Why Any Solution to the Drake Equation is Scary No Matter the Answer
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- čas přidán 4. 08. 2022
- How many alien civilizations are there? Using the Drake Equation, we can find out. Do you love equations? Visit brilliant.org/astrum to sample their courses for free, and the first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription.
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#drakeequation #astrum #aliens
astrobiology what is the drake equation drake equation carl sagan seti institute
I don't wanna seem to small minded, but you said repeatedly "solar system" instead of "galaxy "
Oh my goodness... I can't believe it -_- yes I meant galaxy. The amount of times I read the script and watched the video and I didn't notice...
🪁
Universe. Meaning.
Latin.
One song.
@@astrumspace 🪁
A simple faux pas🎩.
This simply proves that you have a belly button 🤗😉.
@@astrumspace so i am assuming in future videos you will do the equation for the known universe.
@Astrum, most of your scripts are just talking out you fart box anyhow... Give us some source links.
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
Why? Is nearly 8 billion of us not enough?
-Arthur C. Clarke - Michael Scott
How is being alone in the universe scary?
At Least There are no aliens that can destroy us
Or aliens watching us
And we can colonize the universe without worrying about aliens or war with aliens.
And being alone in the observable universe is nearly impossible life is too rare to detect but too common to be lonely.
you use words together what it creating paradoxes....two are always more than 2.... possibilities are also in to infinite..... and exist... this word it means what it says.... so i unfolding for you...what exist it always exist indifferent from what the others believe or think.... with other words no one have to prove their own existence...because they always exist indifferent from what the others believe or think.... what the two things are where you make confusions are knowing & believing..... because those are different things.... why.... because humans mind work with a believe system...and not with an sophisticated logic system.... other wise they all can become like robots... to do ,think and believe the same things.... and starting to take orders only from one god... what it never happened on eȁ̶̢̳̪̥͎̩̦̫͓͓̏͋͌̀̑̔̑̆̄͌̽̄̂̄͜ͅrth....🌏 📡🌏 👣🕘 💎👽☠☼☾☄ゞど・ㇺㇾㇽ₪𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖇𝖎𝖗𝖆₪なめㇺㇾㇽ✶☥✨🌛🌄⊀✶⋊🐺🐾♓☆🐜🐜🐫▲▴◭
@@maryann2628 I think it means that if we are the only intelligence in the universe and something happens to us there would be nobody left to appreciate the magnificence of it all.
What's wild about the Drake Equation, is that not only are most of the terms unknown, but we could make contact with an alien civilization and STILL not be able to determine many of the terms
But based on proximity, we can quickly simplify it to few or many in causal contact. If we remain out of contact for millenia, life is early or sparse. If we see aliens 10 ly away, we live in a dark forest.
@@BrandonAzzarella Or, in both cases, we just got lucky. Like how it's well within reasonability for someone to take out a D100 and hit a 1 on their very first roll. It's no big deal if you understand probability, but if this is your first time ever seeing a D100 and you assume it's the only one that exists and that this is the only single roll that will ever happen, and that 1 is somehow a more special number, you're gonna draw some VERY strange conclusions. That's why I don't really like theories that rely heavily on using limited data to reach narrow statistical conclusions. Limited data is fine for creating statistical *variables* , but it's bad for conclusions.
@Andrew Given sufficient computing power and sufficiently large sets of data on species and planets in our universe, it would just be a matter of statistics and calculation. Probability of life evolving? Simulate a trillion plausible star systems on a quantum computer programmed using natural laws. We just don't possess sufficient data points and computing power. Yet.
Many years ago, I was playing around with Excel and my own version of the Drake Equation. I was trying to predict if there was any possibility of other intelligent life within the Milky Way galaxy, and, if so, what was the median distance between each. To make a long story short, the median distance I came up with was approximately 3,500 light years.
This brought up a question to me about how the Drake Equation does not take into account how, even if there ARE or WERE previous civilizations throughout the galaxy, it is VERY likely that we might never meet. This is due to potential differences in the timelines of each of those successful civilizations.
I’m afraid that the Drake Equation needs an additional variable. Something like “Galactic Timeline Equivalence”.
P.S. The speed of light becomes the ULTIMATE limiting factor! If the nearest of my hypothesized civilizations could spy on Earth from their perch right now, they’d be seeing the Pyramids being built.
Thanks for shaking up my brain a bit!
indeed! But imagine youre seeing these pyramids and think, maybe these guys will be a threat at somepoint. And you decide to build a good spaceship and travel to near light speed to come in earth and attack. As you approach, you see time travelling faster in the future. And just before you reach some 140 light years away, you detect the first nuclear explosions on the planet, and then more, thousands more.....and you decode the TV feeds of that pyramid building species and you see ICBM;s launched with nukes, heck you detect the first nuke in space!
And you know your ship was equipped for fighting sticks and stones carrying humans, not some ICBM yielding and space capable civilization!
@@egooidios5061 Thanks for your great answer!
I was thinking the same thing. The video provides the example of 1,000 year civilizations producing a Drake number of 9. But if there are 9 civilizations that last 1,000 years in a galaxy 100,000 light years across, there's a good chance they'll be too far apart to ever talk to each other.
Speed of light is for mortals
@@logank444 Old science saying: "186,000 miles per second. It's not just a good idea, it's the LAW!" 🤭
(If you didn't know, its a takeoff from old highway safety public service announcements.)
"Once is never, twice is always." Until we see it a second time, we can't assume it has happened.
95% of all galaxies we can see in space are already beyond reach even if we can travel at the speed of light. All of those must be eliminated from the Drake equation.
After that, the speed of light and the vast distance between stars mean that we will never interact with life that isn't within a few thousand light years of us. That's pretty much just a tiny fraction of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is 100,000 light years across. If we ignore that the bulge at the center of the galaxy is far more dense than the galaxy where we are and treat the galaxy as a disk of uniform thickness 100,000 light years across and assume we'll accept anything within 5,000 light years (a 10,000 light year diameter disk), then life we may be able to detect and interact with would be limited to only 1% of Milky Way galaxy.
Estimates range form 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Let's go with 400 billion and assume a uniform distribution again. That leaves us with 4 billion stars at most. If we had 9 intelligent races in our galaxy, the odds say we have maybe a 10% chance ever even being able to detect or interact with any of them. Even the closest dwarf galaxy is too far away; Andromeda is well beyond range.
This changes if we can find a way to travel and communicate faster than the speed of light. Without that, the odds of there being any intelligent life that humans will ever interact with closely approximate zero.
If we manage to detect a second example of even primitive life that didn't originate on Earth, that also changes things. That would mean there's a whole lot of life out there inside our 1% of the Milky Way.
Lightspeed isn't the limiter you think it is. Those galaxies you claim to be out of reach are not in fact. At lightspeed we can reach any point in the universe almost instantaneously due to relative time dilation.
@@kirumondi8053 no
@@TheMisterDarknight yes
@@pragmaticperson7127 no!
Seems pretty silly to assume we’ll never communicate outside of a 10k light year bubble. Once we actually make it out of the solar system, we’ll be able to colonize the galaxy
I'm more interested in finding life, than intelligent life. Alien ecosystems would be the most amazing thing we've ever encountered ever, and for each intelligent civilization, there must be millions of planets with life. Civilizations on the other hand, seem very very unlikely, given how many billions of species have come before us that never made it to the moon and so on.
Spend more time in nature. It's eye candy in every direction.
@@PlayedbyInstinct and a whole other world of it would be the most beautiful and precious thing mankind ever found.
But, isnt it amazing how far we progressed from one of the species just like the rest, to being in the Moon and out fo the Solar System in just say 100.000 years? or if you take the discovery of fire as a starting point, its how much? 25000 years? Human evolution is staggering and an example we have not found yet in the planet. So many things we do not know yet, so many hints missing
@Ego Oidios What about humanity was "just like the rest [of the species]“? And what change occurred during our "staggering" evolution that has made us different from "the rest"? You say, "Human evolution is . . . an example we have not found yet on the planet." An example of what? Of human evolution? It's been found on the planet. You just used it as an example! But I'm sure you mean that it's an example of something other than human evolution; it's self-evident that it has been found, so maybe you're trying to say that human _intelligence_ has no equal. - Perhaps that's true, but it's just a unique characteristic of our species. Each species possesses its own set of unique traits, and our intelligence is merely one of ours. Perhaps it's impressive in the eyes of some humans, but It doesn't impress me. Most humans have no idea where Kansas is on a map or globe, let alone China, India, or even France or Denmark. Many other species have intelligence that rivals ours. Crows, dolphins, honeybees, chimpanzees and many others have been proven to possess complex communication abilities akin to language. Slime molds are able to design and fine-tune more efficient network topologies than humans could previously, even with the help of computer algorithms. There are endless examples of animal and vegetable communication and intelligence that easily, objectively rivals or even exceeds our own in some ways. And what of our own "intelligence?" In today's world, it only exists by virtue of a small percentage of the population being open-minded, and having had some training in critical thinking. Science & math aren't inherent in humans. Children will revert to a wild state if they aren't taught self-awareness and respect. Most people in the U.S., & I daresay on this planet, are dumb as posts. There's nothing special about humans compared to any other living being. They are simply unique. No more unique than any other living thing, though, obviously. Uniqueness is standard in nature, though. I know of precisely zero organisms which are exactly the same as each other. So the next time you go on about the "bloody Romans," DON'T FORGET YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!
