Launching in a year.. or so.' :D

[@joshuakahky6891]

@Daan P gr8 b8 m8

[@enaidealukal4105]

yeah... still no James Webb, and 2021 is a few days away

[@flatearthnews7904]

Delayed :( now in October or near that

[@insevered2730]

Greetings from 2021 the JWST is still on earth!

[@IOtheFifth]

Every time someone mentions JWST, it gets delayed another month.

[@whocares2087.1]

Everything is relative. Especially in the Southern USA.

[@2ebarman]

every mention of JWST bends spacetime even further in Southern USA nevermind, I could not resist

[@OneCut1Slash]

Lol, it'll be out some decade.

[@christianartman]

2025, 16 billion

[@derekscanlan4641]

shhh stop mentioning it

[@smazey2309]

Aliens pass earth and lock their doors

[@helloyes2288]

Or cross the street when we look their way.

[@Illiteratechimp]

Aliens are racist.

[@daveb5041]

Imagine what they must think when they see who our leader is? That's why they are not sharing the warp drive with us, we were almost ready, but they were like : "Oh maybe they are not that great a decision making after all, on to the next star system Zortorg"

[@Illiteratechimp]

@@daveb5041 The alien leader be all like: When Earth sends its humans, they’re not sending their best...They’re sending humans that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [them]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good humans.

[@daveb5041]

​@@Illiteratechimp Well can't we build a space wall? I know that most UFO's come here through legal space boarder crossings, space ports, or just overstay their space visas, a wall still might help but we need to make sure no quantum tunneling, the tunneling is great tremendous and amazing. The tunneling is very instant its tunneling and its instant its tunneling instantly. But the UFO's on the south peninsula below the Space DMZ needs to de-space-nuke. Most ufo's are Clinton supporters full of space drugs.

[@animalpowerca]

this videos are incredibbly well made, thanks for the experience.

[@Crushonius]

these videos or this video

[@chuckschillingvideos]

This video is based on absolutely NOTHING scientific.

[@bikerfirefarter7280]

'dibbly' ? wtf, spell check?

[@LeoDVfan]

"Are we more inclined to acts of self-destruction and planetary sabotage, or to acts of preservation and exploration?" *awkward cough*

[@valiroime]

I’ll take _Self Destruction and Planetary Sabotage_ for 100 Alex

[@AndriiPovkh]

What if PBS is a disguised alien trying to teach us some science?

[@georgeperalta936]

I'd feel very sorry for that alien watching us wipe ourselves out for a particular bartering method (money). It's truly sad that the scale of the universe makes people so uncomfortable they entirely forget it

[@thatdutchguy2882]

You got Into my stash again haven't you xD ?

[@webkeeper]

@@georgeperalta936 maybe this alien thinks that his planet had to go through all these mistakes too. To learn from them. Is it possible for his race to jump the steps in their evolution?

[@thebigpicture2032]

He’s teaching science while covering up evidence of aliens while they prep to invade. “It’s never aliens until it’s aliens” suddenly becomes chilling.

[@iamnegan2294]

He does look elflike.

[@kontrolhax7684]

You just made me go in 4 o'clock in the morning for a 15 min bike ride in the rain to get pringles

[@sangramalive999]

Are u serious

[@zoidberg9607]

what flavour did you get

[@DashRantic]

@@zoidberg9607 asking the real questions here

[@bloomsux69]

come on dude what flavor did you get we need to know

[@williamdistasio9358]

Salt and vinegar are the best.

[@thomasford2032]

I always had this idea of aliens being in the same situation as us in the sense that they are also asking if there is life beyond their planet and that they have the same hurdles to overcome.

[@kaboomsihal1164]

To me the most significant thing to keep in mind is that there could be hundreds or thousands of civilisations exactly as advanced as we are in the milky way who look for others the exact same way we do and we'd not have found each other. The fact that our own search might well not be enough yet to even find ourselves at a realistic distance puts things into perspective.

[@ekklesiast]

The universe is 14 billion years old. it's highly unlikely that there are thousands of civilizations EXACTLY as advanced as ours and none of more advanced.

[@aurelia8028]

No. There couldn't be. We would have seen them by now. Also, the "fact" is not a fact, just popscience nonsense

[@xIANoDOOMx]

I think you missed the point of this guy's comment. Our own search is dedicated to the larger/more advanced civilizations as of right now and we honestly have no way of detecting civilizations at our own level. The same would also be true in reverse, because our own radio signal we've been emitting (since the invention of radio) is so hopelessly diffuse that it would be unlikely any equivalent level species would be able to notice it, let alone decipher it (at any significant distance).

[@oberonpanopticon]

There’s also the notion that perhaps advanced intelligent life is incredibly common. After all, if the universe is absolutely packed full of life, then we have no baseline to compare it to.

[@Aikko77]

I think one of the great biological filters for developing intelligent life may be the development of complex multicellular life. No matter which way multicellular life developed, whether it be thru symbiosis, cellularization, etc., it all seems to be exceptionally difficult to jump from anything more than a slime-mold sized organisms up to something as basic as a sea slug. Unicellular life existed for BILLIONS of years before the first simple multicellular life took form, and it took until the Cambrian explosion before some real complexity existed. I feel like given the amount of time it took for multicellular life it develop, and given the likely number of multicellular species compared to unicellular species, multicellular development is an extremely rare and difficult event, that takes such a wide range of circumstantial sequence of events and factors to occur, that it is very possible that Earth may be one of just a few hundred, maybe a thousand, or so planets which have developed multicellular life in the Galaxy. Most all of the small and iffy evidence we have for life on places like Mars is focused on unicellular life almost exclusively. Given that even after developing multicellular life, a species must evolve intelligence (which took ~550 million years from the Cambrian explosion on Earth) I feel like multicellularity may be a large enough limiter, not even considering other limiting factors (such as the planet's parent star being the right type so as to not emit too much radiation, the star being in the right neighborhood of the Galaxy to avoid excess radiation, the presence of a large planet like Jupiter to limit asteroid impacts, the planet not being too large so spaceflight is impossible, the presence of a magnetic field to further limit radiation, existence of the right materials on the planet (i.e. planet is from correct stellar generation) and the planet is old enough to allow for the evolution of intelligent life), is enough to limit Earth to the only or one of only a few planets with intelligent species in the Galaxy.

[@2ebarman]

Another factor to consider is that Sun has increased in brightness by about 40% during the development of life on Earth. And yet Earth has maintained similar temperature on its surface during all that time. How did that come to be? Maybe there is some really simple and well-understood reason behind this, but I have not really heard of one. Is this reason somehow unique to Earth, or can it be common to every planet? After all, all stars get brighter during their life, although very small stars brighten up significantly slower. But very small stars exhibit substantial instability in their radiation output. Larger stars, on the other hand, increase in brightness much faster, leaving much less time for life to develop around them. In any case, I'm not an expert in physics not in biology, so I can only throw somewhat blind guesses out there

[@Mosern1977]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I think that single celled organisms probably are fairly common. The multi-cellular one is probably the biggest 'filter'. And the fact that the dinosaurs could have easily ruled today, if that meteor didn't wipe them out. And they were not the greatest thinkers. I mean, the did rule the earth for over 200.000.000 years. So my guess is: 1. Single cellular life = common. 2. Multi cellular life = extremely rare. 3. Stupid animals = incredibly rare. 4. Intelligent animals = nearly zero chance. 5. Space-faring animals = practically one pr galaxy.

[@2ebarman]

lvl1 multicellular organism lvl2 multiorganism hive lvl3 multihive mind An organism is emergent from cells A hive is emergent from organisms A mind is emergent from hives The third level made little sense stated this way initially, but I had an idea. I googled "hive neurons" and got that as a second result: "A Bee Colony Closely Parallels the Neurons of the Brain". So if a single brain acts sort of as a hive of neurons, a multi-brain entity is not a hivemind, it's a mind of hives. A multi-hive mind. A civilization ... perhaps? One can go from there and develop some rather interesting philosophical concepts. That our higher level thinking is civilized, but the term 'civilized' has a specific meaning there. It indicates that our thinking is not really our own. We haven't created it, merely learned. A quote from a movie that I liked: "Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others" I'm bit tired and perhaps not entirely rational at this point, and perhaps I should not write this comment, but maybe someone can see something interesting there for themselves ... just maybe. Disclaimer: I'm aware that analogies are good only up to a certain point. The brain is not actually a hive, it may only resemble it in some ways. Great care is needed not to submerge in bs while following such flashes of ... ideas.

