The Fermi Paradox: Why are We Alone in the Universe?
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- čas přidán 16. 11. 2023
- Unlock the mysteries of the universe in this mind-bending journey through the Fermi Paradox. Explore the cosmic conundrum, Fermi's calculations, and the chilling concept of the Great Filter. Are we truly alone?
One of my favourite analogies is: Imagine the universe as the oceans of the earth and you pulled a glass (representing the observable universe) of water out, you might assume there was no life in the oceans. The universe is so immense, time immemorial, and EMR so slow, that many civilisations may have come and gone across the universe already.
The way I like to look at it is like this:
Saying we are alone in the universe is the equivalent of a person who lives in the country going outside at 2am, looking around for an hour, and assuming they are the last person on earth because they didn't see anyone else.
There may be billions of other civilizations in the universe right now, but they are so far away we will never be able to even communicate with them, much less actually come into physical contact with anything involving them.
A straw man argument. Very non-scientific. Ask yourself the question: what exactly are the components necessary for life to evolve? What are the components necessary for multicellular life to evolve? What are the important, critically important, components that are needed for the jump from single cell organisms to multicellular organisms? Finally, what are the components necessary for intelligence?
Answer them, and you'll get a small understanding of why we're alone in this galaxy. It will make your trite argument pointless
@@richardcaves3601 No idea to whom you are replying but we are all very aware of all the small evolutionary steps to get to where we are today. I repeated something I heard from Neil deGrasse Tyson and if it was good enough for him then it's good enough for me so, please taken your over inflated opinion elsewhere
@@sarahlivingstone8367 I prefer Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking and the Rare Earth Theory because they're grounded in real science. Neil is a wonderful and entertaining astronomer, and I'd suggest you look at some of the discussions he had with Brian. Finally, if you don't like criticism, especially when it comes from science, don't post. In your own words, keep your inflated opinions to yourself.
It's a simple matter of distance; even if there were 100 other human-level civilizations currently active in our galaxy, *they could all still be separated by thousands of light years.*
Light years were not relevant to the Mesopotamians, who travelled along tunnels via "magic" portals. Technology is often "magic" when it isn't understood. The Lord of Worlds comes along every 5k-6k years or so. Maybe we'll all see soon enough. In the meantime, do you really believe current "science" is right? When I was a kid, dinosaurs were cold blooded scaly lizards and Neanderthal was a species that died out millions of years before we showed up. The assumption that current science is absolutely correct is entirely false.
So? Even if you have just one such civilisation it could colonize the entire galaxy during a few million years at a fraction of the speed of light.. And universe is 13.8 billion years old so if intelligent technological life was really common it would already be everywhere by now...
Could be. They couldn't be too much older than us, though, or there would have been time to spread all over the galaxy and beyond. 🙂
@@neutrino78xthere is no reason to assume anyone would spread anywhere.
why leave the planet you were designed for, to go to an infinite hostile void?
it's like deciding to live in antarctica...if antarctica was always night, radioactive, 100x colder, and you had no hope of resupply....
what even is the best case scenario? even if you meet an alien, the overwhelming likelihood is they'll try to eat you because you are a handy concentration of resources...which is pretty much what life does, is consume concentrated energy to stave off entropy briefly.
edit: if you see something who decided the void was less hostile then the environment they evolved in...and went out looking for something to do.....RUN
Only works on the condition that civilizations do not end up spreading through the galaxy.
Maybe we are not alone in space, but we are alone in time. It's a shame that this is never taken into account in videos like this. The 4 Dimensional space is to consider, when that means traveling or sending messages would take million of years from our perspective.
Perhaps a level 3 civilization has conquered time and is free to travel wherever and whenever it wishes. That is if such a civilization exist and backwards time travel is possible. We can't prove either isn't a possibility but that doesn't mean it's a probability.
The big question is is the universe infinite with the same laws of physics throughout. If it is infinite than their are infinite possibilities within our laws of physics. With infinite possibilities there are an infinite exact copies of you in the universe. In one of them you are married to Taylor Swift. In another you own a pet T-Rex called Rexy. This is guaranteed if the universe is infinite. Anything less than infinite changes everything.
That’s the part no one seems to understand. We are actually hoping some alien intelligence is so far advanced that it has branched out into the galaxy close enough to us that they could have received radio waves from earth and then they decided to investigate. They would still need to travel faster than light to get here within the past 100 years because we haven’t been broadcasting radio waves for much longer than that. Everybody leaves out the time equation.
And some civilizations might not exist yet. The universe and our galaxy are still quite young.
We just might be the first to overcome all obstacles so far
Hey, I like this perspective! You’ve really opened my eyes to this, and instead of going to sleep I will now go down that rabbit hole!!!! It’s people like you❤I do not deserve!!
I think what needs to be included in there which no one seems to mention is the mental stability of a civilization. The ability to stay sane as a civilization going forward seems to me to be the greatest great filter.
Yah look at what is currently happening in the US - if it goes the path of a dictatorship with Trump, where his followers do not believe in science, then it will drag down all the democracies of the world, and we could enter a long period of regression technology-wise. And by their ignorance of not believing Global warming it could end life on this Earth.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
-Arthur C. Clarke
Like a single drop of pond water is teaming with countless bacteria and organisms, so is our universe. We see them all the time and they watch us continually. Not only is the universe teaming with life it is teaming with life in dimension upon dimension upon dimension as countless worlds exist on different octaves of vibration. Just like you can play the happy birthday song with one finger up and down the keyboard of a piano in the low, mid and high range. Entire worlds share the same space at different vibrations. We think of vibrations as being a large band from infrared to heat, sound and light etc. But this is a tiny slice of the entire bandwidth of existence which goes from zero to way beyond the trillions. In fact, matter itself vibrates at over 12 sextillion times per second. That is 12 with 21 zeros. 12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. So imagine the possibilities.
Whats more is all matter, energy and all existence itself is consciousness. Even the electricity we use was once a thought on some other plane of existence but all of this goes down another long road of possibilities and is the reason it is believed that the human race itself is kept in fear to be like a kind of battery for beingsin a neighboring dimension. You don't have to accept or believe any of this but just as an exercise imagine it is true and contemplate how it would work and imagine what the possibilities would be. One thing is for sure. We are not alone.
Stfu everyone’s already heard that 2000x
Why would being the only intelligent life in the universe be terrifying? Being one of millions of civilizations in the universe is much more scary.
All it would take is one out of that million that is more advanced and aggressive(like us), and they could wipe us out or enslave us all.
It's not terrifying. We'll be here for a nanosecond and the distances are too great. There are billions of civilizations. There's zero chance of an encounter.
@@seltonk5136 We don't know what we don't know. Didn't know flight or automobiles just 150 years ago. But yes, I doubt other civilizations would care about us.
"The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space".
From the movie Contact. I absolutely agree with it too.
I always liked this one.
I have watched dozens of videos on the fermi paradox....still listening to the factboi to make sure this channel stays amongst the living
Follow-up, best video on the Fermi-Paradox I've seen so far. Especially with the added variables in the Drake Equation. Great fucking work.
The Fermi Paradox is probably underestimating the difficulty and impracticality of interstellar travel, even for advanced civilizations. If the universe were teaming with life at least as advanced as. say, Mayan civilization, or even 20th century earth, we would not have any easy way of detecting it.
My thoughts exactly. There could be thousands of civilizations similar to ours, but we'll never detect each other.
That's actually one possible explanation for why the paradox exists and probably one of the most depressing out of all explanations.
You also have to consider that the universe is very young. The universe is only a few weeks old in human years. Now we are in a phase of less chaotic and more structural integrity. In the early days of the Universe's forming, it was more chaotic and dangerous, therefore it was nearly impossible for life to develop. Now that more planets and stars have settled, dark matter contributing to this by pushing galaxies away from each other. I think we are in the early phase of life formation in the Universe, and maybe a few billion years from now, the Universe will be more populated with life.
Alien life is already visiting our world according to the witness testimonies at the UAP Congressional hearing in July = David Grusch has seen the evidence of Alien materials being hidden by the Pentagons USAPs for 80 years since Roswell 1947. Also USN Commander David Fravor who chased the Tic Tac UFO in 2004 with his FA18 that showed advanced technology that mankind simply does not have. As DNI John Ratcliffe has stated as well.