@@krietor it's Interesting, the way you try to compare fungi patterns, with the way you try to extinguish the biggest percentage of humans as non intelligent droids or ants!
What you are describing is the fact that every single living organism exhibits intelligence one way or another. If it has a will, to eat to move or do anything, it has some sort of intelligence right? But by claiming this you throw the term intelligence to the garbage bin, very conveniently.
Maybe I should have used the term technology then. So, do you see any other examples of technology except for the human ones? On this planet or anywhere else?
It seems like no one has pointed this out, us being the only species that has reached all these qualities and from that trying to extrapolate so many variables unknown and impossible to estimate being that we know so little about our surroundings, makes this types of calculations just a rationalization of our imagination.
Not entirely true. By putting it in mathematical terms helps us see what combinations can't be true at once. Technological civilizations can't be common and long lived. So which is it?
Assuming we are typical and not exceptional, we have one of three likely futures. In one version we will be lonely but live for very long. In the second we may have neighbors making cave paintings right next door, but we will perish before they can say high to us. In the third we have some compromise of the two.
Please note that longevity becomes exponentially visible. Lets say we get another 10,000 years, we will most likely leave space junk around here AND nearby systems that will litter for millions if not billions of years.
Us being the only species that we know of at the present time.
@@cookieninja2154 Why would you assume we are typical and not exceptional? By the scale of time in the universe, if intelligent life was so commom, one of them would've left probes and other tech throughout the galaxy as it would take only a some hundred thousand years for it to colonize the whole galaxy.
I don't get why people look at earth and can't fathom that what happened here may have never happened elsewhere.
Exactly. Humanity is in a mud hole with their heads up their asses.
@@alvaromneto that’s possible, but speaking strictly probabilistically; we should assume we are typical observers. Specifically, it’s less probable to assume we are strictly unique observers since we know we exist it’s thus more probable to say that we are typical observers than unique observers
Before you move on to cover the Fermi paradox, I recommend reading the paper "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox" by Sandberg, Drexler, and Ord, which points out some often overlooked properties of the Drake Equation that make the Fermi paradox seem significantly more paradoxical than it really is. In short, if you model our uncertainty about the parameters of the Drake equation to produce a probability distribution of the number of communicative alien civilizations in the galaxy, you can see that even if the mean of the distribution is a large number, the probability that there are no civilizations in the galaxy (as predicted by the Drake equation) is still considerable.
The paper's abstract:
"The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high ex ante probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference. When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it. This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe."
You can find the paper on the arXiv, at arXiv:1806.02404 .
The first life also has a massive exponential advantage. In the moment a life form forms it instantly is able to use exponential growth. Considering this, anything that doesnt arise practially at the same time should be outdone or outright prevented by existing life within just a few years or decades.
I've got a feeling that one of the more plausible scenarios that humans meet aliens, is after we send out humans over even 5% of the galaxy, time passes, and we forget where we come from. Then, we find each other again, but by that time we look different enough to not realize we were the same.
We could likely detect that we have common ancestors with genetics
@@Astromath I'm talking millions of years down the line. Genetics could certainly get muddled
We‘re separated from other apes by millions of years, yet share 90% of the DNA. Science can show we are (distantly) related to bananas! It‘ll be hard to outgrow the dna evidence.
@@tankunext81 life has been evolving for hundreds of millions of years and we can still detect common ancestors that far back
@@tankunext81 proto humans existed then. Even after billions of years if it even has any DNA at all it's likely related to us, DNA is not specific to life. That may have actually happened already by ice asteroid collisions bringing it to places
I love exploring these weird gaps in our knowledge. It is both wondrous and intensely humbling to consider the things for which we have no answers.
I have a feeling we are quite alone. Perhaps we just need more time to observe and discover, perhaps we will find something, but I find it kind of spooky that we haven’t yet. Then again, space is absurdly Immense, so there’s a lot of room for surprises still. But all the same, it’s just a (pessimistic?) feeling I can never seem to shake.
I'm in the same boat, it's a deep existential thing for me and has been for a decade. Lately I've actually grown bitter at all the believer crowd turning this social phenomena into a new religion more than anything lol.
If for some absurd stroke of odds extra solar intelligence is or has been in our solar system I suspect it'd be a Zoo hypothesis scenario and they'd either consider us of low sapience, lacking sapience or have a population of mixed sapient and pre-sapient in terms of wisdom citizens. Could just be my massive ego. We still have uncontacted tribes today but I'm not sure this is a fair example but we're basically ultra advanced extraterrestrial beings capable of crossing the vast infinite oceans and we avoid this one planet called the "Sentinel Island" for prime directive reasons + viruses.
Just think about how the religious fundies would react to a superior non-Human (In my opinion likely non-Humanoid) intellect that could readily eclipse our intellect and reasoning capacity. We still have
We might not see aliens anytime soon in our lifetime's and possibly descendants. Due to once again, the huge space between...well...space. Distance is the universe's cruelest propriety. there IS life out there, we know that. If life emerged here, then it must've emerged somewhere else. It's painfully obvious and yet people ignore it. Thinking the Earth is the only PLANET IN THE ENTIRE VISIBLE universe to host life. These types of people infuriate me. Earth, while is our home and we must protect it, is nothing special to the grander scheme of things. Like has been said, if an alien took out a telescope or anything similar, look at our planet millions of light years away or even thousands of light years, they might see dinosaurs, or perhaps nothing, Human civilization didn't even begin. Just like those exoplanets we Humans have found. For all we know, we are just seeing their past, not their current form. They even might host life and we don't even know it.
Like always, You break down this subject in a simple understandable way. It is incredibly amazing to play around with the Drake equation. Thanks.
I personally think that life itself is going to be pretty common in general, at least on the microbial level.
We have found organisms living in complete isolation for hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of years underground or under the ice. If microbial life starts on a planet, it would be difficult to sterilize it completely afterwards.
Intelligence is probably far rarer, or far shorter lived then expected. And the silence in our neighborhood of the universe does bring me a sense of unease regrading the ability of technological species to overcome great filters 😖
All that tells us is that once live gets introduced into a planetary environment and survives, it tends to branch out and occupy every ecological niche available. It does _not_ tell us how common life is elsewhere in the universe.
I believe the same way you do. But I’d still think intelligent life is quite common as well. If you think of the time life exist on earth and how long our civilization is now, we are just barely a blip in a cosmic time scale. There have been intelligent race before us and there will be more after us as well.
I largely agree with this take. In the case of Astrum's three outcomes to the equation, I am thinking the most correct answer is probably "9" rather than "9 million" or "zero." I have a hard time believing that if there was a ton of intelligent alien life we wouldn't have been visited/found by now. I think intelligent life is probably pretty uncommon. On the other hand, I refuse to believe that we are unique in the universe. Somewhere out there, maybe in another galaxy, there is intelligent life. We just are unlikely to meet them.
The thing is for microbes to be common they need to be created commonly, we just don't know the odds of abiogenesis
One very big filter is likely to be the makeup of a planet that might foster life, and general solar system activity (Sun, debris, etc.), not to mention proximity to black holes like the one at the center of our galaxy. From what we can gather, a lot of solar systems have a lot of debris and a lot of solar activity. Big suns don't last long before going supernova, and small suns like the * dwarves spit out radiation plumes and generally tidally lock planets to them. At best an "eye planet" (stares at its sun) has a habitable ring at the twilight around the edges. The face cooks and the backside freezes - who knows what sort of weather than creates? Our sun is "just right".
It's also not too common for planets to have 24 hour days. Spin too fast, you get violent weather. Spin too slow, you get baked on one side and frozen on the other. 24 hours at this distance does a pretty good job of getting our temperature just right. If Earth was a bit larger, we could have a larger atmosphere and more asteroid impact resistance - but could we escape the atmosphere into space, to become observable? And would our continental plates lock together? There is a mass point where we'd no longer have plate tectonics to refresh the minerals on the surface, create mountains, etc.; without our iron core and molten mantle producing magnetic fields, we'd also be far more at the mercy of radiation from the sun, frying the surface. Scientists suspect that the earth should've become rocky/volcanic from impacts, perhaps more Venus-like, except that our big brothers Jupiter and Saturn sucked up a lot of debris and took punches for us, plus we were just far enough away to not set off a greenhouse gas catastrophe. If we look at planets in our solar system with no plate tectonics or refreshing of the surface, there's some doozies of impacts visible... (giant craters, even fault lines running across the entire planet, etc.) ...plus some real scorchers. Water is a great GHG, and we have enough of it to cause real problems if we ever average 40C.