[@TheMarrethiel]

I watched something recently that speculated that Oxidation may be the big eureka factor in biological development. So if the rest of the galaxy is developing anaerobically then we likely have a big head start.

[@Jamie-Russell-CME]

Or not even that. Even with all the time many things dontake sense or aren't solved. Not to mention the fact or we haven't even considered. It's a crapshoot. And the fact that more and more papers are written describing certain parameters have to be just right for life to exist we can probably expect that there are many more factors which determining e the possibility for life to exist will be discovered. Rendering the hypothesis of the rare earth more impossibly rare than before. It's already coming into focus. We are the only life permitting planet in the universe. And once that is realized the next realization will be that development of intelligent life is only possible by the transcendent Creator and His will. After all we are based on a code. And we have mutation correcting codes in our DNA. and no code has ever been shown to arise without intelligent agency. Let alone an error correction code. How do mutations randomly create a code that corrects mutations. And virtually all mutations degrade the genome. And these mutations are shown to be degrading us by 60-100 per generation

[@Gojosaturo890]

Maybe going from unicellular to multicellular is the great barrier

[@peterhalloran291]

Took earth 3 billion years, so that makes sense.

[@eduardoorvananosarcher4053]

Or even from nothing to unicellular

[@charlesjohnson4210]

@@eduardoorvananosarcher4053 From a time scale perspective, nothing to unicellular appeared much faster than unicellular to multi-cellular

[@rubiks6]

Maybe going from non-living to living is the great barrier.

[@charlesjohnson4210]

@@rubiks6 So that happened within 1 billions years of the formation of our planet, it took nearly 2 billion more to get from single cell to multi cell

[@Cobloaf69]

Love how all these videos come to an inconclusive outcome

[@loweloking88]

I would love for one of the rovers on Mars to casually run into a small bug or something walking around on a rock. That small little insect will be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind.

[@wahn10]

Matt, thank you for saying "Understanding comes from interpretation of your models, not the models themselves." This is going on my fridge.

[@scottwatrous]

To me I still think there's a bit of "Dark Forest" theory to be considered. It may be that any group which does pass the great filter also comes to understand that broadcasting their existence is not the best idea, and that survival is best accomplished when you don't have other groups coming after you.

[@Master_Ed]

Copy and paste :|

[@PersimmonHurmo]

There WILL BE at least someone who doesn't do that! Which means your theory does not prevent us finding aliens

[@scottwatrous]

@@PersimmonHurmo yeah I'm sure that's true. But it might explain why things are "quiet" and we don't already have clear evidence of being in the midst of a galaxy-wide cultural explosion. I think it is likely that eventually if it's out there we would notice things. We might not see ships or societies or great works: but there might be ruins or leftover oddities that start to point to a narrative that requires an intelligence at one end. If something like Dark Forest theory is in effect, I would liken our situation as being happy, simple, island people on the shore of our beach, looking out into the ocean for a ship, or even some fish. Now, maybe it happens that those smart enough to be out there are aware of each other but in the midst of a great Cold War. Their ships are submarines, designed to hide from each other. Lesser species such as ours, our existence may be obvious to such beings, but they won't have any reason to bother with us. They could probably slip in and out of our system, gathering supplies or just some gravity boost, with no one knowing better. Or it's just optics and we need better lenses. Maybe it's all quite plain if you knew which of the millions systems to scrutinize closer.

[@PersimmonHurmo]

I am inclined to support your latter opinion. Dark Forest theory appears too fictitious to me, as if from a sci-fi book

[@scottwatrous]

Well yeah about that...

[@demkadeem]

It depends on how high Elon musk gets

[@b4nkrup710]

ASAP Papi lmao

[@KafshakTashtak]

ASAP Papi Elon believes in US being a simulation. How good of a simulation?, that depends on how high he gets.

[@burtosis]

Considering how many spaceships he has, that's probably pretty damn high.

[@saurabhjamgade8606]

Self annihilation i think thats the filter we have to overcome 1st.. we already got tech and weapons to annihilate ourself imagine when we become type 1 civilization we might be capable of such destruction to destroy all evidence of our existence.(Elon musk is smart guy thinking to put some of us away from humans i.e. on mars).one more better plan might be creating robots AI to do the space labour work like journey and waiting till some one else we see. and when they spot something worth visit then we download our conciseness(saved millions of year ago into these robots into some biological or mechanical humanoid. Imagine Evolution as ladder unfortunately it doesn't care where the next step of ladder is comming from a good or evil idea. it just want to go up. Super advance AI without feeling will do the same. But humanity.. i believe its in choosing the most good ways and ideas to climb the ladder of evolution (MOST 100% is not possible). JUST DONT WANT AT THE END STUPID ROBOTS AND AI MEETING AND GREETING created by diffrent aliens.

[@anvynesherman2354]

Which is good him being high or him not?

[@gabrielbrownBG]

I mean, when we film nature documentaries, we hide from the animals too...

[@bodombeastmode]

The fact of the matter is that space is so profoundly massive that there could be an intelligent civilization 200 light years from us and we would never know. That is relatively close on a cosmic scale. The universe is just too damn massive, and the speed of light is just too damn slow. We are like ants separated by miles.

[@bormisha]

Not only is the speed of light slow, but attaining even 10% of it is so difficult even without massive relativistic effects!

[@panzrok8701]

But ants still have managed to spread all over the planet and are almost everywhere.

[@bormisha]

Panzrom, good point. But do ants of Europe know of existence of ants in America? What if we ourselves are the "self-replicating probe" of a spreading galactic civilization?

[@adamkosloff3576]

Exactly. The Pizza Guy got it right: boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=689927

[@vakusdrake3224]

Did you not watch the video? Even if civilizations didn't spread beyond their home start we would definitely notice any dyson swarms within 200 light years of us.

[@PaperDragons]

I am curious why I never hear anyone dive deeper into the odds of our own intelligent life evolving out of billions of years. It is kind of washed over by saying 'even if 0.1% of the planets could produce intelligent life". We have tens of millions of species over billions of years of life to use for base numbers to figure out the odds for humanity. Humans have zero expectations of finding any intelligent life on Earth, now or in the past. There are creatures on Earth with an extremely complex communications system and we can't even figure out what they are saying or how they communicate. Curiosity may be the great filter that we happen to break through in order to use a rock and burn a log.

[@Deadlyish]

Paper Dragon check out Isaac Arthur's video on Rare Intelligence. He explores all the things that need to line up perfectly for something like human intelligence and tech to be possible. Spoiler: there's a lot of them

[@zodiacfml]

I agree. There are countless reasons why we haven't found them yet. One of that is communication. Our technology doesn't match the alien civilizations out there. Radio is pretty much a crude technology and advanced civs must have got rid of it for a long time. Another thing that video did not discussed is the possibility that we are the most advanced survivor of an alien civ which are going annihilation. It also did not discussed the possibility of survival of the fittest where complex beings can't defeat the annihilating power of nature or harshness of space. Another is fiction. Advanced civs could be a fragment of literature to something greater than us; the concept of gods, then turned monsters, ghosts, and now aliens. I'm just not holding my breath that we'll find each other within this century.

[@sasshole8121]

Well said, and a good way of considering how rare intelligent life may be. Earth has countless little attributes that make it aminable to inteillgent life and advanced civilization, and if it was missing any one of them, advanced civilizations may not have arose. For instance, if flint or chert didn't exist on Earth (and are not common on Earth as it is), early humans would not have had a rock with the right properties to make the hand ax, which was the only tool that hominids had for millions of years and which drove our evolution until the neolithic era. If you add all the unlikely qualites that Earth has to make it friendly to advanced civilization, the chances of finding something similar is extremely rare, even 1 in a trillion could be optimistic. If that is the case, advanced civilizations could be very few and far between.

[@maxcarren112]

It's not just the fact that flint was here that drove us to develop technology. There were a whole lot of other factors at play too. Like our weird curiosity that causes us to sail into the middle of oceans we know nothing about. Or our obsession with creating stories that explain the world around us, and getting others to believe them too. All of these things are pretty unique, we don't see dolphins trying to crawl around on land just to see what's up there. We were a pretty stable species that lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle for millions of years, we didn't really have any environmental pressure to develop rocket ships or even agriculture. For whatever reason we were curious enough to try new ideas that sometimes went horribly wrong, and then try them again and again until they worked. IDK if that's very common since we are the only example of a truly "innovative" species on earth.

[@PaperDragons]

Thank you for the suggestions and feedback!