This doesn't actually help that much for the Fermi Paradox. While it is true we can't yet detect civilizations like the Mayans, and civilizations like our own beyond something like maybe 10 ly, a K1 civilization is approximately as easy to detect as an exoplanet and a K2 civilization is approximately as easy to detect as a single sun-like star. This means that we should by now have been able to detect K1 civilizations within about 1000ly of Earth, and K2 civilizations pretty much anywhere within our Local Group of galaxies outside of the region in the sky blocked from our view by the Milky Way's galactic center. Our current civilization is only about 500 years more advanced than the Mayans, and we ourselves could get to K1 status within 100-500 years, depending on how optimistically you project future growth.
The Milky Way has over 100 billion stars (and keep in mind that K2s are not limited to habitable planets. They can comfortably colonize any star whatsoever). If it was "teeming" with Mayan level civilizations, then there should be at least a few hundred K1+ civilizations and maybe half a dozen K2+ civilizations in the galaxy, and we should have noticed at least one of those K2's.
So we still are left with the conclusion that technological civilizations must be fairly rare, such that there are only a handful of them in the galaxy (not "teeming") and just by chance none of them have yet reached K1 or higher status, or there is some kind of filter that prevents civilizations from growing to K1 status or beyond.
IMO, the first contact message we'll, probably, get reads something like "STOP BROADCASTING! YOU'RE PUTTING YOURSELVES IN DANGER!!!!!"
"Be quiet. They are listening." One of the spookiest thoughts out there.
@@snaffu1 we did get a reply. "shhhhh they might hear you." Was it meant for us though? I got bored with starfield and just finished another CE run. "When you first saw Halo, were you blinded by its majesty?" waiting for reply...
I've been pondering the Fermi Paradox for a while... and the resolution is probably found in the immense size of the universe and resulting time required to travel through it due to the limiting factor of the speed of light. As other commenters have pointed out, the universe is so vast, and civilisations so brief on a galactic time scale, that any observations of other solar systems, let alone other galaxies, have virtually zero chance of seeing anything indicative of complex life.
Edit: The Great Filter argument is pervasive... and I've thought ever since my teens in the 1980s and the appearance of the ozone hole that civilisations lasting long enough to spread outside their own solar system, let alone through a significant part of their home galaxy, is just not possible. After all, humanity has demonstrated repeatedly that we're really not that bright and prone to self-destruction, and I suspect (with deep regret thanks to my love of the works of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert) that we're just not going to make it. I don't know whether we're going to engineer our own extinction, or simply end up with a Matrix ending at the mercy of our AI overlords, but I see one or the other as the most likely outcomes for us.
We built a spacecraft in the 1970's that is currently going at 61,500 km/h out of our solar system, we were not trying to make it fast, and did not aim it
..but at this speed it could get to the farthest point in our galaxy in a billion years
we can easily make a craft faster, and a billion years in the time scale of the universe is nothing
@@davidioanhedgesa billion years is 1/14 of the age of the universe. Hardly nothing.
"and the resolution is probably found in the immense size of the universe and resulting time required to travel through it due to the limiting factor of the speed of light."
They've had time to cross the distance though. Remember, at relativistic speed, not only does it not take thousands of years to go 20 light-years, but time slows down for you, so according to the clock on your ship, it would take less than 20 years to go that 20 light-years.
This was known physics in Fermi's time, and he knew about the power of the atom, being the guy who invented the first nuclear reactor, underneath the University of Chicago, so his question stands, where is everybody 🙂
" I don't know whether we're going to engineer our own extinction, or simply end up with a Matrix ending at the mercy of our AI overlords, but I see one or the other as the most likely outcomes for us."
Meh. We've had nuclear weapons for decades and it hasn't happened yet.
yeah not just even the unapproachable limit, but if we did travel at 10x lightspeed, we could be hundreds of millions of years away from our galactic friends, the universe is that big.
@@pauls5745
Well, our galaxy isn't hundreds of millions of light-years, but if the closest one is in a galaxy millions of light-years away, that would make it harder, assuming that the speed of light is indeed the limit. If they are int the same galaxy though, or even one close by (Andromeda...), they've still had time to get here.... 🙂 Andromeda is what, 100 million light-years? There have been billions and billions of years for them to get here. 🙂
The problem is probably that those “tens of millions of years”, might be a blink of an eye against the age of the galaxy, but it’s cripplingly long for the connection and survival of any civilisation. Let alone maintaining that single endeavour of expansion. I suspect there’re pockets of life, disconnected from each other, by vast distances, with time inexorably wearing them down to extinction, because time in the end, always wins.
I like to imagine how different our perception of time might be to another intelligent species. Suppose they are sending a message via radio waves, in a sort of Morse code. Where each dash is one thousand earth years.
I listened to an audio book "Dragon's egg" That concept was the premise of that book@@sn1000k
Once a civilization spreads to other stars, it would be next to impossible to completely extinct life. And it doesn't have to be one coherent civilization but a constant 'birthing' of new civilizations from the original, which in time diverge in differences to the point they might as well be aliens.
Some of these civilizations will never venture beyond their star, some will collapse, and some will spread, giving birth to even more diverse civilizations. Each of their behaviors' will be vastly different and unpredictable.
@@sn1000k even radio waves take a lot of time to get anywhere meaningfull... and by then will have an energy level well below the level of the background noise and is most likely undetectable...
Also... radio waves are not used very long it seems. We have been using radio for a little more that a 100 years now and everyone if moving away to fiber optics.
Only in space do we use radio but then its very directional (narrow beam - e.g. to Voyager 1 and 2) meaning the odds of a random somebody intercepting that radio beam within a reasonable distance (say 50 lightyears to be detectable) is very small.
The question is over-hyped and inconsequential, as the answer is obvious: Space is too large and time’s extension too long for any meaningful possibility of contact. There may be a very slim chance of detecting an form of communication at some point, but even this would take extremely powerful technology and luck-such a communication would be at best an immense shot in an inconceivably vast darkness, both spatially and temporally. As for actual space vessels or even material probes, that is laughable. I am perfectly willing to grant that there is, has been, and will be multitudinous extraterrestrial life. I assume the night sky teems with it. But that is of absolutely no relevance or consequence to us, other than to inspire the kind of modern fairytale presented here.
I go with the rare Earth hypothesis. In particular I believe that our freakishly large moon, and how that moon was formed is why we have intelligent life here, but not anywhere near by in time and space. Specifically, late in the formation of the Earth a planet the size of Mars slammed into the Earth at an angle. This did several things - one, it gave us a larger than normal iron core, because now we have the iron core of two planets, not one. Two, it increased the spin of that iron core. Combine one and two and you end up with a stronger and longer lasting magnetic field then we should have for a planet our size. A magnetic field that protects us from the solar wind. A weak magnetic field is why Mars has such a thin atmosphere and high surface radiation. Third, the lighter material got blown up into orbit where it formed into the moon. Our moon is freakishly large for the size of our planet. This has several effects, it increases the size of our tides, mixing up those chemicals of life so well, and often. It stabilizes our rotation so that the Earth doesn't wobble, which stabilizes our climate. Our freakishly large moon also provides an asteroid deflector. An imperfect one to be sure, but on that increases the time between extinction level events.
Add all of that up and we have a planet that allows a long enough period of time for intelligent life to evolve, something that seems unlikely on other planets.
Agreed. Also, if any galactic-wide civilization was even possible, it would have occurred billions of years ago. What civilizations need (whether human or not) is space to expand and resources. Do the math. The entire galaxy would have been mined and populated, and we would not even exist. If it could have happened, it would have. There are no spacefaring aliens out there, and there never were. Why? Because it can't be done. Simple life, yes; probably very common. But that's it.
The relative sizes are pretty absurd. One of the smallest planets and one of the largest moons.
Though it's not so much the amount of iron in the core which has kept our magnetosphere alive longer than Mars. That's largely due to our planet being larger and the square-cube law. Then again, Venus is nearly identical in size but lacks a magnetic field.
The only aspect of Rare Earth hypothesis that has me take pause before adopting it for myself is how it actually doesn't say anything about advanced life - or even life as a phenomena - in the universe, but rather deals with how improbable and complex the specifics of *our* evolution has been on this planet given it's specific circumstances. In this way, it aptly should be renamed "Rare Human" and proclaim that how insanely unlikely it is that we might find human s elsewhere in the universe given that complexity.