What's the likely conclusion of all this? Life may be very common - the microbial in particular - and it may even evolve all over the place, on billions of worlds even today... slowly... too slowly to outpace the challenges above. That'd explain why we see no observable technological markers when we look at milky-way suns. And yet for all we know, it might be everywhere - Mars, Enceladus, Titan, and other worlds included. Wouldn't that be incredible if life evolved at least 5 times in our own solar system? And yet still we'd have that question hanging over us, of why we don't see any when we look to the stars.
Another key issue is the ability to see light. Dolphins might evolve enough intelligence one day, but their view of the stars is smothered. Imagine how many planets might be oceanic, or subterranean, or have permanent cloud cover.
There's also the willingness to extract and use combustible fuels to launch, which inherently began with war.
Humans might be the first and only to just discover space itself.
I mean, if they've become intelligent enough, they would explore their planet quite extensively
It's also possible that the development of mathematics is a very ethnocentric phenomenon, influenced by specific cultural and philosophical outlooks. Humans, as an entire species, did not invent mathematics; it originated in Mesopotamia and was further developed in Greece.
Outside of navigation (stars) and basic counting (trade), it is perhaps quite possible for a society to completely ignore mathematical development. Indigenous peoples of Australia apparently did it for 65000 years (although apparently they counted in base 5/quinary, so who actually knows!).
There is a lot we take for granted.
A branch of dolphins would more likely become more intelligent and physically capable of doing scientific things after evolving onto land. I think the animal most likely to evolve into the dominant intelligent species on earth is the bear. There are already different "races" of bears, white polar bear, brown bear, panda bear, Asiatic black bear, etc, all over the earth in very different environments. Humans are the same. Bears have interesting front paws that look like hands and they use them in intelligent ways, like for fishing. Bears can stand up on two legs, which would eventially evolve into bipedalism. They are by far the next best contender after humans either destroy ourselves, get destroyed or perhaps leave earth for a "better" planet.
@It’s OK but I agree. Dolphins would need to evolve into a land mammal again in order to become anything close to what humans are now. I don't thing an aquatic animal could ever develop technology like electricity, etc.
@@mygirldarby land or aquatic? Maybe you guys forgot about the skys.
Crows are passing through our equivalent of the stone age. They craft tools, communication between them is surprisingly effective, they can warn others about regions or persons to avoid or attack.
Although they didn't have a mammalian brain, I would bet on crows to evolve to the next "intelligence" species on the line.
The Drake Equation is a decent guesstimate but it misses several points. For example it only looks at the suitability of the host star but ignores the region entirely. The star in a star system doesn't need to be instable in order for everything to be wiped out by a gamma ray burst or just a simple super nova in the neighborhood. Not to mention extinction level asteroid.
all that has to do with the lifetime of the species, which is accounted for
A few things. Regarding the definition for life I wanted to add homeostasis as being another deciding factor, or at least some active way to maintain internal conditions of a body from the environment outside if there is no cell to be had in a lifeform.
Another thing is that a lifeform can be even more intelligent than humans and still be unable to make the necessary technological innovations to leave a planet. Lifespan and an ability to manipulate and alter objects enough to make tools and inventions with those tools. It's why octopuses aren't making buildings, because they have incredibly short lifespans despite having the ability to manipulate objects. Dolphins can't either because despite the long lifespan they can't manipulate objects to the point of manking tools and inventions with those tools. In fact I think if elephants had a 2nd trunk and forward facing eyes they would be the only creature other than humans who have a similar chance to make similar technological innovations as humans.
And finally I personally believe that roughly 30 intelligent species equal in current human technology will ever exist in our galaxy prior to the heat death of the universe. They won't ever exist at the same time and if they do one would be in its infancy while the other is in its death throes and unaware of what the other will eventually become. I wouldn't be surprised if we find remains of some incredibly ancient alien civilization on some distant planet eventually. Simple life I expect us to find eventually. But something like Star Wars or Babylon 5 that would be a hard no from me as fun as that would be. Maybe something like Dune where the various aliens are really just isolated humans who have become their own subspecies / species. But that's as far as I'm willing to go.
Aah, you mentioned B5. 👍❤️
Some interesting takes here - I’m inclined to agree with your estimations in the third paragraph, they seem reasonable. I am wondering though, how you settled on the number 30?
@@comeandgetthem8757 The short answer is very unscientifically lol. That number just feels right to me with the current information we have.
15:41 "We should learn to get along with each other because we are all the life we are ever going to see." - Astrum
Profound.
That is a cool quote!
Well, we are definitely getting there. For each social problem solved through communication rather than violence, we are breaking free from our genetic shackles. Don't even bother bringing the war with Ukraine or the failure of the Chinese government to disprove my statement. I view those events as mistakes from which we can learn from.
@@kindledashling3610 USA imperialism should be gone for communication rather than extremist force and commanding they done for 70 years to happen... But Russia at least are standing up and doing some crazy damage to the west regime (UK, Bulgaria, Italy regime already recently got overthrown but will probably replaced by the same)! But the crazy Trans movement, legalizing crime in USA and grooming isn't a right step in the direction! Paradigm shift in a system is more likely change then a diplomacy or politicians becoming less power hungry, fall of the western empire through bad decisions and stupidity (Biden Administration) and Russian, Chinese opposition.... interesting times ahead
Not just other humans, but all animals.
@@Nooraksi wtf are you talking about
I think that considering life evolved on Earth almost as soon as conditions were suitable, it shows that the evolution of life itself is probably not rare or even necessarily particularly difficult. Of course, we also still don't know exactly how life evolved in the first place, or all of the conditions in which life is possible, so that does introduce some uncertainty, but I think that number is quite high.
However, the fact that it took approximately 3 billion years after that for complex, multicellular life to evolve, and several hundred million more years for a species with the intelligence and desire to conquer the world and exploit our resources, says to me that intelligent life is probably extremely rare. Even multicellular life (or whatever equivalent of complex life there is elsewhere) is probably pretty rare.
I think it's probably likely that life is relatively common, complex life is uncommon but not necessarily rare, and intelligent/advanced life extremely rare. And the chances that two intelligent/advanced civilizations live close enough together in time and space to communicate is probably even rarer still. In otherwords, I think we're in for a pretty lonely existence. And I have my doubts that settling other systems is even possible in the first place. But that's just my two cents.
"However, the fact that it took approximately 3 billion years after that for complex, multicellular life to evolve, and several hundred million more years for a species with the intelligence and desire to conquer the world and exploit our resources ..."
I agree with the above statement of fact but come to the opposite conclusion. If, given 3 billion plus years, intelligent life evolved just by chance (i.e. mutation, natural selection), it says to me that intelligent life is probably a certainty (given a few billion years on an Earth-like planet).
@@robinswamidasan That's certainly another way of looking at it. While there's a lot we don't know about why humans became the way we are, I think some things you can infer about it is that it required a very specific set of conditions and a lot of chance, and arguably similar conditions have existed at other points in history. So I tend to think that was more of a fluke than an inevitable evolutionary path. But with only 1 case study to draw from, it's totally reasonable to come to the opposite conclusion!
To be all together is Not "a pretty lonely existence". Except for the egoistic.
Except that that only happened once - as far as we know. So it could be that the right conditions for life to evolve and survive only occur very rarely. You may not agree with that, but it's based in the same source data as your conclusions. The fact is, we simply don't know.
@@paulhaynes8045 You're definitely correct. But I would like to emphasize as far as we know. Because if life did evolve elsewhere on Earth, and was outcompeted quickly, there may be no evidence of it, or we may not recognize the evidence.
But again, it's based on the same evidence. Hence why I mention that there are significant uncertainties. It's mostly based on the fact that it evolved so early on, as soon as conditions were favorable, whereas "intelligent" life had to wait for very very specific conditions and circumstances. But the initial evolution of life on Earth could have been a fluke. No doubt about that. We don't know...and we may never know, unless we do discover life on another planet or moon.
thanks for continually putting in the work Alex.
I think the universe looks like this. Simple microbial life is common. Complex life is less common but still fairly common. Intelligent life is rare. Intelligent life that can make civilization is extremely rare. We have multiple intelligent life forms on this planet. Dolphins, whales, birds, even orcas have a language with different dialects, and they teach their young. But only one organism on this planet has the physical and mental ability to create civilization.
One of the few channels that talks about aliens in a reasonably way of explaining, simply amazing Alex, keep it up 🙏
I remember 1st hearing about the Drake Equation when I watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos in 1980. I dug out my copy of the companion book. In it he used N* in place of R*. 40+ years ago we had no evidence of planets besides those around our Sun. Yet he plyed around to determine that He came up with approximately 10 but said it could be as small as one or in the millions. I suspect that some decisions he made for the various numbers he chose were based more on the results he wanted. We have a long way to go before we can accurately fill in some of those numbers.