[@manspidermann]

So we observed around 2.700 planets. The milky way is said to have 40 billion. 2.700 planets is 0.00000675% of all the planets. :P we gotta chill a bit

[@garethdean6382]

That works for not finding life on ONE planet. Limited pond-scum life. But if any of those planets developed interstellar tech at 1% light speed, it takes a million years or so to colonize the whole galaxy. Dyson spheres, star mining, MOVING stars... we see none of this, and nobody has left us a welcome mat. So is all life single-planet? Why?

[@ScorchedEarthRevenge]

Listen to @@garethdean6382 . Literally the first person I have found on the internet who understands the Fermi Paradox. 1 million years you can colonise the entire galaxy. Our galaxy has existed for nearly as long as the universe itself. It's 13.5 billion years old! That's a lot of opportunities to colonise our galaxy!

[@ScorchedEarthRevenge]

@@jasondenton5432 You do not understand the Fermi paradox.

[@Jhakaro]

Gareth Dean The time at 1% the speed of light even assuming instant acceleration to that speed and in deceleration, is 10 million years not one million and that's to just reach from one side of the galaxy to the other. That's not including the fact that you have to essentially travel 100,000 light years in distance diameter, travelling that far in EVERY direction. Now that's very rough and not at all a scientific measurement but gives some idea of the distance. Then you have to slow down and get to any and every inhabitable planet along the way and spend hundreds or thousands of years colonising those before moving on to the next. You could spend 20,000 years on just one or two planets. You also wouldn't head out to most far off planets until you know for sure that they are habitable and if you sent out probes, by the time they get there and send a signal back, your entire civilisation could be gone and dead meaning you never even got off the one or two rocks in your own solar system or the surrounding solar systems. You might not even need to go beyond one or two planets you find and colonise because your population isn't even big enough to warrant it for another 30,000 years or more because you already live on four or five planets nearer you. 1% of light speed is absolutely nothing and I'm pretty sure we have many means at the moment that could actually get us up even faster than that and we'd still all die before reaching our nearest solar system because of radiation in space, muscle atrophy and bone density decreases due to lack of gravity and the fact that we wouldn't have enough food or supplies/resources and money to build a ship large enough to carry enough people to colonise a planet and feed them and hydrate them and stop them from killing each other in transit due to space madness, spending 400 years in space at the 1% light speed value you gave just to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest interstellar neighbour. There'd have to be generations of self sustaining people that don't go mad from lack of grass and wildlife and the sound of wind or water and the feeling of being entrapped on this one way journey. Hell, over such distances, because it would take so long, the entire ship's engines or internal life support systems could easily breakdown killing everyone aboard. You'd also need about 40,000 people for a good range of genetic diversity to get to that one planet to colonise it, meaning either a ship that can hold and sustain that population and much more (kids, grandkids etc.) or many large ships carrying them all (a more viable and safeguarded option) and that's all if you can solve the gravity problem and the radiation problem, feeding problem, water problem etc. To colonise the galaxy would take hundreds of billions of years and due to all the hurdles might not ever be possible and most civilisations would die out long before they get the chance or shortly after they begin.

[@ScorchedEarthRevenge]

Jhakaro *Problem 1 - Techological advancement* You're assuming that a technological civilisation that has existed for millions of years could would have the same level of technology and therefore the same problems to overcome as our civilisation that has been around for 100 years. But the biggest problem with your counter-argument is that it assumes the colonisation is a linear process. It starts out slow, but occurs at an exponential rate. *Problem 2 - Exponential rate of colonisatino* Once the first planet is colonised, you have two bases from which to send colonies. Even if every base only sends two successful expiditions you soon have 4 bases, then 8, then 16, then 32, then 64, then 128, then 256, then 512, then 1024, then 2048, then 4096, then 8192, then 16384, then 32768, then 65536, then 131072, then 262144, then 524288, then 1048576, then 2097152, then 4194304, then 8388608, then 16777216, then 33554432, then 67108864, then 134217728, then 268435456, then 536870912, then 1,073,741,824. 30 doublings and you have 1 billion civilisations and that assumes each colony only sends two successful expeditions. The milky way is 13.5 billion years old. Plenty of time for 30 doublings. *Problem 3 - The assumption that the aliens send themselves* Many of the challenges you outlay assume that humans are sent. The Fermi paradox does not require this. It just expect to see evidence of alien civilisations. This can take the form of robotic missions, which could also propagate exponentially if the robots are self replicating. This was mentioned in the video.

[@Jamie-Russell-CME]

The depth of information encoded in "it's never aliens.....until it is." is vast and fun to consider. Bravo.

[@No_OneV]

The WOW signal wasn't explained by comets, otherwise we would be getting WOWs every single day

[@DeGebraaideHaan]

In some strange way, this makes me want to watch Starship Troopers again: 'You're some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren't you?'

[@vytautasdanielius7058]

Plot twist: panspermia is true and we we're the aliens all along ayy lmao

[@benl8962]

you said sperm xD

[@BNSFGuy4723]

I would honestly laugh my ass off if we found out one day that life originated on Mars. But before the planet could be transformed into the desert world we see today, a lone rock was blasted off from Mars do to a asteroid impact, carrying that chunk to earth and fertilizing this planet. I mean, they found some Martian rocks in Antarctica not too long ago... We're the Martians, and we succeeded in invading this planet after all :P

[@kaigreen5641]

Still wouldnt make us aliens, we evolved here. It would make our very distant ancestors aliens.

[@johnteixeira6405]

That doesn't make us not aliens... That just makes us aliens who would have been here a long time if it's true.

[@ivan-Croatian]

ayy

[@briandrake6660]

Imagine the viruses awaiting us on other planets.

[@250txc]

Really and whitie just can't under this.

[@shaggyshanedadaddy]

Hope we don't give the Aliens Corona Virus lol

[@thedevilsadvocate9365]

Maybe they're like steroids. We'd be like superman.

[@allyourcode]

It is unlikely that extra terrestrial life forms would find our bodies to be a suitable environment for their survival. This is why different species on Earth are usually not susceptible to the same pathogens. It's usually hard enough to be able to survive in just one species. Of course, there are some exceptions (e.g. corona virus made the leap from bats to humans, HIV made the leap from other primates to humans), but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.

[@250txc]

@@allyourcode We have another candidate for a 'local Nobel prize' winner here.

[@yuvalne]

"The James Webb space telescope to launch in a year or so" *Laughing in expected 13 months to launch in 2020*

[@bingo4519]

It's been delayed to 2021 now lmao

[@gm_28]

This conment aged well😉

[@yuvalne]

good news y'all, it finally launched

[@TunamanBacon]

I thought I saw something in the corner at the beginning of the video but I can't remember.

[@jokuvaan5175]

I compleatly missed that XD

[@whocares2087.1]

It's just "beautiful" Ted Cruz. He is an alien, he's from Canada.

[@puckrocker1818]

All I know is now I have a sharpie mark on my arm...

[@brandonvasser5902]

“It’s never aliens... until it is.” Is such a great saying for this channel 😂

[@Flexedqt]

Bruh i read that the exact same time he said it lol

[@neorock6135]

You mentioned that the "WoW" signal was probably explained by a couple of comets. If that is the case, how come we do not have not a single additional example of this? Also didn't the author of that say his ecplanation most likely isn't the answer.

[@mexdal]

they now say it couldnt have been comets. But because it hasnt been replicated, they cant "scientifically" say it was aliens!

[@djgroopz4952]

It's lack of repetition points to a natural anomaly. If it was alien communication we would have seen more of it and more complex versions of it. It's very hard to draw a conclusion of alien existence based upon one set of numbers, we would need more substantial evidence. It's sad, the paradox is persistent.

[@tuseroni6085]

there is one thing humanity has had which may not be on most planets: coal and oil. the industrial revolution was largely run on fossil fuels, and it was by only an odd quirk (that trees evolved a type of material that nothing could eat and as such got buried beneath the ground) that we had it at all. it would be rather easy to imagine an intelligent species that never had fossil fuels. such a species wouldn't have a plentiful and abundant source of energy to fuel a rapid growth of industry. access to energy is a key factor in the growth of industry and who knows if other planets would have our good fortune to have so much energy so readily available.

[@mikejones-vd3fg]

or we could be living in a relative wasteland of energy, where even our night cycle would be considered deadly to other civilizations who have constant sun or other sources of energy

[@VaradMahashabde]

"The James Webb Space Telescope, bound to launch in a year... or so" God, why thou maketh us wait so much?

[@Mosern1977]

If that blows up on the launchpad...

[@aspzx]

It's actually 2021 at the earliest

[@randar1969]

doesn't matter much now, the great magellan telescope is build on earth if american's don't hurry the europeans will have something with the power of tens of times hubble and europe will get the credits with the discoveries JWT could have made. although JWT is working in infrared unlike the GMT.