So more than anything, to me this hypothesis underscores how utterly subjective an approach to the whole thing we have - and is in fact limited to. Everything we experience, everything we take in via our senses, is passed through that *other* great filter, the cognitive one that filters out all information deemed irrelevant even before it reaches the conscious parts of our mind. It simply can't be helped, it's intrinsic to the very way we sense, perceive and experiense; there *is* no true objectivity in this existential perspective. But we can become aware of it and so become able to take it into account.
In doing that, we see that the only working and workable model for true, universal objectivity we have is mathematics. Using that to evaluate our data, we cannot ignore that, mathematically life in the universe should be a very common occurrence. The probability of biogenesis is high, very high indeed, given how all the necessarry materials is in amble supply everywhere we look. In fact, it is so high that it makes more sense talking about how fantastically improbable it is that life has not evolved anywhere else. Even more so, considering the Drake Equation is based on the Goldilocks theory while since we have discovered many other places previously thought to void of potential to actually be good places to look for life in the form of ice-covered ocean worlds far from the Sun and kept warm instead by tidal forces. And we also see that, mathematically the probability of our own evolution across 4 billion years is super-complex and improbable in the extreme; it's a true-to-god *miracle* that I sit here typing a lengthy comment that isn't going to be read by very many other highly evolved beings if any at all given all the things that could have been different throughout all those thousands of millions of years - obviously. It is super rare to be a human; absolutely unique thing under the stars, that's the rational conclusion. But Rare Earth talks about advanced life in the universe - and mathematically the only thing we can deduce about that subject is simply that we don't know. Only thing we know is that whatever there is it's super unlikely it's going to be other humans.
@@WormholeJim The objective reality is that we have so far seen no evidence of intelligent life. This despite the fact that we know there are lots of places where it could have. Furthermore, there has been a lot of time for that life to have spread out so it would be very seeable. So we have to start from that point and no other. There are two choices - intelligent life is even harder to create than we think, or intelligent life kills itself off soon (geologically speaking) after it is created. Those are really the only two choices. (Or I guess, it hides really quickly, and stop emitting anything that can be detectable). Rare Earth falls into the first category - rarer than we think. If intelligent life needs more time between extension events to develop, if it needs more time with a strong magnetic sphere then most planets are able to provide, then we have our explanation. We are not unique in the universe, but we are so separated by time and space because of these very low probabilities that we are effectively unique.
I think we need to consider that life is a complete anomaly that may never be replicated and that we may actually be alone.
That’s not likely.
Naaah just going by odds, I can't believe in our galaxy of 100 billion stars, that we are the only life - hell I bet there are some kind of aquatic life under Europa's ice mantel.
@@Kr0N05But what if the odds of life forming and developing in a star system is greater than 100 billion to one?
I really think we need to prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that we are alone.
One of the best videos I have ever seen on the Fermi Paradox, well done.
A new Simon channel!?! How did I miss this for 3 weeks!? I always need more of his content
Simon is infinite.
@@sirius4k Simon is life.
It's been around for much longer than 3 weeks.
Same! I would have clicked sooner if his face was on the thumbnail.
Personally I just assume rare earth + rare life + rare intelligence = no life (other than us) within the observable universe. I also hold to the infinite universe camp (in time and distance) so I acknowledge that there IS life out there somewhere, it's just so impossibly far away it doesn't matter.
Exactly right - Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking and the Rare Earth Theory.
That seems almost impossible to believe since the "observable universe" is 92 Billion Light-Years across and the number of planets that might have potential for life would be in the quadrillions. Remember that the number of galaxies is now believed to be possibly 2 TRILLION galaxies, each with 100 to 400 Billion stars.
@@odonnelly46I'm pretty sure it's accepted science that there is single cellular life on many planets in our galaxy and others. But from what we know of biology, chemistry and other fields, the jump to multicellular life is HUGE, so huge that we're almost certainly it for this galaxy. The jump to intelligent multicellular life is even more.
The number of Goldilocks things that have to happen for us to evolve is mind boggling. Look them up. The first is Stability; of local cluster, of galaxy, of solar system, of sun, of moon, of orbit, of water. Without these life doesn't stand a chance or remains dormant.
So yeah, any intelligent multicellular life is outside our galaxy and is probably long gone by the time we get to hear from it.
@@odonnelly46 the math can add up very quickly. If only, say, 1 in a million planets are earthlike, and only 1 in a thousand have steady plate tectonics, and 1 in a million earth like planets have a moon like ours, and only 1 in a million of those have a large gas giant like Jupiter in the right spot to protect them from debris, and only 1 in a few quadrillion develop life, and only 1 in a billion develop intelligent life, and only 1 in a million make it to space, etc, etc. It's not at all hard to get to a point where 2 civilizations springing up in the same 100 billion light years is basically impossible.
@@Russo-Delenda-Estyour numbers are most likely grossly exaggerated. 1 in a million are Earth like? Our sample size says 1 in 9.
what disturbs me the most about this is that regardless if the answer is “yes there are others” or “no we are alone” both answers are alerting…
They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, either. "Yes, there are others. They're alone, too."
You & Hank Green should do like a
weekly podcast together, i think humanity would benefit from that
Yo hank green fan let's go
I'm fond of the hypothesis Peter Watts proposed in his novel "Blindsight": that advanced civilizations are out there, but they aren't intelligent. Or, more accurately. They aren't made up of countless conscious individuals. Rather they evolved from colony creatures like bees and ants.
Distance is the main factor as to why we will most likely never nakr contact.
I think time might be just as big a factor. If we disappeared now and someone took a look at us in 50 million years, they would find no trace of us ever existing, unless they actually started digging through some old rocks and got impossibly lucky. And 50 million years is a blink of an eye in terms of the lifespan of the universe. So this could have happened all around us, over and over again. There were just no Silurian era astrophysicists to observe it, and all that's left now is buried under two miles of shifting tectonic plates, ocean sediments or ice. On a planet 500 light years away, and all we can tell about it is that it's made of rock and approximately yea big.
What's "nakr"?
@@Rotorhead1651misspelled "make", I assume?
well, they've had plenty of time to cross the distance, though. 🙂 Remember they can go 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light (infinite number of 9s) without violating the laws of physics. 🙂
As might as well BE alone in the universe at distances like that.
They always forget to mention time. We've only been able to listen for about a hundred years or so. Another civilization could have been broadcasting a 1000 years ago and we wouldn't have been able to hear it. Or they may have been broadcasting for a million years, but the signal hasn't reached us yet.
This will keep the cogs spinning tonight. Thanks
Native New Mexican here, our state motto should be: "Yes, we are a US state." Thank you Simon!
Arthur C.Clarke said: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
that quote has always stuck with me.
It is only terrifying if one has the imagination to grasp the significance of that statement. Right now we can barely grasp the looming implications of climate change.
@@neiladlington950 So you are assuming that literally nobody has sufficient imagination?
And you assume this, because of a perception that people are unable to grasp perceived implications of a perceived problem?
I suppose i should make sure i confirm a point of specificity... When you say "climate change", are you referring to the very real cycle of climatic change that the planet regularly undergoes, and that we can do literally nothing about? or, are you referring to the utterly bogus narrative that claims that humans have caused a problem, and that we must drastically lower our standard of living, whilst we destroy the environment, to save it?
I also remember the quote , every time I see it again It always makes me think.
Arthur C Clarke was a very good writer and as such good with words , but I always felt he missed the mark on that one.
The possibilities of either are definitely not Terrifying , curious to he sure but not Terrifying.
There's nothing terrifying at all about either possibility.
@@Elayzee What makes you say that?
I have an extensive love and background with science, snd this is one thing I love to talk about.
When this topic comes up, the most usual argument that people have for there being life in the universe is "the universe is too big for there not to be life". My biggest counter argument has always been the same "the universe is too big for there to be life".
What do I mean by that? Well just as there are X amount of chances for life to arise, there are also X amount of chances for life to be wiped away. Wiped away by any sort of regular cosmic phenomena, natural disaster, or inhospitable conditions.
My take has always been that the amount of life in the universe can be equal to the amount of events in the universe that can end life, meaning there is possibly no life at all.
I always like to think about it as a reverse Schrodinger's box. The universe is the system, and we won't know whether there is life or not until we actually open every box.
We also don't know that there ISN'T.