The Drake Equation is essentially a set of arbitrary numbers and is a perfect example of pick and choose pseudoscience. Of course, extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.
Sagan's TTAPS numbers proving Nuclear Winter was the same damned thing. This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate. The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all.
According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months.
The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. They carried on a publicity campaign so effective that "Nuclear Winter" is still widely believed based on pseudoscience.
Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, “I really don’t think these guys know what they’re talking about,” other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying “It’s an absolutely atrocious piece of science but who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?” And Victor Weisskopf said, “The science is terrible but-perhaps the psychology is good.” Sagan was a publicity whore and those words came from his ex-wife Lynn Margulis who has her own Wikipedia page for her contribution to evolutionary biology.
Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant. I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. Be honest and say Climate Change isn't going to be that bad and see what I mean. I live 3 feet below mean sea level and have since 1967, water has not come over the wall yet. Newport Beach, Balboa Island. Seems there is no sea level rise on the West Coast.
You know why Bangladesh gets flooded with even tropical storms now? Look at Google Earth and ask why there is farm land right down to the coast? They cut down thousands upon thousands of square km of mangrove forest for farmland, they screwed themselves. Same for New Orleans, they diverted water from the Atchafalaya swamp with all its wetlands building silt to keep freight open on the Mississippi River.
My thoughts it might just be rare enough that distance in time and space just means it's 0 like in the video sadly.
The SETI project is monitoring electromagnetic radiation like radio which we know doesn't really do much.
I would like the SETI project to expend their search to light sources.
EDIT: and I checked, they already do that.
Yes the Drake Equation needs to be refined.
Based on what we know of bodies with potential biochemistry like Titan, Mars, or Europa I think one of the base assumptions about life is flawed. Would life require an Earth-like evolution or could life exist in environments like ice shell moons? If so could those environments evolve intelligence? If the answer to both questions is yes we have a major problem.
Imagine a society which developed under an ice shell. Would it even have a concept of the Universe? Would it use basic communication or have an alien form? Communication isn't a requirement for environmental manipulation and social organization on Earth. Take ants as an example. So why do we assume other societies would be more like primates than ants?
Just with humans some cultures failed to conceptualize certain ideas they werent exposed to. As an example the Inuit have over 100 words for snow but in the Amazon most tribes have none. So if expression is this different on Earth among the same species imagine the magnification with completely different environments, senses, and evolutionary factors.
I think we need to add another Drake Equation value for life which evolved analagous communication to ourselves. Whether that's writing, speaking, bio luminescence, smell, taste, or what have you, advanced societies could evolve without it.
@@Jakethegoodman I wonder if the equation was meant to mean: those we can maybe communicate with. Because their are lots of life forms on earth we can't really communicate with who are very intelligent: dolphins and elephants for example. If you think about it: maybe we need to solve those problems first.
@@autohmae I think we have a very naive understanding of intelligence born from our vanity.
Even the animals you mention like elephants and dolphins are mammals and share 80% of our DNA. But yet even with far more unrelated organisms there's some sort of social interaction happening.
Think about Mycelleum. Fungus is about as alien as you can get on Earth and somehow these organisms send signals for where and where not to feed and repoduce. Is this because the fungus is sending signals the same way our brains do and making strategic decisons about the environment, or is it because it uses instinct inherent in its' RNA? In other words is it using a form of communicatiom we can't understand or explain.
And ya the Drake Equation is answering how many civilizations could exist and potentially communicate. Personally though I think there's a considerably higher number of intelligence without communication of any kind and that alone would invalidate the solution if you had the correct data inputs. So if theres 100 sentient species but only 1 developed non-instinctive communication the answer would still be 1 lol.
I remember this topic came up in a college class years ago and our professor had the most unromantic speculation that, billions of years ago, a race of alien surveyors stopped on a young Earth and emptied its septic tanks before blasting off again - kicking off all Life on Earth.
Edit: as in originating all Life on Earth, sorry for the slang
Yeah, that's a very possible option for the origin of life that falls under the Panspermia umbrella of options. The big three groupings are tidal pools, volcanic vents and then of course panspermia. Hitch-hiking bacteria on a cometary body slamming into the early Earth is a common interpretation of Panspermia, but the septic tank one remains not only valid but fun to consider. It's also humbling. And a damn good reminder that we need to be careful about where WE empty OUR septic tanks, else we might accidentally play god.
@@Lusa_Iceheart why *not* just dump bacteria over as many places as we can?
@@nonameno8065 The same reason it was a bad idea to bring pretty parrots to Hawaii. The snake population exploded from eating all the parrots then we had to import mongooses to kill the snakes. Now Hawaii has too many mongooses and certain snakes are endangered. On the off chance a planet has native biology, even just some simply single cell microbes, throwing our own complex and highly developed stuff on the planet would obliterate the young ecology. We might have already done this too. We've long had suspicions that Mars might have some micro-organism somewhere on the surface. Obviously, we would LOVE to study them. Imagine if one of our early landers or rovers wasn't fully decontaminated, and some Earth bacteria hitched a ride to the Red Planet, survived the trip and did well over there. Now, a few decades later we do indeed find life on Mars, but it's the decedents of that hitchhiker and it's now supplanted the native Martian microbial ecology. There is already a non-zero possibility that we've accidentally destroyed the first alien life we've encountered. It's a slim chance, but it's non-zero. And it goes up when you count all the meteor exchanges Earth and Mars have had with each other. Now, why in the HELL should we even risk doing that with intentional dumping of bacteria on what we presume to be dead rocks? We've spent two centuries staring at our nearest neighbor and still aren't sure if it has life we might accidentally wipe out, we simply can't risk being careless with planets we'll be spending far less time studying. If microbial life is common in the universe, then perhaps we can be a bit more reckless in the far future, but as of right now we only have one example of life arising and only one star system it arising in, and must assume it is beyond valuable. We can't take any risks in killing the first biosphere we come across.
@@Lusa_Iceheart short term, i get what you're saying. long term, if we're truly alone, isn't it life's bet to infect everything we can possibly infect with any life we can bring?
@@nonameno8065 Sure, long term once we're more confident on the variables in the Drake Equation. I'd say it wouldn't be even close to enough data to call it sufficient until we've gone over 100 star systems with a fine tooth comb looking for microbes, so we're talking a millennia or more in the future. After that point, we should indeed be inhabiting every single rock we can, any ball of ice big enough to stick a rotating cylinder habitat powered off of fusion in, terraform or dismantle every rock big enough to hold an atmosphere, inhabit anywhere we can by any means we can. Hell, we should even consider dismantling Mercury for material to build a Dyson swarm so quadrillions of humans could live around the Sun, along with a trillion nature preserve habitats the size of continents. One we've spread out far and wide enough, we'll diverge too and become the alien life we never found.
Personally I am a fan of the Great Filter hypothesis/answer to the Drake Equation. Which is that there is some filter that either prevents most civilizations from ever occurring or destroys them before they can make contact. And personally, I believe that filter is civilization itself. While intelligence *in general* has evolved independently many times on Earth, intelligence capable of building a civilization has only arisen once in nearly four billion years.
This is a very interesting discussion. Very engaging. I like the different possibilities and where it would be good to look to for more specific answers. Thank you for making this!
I love your videos. They're so educational, the graphics (and real photos) are awesome and the way you explain things is easy to understand. Thanks for all you do, Alex!
The best thing for CZcams creators who's working in science, especially in universe is not protected by the creators, everyone can use them and YT will not take monetization from the creators, just credit the creators and that's it. Most of the creators have huge problems with the YT and their monetization is claimed by the someone else if they use anything that's not their own, except for the free publications like science publications, all of them are for free.
Only if they use music that's not free can mess up their work.
I have knowledge to create a few minutes music clips, all kind of different music I'm just not sure how to sell that
Assuming an event occurred without evidence is not educational. It is an example of unscientific reasoning.
@@radrook2153 do you know that Novak Djokovic's wife said that she was watching a single profesor from Japan, did scientific research how emotions can change molecular structure of water, simply with his emotions! And she declared its based on the scientific evidence and research.
I have responded, I was irritated because of numerous reasons. Firstly she's influential person and she needs to be careful what she's publishing because she can influence on so many different life's directly. Then I explained what means to be scientifically proven, how needs to be published in the scientific circles and he must explain to the details how exactly he (but its usually the whole team, not a single profesor) got those results and some other team needs to be able to get the same result using the same technique that he was using and then they need to replicate the results in order to be scientifically proven and if single professor crates YT video it doesn't mean that's scientifically proven and she needs to stop doing that online because people who have huge followers, social responsibility is very important.
Alex you rock! And I love the 4k uploads 😁
The question is not only "where are they all" but "when were they". Nothing suggests that all life sprung up at the same time in divergent places. So, while there might be 9, the question becomes when was the nadir of those 9 (of which, obviously, we would be one).