[@angelic8632002]

Another plausible theory is that science follows a certain trajectory and inevitably leads to technology that is extremely hard to detect. There might be communication methods way more efficient than we have yet to envision, that would be practically invisible to us. And we are assuming that civilizations are centered around solar systems. If they lived in deep space between the stars, it would be almost impossible to detect(at least for some time). Or uploading/robotic transformation is the natural path to take once you want to "get out there". That would throw a serious wrench in our calculations as it would open up a much broader range of possible habitats/ways to form societies.

[@2ebarman]

That line of reasoning assumes there is some reason not to use abundant and easy to use starlight for energy by Dyson swarms. As it stands, all stars shine away hard-to-imagine amounts of energy, that basically goes to waste from the standpoint of civilizations. Sun alone converts about a million metric tons of rest mass into perfectly usable electromagnet radiation each second. Why would a civilization opt out from that source? There might e reasons, perhaps, it's just it's hard to come up with some. And that keeps people wandering, it seems to me.

[@cristianverdugogalaz8725]

that asumtion still falls into what most fremi paradox "solutions" fail at, asuming that all of the supoused civilisations took the same path in their technological advanacement, imagining a couple of them having technologies that are vritualy imposible for as to detect with currrent technologies its one thing, imaging all civilistions having thoes technologies its another

[@Makyura43]

Well if they do exist where are they ? At least one of those civilization will be in the spirit of colonizing the galaxy. We will do so for sure if we survive to reach required tech level. With life extending technology that allows us to live around 1000 years old and space ships that can travel 10-20% of the speed of light it would take us around 1 million years to colonize most of habitable planets in milky way. Our own galaxy is one of the oldest ones in the universe at least 12 billion years old , if we have started colonizing then we could do it 120000 times by now even if we do not advance technologically at all from that point on. We can if fact clam for sure than in the past 12 billion years there was not a SINGLE ONE alien civilization that wanted to colonize this galaxy , because if there was we would see it by now without question. And that is the core of Fermi paradox. Where are everybody ?

[@angelic8632002]

+Cristian Verdugo Galaz Depends on how many filters a species need to pass before that point. But I get what you are saying. I'm merely proposing a hypothetical to get a conversation going.

[@angelic8632002]

+Pärismaalane I guess we will see for ourselves once we get that far. My point was just to point out that there are a few assumptions we make that could possibly be due where we are technologically right now. There are a lot of unknowns.

[@knyghtryder3599]

The Fermi paradox, Dyson spheres , and von Noymann probes are so ridiculously cultural ideas largely inspired by science fiction and Hollywood

[@M0nu5]

I would love if you would talk about the Dark Forest Theory at one point

[@mattk6343]

Isaac Arthur did, but he came to the conclusion, that the Dark Forest Theory is very unlikely.

[@chaseb6188]

Advanced civilizations could also be cloaking themselves from other life for safety, I'd say it's likely actually.

[@jamieniche]

They actually wouldn't even have to actively hide. Just stay quiet and no one will ever notice them.

[@RedSiegfried]

I like to imagine it's more likely that they're just undetectable because they're not like biological, physical life that we can imagine. After all, it's very likely they're "angels" to us, and we're the "apes" compared to them. They may have completely abandoned this physical substrate altogether. But I admit that's just high speculation on my part. Even scarier, imagine that they're hiding because they know that if they were detected there's a non-zero chance that contact could result in an extinction level event for either them or us. Or far worse, that they might decide just to wipe us out with relativistic weapons before we even detect them and not take any chances. Preemptive genocide in the name of self-defense. After all, when you're dealing with the survival of your entire race ... some people would do it.

[@sleepyboi8060]

@@RedSiegfried They've been here before and pretty recently. I know that sounds cookoo but look at the more than 1 'UFO' pictures/videos the Pentagon has released/leaked. Those are not of this world.

[@b0rder.-991]

If they're advanced enough to cloak themselves from us, we would be no threat to them so there's no need to cloak themselves

[@proton8689]

@@b0rder.-991 who ever said they're hiding from us?

[@kev905]

I always think we forget to take into account laziness. Some year soon, we may have the option to plug into virtual reality and live a dream life while machines keep us alive. Those machines could be as efficient as they wanted because we would not care. We would be in a fantasy dreamland. By comparison, all of the issues that travelling these astronomical distances bring with them are very difficult. Spend your life investing in a project that may or may not pay off in a thousand years, or just accept the fantasy of doing all of these things virtually? Then there is the rabbit hole of just how many times we may have made this decision already.

Greetings from 2021! The JWST is still safe and sound here on Earth!

[@nicolasnott2739]

There always seems to be the assumption that advanced civilisations will be noisy and messy. Maybe there's a Galactic Union, that has rules about radio pollution, blocking suns and buzzing emerging civilisations, a bit like we leave Amazon tribes to themselves. Maybe enlightened civilizations have no need of huge amounts of energy.

[@garethdean6382]

Hahahaaa. Leave them to themselves? We're wiping them out by the dozen each year. I don't like the idea of all civilizations being magically good and not altering the universe one bit. It's like an invisible God who exists only you can't disprove him because everything He does looks natural. It's too perfect.

[@danielfahrenheit4139]

Curiosity and discovery always has leads to exploitation! I view as the free floating rationale of curiosity. They could be wary and vigilant of other intelligences out there. We may even become a nuisance if we discover them among other things! Alien technology would become an ark of the covenant ( something looted and sought after). they would or will eventually just wipe us out!

[@Ging_10]

Gareth Dean Thats the point...the more conscious your are the more you going to leave things at their place and just let nature take its course. Its our stupidity and arrogance that is disturbing the harmony within the universe.

[@danielfahrenheit4139]

@@Ging_10 the darwiniian rules of survival will always apply! if we became pests or got in the way of their own expansion, they would wipe us out! they would constantly be under our microscope and we may even start to get touchy feely. there is nothing they need from us

[@Ging_10]

Zoophilia Consultant Am not saying that they wouldnt ever think about wiping is out. Am saying that given our current circumstance there is no need for them to show us they exist. We are still too primitive to handle this kind of truth. Still a large portion of humanity literally believes in 2000 years of fairy tales...what makes you so sure that the Aliens want to waste their energy and time trying to communicate with self centered beings who still kill each other over stupid beliefs?

[@PsyKosh]

In the tradition of PBS Space Time comments, I shall now nitpick the graphics: Specifically, your Dyson swarm was a bit wonky. They weren't really orbiting the sun, it was more like they were just all stuck to a vertical pole that was rotating or something. Definitely not orbiting the center of mass of the sun. Your universe has broken gravity. :)

[@TheCaffeinix]

Also, the orbiting binary system at 5:43 is wobbling the wrong way. The larger star should be wobbling *away* from the smaller one, not towards it. (The center of mass of the system has to not be wobbling.)

[@PsyKosh]

Good catch. I think the black hole that's simulating that universe may have a few bugs in its code.

[@kindlin]

4:47

[@flmbray]

@@TheCaffeinix That assumes a "camera" perspective that doesn't move relative to the center of mass... a reasonable assumption, but not guaranteed. The Dyson swarm however can't be explained away like this.

[@webkeeper]

I think Carl Sagan's Cosmos had an effect on certain someone. :) Great video! Thank you!

[@eleeco8627]

It ain't aliens.. until it's aliens...

[@twisted1800]

I just hope i'm still alive when we make first contact, it will be the greatest day in human history, hands down.

[@rachelnewton-john7031]

Hey, there's a typo at 4:40. "It's never aliens Unti it is"

[@_dr_ake]

That's a dogwhistle to their alien overlords that they're trying to keep secret

[@ObjectsInMotion]

UNTIL IS

[@mikejohnstonbob935]

the typo is caused by aliens

[@anteconfig5391]

+Rachel Newton-John Haha. I didn't even notice.

[@rachelnewton-john7031]

@@zutaca2825 No, the typo is "unti" instead of "until" :p

[@hillario7765]

Vast distances means our telescopes can only view those planets from thousands of light years ago. Who knows what they could really look like today.

[@l0lLorenzol0l]

Yes, it's only a matter of time. A better question is "Will we ever find *inteligent* alien life?" because microbes are easy, tool users and civilization builders are hard

[@pitthepig]

It depends on when you place the moment were it became inevitable that we ended up being a technologically advanced civilization. Once agriculture is invented, maybe its inevitable that sooner or later a civilization gets to the point of having an industrial revolution.

[@ObjectsInMotion]

You're saying microbes are easy without any evidence to back up your claim. We haven't even found microbes yet, it could be that life itself, any live, is exceedingly improbable.