@@Rotorhead1651 exactly, so they are in a perpetual state of both existing and not existing at the same time
Exactly right. Try Brian Cox and the Rare Earth Theory. There are about 20 things that have to be exactly right for life to evolve from rudimentary single cell life to intelligent multicellular life (us). We haven't found anything like multicellular life yet elsewhere, let alone intelligent multicellular life. And the jumps from single cell to multi cell, then to intelligence, are HUGE. Ask any biologist. Or doctor. People asking "why not" are asking the wrong question. They should be asking what, how, where and why.
I do not know whether you will find this interesting but my view is that a scientific proposition must be refutable. There is no observation that can refute the proposition that there is life elsewhere therefore that proposition must be rejected. Instead, the proposition we must hold is that there is no life elsewhere because this can be refuted; by observing life elsewhere.
Life finds a way if it’s got some gool shit in it fr
Fast becoming my favourite channel !
Grabby Aliens model is my favourite version of Great Filter.
A delicious implication of the 'Great Filter' hypothesis:
The more life we find in the universe, and the more advanced it is, the more likely any 'Great Filter' is in our immediate future. Should we find any evidence of past 'alien' civilisations that would be a disaster for us.
Paradoxically by far the most 'comforting' possibility would be to find we are truly alone as that would imply our 'Filters' are behind us.
The fact that there are filters behind us (yes, there are many) doesn't imply that there aren't any filters in front of us.
The anthropic principle (i.e. survivorship/selection bias) ensures that any observer has to see the conditions which allow for their existence. So if we are here right now talking on the internet obviously all the necessary conditions which lead to that, including blowing past any great filters in the past, need to have been satisfied. But none of this means that there aren't any filters in our future...
Look around. If there is advanced enough life out there to swing by and say hi, why would they? Id stay out of the entire galaxy to stay away from us. We're a mess.
Facts
Thats the thing. There is literally zero actual benefit to making contact other than curious intentions.
They wouldn't.... they would eliminate any possible threat.
What do humans do when we find insects in our home? We don't observe them, we don't try to make contact with their leaders, we eliminate them.
And too small and too boring and too stable - just too uninteresting.
Maybe some day I'll explore all of it, but for right now, I'm enjoying our planet Earth.
Of course we could just THINK we're alone as we haven't heard from anyone. But remember that we've only been searching for (at most) under a century, in an environment that is measured in thousands of millions of light years - any signatures would either still be underway,, or the senders of those messages are already long dead. Why worry; as someone once said 'the time to start worrying is when you get a Hello back'
Try Brian Cox
The real Fermi paradox is why if they exist in this galaxy they didn't get here millions of years ago and colonise Earth ( in which case we should not be here). Whilst our current technology would take tens of thousands of years to get to the nearest other solar system, a speed above 10% of light which should be feasible would allow colonisation of the galaxy in ten million years or so. Fermi wasn't really talking about radio searches that was Drake far later.
@@davidwebb4451 not to mention communication problems, medical problems, maintenance problems and least of all, micro, and not so micro, meteorites. Yeah, nah! The combined effort of the two top nations in the 60s and 70s got us just quarter million miles. Because of neoliberal economics, and the extraordinary low tax rates and humongous loopholes, no nation has the financial base to do manned missions. Private entrepreneurs have yet to face anything like the challenges that NASA and the USSR faced. When they overreach themselves and come a cropper, watch them scream for taxpayer dollars then.
@@richardcaves3601 A century ago getting to the moon was a fantasy. Our current technology won't take us to the stars but, providing we don't destroy ourselves, we have time on our side. The Earth will support complex life like ourselves for about 500 million more years.
@@davidwebb4451 suggest you consult David Attenborough and watch "Extinction: the facts". Answer your own question.
Of all the various types of life on earth. Hundreds of millions of things from single cells to us, only one has developed an ability to explore the Cosmos.
Long odds for something similar to us
Only one thing THAT WE KNOW OF.
Fixed that for you
Agreed and science backs that up. Far, far too many sci-fi addicts and not enough real science.
The data set is one, and there is a 100% occurrence of sentient, technological, biological life in that set. Not enough to make any definitive conclusions either way.
@@dougthompson1598 science, not sci-fi. We know what we know and anything else is BS.
@@richardcaves3601 Science once did not know the Earth was not the center of the universe, or that the universe was more than just the Milky Way galaxy and anything else was BS.
When I hear about interesting things about the universe, it excites me and motivates me to learn more about it. But the voice in the video made me fall asleep without even realizing it
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.”
Great video, and very entertaining as well. Loving this new channel!
I'm not remotely an expert, and really, none of the us are when it comes to astrobiology. But based on all of my own research and meager thinking, I've gravitated toward two things that l think MIGHT be relevant as pertains to the Fermi Paradox.
1) It may not be that life (or even intelligent life) is so vanishingly rare in principle, but that it may not even really get a chance to emerge in any given galaxy until it is middle aged. Surely we need multiple generations of stars to live and die to produce all the spectrum of elements needed for organic chemistry in sufficient quantities to make life common. Plus, we need a relatively sedate galaxy where the central black hole is not irradiating the entire galaxy, and the frequency of massive supernova explosions is at a minimum. This is just for life to get started, let alone for any particular ecosystem to survive long enough to produce intelligence. So, we here on earth may just be among the first in our galaxy to gain such a foothold.
2) if there are other civilizations out there who are far beyond us and are interplanetary or especially interstellar, then surely by now, they have mastered the efficient use of energy enough that they would not be wasting massive amounts of energy communicating via omnidirectional radio broadcasts. It seems obvious to me that if they did communicate across space, it would be by very focused, precisely aimed, compressed microbursts of data via lasers or something even more surgical. And the odds of us ever intercepting such a communication are virtually nil with our present tech. About 99 percent of our search for alien life thus far has been conducted with radio telescopes. And that, to me, is incredibly shortsighted and hopelessly anthropomorphic.
Is radio communication actually that energy hungry for an advanced civilization?
Here's the thing, though. You use the phrase "organic chemistry". Well, as a matter of definition, "organic" simply means "comes from carbon". So here's my question: "What if life, on some hitherto unknown world, didn't evolve from carbon? What if it evolved from silicon, nitrogen, titanium, or some other element we haven't even discovered yet?
@Bangkoksuperbike not necessarily, but l think if they used radio, they'd broadcast in a very narrow beam and not omnidirectionally. Kind of like how we communicate with our own satellites and space probes. Or, maybe more like how those devices communicate data back to us on earth. We wouldn't even be able to receive data from Voyagers 1 and 2 at this point if their radio antennae were not aimed precisely. And they are barely outside the heliopause, much less beaming at us from another system.
@Rotorhead1651 that is possible, and an interesting idea. However, other choices like silicone so far do not seem nearly as ideal for this type of chemistry as carbon. Also, how would a civilization develop sufficient tech to reach for the stars if their home world was not endowed with enough heavy elements? If the earth was poor in things like gold, copper, titanium, iron, and so forth, we might still have life here but we wouldn't have much technology.
It's been well studied if life could evolve from a heavier element like silicone but the chances aren't particularly good. Life is based on carbon purely because it's by far the easiest element for all the chemical reactions necessary for organic life to actually take place. It's unlikely that silicone would be able to be versatile enough to be the base element of a living organism. For one thing, silicone isn't as stable as carbon in complex chemical reactions and molecular chains. It's just very unlikely that any life could evolve from anything but carbon. The biggest problem with finding extraterrestrial life is just the vastness of space. Not to mention that sub light speed travel is just far too slow. The challenge of building a space ship that could function perfectly for thousands or 10s of thousands of years to get from one solar system to another is practically impossible. Not to mention life may never have evolved here on earth if we didn't have a moon. The moon has been critically important for life on earth. There's just so many factors involved with life being able to develop at all. And the universe is actually still only in its infancy. We could just be the first intelligent life in our galaxy. We just don't know
We're not necessarily alone in the Universe, but we are probably alone in our galaxy.
I agree. There are a lot more contingencies that could prevent intelligent life (and life in general) from forming that they didn’t mention and after factoring in many of those, you get to the point where the number of potential civilizations can get down to single digits or even less than one (meaning it was even unlikely for us to have shown up). So if I were a betting man, I’d place my bet on we are the only intelligent life in the Milky Way. Maybe not the only life in general but definitely the only intelligent.