Alex, Love your content and all the hard work you've composed into masterpieces. Out of all the space content across the internet, yours is the tippy top of the mountain best. Your narration on the videos is warm and buttery that suits the atmosphere (no pun intended). You would be surprised how many times I've dosed off learning about the stars or casually revisiting one of your documentaries to curiously relearn or rediscover something I might have forgotten. Your work is appreciated and loved by many. Keep up the good work and cant wait to see what more you have in store! Please keep them coming!!!! :D
Well i clicked this video immediately..
I absolutely love this channel..
U narrate these videos so eloquently.👏👏💞💞.i love astronomy n science..
I like the idea that there are other life forms, but predatory evolution of them has ended up making them hyper stealthy and hyper lethal. Our signals just haven't made it far enough, or their quasar death ray hasn't made it here yet to zap us out of competition.
Yes evolution would have massive impact on the psychology of extrasolar intelligent species. I suspect it wouldn't typically be their primary driver as most of us can control these more primitive macro instincts as we understand them through our sapience giving us the ability to override billions of years of programming and pick up a snake or jump out of an airplane.
Extraterrestrial peoples likely would have significantly different psychology and it could be my jaded view of Humans but I think most of Humanity, especially the religious by and large wouldn't be able to comprehend this or accept it as they don't even accept evolution often.
Many people think predators would be more likely to evolve intelligence. Humans are predators, persistence hunters that scared prey to death or chased them for hours until they tired out and died. This form of predation very well could make Humanity unique as I don't believe it's yet to be observed as an evolutionary convergence. Humans could be the Slenderman looking nightmare fuel lol.
An herbivore species could be disgusted by consuming meat but through wisdom understand the evolution behind it. Think about how different a species that doesn't reproduce sexually might form a strange culture. I think one of the deepest conversations that could be had would be 2 beings evolved on alien worlds discuss these differences in civility and detail with compassion. Though this is merely day dreaming, obviously they wanna probe us and lure us to satan, gonna go dig holes for a living peace stranger.
Somewhere there is a distant civilization with similar questions but saying "Obviously we have to rule out Planets with Water, as we all know it is toxic to all life forms".
I had to searchengine out what was that R* = 5 thing about, and from a quick glance, it seems that there exists at least two different versions of this; The Drake equation, and The Statistical Drake equation. The former, which this nice video was about, uses indeed R* as a mean rate of star formation, which is rather off-topic imo. The number I personally find much more interesting results from The Statistical Drake Equation, in the form of Ns = the estimated number of stars in our galaxy. That's considerably larger number than five.. :P
*Astrum be like:* and with the new information inputted to our equation, the answer is!!!!! ZERO.
That's correct!, If you use the rate of formation of Stars, the number N will give us the number of formation of new civilisations, not the number of civilisations.
It is simple math, every number is undimensional except R*, R* is quantity over yerar, or simply quantity. The result of the equation will be in quantity per year or quantity depending of the version of R* you are using.
@@ciudadanubis Exactly. It's not a mistake, it's making units work. You can solve for the total number of civilizations that would possibly exist, ever, or, more pressingly, you can calculate the number of civilizations that may be around today. That 1st bit depends on the total number of stars, ever, the 2nd depends on star formation rate, so the number of new civilizations that could form in any given time interval, and with the total estimated duration of a civilization (T), you have the total number of civilizations alive, right now.
Its also Star formations per year.... well a year is 365 days and a rather arbitrary variable when you consider that very few other planets have a 365 day year. So the results you would get is the number of new intelligent civilizations that come about PER YEAR.
It would not count the existing ones... nor the ones that did once exist but are now extinct, nor the future civilizations that will form from a bank of stars in the hundreds of billions, and all knocking bout in the galaxy since it first became a barred spiral galaxy.
The drake equation to my mind is a pretty poor attempt when you consider Drake was a physicist.
@@mickelodiansurname9578 no, because in the end its multiplied with the average lifetime of a civilization in the same unit (year) - so it does not matter its an arbitrary unit, it cancels out. It gives the number of civilizations that can be assumed to exist at the same time (not counting the ones that may have existed in the past and could exist in the future).
I love this channel :)
So much fun talking about the great beyond and the visuals are gorgeous!
Best physical example I have seen to demonstrate how easy it is for the results of the Drake Equation to change dramatically by simple adjustments for various possible realities was using a Christmas Tree and their lights (which I have never been able to find again since I saw it the couple of times on PBS or something). If each light represents a civilization and when they are off they are not actively looking for aliens or broadcasting, and when they are on that is when they are looking or at least broadcasting something that can be picked up at our level of technology, only have lights that made contact remain on longer then the average active searching stage of the aliens. The amount of lights on the tree that remain solid almost the whole time goes up dramatically the more the variable for active search/broadcasting increases in length. If broadcast/search variables are low almost none of the species make contact and the tree looks like every light is just blinking out of sync with the occasional small group that stays on for a little while, but if it's high then all the lights come on one by one and almost all of them stay on for as long as the species survival variable allows which is also a really weighty factor in the making contact.
I read the Drake Equation years ago, and was thoroughly impressed.
Some other problems not taken into account in this equation. For instance, we know that most stars in our galaxy are multiples. Binary or trinary systems. It seems unlikely for a planet with the same conditions as the early earth to develop in such systems. Also, many of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way exist in globular clusters, which likely have radiation levels too high for life to arise. Additionally, another large fraction of the stars in the milky way exist in the core of our galaxy, where we actually know the radiation levels are extremely high, and probably would preclude the arise of life as we know it. We on the Earth exist in the "local bubble" of low interstellar matter, which has been a protective factor for our planet developing life. Realistically, the probability of life in any given galaxy is _insanely_ low.
Well, the major point is that all you said is valid, but also just speculation.
We're only just beginning to be ablse to test the hypothesis about planets and their conditions around different kinds of star systems.
As the two Voyager probes just recently made us realize, we don't fully understand how the interactions of the interstellar medium and the radiation bubble of a star interact, and thus we can not yet make reliable calls on how radiation levels will be around other stars depending on their location.
Least to say, we've no idea is life is not also possible at conditions rather different from ours.
The point beein, for most of the factors in the equation your guess is as good as mine, and neither of us has data that backs their guess up.. we've just - mostly well argued - hypothesis of how we interpret what little we know with cenrtainty and what we think can be derived from that for all the stuff we don't know (yet, hopefully ;) ).
Very far binaries and very close ones could have planetary systems without too much disruption
The thing I don't like about the Drake Equation is that it's not so much an equation as much as it is a definition.
Say there’s one instance of intelligent life per galaxy: that’s still a massive number in the scheme of the universe. I think the problem then becomes the vastness of space and if one these races have reached a level of intelligence that would allow them to communicate outside of their galaxy. All in all the universe is just mind boggling.
we have no data at all about radiation levels on other planets, furthermore it's bogus to assume that it will stop life from developing, Chernobyl is doing just fine. There are organisms on earth that withstand 5000 grays, whereas 5 grays is life-threatening for humans, 5 grays is 5000 millisieverts and your average exposure is about 2.5 mSv per year, so you're talking about places that are *million* times more radioactive than earth.
Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always say
Interesting video, thanks.
I think the way octopi communicate is way more intelligent then opening a jar or solve puzzles. Other animals also communicate in ways we don`t understand but know they do communicate as we can see the results of it.
Distances in space, and in time, then the speed of EM radiation... they are so large, with so little chance of overlap, that it's just very unlikely we'll ever encounter any life which ever existed elsewhere - unless traces can be found in the Sol system.
I'd love for us to be able to go beyond our system, but taking a realistic view it seems very unlikely, unless our understanding of reality is very wrong.
I still think we will get a close up glimpse at proxima centauri in our lives. I don't think it to be impossible at all. So long as we get some whacky project rolling soon.
Even if we could get something going 10% the spend of light, get even something as "simple" as new horizons going that fast, it would be utterly incredible what we could learn. I don't think 10 to 20% the speed of light is impossible for us to do with even today tech.
We are smart monkey, we could certainly find a way.
Humanity could eventually colonize other star systems it would just take a long, long time
Well put
@@waspsandwich6548 But it would take so long that the people who make it would barely be the same people that left. Most places would take a long enough time for genes to mutate and for the species to change. Also who knows if you could even keep several generations a live in space.
Anyways it is very hard to say we would ever be possible to colonize other star systems.
According to NASA the nearest star would.take 73,000 years to get there if travelling at the speed of Voyager.
So 3000 generations will spend their life in space without consent.
We only looked at planets. But Moons could also harbour life, fueled by not a star, but by gravitational interaction with a massive planet.
Point is, there are alternatives to life around a sun, and it'd be even harder to detect. Some massive orphaned Jupiter with a few moons being squished and pulled apart enough to heat them up.
A moon being molested to the point it's generating enough warmth to fight off the deadly cold of space doesn't sound like a stable place for life. Plus as you said it would be even harder to detect.
Literally galilean moons tho.