[@michaelsommers2356]

+Michael Bishop _"... or stone age, like ... Africa was, ..."_ Actually, Africa (by which I assume you mean sub-Saharan Africa) skipped the Bronze Age and went straight to iron.

[@Odin029]

@Michael Bishop I don't know why people think Africa as a whole or sub-Saharan Africa in particular was stone age. Just like there was a time when the Middle East was at the forefront of astronomy and Math(Algebra is an arabic term), believe it or not, there was a time when the West Africans were at the forefront of medical science in particular. In the late Medieval and early Renaissance era they already had inoculations for infectious diseases like smallpox, they could do c-sections and even cataract removal surgery. Also like Michael Sommers said, they were also pretty advanced in metallurgy. In fact their iron furnaces could get hotter than most European ones until the Industrial Revolution

[@mikehudgins8545]

Hell at this point I'd settle for a planet with insects or fish levels of complexity. Even simple plant vegetation would be great. Giraffes rule Andromeda so I'd stay out of there.

[@blackholeentry3489]

In the late 60's I witnessed a classic ''flying saucer" pass directly over my house and I at about 10 at night. Although it was dark, my unshielded front porch light lit it up quite well.

[@XOPOIIIO]

"Wavelengths of the dips is consistent with dust". What if it is dust-sized solar pannels? Remember, it's always aliens until it's not.

[@amogus5902]

if we find alien life I will be able to die happy- that's the only thing I've ever wanted to know in my entire life

[@ivolokiris1472]

It exists, no way it doesn't, we see so little of what's out there

[@rafstrayhorn5772]

We already know. The answer is no. Humans are alone.

[@bornkinggamer3347]

@@rafstrayhorn5772 I'm going to ask you how you know. Are you about to quote a religious text?

[@rafstrayhorn5772]

@@bornkinggamer3347🙄Take your edgelord anti-theism to some other comment. Given the timescales involved, the complete and total lack of evidence, and the number of unlikely factors that went into human evolution, the overwhelming likelihood is that there is no one. The only religion here is the baseless science fantasy belief in aliens.

[@bornkinggamer3347]

@@rafstrayhorn5772 Ok please provide your math below.

[@tesseract3966]

I learned a new combination of words today: TechnoMonkey. I'm so satisfied with that word...

[@SnowblindOtter]

If you wanna piss off the snowflakes, say "Analogue-Challenged".

[@Jimbobjorthethirdjunior]

this is very interesting I think i will think about this for a few weeks

[@h7opolo]

"the m is for 'munchies'" lol

[@OmarFeliciano]

this is the second video I see from the channel, I'm about to subscribe love it so far. One thing I notice from the first video (released 2015) to this one IDK why but I see Peter Dinklage in your face 😂.

[@TheApplecyder]

You guys should look into/do an episode on the azotosome and potential exotic types of biology like what may be possible on Titan. I think it's a better and more interesting spot to colonize over Venus or maybe even Mars. Loved this video, cheers!

[@JamesDavy2009]

Titan's gravity is also low enough for us to be able to fly under our own power. The temperature on the other hand is cold enough to condense methane.

[@spacetoon6ok]

I wish but unfortunately it is very unlikely, after all it is an astrophysics centered channel not astrobiology.

[@brosephbalin6568]

No. The immense distances and limited time we have spells a definitive "no."

[@exoplanets]

Maybe.. they will find us

[@robboss4085]

The Exoplanets Channel Maybe... they already did. I'm lookin at you Mark Zuckerberg

[@MrLuigiMor]

@@robboss4085 You made me laugh so hard! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@no_more_free_nicks]

Hi is not an alien, he is a lizard. It is something different.

[@Metacognition88]

Maybe they are aware of us but we are so insignificant to them. Like us seeing a trail of ants. We don't even bother.

[@HeliosLegion]

By using the sun's gravitational lens and telescopes at 550 astronomical units, you could scan planets as small as Mercury with quite a good resolution across all the galaxy. It's called Fast Outgoing Cyclopean Astronomical Lens (FOCAL).

[@nobiggeridiot]

The reason no other life has been found, is because no other flat planets have been found.

[@whocares2087.1]

The problem is flat planets are too easy to slip under a door and thus render them undetectable.

[@kaigreen5641]

We have no idea what shape the exoplanets are, how dare you suggest they are not flat like ours!

[@desiderata8811]

Is our planet a flat circle or a flat square ? Or neither ?

[@jorgepeterbarton]

But what about the dome with a moon painted on and the lamp going around on tracks we call the sun? It's really snowglobe shape.

[@LuisAldamiz]

XD

[@WalkingDday]

I don’t expect aliens to ever meet us, or for us to get to another star system, but to think we are the only life in this immense universe is depressing.

[@valiroime]

There is life, and then there is us. Life is likely pretty common. Life that evolves into _intelligent_ complex organisms like us, likely much less so.

[@saadlebdeh89]

That wow signal being 2 comets has been thoroughly tested and was shown to be at a different frequency. Forgive my caveman explanation as I’m no scientist but I was watching a vid from the guy who recorded the wow signal and he said that it couldn’t be the comet thing.

[@vze1ruuh]

Greetings from 2020, the CIA released documents confirming aliens exist. See you

[@12runes]

Aliens do not exist.

[@vze1ruuh]

@@12runes to each their own ig

[@gamer-zp6vr]

“Too late to explore the world, too early to explore the universe”

[@hizzo3534]

@Michael Collins ngl it actually kinda is

[@peanutkaboom6004]

you're not at all too early or late to explore either. There remains plenty to explore here on Earth, and plenty out there to explore from Earth.

[@johnforrester2574]

Yes.

[@styromaniac6967]

There are many discoveries left to be made. I've made a few myself. They're not eye-opening except to the previously unscientific mind and are very accessible experiments. You too are capable of these.

[@ZY1982]

I will settle for "just in time for antibiotics and half-decent medicine".

[@ThEuNdYiNg1]

It could just be that humans were first, we haven't found new intelligent life because it doesn't exist yet.

[@GonzoTehGreat]

Not necessarily THE first, but perhaps part of the first (or second) _generation_ of civilisations to evolve in our galaxy, potentially explaining why there _appear_ to be fewer than you'd expect given the age of the galaxy.

[@StefenTower]

Could be, as in possible, but not probable. People keep forgetting how vast this one galaxy is, and how little and how close and how narrow we've searched so far.

[@StefenTower]

And I'll add, frankly, how unimaginatively we've searched so far.

[@OmegaFalcon]

Or maybe were the only ones who even give a crap about what some other civilization might be doing

[@paulpeterson4216]

I am a strong proponent of the we are "early" theory. The Earth is about 1/3 the age of the universe, and it took a certain amount of time for there to be sufficient metalicity in the gas clouds to form planets where sufficiently complex chemistry necessary for life could occur. This could eliminate many stars which are older than Earth and all stars which are much older. Further, if it took 4 billion years for Earth to develop intelligent life, and almost that long to develop multi-cellular life, that time frame, if "typical," could eliminate most or all stars that are younger than the sun, and all stars with lifespans which are shorter. Yes there are a lot of stars in the galaxy, but in the galactic core, you are so close to so many stars, that the odds of a sterilizing event, or just too much radiation could well rule out most of the stars in the galaxy. If we speculate and say that only K and M class stars of at least 4 billion years in age in this galaxy are the only potential places for intelligent life to arise, and make the assumption that maybe we were just quicker than "average" in getting from lava-ball to multi-cellular biosphere, then we could certainly be first in the galaxy. Any life outside the galaxy is so far away as to be virtually irrelevant, extremely hard to detect, and impossible to reach or communicate with.

[@Prickly_Cactus_1993]

If I was the first to contact aliens, the first thing I would ask is, do you want a cup of tea? They just travelled a along way and the least you can offer them is tea. It is a sign of civility and should avoid war.

[@nicholasfitzgerald585]

Unless that tea is poison to them and see it as an attempt on there well being

[@goldinho]

As a British man I approve of this.

[@crowlsyong]

2:51 James Webb telescope to launch in a year from upload date... Still not up as of comment date (August 5th 2020) Sometime this decade, probably...this century for sure, if nothing else, this millenium (assuming low earth orbit doesn't turn into a prison door of junk)

[@deziograff]

Seeing what we see is limited by the speed of light and knowing how life on earth is only 500Ma yrs old (which could be visible from space), isn't it possible that we are staring at hundreds of life inhabited planets yet we are too far away to detect the traces of life?

[@ShellShocks14]

Really feels like the deepness of time is forgotten when discussing the Fermi “Paradox”.