We might very well be alone in our galaxy. But even if we are not the huge distances involved even in our galaxy might be a limiting factor for two civilizations interacting. It may in fact not be possible to overcome the speed of light problem. Sure you could make replicating machines that could go out and colonize the galaxy but what would be the point in doing that? You can't communicate with the new colonies over a reasonable time scale. Or perhaps there is another civilization a thousand light years away. On a cosmic scale that would be close but not close enough for any meaningful contact. We might develop the tech to determine they exist but so what? They would be out of reach.
As a Cards fan thanks for bringing up the Cubs being terrible in the most unlikely place
Go St Louis Cardinals. Your comment was the only one that made any sense amongst all of these want to be Astro Genesis😅😅
Not only do we have a 'sample of one' for a planet with life, of every species that have ever existed on Earth, only one has gone as far having enough 'intelligence' to modify their environment enough to create metals and technology.
If we are alone in the universe, it would be a terrible waste of space. #sagan
Carl didn't know then what we know now.
I love Simon's videos but, there's a pet peeve of mine that I have to address...
It really irks me to no end when, whichever scientists are looking for signs of alien life, limit their attention to planets that are in the 'habitable or Goldilocks zone' of their respective stars.
We've discovered creatures here on Earth capable of surviving and thriving in extreme heat or cold, which we call Extremophiles.
So why do we presume that any alien lifeform would be limited to the narrow band of circumstances we are limited by?
1) We need a second earth in order to survive. That means similar conditions.
2) complex life forms can only exist in temperate zones. Man didn't evolve from ice worms at the poles but the savannas of Africa along the equator.
3) what kind of life are you looking for? Microorganisms, plant/animals or intelligent life? To much radiation is harmful as well as too little radiation doesn't provide enough energy to accelerate development. Presumably, intelligence came about when man mastered fire and was unable to cook his meals and unlock the energy contained within. Life is about energy. To much and you burn up. To little and you go nowhere.
As far as we know, life needs extremely favorable conditions to emerge.
Just because life exists in extreme environments on Earth doesn't mean it started there!
@@stewiesaidthat Your 1) is totally irrelevant
Are you telling me they're made of meat?!
But did that life evolve separately from all other life or did these extremaphiles come to be only after other life established a foothold on our planet? Just like the Fermi paradox, we need other examples (at least one example) of life from off-planet sources before calculating what the odds might be. So, we start where logic dictates we should, planets in the goldilock zone.
👍👍🚀🚀Outstanding. Thanks. Endlessly fascinating topic.
I think a clue to this question is that even to this day, we can't create life with fundamental elements.
Species seem to only last a few million years from start to finish so postulating 10’s of millions of years is a bit hopeful. Also long range space exploration would require planet wide cooperation. Good luck with that.
Well, yeah.. biology alone probably wouldn't allow for that. Genetic drift would have to be somehow stabilized technologically. Question is if we would still talk about "individuals" and "lifetimes" at that point, or if it was just some extremely long-living hive mind or something..
Haven't our radio signals only penetrated like 0.1% of the distance in to the milky way? those 3 boobed blue alien seti workers probably didn't see us yet even if they're relatively quite close in say the next arm of the galaxy. With galactic dust and the energy required to push a signal strong enough for detection being way higher than we've been putting out there, I'm afraid watching alien TV is just not likely. We'll probably find some "sub spacy" type communications method in the future and suddenly the whole galaxy will be lit up.
Radio waves are like any other wave - they dissipate with distance. Our radio emissions dissipate to background levels before even leaving out solar system.
You can get some meaningful distance with extremely high power unidirectional array, but even that would be a mere few LY's - a spitting distance on galactic scale, and you NEED to know where to aim with accuracy below 0.0001 arc second.
To make any meaningful distance with radio waves, you'd have to use a planet frying emitter - literally. To detect an artificial source of radio waves, it would have to be sent in our literal backyard.
The truly distant radio signals we detect originate from natural sources that are apocalyptic on galactic scales - pulsars, neutron stars, supermassive black holes etc.
4:56 For no reason other than I decided to do so, I have to say this is currently one of the most pure and pristine Whistler channels CZcams has going right how.
What, you mean this is the channel where Simon eschews the laddish f-bombing and resumes his old 1970s Open University presenter persona? 😏😏
I think there are so many factors that need to go right to permit sentient life to exist, it is likely we will never find out if any exist.
Given that scientists on Earth have failed to create anything close to life despite knowing the goal and a relative infinite set of starting conditions, it's safe to say that the first step towards life is incredibly rare
Life on Earth started as soon as it reasonably could, the time between the earth cooling enough to have liquid water on the surface, and life starting was geologically the blink of an eye ... the conditions at the time were just this side of hostile to life, it looks like life is a near certainty given the right conditions
But it did then stay simple and single celled for 3.5 billion years, so complex life seems to not be anywhere near as likely or even inevitable
Early earth had to have nearly perfect conditions for likely millions of years for abiogenisis to occur. The cosmic lottery. If we make assumptions that earth needed a moon nearly identical to our own and all the other likely, millions of variables that come into play for just the right conditions, abiogenisis doesn't seem very likely elsewhere.
@@davidioanhedges That still doesn't mean that abiogenesis isn't rare.. It can still be incredibly rare and Earth could have been a freak accident..
@@kyjo72682 We have one example, so we don't know, but everything we have says it's not rare given the right conditions
Note the original comment is simply wrong, creating the building blocks of life was so simple they did it easily, using the wrong conditions, and have replicated this given almost every condition with the right elementary ingredients, that is not actively hostile - and we have since found the same precursors in space
The experiment to do is have the right conditions (not rare), and the right elements (not even remotely rare), and wait a few million years ...
@@davidioanhedgesIt stayed in the prokaryotic stage for most of that time. Just the jump from prokaryote to eukaryote is one that could take billions of years and in many places may never take place. I think abiogenesis is probably the hardest step on the way to a technological civilization. The second least likely is probably the evolution of a species that developed technology. It has only happened once here and a lot of circumstances aligned to favor this happening. If even one of those hasn't occured we would probably be hunting with rocks today. Or perhaps we would be not much different than the other great apes of today.
These theories don’t take into account just how incredibly violent the universe appears to be.
Yes it's sort of a shit show out there lol.
If you were dropped in a random place in the universe, you would die, probably quickly
With enough preparation, equipment, and supplies ... you might survive if you are lucky
Another good gabble.
That shot at the cubs was uncalled for 😭
Why take cheapshots at my Cubs? Not nice. Besides, the World Series curse is over, thankfully, but to bring up all those years of pain 😢
Because the Cubs do cheap shots to them self constantly..
Simon knows nothing of any sport....just reading a script
EXACTLY, let us Chicagoans enjoy one!
Something like the inclination to develop technology could be incredibly rare. Of species that have rudimentary tool use or the ability to build structures, we did a lot more than just using a stick to poke in a hole or what amounts to simple nest building. Then on top of that, it could be a matter of having certain resources readily available at the right time. (There could be other things out there just as smart or smarter than us, but still living in a very "primitive" manner.)
I agree. What we usually don't consider is that maybe other intelligent species out there simply have no need to develop technology, mainly because they are perfectly adapted to their environments. Necessity breeds invention: we humans are uniquely incapable of surviving without tools to provide our most basic needs. But even on Earth there are intelligent species like whales, dolphins, octopuses, for ex. who are perfectly adapted to survive in their environment. Maybe what's rare in the Universe are beings who depend exclusively on technology to survive.
Humans and our close relatives lived for millions of years making stone tools before we took up agriculture and the pace of change sped up so dramatically.
Sure. Whales and other ocean species can't make fires. Therefore, are never able to create rockets and other technology that land animals can. All land animals on earth came from the water. If animal development is the same elsewhere, animals on other planets may never adapt to living on land. Sperm whales may be more intelligent than humans. Their language is far more complex than ours.
Intelligence is not necessarily evolutionary beneficial either. The amount of time spent in wombs and energy costs of high functioning brains and development along with other factors seem to prevent many animals from developing Intelligence like our own.
@@jeffmacdonald9863This is true but beginning with Homo habilis the necessity to use the brain for survival increased. Once we became totally bipedal and became primarily a non tree dwelling creature we had to adapt to tool making or die. Erectus may have only made a couple of tools but was very efficient in their use. He also mastered fire and began cooking meats which lead to a rapid increase in brain size. Every descendant of Erectus, including us, had a large brain and more complex tool making ability.