@@UnnamedThe Yep NASA is sending their Europa Clipper mission there in 2024 to see if the most likely of the moons could support life.
Doesn't mean it does support life and it still remains a not very hospitable place considering the massive amount of radiation, a surface temp of around -160c and a tenuous atmosphere.
@@DistinctiveBlend it has possibility to support life but it's too young to develop a complex life, maybe microbial though
@@Nooraksi It's 4.5 billion years old (google) so it's had enough time based on our own planet... but nobody actually knows if it's a place life could develop hence the clipper mission.
Alex’s voice lowers my blood pressure. Soothing like snuggling with a blanket fresh out of the dryer.
I'd wondered before about the fact that life appears to have appeared only once. As said here, it does seem to suggest a much lower likelihood than many who expect alien life to be out there like to imagine. I mean, we've had FORMS of life develop over and over, like how we've had several different groups independently developing wings, each different enough to clearly be developed separately but still similar, but everything still appears to have come from the exact same starting point, which would suggest an extremely low likelihood and extremely narrow circumstances under which it can happen. Frankly, I even find the "maybe it did happen more but more advanced species eliminated the newcomers" argument to be dubious. After all, we've seen clearly that there are huge advantages to a simpler form and nature. I find it a stretch to suggest that any and all of these new organisms were simply unable to compete.
Also, even if you go with optimism and include octopi, apes, dolphins and other animals with fairly high intelligence, I'm pretty sure out of all life 0.0001% would be an insane exaggeration. Compared to all species out there, I'm pretty sure we're talking about a much smaller fraction. Of course, there's also the fact that with just one example that's achieved the communication requirements, increasing the probability of intelligence would likely decrease the likelihood of measurable communication and vice versa.
Instead of just requiring a planet, it could in fact be any sizeable body such as a moon.
Also, there's not necessarily a need to be near a star or in the goldilocks zone if the moon/planet/body generates it's own heat.
I assume these two factors might significantly increase the liklihood of life and consequently intelligent life.
Yes, a moon.... I love to imagine a civilization rising on the far side of a tidally locked moon, whose scientists are in a hot debate about the size of their home celestial body, once they have reached a technological level equivalent to europe´s renaissance. Triangulation with other bodies in the sky give a rather big radius, but that would mean, that its density must be irrationally low, giving its gravity. And then, they send a ship to circumnavigate it - and after a while, this huge thing rises in the sky and they realize they are looking at their parent planet (which they didnt even know existed) for the first time.
I´d love a mini series about this, in which the lack of a moon in the sky and the long duration of each "day" (which is also a "month") are being treated as normal and subtly never explicitly mentioned (also, the aliens look exactly like humans and dress like 15th century italians, say), but can be picked up on by the audience, before the big reveal of the planet rising in the sky. Like in preparation for the expedition, great value is being laid on starting early in the morning, as sailing in the night is something this civilization has very little experience with, as days are usually long enough to reach any city of theirs in one. The audience might wonder, how in one episode it´s daytime in each scene and the next is all night, and a whole lot happens in any one of these, but there is no explaination given, so the audience might shrug it off, not notice or regard it as a fluke, even. They decide to sail one night and by the evening of the next day, half of the prep-work is done. Observant people in the audience might be like : Wow that was quick.... when in fact it took an entire earth month. Ideally geeks in the audience would be pointing out this stuff, complaining about bad writing and plot holes and such... and then be like "oohhh, now it all makes sense" after the reveal.
EDIT: Another hint to the audience might be the amplitude of the tides in the harbor the ship(s) are being prepared for the voyage. Without it being mentioned by anyone, the water level should subtly but substantially vary as time passes. You know, like in "the 6th sense" there should be plenty of clues of what is really going on, with hardly anyone figuring it out before the reveal.
And this could start an entrie "universe", with the obvious continuation being about that civilization trying to land on its parent planet a couple of centuries later in a parallel to the race to the moon on earth.
The size is because there can't be life in asteroid or comet dust or in small asteroids and there can't be life in stars.
It is impossible to make any statement about the frequency of life and thus also civilizations without knowing how probable abiogenesis is. If the probability of abiogenesis is equal or smaller than the number of planets in the universe - which may well be - it may be that life exists only once. No knowledge about the abiogenese, no predicitons. No matter what formulas we use. So you cannot just say "oh it could be a million to one if we're pessimistic" (10:49) when it could be a centillion to one. We just don't know. So no assumptions are possible. Guessing doesn't become less guessing just because you use a formula whose variables you roll the dice on, even if you have a gut feeling that the number you roll is optimistic or pessimistic.
You MUST kill to live.
I highly doubt that this would be different in the history of another advanced civilization.
Not that I agree in the first place, because I think we are alone.
The odds seem to be extremely high with how quickly it happened on Earth, so there you go. What's more likely, you are a common occurrence or a one in centillion chance occurrence? You aint special, kiddo and you just defeated your own argument.
@@filonin2 Please explain to me why something is extremely likely that is only known to have happened once. If it is so probable, why have thousands of researchers not been able to observe or recreate abiogenesis in the laboratory or in field research for at least 150 years of research? And if you now say that abiogenesis just needs a lot of time, then please tell me what distinguishes this statement from guessing, believing and not knowing. A thinking mistake of you is also about my statement that we cannot calculate with unknown variables to draw conclusions about whether I have a need that we are something special - or is this only an attempt to discredit me to support your own assumptions about life frequency?
Roll a dice 3 billion times and you will end up with an average. And it WON'T be zero
Thanks mk for stating the truth so I don't have to. The drake equation is completely useless if even one variable is unknown. And to know some variables, ironically we first have to detect other species. Which makes the use of the equation pointless in the first place.
Sadly, users like filonin2 and many others willingly ignore basic statistical and other mathematical principles and that's always a pain to argue with.
When he says let's keep an open mind, he means always keep your mind hermetically sealed so the concept of intelligent design is never considered a possibility.
Ironic
nice video. cool equation.
Around 9:00 - 10:00 you say a few times "number of planets in the solar system" when I am pretty sure you meant "number of planets in the galaxy"
Yes I did. Oh dear...
N(e) is the number of suitable planets, not a fraction. Multiply the 0.003 by the one billion you mentioned and add the result to the equation. Then you’ll have the number of suitable planets in our galaxy.
Beautifully done, thanks! I personally think we just lack sufficient data to make a quantitative estimate here, and your range of answers depending on equally plausible parameter values demonstrates that. We just don't know. This is my greatest hope for my lifetime, that there will be strong evidence of life on an exoplanet.
"According to the Drake equation, the sky could be completely silent, or absolutely teaming with alien life." > that is about the same as stating the equation is practically completely useless due to the unknown premises.
YES!! ... I totally agree that life may exist without the requirements for water (or carbon) that we observe here on Earth. Most people assume without question, that these conditions are prerequisites for life, including temperatures (therefore, only planets in the "Goldilocks Zone"). I've long held the belief that life may well exist outside these basic conditions observed on our home planet, and consider it arrogant and narrow minded to make the assumption that all potential life must be similar to Terran life as we know it.
I like to believe that there are millions of aliens out there, mostly because that's a whole lot of space for just us. Second I think that there may be a certain tech level requirement before contact is made, like we need to be able to move out of our star system. So maybe once we figure out interstellar travel we will be invited to the galactic party so to speak.
Yeah I'm thinking along these lines. I suspect the technosignatures we look for are fairly "barbaric" and we don't find signs because we aren't at a tech level to know what to look for.
There's also the fact that Astrum totally botched the equation. He started from "5 stars" as if that's the total, but it's 5 stars *per year* which over the life of the galaxy would add up to billions of stars total. If the rest of his numbers are right, that would actually be millions of civilizations.
Doesn't seem likely there's any sort of galactic party. It would need FTL communication at least for that level of coordination, and probably FTL travel - but either one would result in time travel and break causality. The dark forest theory is much more realistic.
I believe we have already diplomatic relations, bases on Earth and regular visitations perhaps coming from the Earth or Solar system. The alien progenitors better not decide we’re killing the Earth we will be in big trouble 😅
Yep that is the good scenario....that an established galactic community exists already and we live in a sort of protected species planet/system where nobody can trespass.
But given our society knowledge so far, no established community no matter how good it is, can really prevent outlaws, and crime. Some alien smugglers would try to reach earth to use their better technology and steal or exchange stuff. Some others could just broadcast things for fun, to see how the little ants of this rock would react.
An advanced society that has totally eradicated crime and abnormal behavior.....would most likely have some extreme control over its members. A control we may not really want
The Fermi paradox is extremely interesting to read and internalize. The Great filter, the Zoo hypothesis, and so many other possibilities could explain the techno-silence we have experienced so far, there's also the possibility that these Aliens could be using quantum science based tech as a mean of communication that we obviously don't have nor detect.
But I'm a firm believer that other intelligent life must of lived or are living somewhere out there and that it's just a matter of time that we will detect it or them.