[@MrSharif309]

The Fermi paradox can be easily solved by the anthropic principle. The fact that all the laws of physics and value of natural constants are fine tuned to support sentient life because if that's not the case in our universe there will be no sentient beings there to ask that question. Which also means that there are multiple universes and we only exists in the ones that support life. If the laws of physics also support life but in a finite universe there are very few probable planets that have barely life supporting conditions for a few billion years. So their will be more universes as old as our universe with at least one earth like planets compare to the universes with multiple earth like planets. Now apply the same statistical principles from which entropy arises. Assuming that the big bang happened because given infinite time energy could randomly assemble in one point and created big bang. In infinite time this could have occurred infinite times creating infinite big bangs with some of them supporting sentient life. Now for those universes which supports sentient life like ours a limited time has been passedd so it's more probable for only one sentient life to have formed in the beginning compared to more than one and that could be us. My reasoning here is that our planet's history has some very specific events to support life. During the start of the universe stars are just way too big and chaotic to support life. Assuming the universe is finite. Ofcourse here also we can use entropy. So of all the infinite times matter randomly assembling to create big bangs the chance of it making a finite smallest sized universe is higher than the chance of it forming infinite universe and we exist in just the minimum possible universe size to be capable of supporting life long enough for us to evolve and ask that question. Even if there are trillion trillion trillion earth like planets revolving around sun like stars in Goldilocks zones. Consider other factors like gas giants like Jupiter protecting us from asteroids. A smaller planet Thea colliding at just the right angle to have a moon like moon. Just the right amount of gravity to support plate techtonics having puddles of water on earth with wet and drying cylces. Having alkaline geothermal vents. Dinosaur getting killed by a asteroid. Just the right amount of oxygen being formed. Life surviving severe ice ages, gamma rays bursts. Blackholes. Stray stars and rogue planets. If consider all these factors and many more earth is a very very specific place which reduces the chance of sentient life forming close to one. So we are actually alone in the universe most probably. But in the future more sentient life will evolve definitely. For now the closest aliens are in parallel universe. Although once the Sun is continuously adding energy to the system, life will find a way to dissipate that energy by maintaining order inside it's body. Moreover you can see how life evolved into billions upon billions of different species but the chance of a sentient life developing out of other life forms is 1 out of all the species that existed. So you can apply the same analogy to the universe.

[@haurenox7686]

The "Wacko factor", best concept ever.

[@Jeremiah6071]

The real question is, "If intelligent aliens exists, would it be wrong to eat them?". Mmmm Alien steaks.

[@blackholeentry3489]

Please pass the platter of fried saurpods. .

[@Lobos222]

The Problem with Popplers?

[@blackholeentry3489]

J B ..... Please pass the hot green salsa and a Fosters!

[@gustavoboscardin9351]

They're likely asking the same question in regard to us

[@fivish]

Someone has to be first and its us. Age of universe, age of Earth, two sun cycles, only enough time for one emergent inteligence? One day we will be called the Ancients! Unless we destroy ourselves.

[@EchoBoop]

So is not just the fact that they need to exit, but that they need to survive as well... so we are probably really lucky to not die at this point.

[@Deciheximal]

An option not usually talked about: The boundaries of technology are a lot closer to where we are than we think. Although there's no current sign of it, there's nothing to rule out that 100 years from now our technology becomes rather fixed because it would just take too many resources to advance any further. So those aliens out there? Like us. Doing a whole lot of listening, not a whole lot of talking, and certainly not affecting their galactic backyards in any way that we could spot.

[@argh523]

We don't need more advanced technology to colonize the galaxy, just brute force and a lot of time.

[@laughingatu3699]

The fact that we are looking at really old pictures might be why we don't see anything 🤔

[@pierfrancescopeperoni]

In our galaxy the pictures are all less than 10^5 years old, which is small compared to the age of the galaxy.

[@laughingatu3699]

@@pierfrancescopeperoni lol I think you misunderstood, I am referring to the time it takes the light to reach us. We are looking at very old light hence old pictures.

[@pierfrancescopeperoni]

@@laughingatu3699 That's exactly what I mean: our galaxy has a diameter of only 10^5 light years.

[@laughingatu3699]

@@pierfrancescopeperoni lol only???? That's a huge number making any light from there very very old.

[@pierfrancescopeperoni]

@@laughingatu3699 "Only" is totally relative. 10^5 is literally nothing compared to the distance of the other galaxies. If intelligent beings can occupy the galaxy in millions of years with serif-replicating robots, and we don't see anything of this, it means two possibilities: A) there is no other intelligent life in the galaxy, or it becomes extinct before being able to produce those robots; B) We are the first intelligent life in the galaxy which will reach that technology. Given that the age of our galaxy is of the order of billions of years, instead of millions, it is very unlikely that we would be the first given that we are not the only ones. So we conclude that we are probably the only ones.

[@chrissscottt]

My guess is that the galactic federation has a non interference policy for developing civilisations and that our view of the galaxy is filtered somehow.

[@auriel8]

chrissscottt that makes sense thinking about it

[@brendanfitzpatrick3824]

Exactly. Developing species are quarantined to prevent any malignant technology they might develop from infesting the galaxy, and when they become advanced enough they figure their own way out of quarantine and can be welcomed into the community. Or obliterated if need be. But I tend to think that any inclination towards unnecessarily destructive behavior is inversely correlated with level of advancement. (Yes ... we're not very advanced. Yet....)

[@Ray-fk4vh]

Sounds like star trek

[@joshuahoops9430]

Wow very possible

[@brendanfitzpatrick3824]

I mean, the von Neumann machine nanotech of others civilizations would be all over space, there's no way we'd miss it unless it deliberately hid itself. I'm sure there's a swarm of alien nano-ASI all around us monitoring our development.

[@rpaleg]

I feel like the life development bottleneck is actually the sheer rarity of very specific combinations of molecule that create self sustaining, self replicating and adapting life, let alone the fact that the first organism would have to be extremely lucky to increase population. It's probably more likely a robotic/computer intelligence would develop in the crystalline structure of a rare element due to particles bouncing around, acting like our neurons in our brain, at least they wouldn't have to self replicate. Also this would be a good idea for a super computer, don't know how you would do it but it would be more compact than our brain.

[@smcic]

Aliens use a rating system for solar systems. They probably don’t like our planet ‘cuz we only got one star.

[@JamesDavy2009]

Worthy of a chuckle. Then again, there are very few two or three-star systems.

[@vladfromyourtube]

**slow clap**

[@kaigreen5641]

I think I saw an alien at the start of this video but I'm not sure.

[@CarlosElPeruacho]

I'm not sure what alien you're referring to, but every time I restart the video a new tally gets added to my arm...

[@slipdiscdiscslip5908]

I don't think so. If there was one I would have masturbated to it.

[@Azmedon-AU]

Just remember there's about Septillion planets in our observable Universe, So there has to be life somewhere :)

[@brendanfitzpatrick3824]

There is evidence of life in the universe right here on this very planet. In fact it has arisen on this planet more than once despite numerous catastrophic events wiping out earlier pogress Given other factors and the laws of physics it's difficult to formulate a rational argument that it's not everywhere it that has any of the huge variety of conditions we know this planets DNA has adapted to from thermal vents to rabbits to upper atmosphere bacteria.. however, "knowing" is different from recognizing the overwhelming probability. I would say it thusly: I would bet my last piece of cheese and my entire supply of imaginary drugs in the afterlife that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

[@Wookeyehandtechihhila]

Just started reading “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Yong. Maybe we are alone because in our case a bacterium only merged with an archaeon once in 4 billion years? With those odds it does seem pretty unlikely that there is a lot of advanced life in the universe.

[@Evilfreezer1995]

Hey Matt i was just wondering if the great filter is in front of us would other civilizations at our development level not already be sending out radiowaves that we should be able to detect? Does the lack of radiowave not disprove the theory that the great filter is in front of us? Love the show keep up the good work :)

[@bormisha]

Our tech does not allow detection of radio transmissions of a civilization like ours even if it were located on Alpha Centauri. The only interstellar communication that we could build with our tech is some gigawatt laser, but it has to be precisely directed at the intended receiver. We ourselves do not send gigawatt laser pulses into nearby stars, so probably they don't do it either.

[@christopherthompson5400]

Maybe we were the only intelligent society that developed the internet and that's how we passed the great filter, enabling global conscious.

[@mikeg9b]

Humanity needs to colonize space, other planets, and other star systems as soon as possible -- before a nuclear war, large asteroid impact, pandemic, or some other extinction event wipes us out.