The interesting thing is that for close to 200,000 years we were anatomically identical to what we are today but our brains for some reason developed an incredible intellectual capability around 50,000 years ago. That rather sudden changed separated us from the others in our genus. Ultimately we had far greater ability to share and pass down knowledge. We were probably much better at adapting to the changing climate as well.
As far as what caused that sudden increase in our ability to think and create. Well it had to be the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey.
This is important too.
Everybody tackling Fermi Paradox just... assumes... that intelligence and technological civilization are the inevitable end result of evolution, when in reality - it's a complete accident of random adaptations being mashed up.
To reach technology, you first need life(well, d'uh), that life needs to diversify into multicellular forms, then it needs to develop intelligence(but that requires specific evolutionary pressures, there's plenty of prolific life on Earth that doesn't need primate level intellect). And here's the kicker, all these smarts ain't gonna amount for squat if they won't come along together with the means to dexterously interact with your surroundings(Dolphins are smart, primate level smart - but they will never develop civilization because their forms don't permit for tool use and creation). And then, said life needs to have environmental pressures that favor curiosity and expansionism, over sedentarism
Then, you have to consider that as far as we know it - the universe wasn't capable of bearing life for THAT long. Life, as far we know it, is just basic chemistry - complex, but still basic, no magic involved. Chemical reactions need a solvent to take place in, and as far as we know - water is the only one that's liquid outside of extreme temperatures that isn't corrosive or worse. It works out with Carbon and Silicon, exotic matter or base elements - not so much. Thing is, heavy elements like Carbon and Silicon haven't been around in any meaningful quantities for that long. It took MULTIPLE generations of stars going supernova to seed these heavy elements around.
Then there's the often ignored factor of time. People just kind of assume that all these civilizations will sprout up at the same time to meet up. That's another fallacy. It might take evolution 500 million years or 5 billion years to produce complex life in the first place. Hell, our Earth took 3 billion years from when life first appeared, to said life becoming multicellular.
The depressing reality is that most likely, alien civilizations are extremely rare. Like, one in a hundred billion life bearing planets undergoes the perfect storm of random accidents for something smart enough with opposable thumbs or tentacles to emerge from the evolutionary crucible. And once it does, any that preceded it on the galactic plane are either long since impressions in the rocks on some far away tomb world, or half a billion years away from evolving past the amoeba stage.
And considering the insane distances involved in interstellar travel, and the inability to move FTL outside of Sci-Fi, keeps them confined to their own homeworld, and some artificial habitats around their home solar system.
The Great Filter is definitely in front of us!
I see you chose THE EMPTY MOONS OF JUPITER as you musical accompaniment. Excellent choice.
just because we have not seen them, doesn't mean they are not out there. we haven't been around long enough to know if they checked out our planet before intelligent life evolved. (it wasn't that long ago) the great filter is simply the speed of light and our inability to get close to it.
For life to exist, there are certain biological rules. Just like certain chemistry rules and certain physics rules. So because we know a lot of those rules, we can be pretty certain that "they" ain't out there. Not in this galaxy anyway. If you want to get beyond mere speculations and really find out, try real science. Try Brian Cox and the Rare Earth Theory.
That ignores the scores of credible reports of non-human intelligences visiting us in modern times.
Too much smoke for there to be NO fire. Wherever they come from, originally, they’re here now.
If we haven't seen them then they might as well not be out there. From our perspective the two conditions are one and the same.
If they did check out our planet before we wouldn't have evolved at all because they would have colonized the Earth and prevented us from taking root.
@@richardcaves3601
"Try Brian Cox and the Rare Earth Theory."
That's one of many possible solutions, bro. You make it sound like you worship Dr. Cox and he's infallible lol. Lots of other equally smart people would say there's an excellent chance that aliens ARE out there somewhere.🙂
I think another possible great filter is the inability to transition from dependence on a readily available, naturally occurring, but finite energy source such as oil to something else. Failure to make that transition will most likely result in loss of technology and the regression back to a simpler, less technologically advanced society
Or more likely will destroy that civilisation as a result of 2 things, the first being the by-products of that readily available resource, such as pollution, and the technological branching inherent in said technology. The vast majority of power generation utilises the same basic principle of a steam engine. Add heat to water, push result through fan to get rotation, use rotation to get power. Nuclear, coal, geothermal, all use this same principle. Wind and hydroelectric use a least part of that process, and then there's solar. Solar is the least efficient, and the one we all still dream of becoming practical on a large scale, but has to deal with all the development on the efficiency of the steam engine approach.
The second is what will inevitably happen should we undergo such a failure. Large scale war. We tear each other apart in our desperation to maintain the failing system.
Both or either of these means that society regresses, and super powers splinter.
And all of that induces a need for additional time.
Even if we dodge every great filter prior to interstellar travel, humanities cradle is on the clock. Eventually our star will expand and all inner-system planets WILL be lost. This cannot be prevented, as far as we can tell. Ergo the great filter could simply be a race. How quickly can you escape your planets demise. Followed by the second race. How quickly can you establish self-sufficient extra-system colonies. If you fail. Your race is lost, alongside all those wonderful signals humanity may find.
@The BigBlueMarble I think there are several Great Filters, and you've named yet another one.
There's a fair chance we'll run out of potable water before oil. Just because this planet has a lot of water doesn't mean it has a lot of water we can use. In the past you drank the wrong water and it was your doom. Which is why booze got so popular. Alcohol is a good disinfectant. Don't drink de water!
New Simon channel, on space? yes please!
Based on the information we currently have it doesn’t matter how big the universe is, we don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions on the possibilities of life on other planets. How can you extrapolate from 1 occurrence? (As you said)
Maybe everything is just to far away for us to travel with our life span and we are not prepared for multi generational travel.
You also only describe life as we know it. Who says all life needs water or our Goldie Locks zone?
There are a couple of points about Fermi that I think don't get mentioned enough.
1) We aren't really "broadcasting our existence" to the universe anymore. At most, we had a 100-year history of ubiquitous high-powered radio signals beamed from omnidirectional antennas, which is what creates the radio leakage that "broadcasts" us. In 2023, there is very little broadcast TV or radio anymore, and what exists is largely done through satellites which means there is less leakage. What we leak to deep space in 2023 is a fraction of what we leaked in 1973. If aliens go through a similar progression, there may only be a small window to catch any ubiquitous broadcasting before the tech changes to methods that leak a lot less. In that case, we have to be looking for aliens intentionally broadcasting their existence by setting up a beacon, and there are good reason to suggest that's pretty dangerous.
2) We've only been looking for a VERY minuscule amount of time in a VERY small region of space. Complex life on earth has been around for about a billion years, and arguably, intelligence could have developed at almost any time during that period, with likely higher probability as time goes on. But in perspective, that gives a LOT of time for even a couple of hundred intelligent races to be born, build million-year civilizations (humans have barely 5000 under our belts, and more like 300 if we talk technical civilization), and die out before humans are even a twinkling of any evolutionary eye. If one of those species traveled the galaxy, say back when dinosaurs were ruling the earth, and visited our part of the galaxy, how would we know today if they didn't leave something behind? And even if they did, what lasts 250 million years? Equally, we can never hear any "radio bursts" that civilization might have created ... if they visited us 250 million years ago, and lived for 1 million years, no matter where they were in the Milky Way, their signals are long since gone from our are as the galactic disk is only about 100,000 LY across. What that means is that for us to "hear" an alien radio broadcast from the Milky Way, the civilization has to have been alive sometime in the last 100,000 years, and they have to have been broadcasting something at exactly the right time (depending on their location) for us to have heard it in the last ~70 years of listening.
I think we are WAY ahead of ourselves with Fermi. I don't think there's anything unusual about us "not detecting aliens" yet. The distances and time scales involved aren't easy for most people to grasp - there are probably about a billion years where intelligence could have formed in the Milky Way (conservatively IMO) and ~100 billion stars, while humans have been listening for alien signals for less than a century. It's not EVEN a drop in the bucket yet, IMO ... get back to me in 1000 years if we haven't found anyone yet and I might start wondering lol ...