Putting my bucks on the JWST detecting atmospheric technosignatures before receiving a radio signal though.
Would have loved to see you weave in people like Fermi and Nick Bostrom who have such interesting contributions to this topic. Amazing video as always, though!
Sincerely, Thank You For This Channel !!!
Everything is so perfectly presented.
(I'm a retired biochemistry researcher)
Always great content, I love this subject and so stoked that the JWST is finally up and running.
We’ll be able to see signs of life soon, maybe even signs of intelligent life.
Don't hold your breath.
@@paulhaynes8045
Your pessimistic derision won’t change my hopefulness.
Maybe signs of life, but I extremely doubt intelligent life
There might be some clues that there might be favorable conditions in certain star systems for life to exist, but I don't think JWST is capable of confirming that "yes, that's life right there". Though if that did happen then - wow, a new era for humans would start.
@@Teoras
When a planet transits in front of a star they can deconstruct the spectral makeup of the star and remove it from the data and what is left is the chemical makeup of the atmosphere of the transiting planet. The JWST will be able to read what’s in that atmosphere, like oxygen, methane and other chemicals that may point to life.
That’s why the JWST is so amazing.
One of my favorite theories is that we are one of, if not, the very first species to reach this point. After all, our universe is relatively young, given our current understanding. If so, would it be right of us to attempt to create new life? To leave behind simple bacteria on planets as we pass by, for the slight chance that they will grow into a civilization like our own one day? Is it possible we arose the same way? By an advanced civilization finding a safe planet that is protected greatly by it's own neighbors in such a way that life could flourish? Maybe we'll never encounter more life, because in all the time we have, a new species will never arise on it's own, and in the same way we were created, we will go on to hopefully explore the stars to find the next perfect world in the perfect conditions to continue the unspoken and unknown legacy of life in the cosmos.
It's fun to think about all the possibilities, however unlikely any single one might be, almost none can be truly denied or confirmed. It's a great way to spend an hour or so, if nothing else.
Civilizations are likely impossible prior to our system's generational number, since low metalicity systems wouldn't support stellar civilization, and likely don't have the stellar activity stability (sun spots, flares etc) required to protect life for the long evolutionary period.
This means there are likely systems that we can see the origins of, but we can't see the current civilizations on, and we won't be able to see them for billions of years.
In our currently observable bubble, we are the only civ, but it's unlikely that if we could see the entire observable universe in high resolution with no time lag, that we would be looking at such an uninteresting, barren universe, but unless we get FTL, we'll never be able to see the majority of our potential peer civilizations.
We could do as you say, try to seed worlds, and I don't think there is anything wrong with this, especially on barren planets, but I don't think a good host planet/system candidate would be barren. If we find a super stable dwarf star, with a big planet outside it's orbit protecting it from collisions, with a magneto sphere, and water, and a good balance of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and things like the super important phosphorous (at least for our life chemistry) ... what are the chances that it doesn't already have life? We could try to manipulate the indigenous life to accelerate it into eukaryotic stages, or muticellular something, but I doubt you'll find it free of bacteria and slimes, or at least something extremely primitive and reproducing. That seems to be automatic given the right circumstances.
@@markallen6433 +1 like for mentioning Myxomycetes! 😄
Our solar system was created when the universe was about 10 billion years old. To conclude that nothing came before us seems irrational.
@@laurendoe168 I don't think anyone is going to make credible sounding claims that nothing came before us, but I see nothing strange with claiming that nothing which came before us was successful enough to leave a stellar or galactic scale mark upon the universe which we can already see.
There are very few things that we see recent emissions from, so while I am sure there are many peer civilizations currently doing things similar to us (very hard to see down the line from far away) and we are looking at the matter from which those civilizations have likely already sprung, or will soon, they aren't yet visible to us, and the vast majority of them never will be.
@@markallen6433 Those things which came before us are no longer visible and never will be.
If we're here, others are here as well. Life can be anywhere and I think lava rock crestations are a great example of that. I think the problem is people are looking for humans that happen to broadcast the exact same radio frequency which makes things near impossible. It's like trying to connect to WiFi with a pocket radio.
We've got to invest resources heavily in space,science and technology so that when the time comes to meet another civilization we are prepared for their level of knowledge or else they could take advantage of us.
We can't even find even the faintest whiff of even a microbe in space, yet people are convinced that there's intelligent life. We may very well be the first, which is both an exciting & slightly terrifying prospect.
You are quite right on this perspective, life seem so complex and rare to be widespread in the universe.
Why is it terrifying?
You are here, take joy in that.
The alternative, you not existing is still not terrifying. You can't miss what has never existed.
Seize the day....
@@leveljoe Why is it terrifying? Because humans are tribal animals, and dislike (in general) being alone.
@@leveljoe Terrifying in terms of potential & implications, not necessarily in a sense of something "lost".
…or the last
That does terrify me, not personally but overall, what if this is closer to end than we can realize.
Easily one of your best videos Astrum! You keep out doing yourself every single time. Incredible
Worst Astrium ever
Just seeing extremophiles, viruses, molds, algae, plants, fungi, lichen, bacteria grow on our planet. Gives me this feeling in my Heart that there is Life all over the universe. If given the chance, relative to it's environment and I feel we will be mindblown by what types of environments are capable of supporting Life.
AT 12:20: Any signals that we send out into space don't go far due to signal degradation (they fade out.) The Voyager probes are just beyond our solar system and we can barely communicate with them for this reason.
Another great work from Alex. I do take issue with Drake's equation though. I think it chases ghosts. Variables vary too much. If you compare the uniqueness of planets or planetary systems to individual humans, excluding the lack of variable in meeting the requirements of a habitable zone. The assumptions within the equation somewhat ignore this.
It is more of a thought experiment or "divide and conquer" approach than a real "equation" that gives you a satisfying answer. Even the assumptions it contains are questionable (like the implicit need for life to arise on a planet, not e.g. asteroids, a solar system or a sun itself). But it definitely is a conversation starter in that regard, and it helps focus on aspects that we actually are or might get able to determine, so to me, it is not useless.
@@DagarCoH One could argue that the overarching assumption of the equation is that this alien life has to be similar enough to humanity for us to be able to communicate with it
@@javierlatorre480 I'd like to hear the arguments for that. Most of our communication happens specific to our physics, not specific to our chemistry or biology. We can communicate using the electromagnetic spectrum, pressure waves within material or by filtering matter. These should be options accessible to other technological matter based civilizations as well.
Great video! It's fantastic to wonder about the Drake Equation
I like to think about how time interferes in the results. For exemple, I believe the number of suitable planets is growing over time because all the time, new supernovas are occurring and generating more oxigen and carbon, making new planets richer in complex elements.
Also, it is important to take account that our planet took almost 5 billion years to reach intelligent life, and that is around 1/3 of the total time since the Big Bang!
not only is there something out there but EVERYTHING is out there..microbes, wildlife identical to earth, exotic wildlife we can’t imagine ,intelligent beings identical to humans, intelligent exotic beings. Apart from the likely infinite size of our present day universe , the universe is also 14 billion years old and humans have existed the equivalent of an eye blink …there are prob countless civilizations/beings that have lived and went extinct already before earth even existed across the vast universe as well as in its vast history in time.
We are so alone in our corner of the universe... It's frignting ! Love the channel 💖
Maybe it is we who have to evolve enough to be able to talk to them or at least to comprehend their existence.
That's what I can't help but wonder too
Astrum has had me thinking on this topic for sometime now. When you consider the concept of nested systems, to me the word “protection” becomes apparent. The atmosphere protects us from the sun, the sun protects us from cosmic rays, in theory the black hole at the center of our Galaxy provides another level of protection providing structural existence for our galaxy in the first place. As we nest inward, our atmosphere protects and establishes ecosystems which inherently protect organisms which evolve within them. This continues with the simple chemistries and structures which make up our bodies - skin protecting us from the elements, internal systems protecting us from disease and so forth. So in essence, the universe is protecting the ability for life, in my humble opinion. So I think there is reason to believe that you can play Drake’s equation more towards the optimistic parameters.
Likewise, if you’re wondering why protection occurs in this manner, simply think about why we protect our children. I would answer because we love them. With this in mind consider that the universe may just love you, and wants life around as long as possible ;-)
if the universe loved us it wouldnt have made a bunch of harmful stuff that we would need to be protected from lol
How high were you when you came up with the idea the universe loves us?
Interesting perspective, only one minor nitpicking: The smbh in the milky way provides much less to its structural integrity than dark matter does. If the smbh wasn't there, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
@@FilmscoreMetaler that makes sense. Thank you for the education ;-)
L=1B is beyond generously optimistic. Being that we only really have humans to base this number on. However far back you believe we were, I think once we reached the ability to communicate, we likely have less than 1K years to go. If we’re lucky.
What a neat video!
For the centre 2 variables, I think a coin flip is the best answer. If something is nearly impossible and yet also a certainty (us), then 50 percent is really the only logical choice.