[@francescadibologna4143]

transfering 'the problem with humanity' to another location is not the same thing as addressing and resolving it. until we can address our self-destructive issues we don't deserve to go anywhere else, because we will just end up doing more harm than good to that new place. there seems to be something wrong with us as a species at a fundamental level. call it egomania, in a word. by an overwhelming majority, human beings seem intellectually and emotionally totally incapable of living in harmony with other species or the environment. and those with the will and resoruces to do most damage of all, inevitably hold most power and inevitably devote all their will and resources to trying to dominate and control the few who try to live otherwise.

[@Master_Ed]

Wipes you out not me

[@randar1969]

people die but if you have many people the species lives on, it's not exporting our problems it's hoping that some will survive. if an super bug or supernova or other extinction level event goes of on earth it's bye bye human race for now. But if we export ourselves to other planets outside our solar system such events won't kill us off. if we settle on mars like elon musk wants to do we would have better odds to survive as species.

[@Theballonist]

A couple problems here. We do not currently have a viable other planet proven to be able to keep us alive. Mars gets a lot of hype, but realistic terraforming is a 10,000+++ year proposition which may actually be impossible without a home base planet to work from (you need generations of stable and flourishing social prosperity to produce the will to accomplish a task like that) so colonizing mars requires the same thing that saving the earth requires. We need to figure out how to treat each other well. Without terraforming the likelihood that humans can survive and flourish on mars becomes vanishingly small. The risk of superbugs developing is vastly more likely in the type of monoculture food production that we would engage in on mars, and the spread of a pathogen would be unstoppable in an enclosed air system. The vast majority of the microbiome that we would bring with us would already be intimately familiar with us from living in our guts and on our skin. Extremely high selection pressure from the constant need to clean every surface within the habitat would exacerbate the “Island Effect” of the already closed system. To avoid the extreme pressure of a tiny biosphere, we could build massive engineering projects, couldn’t we? Domes the size of cities. Unfortunately the best material for the job, given the martian context (no petroleum, no limestone) is steel. Aluminum and magnesium would play a part, sulfur concrete and ferrock could play a part, certainly silicon. But all of these materials currently require hydrocarbon reserves to generate the kind of energy concentration to work. Solar energy could cut it, but the build up to go from what we can feasibly bring to mars and what we would need to make any impact would take multiple generations of engineers. Mars is not a new frontier to be conquered by sheer force of manliness. It would require cooperation and logistics on the same scale as making our own planet safe and secure. We have the technology now to prevent super bugs, and to save ourselves from climate change. These are not someday-in-the-future techniques, we can keep our one and only home safe, and teach the next generation how to care for a planet, which ever planet they choose to live on.

[@Yora21]

But we would need only two or three more planets for that. Really no point in spreading out over hundreds of planets. Especially when you assume that rich societies tend to have shrinking populations because they don't need children to grow into new workers. Robots can do that.

[@erika8357]

"We've been actively watching for radio transmission from other worlds for half a century. We've seen nothing". That's exactly what you can expect if you're looking for ineffective old-fashioned carrier-wave transmissions. We have abandoned that technique ourselves and replaced it with spread-spectrum coding which is much more energy efficient and furthermore is more or less impossible to eavesdrop unless you know the coding sequence.. Also notice that "5G" technology relies on directing transmitted power toward the receiver instead of wasting energy on omnidirectional transmission.. Altogether this will make our radio transmissions from earth very difficult to detect by any listener more than a few light years away. Unless they were lucky to listen in short time window (a blink of an eye in a cosmic perspective) when our civilization used high power AM transmitters. Well there are a few still in service but in a longer time perspective they will surely be gone.. 😁 Besides that, technological civilizations seem to have a tendency to destroy themselves within only a few hundred years, at least judging from what is going on here on earth right now. So the chance to happen to listen in their active time window might simply be negligible.

[@StefenTower]

For me, the Drake equation was such a product of its time before we knew additional possibilities. For example, it is fair to now postulate that life and perhaps even intelligent life could exist on moons as well as planets. And the number of moons in the galaxy is unimaginably high, even if you just look at planet-sized moons with atmospheres. This pushes the potential number up. Another factor is where the heaviest elements in the galaxy tend to be and how close we tend to be to them (i.e. we could be in a 'suburban' or 'rural' part of the galaxy -- that is, a sub-arm -- which ultimately affects our detection capabilities). This makes the potential number more mysterious. Another factor is whether a civilization significantly more advanced than us would either be detectable or willing to engage in any communication for that matter (i.e. we're not interesting enough to them). The bottom line for me is that there are so many unknowns and unknown unknowns at this point that we really can't make a good guess yet. There's too much left to discover about how the universe, and particularly, this galaxy, works.

[@kostasch5686]

I do not fully understand the need of dyson swarms and spheres. Even though a star outputs a lot of energy it might not be the best source to power the civilization. Why not fusion? Or a way that we have yet to discover? All this research is based on physics and engineering that we know and use ( or planning to use) but applied to an advanced civilization that might have a way better understanding of the world and has engineered sources that dont make it visible to us.

[@FeartheKlown]

The thing is, solar power IS nuclear power to a certain extent. It's just from very far away, ultra sustainable, and requires zero maintenance. Why buy the cow when you get the milk, literally, for free?

[@RazorbackPT]

Sure, that's a possibility, but Dyson swarms or spheres are often brought up because they're the most efficient way we know of maximizing the energy output of a star. Why not fusion? The sun is fusion. As for energy sources we have yet to discover, we could speculate about that, but it's probably best to stick to the physics that we know when thinking about this issue in a scientific way.

[@johndalton2334]

Konstantinos Chatzieffraimides One reason they may use a dyson swarm over fusion is that the tech for energy capture would be the exact same (the sun is fusion powered after all), just scaled up in the case of the sun. And given that you wouldn’t need a continuous supply of fuel if you used the sun, it would probably be more sustainable in the long term. As far as other options go, some, such as creating and maintaining a keugelblitz (black hole made from light; super cool btw, look it up) require a massive amount of energy to kick start them, so you could use a full or partial dyson swarm to create keugelblitz engines.

[@LloydWaldo]

A star is fusion. The question you’re asking is really, why would a civilization ever need that much energy. That’s a different question.

[@gubx42]

A star is a very efficient fusion reactor with a ridiculous amount of fuel built in. The sun produces 4 million tons of mass energy per second and it will continue doing so for billions of years. Even with a 100% efficient energy source, we simply can't beat the mass of the sun.

[@chrisgreekman1]

Humans: let’s find another planet that is advanced to the point that could suck the life out of us! That would be so helpful.. 🙄

[@uchuuseijin]

Why friendship's the most important thing in this great Dark Forest we call a universe

[@250txc]

Whitie is dead set on killing everything, including everyone.

[@grassdog46]

250txc Who’s white

[@250txc]

@@grassdog46 Can you not read? Or not spell? Or both? BOT maybe?

[@grassdog46]

250txc Ok who’s Whitie?

[@BNSFGuy4723]

I mean, by simply looking at the probability of life based on the billions of stars in our galaxy alone, let alone the trillions in our own local group and possibly quadrillions in our own Virgo supercluster (all of which are gravitationally bound and will one day merge into one giant galaxy of some sort), totally. That’s if we survive the next few hundred years without destroying ourselves If there isn’t another civilization within the 100,000 other galaxies that we’re gravitationally bound to, I would be confused

[@matthewdavies2057]

You miss the point Emre. Something out there is preventing intelligent life from acting intelligent. Maybe from living. We have no idea what it may be.

[@jackmuller5478]

i am sorry humanity will cause you to be confused. i apologize in the name of humanity.

[@BNSFGuy4723]

Naaaaa, it's probably the fact that we're a type 0 civilization who think we're all that even though we're not. We haven't even scratched the surface. It was only 200 years ago that we were fighting with muskets in line warfare... In galactic terms, the fact that the first man to go into space achieved this feat in 1961, is but a blip compared to galactic terms. There might be civilizations BILLIONS of years more advanced for all we know. What was life doing billions of years ago? Oh yeah, getting started. Our star is a g type yellow dwarf. It's 4.6 billion years old, there were probably 3 generations of stars predating our sun. Civilizations around those stars could have already been space fairing by the time the first hydro-thermal vents spawned life on earth. Maybe they just A. Honestly don't think we're intelligent. I like Kaku's example where he equates us to ants and aliens as humans. Do we try to communicate with ants? No. We're intelligent from our own perspective, but we can be non sapient to other more advanced civilizations for all we know. Or B. (which is more likely), we just haven't looked long enough, hard enough, or have the technology capable of detecting them. I don't think it's some galactic plot preventing intelligence from acting, it's our own ignorance.