To add some detail lol ... the 1 billion year number basically comes from the assumption that most life-bearing stars would have a similar life-cycle to our sun, meaning they would have developed 4-5 billion years ago. It also assumes the path we took to multi-cellular complex life is "typical" and that most of those stars that developed life, had that complex life by about 1 billion years ago. It seems quite probable that at least SOME stars may have developed earlier than us though, so the window could be a lot longer, but likely not much shorter.
Given 1 billion years of "complex life", it's again safe to assume that earth developed in a "typical" way - not too fast or too slow. We had a few false starts and extinctions before humans came around, but it's safe to assume at least some planets "got lucky" the first time with intelligence, and that others also got there faster than us, while some will get there slower.
The 1 million-year civilization length was picked from thin air mostly, but seems like a suitably long future period. It equally seems reasonable to assume that, in nature, no matter how technically advanced a species might get, they can't "live forever" so a decline and an end seems inevitable at some point, but 1 million years still gives them like 200 times as long as we've had to explore. With that number through, we could easily be the 1000th intelligent species in the last 1 billion years and still be alone in the galaxy right now.
The other assumption Fermi makes that never gets challenged is that the majority of intelligent species are also invasive, expansive species like humans and I don't think we should assume that. It's entirely possible that our desire to grow to fill all available space, and take over every available ecosystem and niche is quite rare, and most intelligent species don't bother to expand beyond their home systems, given the logistical issues. And finally, with only sub-light travel (and that's all physics seems to be willing to give us), only the most invasive of species like humans MIGHT consider it "worthwhile" to expand into a 100kLY galaxy, given that communications within the "galactic empire" will take up to 100,000 years to go one way between the most distant points. It makes sense, maybe, to expand to fill the galaxy that way when you are rabbits bent on invading any new territory you see and breeding more, but for a non-invasive species, that just doesn't seem like it would be worthwhile. It's only worthwhile if your home systems are bursting at the seams because of overpopulation IMO and that's only an "inevitable problem" for an invasive expansionist species that doesn't control its population, like humans lol ...
Good argument but your logic went, when you go from fact to supposition. 2+2=4, not 5. You went off the rails at "if one of these species travelled the galaxy". Assumption, as they say, is the mother of all fuckups. To assume that such a species exists invalidates your arguments. Try Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking and the Rare Earth Theory.
@@MotherShipMedia "The other assumption Fermi makes that never gets challenged is that the majority of intelligent species are also invasive, expansive species like humans"
Why live like shit over 1000's of planets when we could live like kings on one comes to mind.
Or aliens simply do not want to talk to us
Yea I wouldn't either
Its because we honour the phenomenon called social media and most thrive for acknowledgment's from our peers no advanced civilisation would need that acknowledgement there ya go i said it its called the EGO nice vid again Simon always loved your work on all your channels
None of you matter. We are all dust in the wind. Your lives and achievements your hopes dreams and families are all worthless.
Love you guys.
Fact boy getting into astronomy now 🙌
Imagine we are the only intelligent life in this galaxy, but every galaxy has one or two planets on which intelligent life has evolved. The distances are so vast that in all likelihood we will never even know of each other's existence even if there are millions or billions of galaxies all with at least one civilization.
On the other hand until we find evidence of even basic life on another planet it's equally likely that the Earth is the only planet ever where the conditions for intelligent life exist at all.
That could be true. But SiMon here is focusing just on our own very large and sparkly platter.
I didn’t know this was another Simon channel but there is his piehole again. I’ll stick around due to his rugged handsomeness.🎉
Arthur C. Clarke - 'Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.'
This is how I view the "Great filter". In addition to all previously mentioned issues there is at least one we have thus far failed to accomplish.
And that is, establish our first self-sufficient extra-solar colony.
Think on it. Life is a race. Or at the very least sufficiently intelligent life is. You MUST be smart enough to build an enclosed environment like a house to even have a chance at establishing a foothold on a less than friendly planet. You MUST at least be able to build some means of getting off your planet and to the next (ergo space filter one, no solid mass in local system to reach within the given species lifetime). You MUST be capable of reproducing the conditions needed to farm your own sustenance (like food and water). And you MUST accomplish all of this AND achieve an extra-planetary colony, before your star expands; something that will unfortunately destroy all Sol's inner planets, OR your magnetic shield of your planet/moon is lost.
All of that is simply step one. Congratulations, you may now outlive your planet. Humans have about 5 billion years to achieve that step before Sol kills us. Bear in mind life took a few hundred billion to reach this point, and we have yet to achieve step 1. (we have at least achieved 0.5, getting to an extra-planetary body and back. we still need to achieve 0.75 that is building a dependent extra-planetary colony that requires support from earth).
You now need to outlive your own star. Well that should be easy right? you can survive beyond the cradle world.
Well not exactly.
You MUST now be able to reach at least the nearest star WITH a viable breeding population, AND the required materials to build a self-sufficient colony, BEFORE said colony perishes due to distance (See the initial colony constructed in the new world for an example, by the time the next ship arrived they were all dead). That colony MUST be sufficiently successful to achieve the previous step, that is they must be able to outlive, or escape their own planet, AND MUST be able to also send a sufficiently viable population and amount of necessary materials to AT LEAST the next star over.
Congratulations you have achieved Step 2! Now keep doing that before reality kills you all. welcome to step 3! REPEAT AD INFINUM!
And for an interstellar civilisation to form ALL of the above must occur, and then develop the interstellar infrastructure to be able to speak to each colony, within that colonies lifespan at such a rate that it is not a "one generation asked a question, the 40th got the answer" affair.
And ALL of that must occur before we can even consider whether or not humanity is a SUCCESS on the interstellar scale.
If we cannot achieve all of the above before reality terminates us all, we are not an interstellar species.
So to add to the Fermi paradox, and the Drake equation, we must also establish the possibility of said life reaching the point where extra-planetary colonies could be built, and THEN that same life reaching the point where successful inter-stellar colonies could be built. ALL BEFORE their star/planet killing them all.
I think the phosphorus problem is the answer to the fermi problem
This is why I am a firm believer in the rare earth hypothesis. The conditions that led to the development on earth are so rare that there are only likely a few other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Conditions include the location of our solar system, our type of star, the set up of our solar system with a very large planet far away from the star, the set up of our earth moon system with one large moon, our planets location in the solar system, the make up of our planet, plate tectonics, etc. All these lead up to earth being really unique. I hope I’m wrong and that intelligent life is abundant but I don’t think I am.
We may be softies but we know of a few forms of life that are pretty tough. I've heard that water bears for instance can survive in the hard vacuum of space. In harsh environments life simply adapts.
@@1pcfred I think simple life is probably widespread in the galaxy/universe. It was intelligent, developed life I was talking about.
@@jacoblind5390 simple life is developed. Simple life just isn't complex. Although in a way I suppose it is. We still can't synthesize life. Not even the simplest of organisms. We can manipulate it sure. But we've never managed to make it from scratch yet, so to speak. We've come close and that's remarkably easy to do. But we can't make it past the first step. I'm not sure how much effort we've made. But not nothing. Just not enough.
it's just one of many possible solutions. Also possible that we're simply too far apart, maybe the next one is several galaxies away 😲 Maybe they just skipped over our area, or they passed by before we evolved and kept moving. There's lots of different possibilities. 🙂
@@neutrino78x I definitely believe in the universe there is other intelligent life, the number are just too great for there not to be, there is probably even a couple in our galaxy. Just not the widespread like in science fiction.
Just look at the time line of earth's history and realise how the entire existence of humanity is basically just a blink of an eye so far. Now realise how big the universe is and its not very surprising that we're alone so far.
I do not think common people understand how vast the universe truly is.
The great filter is modernity. We are at that point where we are about to make ourselves extinguished.
Even if the great filter is still ahead of us, we have been sending signals out into space for several decades, but we have not, with any degree of certainty, detected any from any of the many potential alien civilisations which might have been doing so without colonising other worlds.
Yeah, SETI isn't sensitive enough to pick that up yet. That's why I say, in terms of EM communication, all we can say is that nobody is doing any high power deliberate signals within a certain radius. There could be weather radars and military radars running on all kinds of planets, and we just don't have the sensitivity to pick it up. 🙂
There was an episode 90's outer limits show on showtime where a college misfit figures out cold fusion and it turns out it's shockingly easy. (it was put forth as an explanation to the fermi paradox, as soon as a civilization develops technology it destroys itself)
I ascribe to the theory of early life existing in the universe “shortly” after the Big Bang. During the time where the entirety of the universe was a comfortable roughly 70 degrees . During this time even space was warm. Life could have existed even in space, traveling amongst the universe and possibly life was abundant.