I think life is common so i think
90% to 10% or 99.99% to 0.01%
Look up survivorship bias.
The number - a dozen, a hundred, or a million intelligent and broadcasting species is only part of the equation…. Their broadcasts have to reach us at a time when we were listening, in frequencies we were listening to, and at strengths we could detect. Putting those together (especially the first and last) makes the odds rather low we would ever detect another species, unless they were right now in our “backyard”.
Yeah. Space is just too big. With undirected signals, you'd have to send them out just a few light years from the potential accidental recipient to be distinguishable from noise. With directed signals, distance is a smaller problem, but the chance of accidentally being received by someone else is negligible. Either way, the galaxy could be full of aliens that just never notice each other being dying out.
That transition from a vague interference pattern to the Drake equation is brilliant alone ☺️
I would like to see this figure updated to include the possibility of life on moons orbiting planets outside the habitable zone, such as Europa. It would probably not have a huge effect on the number of spacefaring or broadcasting civilizations since the inhabitants of an ocean surrounded by miles-thick ice would be unlikely that they'd ever break through that ice and travel into space, but it would greatly increase the total number of planets supporting life.
I always enjoyed the Drake Equation as a thought experiment so one day i did my own. I ended up with a similar number. My thought experiment got me to hypothesis that on average, at just about any given time, there should be 5 to 15 habited planets with complex ecosystems like ours in our galaxy.
Inhabited with sapience, technology users or just complex life in general?
Irrelevant, as they'll all be uncontactable. The correct question to ask: out of the total number of civilisations, what is the probability that one is closest to another to:
1) be able to identify the other's existence
2) be able to communicate meaningfully
3) to be actually bothered enough to either want to communicate or do anything about it.
Why would an alien civilization only be relevant if we could contact them? Simply observing them, even at billions of light years would teach us volumes.
@@filonin2 "us"? Who is that? You and your educate-at-home mommy?
@@filonin2 You say 'volumes' but what would we actually learn beyond 'that planet has alien life'?
I think viruses are important because they are an example of a molecular structure mutating the ability to reproduce. I think the ability to reproduce is the super rare limiting factor that kicks "life" as we know it off.
Love the insertion of various star wars crafts lol
For me, I unfortunately think Ne is set *too high.* We need to take into account not just the composition of planets and how far they are from their star, but whether that star is in an area that is too active radiologically or too filled with dangerous debris. The planets need to have a magnetosphere, and a solid surface- so no gas giants and no empty rocks. To have a magnetosphere it needs to be geologically active, which could be a limited window of formation that must line up with other limited windows.
On top of that, our planet formed in a zone that is both protected from debris by a gas giant, which shields us from both interior and exterior free asteroids, but is also far enough away from our gas giant to have a stable orbit and not fling us into space or sterilize us with it’s massive magnetosphere.
Life itself, could have more limiting factors than we give it credit for. A self replicating cycle is not all that easy to set up, even with the exact right circumstances. It takes chance after chance.
So I kind of believe for each one of these, we need to add a few extra zeroes in between the number and the decimal place.
If we also assume life formed on a planet with these qualifications, that doesn't mean it will always endure the catastrophes and mass extinctions to come. Earth has been through many climatic changes that it is mind boggling we still exist.
@@DoctorSakr Earth's cataclysm were as bad as they come, it is precisely why we think life is persistent, we had literal moon smash into us, then a global 800 million age iceage that covered entirety of the planet, how exactly do you propose to make it worse?
we have no data and no reason to assume at all that Jupiter helped earth in any way, in fact it could as well have done the opposite, increasing the amount of impacts we have. life does seem to be extremely easy to appear, because it appeared in pretty hellish conditions on earth. yes it definitely could have more limiting factors than we imagine, but with our current projections on earth's history, it seems as easy as in form the planet - have primordial soup and earth-like conditions - wait for ten million years - viola. there's no reason to believe that life formation was a singular event and everything came from one lucky molecule. probabilistically it's the opposite, life formed over and over again, got wiped, and formed again. we, of course, have no way of knowing, but that is logically much more sound.
The underground or the deep sea prevented the small meteors and medium meteors from reaching the first life
And The meteors made life on earth possible
So it would need meteors first before life came
There is also a galactic habitable zone, where materials are dense enough but we are far enough from the radioactive and dangerous center
The meaning of "intelligent" is entangled with the meaning of "communicative". We regard a tree, for example, as non-intelligent because we don't have any common framework for understanding each other. Thus, it is possible that the number of intelligent species is larger than we think just because neither of us find a common framework for communication. Conversely, the number of communicative species may be much smaller than we think because the human notion of communication is very rare, or perhaps unique in the universe.
I much prefer the 'pessimistic' view, where intelligent life is incredibly uncommon. In that case, the great filters of the Fermi paradox are most likely behind us, and we are trying to beat the odds to go on as a civilization.
0:57 we aren't even alone here. Lots of things Sentient the same way we are. We were never alone at any time in history we only just now have the tools to prove it. and we did.
Unlikely considering the number of variables. And first. We still do first don't we?
Given how much of our findings have been founded by random chance, I feel we'll most likely discover a other civilisation by pure chance of luck, most likely us an them sending a drone to a far away place and have oh hi mark moment.
Three points: 1. Much if not most of life on our Planet is subsurface. 2 Experts tell us life was nearly extinguished on Earth several times (vulcanism and asteroid impact). 3. What are the odds our home world is the optimum place for life to arise? (near zero)
As a method of calculating the chances of finding intelligent life on other planets, the Drake equation appears to be thoroughly useless, due to the number of impossible-to-enumerate variables it contains. It DOES have the potential to demonstrate how unlikely it is that we will find alien intelligent life. Just by inserting random values for each variable, the equation will keep telling us there's not a lot of chance.
There's an old joke about how there is proof that intelligent life exists because nobody has ever tried to contact us.
Good one 😏
Trying to find intelligent life in the Universe it's like looking for a needle in the haystack and the haystack is higher than Mt. Everest.
I like your voice and narration very much .
I mean, who was it that said "Either we're alone on the universe or we aren't and both possibilities are equally terrifying?"
Very well laid out! I fear the N = 0 is true, but I hope the N = 9,450,000 is!
i hope its inbetween 9450000 and 9
The Drake equation misses a few important ideas. Like how far away they are, when they started sending signals, how long they sent signals for, and long we have been able to detect such signals (which is arguably "not yet"). These parameters don't affect the probability of intelligent life but they greatly impact the fraction of intelligent life that is detectable. Which leads me to believe the universe is probably teaming with intelligent life that will forever be alone and unaware of each other, due to the severely limited max speed of travel and information propagation, the unfathomable age and size of the universe, and the challenge of detection.
💯💯💯
🤯 Wow, what a comment! I feel very small brained now. Although I did understand your comment so I'll give myself a *BIG* Kudos for that 😉 You sir, are intriguing!
Donald Parker Intelligent life will be increasingly easier to detect with the next gen telescopes. Already James Webb will be able to scan the atmospheres of exoplanets to detect signs of life. Intelligent species may be isolated but not lonely.
Think you nailed it.
Love the Star Wars ships in this vid!
Wow! I enjoyed reading your reply, 3500 light years just within our Milky way galaxy? I agree, vast distances in dealing with light years is not feasible to not actually getting from point A to B in a starship from a type 2 civilization...however you said referring to using the word 'galactic' these of course, are considered type 3 civilizations that may live and thrive in their spacecrafts and may have ability to cover vast distances in their spacecrafts to travel through worm holes or manage to bend time to get from point A to point B in vast distances in relation to light years.
10:00 is my favorite part postulating how life arose. I recently saw a video of Neil deGrasse tyson discussing the new idea that life on earth is almost as old as the earth itself. Right after the heavy bombardment period and the molten surface solidified life is thought to be present. And life arising from inorganic matter is still baffling to me. Theres something missing that is beyond our comprehension or willingness to accept
Yes, abiogenesis is a hard one to grasp but I suppose the best answer we have at this time given the information we have.
@@hunterbiden7391 that's the tough part about science is a lot is rooted in the "best guess" category. Scientists may one day discover the correct ingredients and combinations of life but it's the programming that melts my brain. A single celled organism isnt just a couple elements, it's the stored information on what to eat, when to eat, how to eat, where to eat and the how when and where applies to reproducing and many other functions to sustain itself. Where does that come from?
I think something else I don’t hear brought up in videos about this often is the time it would take for those signals to reach us must also be added to the amount of time those civilizations would have existed. Also, not all star systems have enough heavy elements to sustain complex life. I think I heard a theory once that we were simply a fairly early civilization, and life may become more common as the galaxy ages
I'd be happy to even learn that life once existed on another planet. At least we'd have much more information
Be excited. It will happen soon.
It would be nice to see what number you can come up with by changing some of the numbers in the equation . If for example if we can prove life existed on Mars then FL would also effect fi and FC now the possibility of intelligent life would increase exponentially