[@ThatFreeWilliam]

Who says galactic expansion is intelligent? You're basically sending people to probably die and if they end up on a new planet, they're just going to do their own thing. The only thing that can be exchanged between systems in a practical amount of time is data...and even then the lag is between years and centuries. How do you hold a conversation? WHY do that? It's a sci-fi trope, there's no reason to believe it's tethered in reality.

[@SquirrelASMR]

Probably we have the probability wrong. We can somewhat accurately estimate habitable planets, but have no idea of the probability of life actually forming on them. Could be way too rare? Maybe the probability of life forming is so low, that it only happens anout once per 1 billion universes. I HOPE NOT THOUGH!

[@dannydazzler1549]

It's so good to have someone so educated talk about this topic, rather than just listening to the paranoid rantings of conspiracy theorist types who have no understanding of the actual science behind the topic.

[@SteveMHN]

I thought the WOW signal coming from comets theory had been debunked.

[@tesseracta4728]

Elaborating on 'The selfish idiot that pushes the big red button,' (with an equation that may have merit) Its possible that tribal evolution and development was slow enough to have evolved an abnormally stable human group mentality--perhaps a 'metastable state'. Civilizations could have developed slow enough to learn lessons from their ancestors, but also developed fast enough to act against selfish individualism. Humans could have just 'the right mix' of characteristics that prevent any one governmental or individual force from 'taking it all away.' This is not to say that humans can be inherently 'bad'; it may just be that some humans are more likely to resort to violence than not with certain mutations. g(x) = effect of genetics on human instability i(x) = effect of acquired intelligence on individual human instability r = kind of intelligence that evolves in specific civilization (this likely requires another function that describes an iterative process) p = world population z(x) = % of world population in sensitive positions integral_sum(p*z(x)*i(g(r)))dt)/time that humans have self-destruct capability = probability of four horsemen causing some problems.

[@helloyes2288]

Just say metastable state - not "false vacuum state".

[@tesseracta4728]

@@helloyes2288 Yeah, that's a better word. Edited.

[@marouaneh175]

Imagine we had a Star Trek replicator, a device capable of building anything atom by atom from a design, and that replicator was accessible like PCs are today. How long will we last befor someone designs a killer biological virus in his basement, as a KZbin prank?

[@FLOABName]

Or there is the dark forest theory. In that we don’t hear anything because no civilization is stupid enough to broadcast their existence. This is because you can’t know if those who receive a signal are benevolent or malevolent. And those who are receiving also don’t know if the broadcaster is benevolent or malevolent. So the safest option for any civilization would be to destroy any alien civilization they encounter or risk being destroyed themselves. I’m not sure I believe this theory. But it is one of my favorites.

[@Mosern1977]

Alternatively there is a galactic 'prime directive' going on, and aliens won't interfere with our development, but they just watch over us to study our development. Sometimes someone spots a UFO by accident, but fortunately they are never believed.

[@HeliosLegion]

There's one big problem with dark forest theory. It would be trivial for an alien civilisation to detect life even from across the galaxy, no need for radio. If you want to hide, you don't hide in your homeworld. Your homeworld is already in someone's databank. If you are genocidal, you leave no chances and sterilise any planet long before anything leaves the oceans.

[@kyjo72682]

If there were many civilizations it would just take one aggressive expansive species to spread across the galaxy. They would be unlikely to keep radio silence.

[@StrongMed]

This is certainly the most frightening of solutions to the Fermi paradox. At least assured self-destruction by an Earth-bound "wacko" is ultimately of our own doing. But getting wiped out by a super advanced alien species who just wants to ensure we won't wipe them out a million years from now, which can only be avoided by not exploring the galaxy or broadcasting radio signals? That's terrifying.

[@TheEmergingPattern]

If they are intelligent enough to detect the smallest radio signals, travelling would be unwise due to asteroids. How strong should a signal be in order to detect real information in the first place?

[@ChristyCub]

I think the question is somewhat different to people who have seen strange phenomenon in the sky that can’t easily be explained as natural events. When I was much younger in the mid 90s during a baby shower in the late evening, probably closer to 9pm, the adults and some kids, including me, in my neighborhood saw a big glowing orange orb in the sky. We couldn’t make out the structure of it but we can tell it was very hot because the light around it was warping around it from the heat it was giving off. It was pretty big and completely silent. The lady those baby shower it was noticed it first and pointed out the stationary orb in the sky. After we all looked up and were observing it for a few seconds, it took off instantly into the distance , still not making a sound. At the time I lived in the high desert of California and we lived close to military bases and have seen all kinds of planes and helicopters.However, this was something we have never seen before and were quite shocked about it after. It’s been so long since it happened yet I remember this event so vividly. Everyone in my old neighborhood has moved away and I sometimes wonder if they still think about what happened on this night too.

[@KayKay114]

Maybe they were alive when the dinosaurs were. We could have missed them.

[@sega32xxx14]

Probably pretty unlikely, but possible I guess. One thing that was DEFINITELY lucky for us at least, is that dinosaurs were wiped out before we came along, so our early ancestors didn't have to contend with such massive, prolific, and plentiful predators.

[@kyzer42]

@@sega32xxx14 In fact, we probably would never have evolved if the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct.

[@jamesmott5181]

Why can't we be the first, someone has to be the first.

[@Jesse-cw5pv]

@Joe Average The evidence is NOT mounting we're alone. Yea, it is possible. But did you know if a species like ours existed only a dozen light years away and we pointed our most powerful radio telescopes at them we would not be able to detect them unless it was something like a radar pulse. But even that wouldn't be detectable from much further. When you say the evidence is mounting we're alone, it's like taking a bucket, tipping it in the ocean and saying "no fish in that bucket full, the evidence is mounting there is no fish in the sea"

[@santircastillo]

If you represent the entire lifetime of the universe with a human calendar, humanity was born in the last second of new year's eve. It seems unlikely that we're the first because there's been so much time and space before us. So much.

[@JimCOsd55]

Santiago Restrepo-Castillo ... it may seem like there’s enough time but you have to remember the early universe was made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. Even today 75% of our solar system is hydrogen with nearly 25% being helium leaving only .1% as all of the other elements! This .1% of other elements needed for life, had to wait for supernovas to forge them within a star before being blasted out for new stars to form and gather them into their own gas clouds. Our own sun is probably a 3rd generation star. I’m guessing it took at least 9 billion years to build up these elements in sufficient amounts for advanced life to form. Then it was just a matter of time until a star of the right size that had 10 billion years of life was in the Goldilocks zone. Once you deduct all the other stars from the yellow dwarfs we know can produce advanced life, 7%. We can then deduct the 90% that are in the galactic center which is to radioactive for life to form. Leaving us with about a billion stars that still meet the criteria for advanced life. Then it’s just a matter of finding a planet of the right size with all of the elements and in the Goldilocks zone? Even if only 1% meet this criteria then it’s possible that there are 10 million possible planets in the Milky Way alone? So if we and these aliens needed 4.5 billion years to reach the same level of technology that we’re at, they may be also working on this paradox? Perhaps we and everyone else still need many more years to build the technology to escape our solar system. I’m pretty sure that aliens didn’t show up here some 4000 years ago to teach the Egyptians a better way to stack rocks on top of each other!??

[@abstractvector1592]

Hey Matt, can you guys start giving a shout out to the subreddit in your vids? I know you link to it in the description, but most won’t see it there. The sub would be better for promoting discussion, and is also less convoluted than KZbin comments. I know I’m not the only one here who wants to see it grow.

[@filipo7703]

I watch pbs space time for maybe a year and a half and i din't know about subreddit. It seems obvious but I don't use reddit often so i've never thought about this

[@Master_Ed]

Na, I don't want to see kids who waste their money trying to show off but in reality they are peasents

[@abstractvector1592]

Master Ed That doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The subreddit has moderators that are very knowledgeable in their respective fields and would remove any misinformation that happened to pop up during discourse, unless it served as an example to further understanding on the topic being discussed. If you think the KZbin comment structure is superior to the forum one that Reddit uses, then you haven’t spent much time on Reddit. Reddit is also a completely free platform, so having money or the lack thereof does not translate over to the quality or accessibility of information being discussed. And if you’re going to criticize beginners and the misinformed by calling them ‘peasants’, then you should at least solidify your ‘claim’ over them by spelling it right.

[@RiboFlavin64]

Not a bad idea, I had no idea there was a subreddit but I'm definitely gonna check it out!

[@Cooky00123]

The comet hypothesis for the Wow signal has be debunked.