Oooh, that 3:45 picture is so good.
Like destiny 2 said, we are the river so release control to flow with the current. Those who understand the current of reality can understand the potentials and realize them through different mediums. In order to fly we use a plane where with more understanding we could use other means like ballon’s or something different like genetic engineering to enable a magnetic field to be controlled at will or something.
It's pretty clear to everybody these days that we are not alone. I saw there ships in the mid 70s in Australia and they have been here a long time!
yup
What the heck Simon, ANOTHER big brain channel? Sure I'll subscribe 😂
Appreciate your realistic take on the Drake equation... My guess (as the the equation allows us all to guess) is the great lethargy, intelligent life can't be arsed or decided it was a waste of money to go further than their 1st few planets
Since the universe started at one point in an instant, it can also be possible that all existing civilizations in said universe started at the same time and are approximately in the same stage of development or advancement. The primordial cocktail began fermenting and was ready simultaneously to spring forth life everywhere.
They may be there, even in the Milky Way, but their science is either just slightly more or less advanced than ours. Distance is the barrier and invention is the limit.
That would have to be a huge coincidence considering the age of the universe, i.e. 13.8 billion years. Life on Earth started some 3.5 - 4.2 billion years ago. Even if we assume that similar thing happened on many other planets during around the same time you would still have to synchronize all the evolutionary events from abiogenesis through evolution of RNA/DNA (or alien analogues), simple cells, complex cells, evolution of multicellularity, etc. etc., all the way up to complex intelligent organisms.
Even if two such planets somehow happened to independently develop their own version of intelligent life the probability that it would be synchronized down to years/decades/centuries/millenia or even millions of years... is incredibly unlikely.
The universe isn’t particularly easy to live in. Think about in our short history of earth, how many mass extinction events have occurred. Had we been unlucky enough to have existed at those events, our civilization would have been extinguished. Also, I think we will discover that fewer than 1 in 100,000 planets are habitable. Not only is there a habitable zone around each star there is also a habitable zone around each galaxy the closer you get to the supermassive black hole in the center the less habitable it is thanks to radiation. In order for life to then develop on those habitable zone areas. Those planets must also have a molten core strong enough to produce a magnetic field to shield it from cosmic radiation produced by the stars around it as well as massive gas giant planets like Jupiter, that also produce radiation.
I'm a 2006 George Mason Alumni :) 😊😊😊 nice to see my old alma mater get some props :)
Really, the Fermi Paradox is a headache. Talking about life on other planets, while the first hurdle, life, could give you a bigger headache. Here, have some molecules and start creating life from the start. Not easy, isn't it? And then we need to use our brains. But we expect to create life by throwing the dice (endless times). To put it in words, Sherlock Holmes would have said: Is evolution impossible? Not really, but absolutely, highly implausible; that would be the right answer! That is because the universe works with rules, not chaos.
If we are alone ... so what! If we're not alone, but we're left alone ... so what! It makes absolutely no difference how we feel about it ... live with it!
Our reality is already in motion which means only certain patterns can emerge from this but all patterns are connected. That’s why humans can see those connections through the patterns like a kaleidoscope. An environment of things causes an evolution in others as well as itself. Reality is growing us and we grow it in a symphony of differences and similarities and we take those patterns observed through the tools such as eyes in order to bring order to the chaos and so the individual can understand reality in their own way so they can navigate and survive sharing their patterns and such to continue on in a ever changing reality.
Try science instead of philosophy.
@@richardcaves3601 try not commenting when you’re salty or can’t understand.
@@user-if1ly5sn5f ooohhh, can't answer with logic and reason, or with any scientific facts or evidence, so resorts to personal attacks. Very mature. Go back to school.
The practical paradox of the Universe as seen by me a lowly meat-popsicle is that the speed of light can be at the same time unimaginably fast (in how we interact with it) and yet so PAINFULLY slow (on the scale of even the galaxy much less the universe).
Its all about distance and the limitations of physics. We arent "alone" but we will likely always be "alone" unless we get lucky and have neighbors within 1000 light years. They are likely broadcasting at the speed of light just as we are, so maybe sometime (even perhaps in our lifetime) we may start picking up radio transmissions from a far off destination...depending on when they broadcast and distance.
Causality is the limit to everything. It prevents us from ever seeing the universe as a whole so we only get glimpses of what's out there. It is so far to anything else that causality prevents us from going anywhere. This goes for any one else out there. Once they discover causality for themselves they abandon exploring the universe physically. That doesn't limit imagination however and remote viewing is a thing we can not rely on to see things we only imagine.
" It is so far to anything else that causality prevents us from going anywhere. "
What? that's not true. For example Proxima Centuauri is only 4.3 light-years away. You're saying it violates causality somehow to go 20% the speed of light and get there in (roughly) 25 years?
I firmly believe that we are alone. The long and controveraial filtering process we have gone through to start becoming a highly intelligent species, the human specific filter we passed, the special environment Earth and our solar system provide us, all point to a very low probability of other highly intelligent species to exist.
There are a lot more context and details in my book, including a definition of highly intelligent species, the description of the unfinished process of becoming highly intelligent, which is a filter ahead of us, and much more as my work is about the human nature, a possible solution to the Fermi paradox is just a side result. We face the results of the filtering process constantly, most of the time being unaware of it. The title of my book is 'Our Inherently Controversial Human Nature - and How We Should Hack It'.
Humans a highly intelligent species? I haven't seen any evidence of that. So far we've been lucky. But luck only lasts for so long. There are many challenges we could face that we'd have no answers for. There's many issues now we haven't any adequate solutions to. Like the fact that we seem to be parasites that exist on fossil fuels.
If there are several civilizations in the universe in space and time (4D), then there are three options where we are alone (despite we could be not alone):
1. We are alone because we are the first civilization in the universe. (There must be a first one which could even be us.) Or we are the first in this galaxy which is practically the same. The point is: the second one is still "on the tree".
2. We are alone because although we are the >2. civilization in the Universe/galaxy, the previous one is already extinct, the next one is still "on the tree".
3. We are NOT alone but it looks like we are alone because even if there are several civilizations existing in the same time in this galaxy (let alone the entire Universe), they still are most likely 10 thousands lightyears away from each other so their observation is: 'we are alone'.
All three options lead to the same observation; the way how we see the galaxy: we are alone. The point is: the Fermi-paradox is not established enough because its explanation is not the only possible explanation because I could give 3 more, above.
It is simply not where we live in the universe and whether we are alone or not. In my humble opinion it's all about WHEN we live somewhere in the universe, and whether or not there is other life in the universe at this given point in time/spacetime!
Just as we created god to our own image, we want other life in the universe to our own image
Isn't it kind of amazing, how much more scared people are at the thought of being alone in the universe, than they are at finding other civilizations out there, just like us...
I'm more terrified there's more out there like us. I'd rather we were unique and hope we break free of our infancy realizing the fact that darwinian evolution is false, but we find a way to evolve socially and intellectually anyway.
Out of all those odds, you're here. What are the odds of that!!
I did not have time to watch the video, but I want to respond to the Fermi Paradox: It's a misnomer. There are so many possible explanations for why we haven't noticed life out there, there's no paradox involved. My personal favorite? Our galaxy could be host to a galaxy-spanning community of worlds that have achieved faster-than-light travel and communication. We don't have the technology necessary to detect anything moving or transmitting in this way, we'd never see or hear them. Why haven't they visited us? Maybe they haven't noticed us, maybe we're too primitive to be of interest, maybe there's a galactic law forbidding interaction with an underdeveloped world, maybe they *have*... Point is, the questions and possibilities are so open-ended that we can't call it.
Is there really any distinction between the idea of a Great Filter and just saying the chance of this step in the Drake Equation is really low?
Can you do a video on the Kardashev Scale of civilizations? There are some that tie it in with the great filter hypothesis.
My thoughts are there are two explanations.
1) Other intelligent civilizations have tried to contact us but they are using means that we don't know about (who says everyone will use radio waves, light or other things we have created).
2) Space is just far too large and no one has figured out a way to travel vast distances. Maybe we can't travel faster than light and worms holes although theoretically possible cannot be achieved.