Technically, you cannot answer that question, only the person you are addressing can do that. Also, if the universe is infinite, which it almost certainly is, then the emergence of life in an infinite number of places becomes (by extension) an absolute certainty.
I thought this video was all scientific and sht, showcasing something that is essential for life to grow and can only be happening on this planet or some sht. Not an ideology about life itself >.< Good video tho, keep it up!
Very good video! I agree that we cannot currently know. I guess and speculate, and I think we can look at the ribosome as a key here. A very basic proto-ribosome could have formed in two ways, with protein first or RNA first. Also a mechanism of inheritance could have formed either way first too. As long as at least one can occur easily enough abiotically, and give rise to the other (these are the things we don't know, except knowing RNA can probably form proteins on its own in a purely-RNA proto-ribosome and that proteins can certainly form RNA). If and only if it requires both to be simultaneously initiated, and that that is unlikely even in a vast ocean of hot chemical soup, then life could be much rarer. The problem I see is that although we can "initiate" some very basic form of chemical self-replicator via RNA or proteins (proteins being more likely to be capable of replication especially in a bath of amino acids), for actual viable life beyond just random chemistry we require RNA, proteins and lipids to come together in a special way. That might IMO be the hardest step. Despite that, I think that life can form relatively "easily" enough to be common. With lipids self-aggregating into capsules easily, amino acids being common in the universe and nucleic acids at least being present (haven't we detected evidence for that? Not sure) or being able to be naturally formed catalysed by volcanism or similar in a chemical soup, then life should be common. The problem i see is if amino acids and/or nucleic acids won't randomly polymerise enough abiotically. That woukd be a big problem. RNA is what really needs to form for life to begin IMO (I am no expert! And have little evidence). RNA can both code information like its stable cousin DNA can, but it can also fold into complex shapes and thus perform as a controlled repeatable catalyst for chemical reactions - like proteins. It can then form structures to replicate itself, and that is all that is needed (though it needs to happen 'en masse') for Darwinian evolution to begin. It can then later start catalysing the polymerisation of amino acids into proteins, and then those proteins can later start catalysing the copying of RNA into DNA. RNA is very much a poorer version of proteins and DNA. But we look at life from a very DNA-oriented perspective. I studied mechanisms in yeast by which proteins themselves carry inheritance and participate in evolution - unique prion-like proteins that can do some special things similar to RNA. This appears rare in nature, but it exists and happens. What if proteins like these (which are capable of converting other similar proteins into copies of themselves and aggregating into complexes, which can do stuff such as catalysing reactions) came first, and quickly gained the ability to produce RNA. We lost most of these Darwinian proteins over the aeons as they would be very poor in comparison to RNA, the RNA life they could have created would quickly overtake them. If amino acids, but not nucleic acids, are present in abiotic conditions throughout the universe, and polymerisation of amino acids can occur via common but abiotic means, then this protein-first start to life could be far more feasible than RNA first and solve the problem of either naturally-occuring nucleic acids or natural mechanisms to polymerise them, needed to form sufficiently long chains of RNA, being very rare or unlikely to be produced randomly. Excuse that awfully written sentence.
Woyam Chny It was more of a commentary on the idea that if there’s only 7 billion intelligent beings currently alive in this universe, we’re even more rare and precious. If that were so, it makes it extremely sad. To us, 7 billion sounds like a lot, but on a universal scale, it’s almost nothing.
Yep. It would mean life is extremely delicate. We could ultimately be the reason life ends in the entire universe lol. But I dont believe we're alone in the universe. Just because we dont see it doesnt mean it's not there. We dont even know that life doesnt exist in our own solar system (outside Earth, I mean). We dont know that at some point in the past that life didnt exist elsewhere in the Solar System. To find evidence of life, we'd have to be looking in the exact right place at the exact right time. I also doubt that intelligent life would be so careless as to shoot radio signals off into the universe like we do. History has shown that lifeforms finding other lifeforms when they migrate doesnt fair well for the less advanced lifeforms. Native Americans are prime examples of that.
Depends who you ask, once we agree that a miss is the best on the planet, it's safe to say that she's the prettiest in 'our' universe since beauty is in the eye of the human beholder. I'm sure every alien being that has beauty contests feels the same way as it's very difficult to think of a sexier lifeform than the ones that have evolved attributes to make us want to reproduce with them. We could never truly judge an unbiased interplanetary miss universe unless we judged our local lifeforms and then asked God to pick the winner...I think God is smart enough to not tell any single female lifeform that she is prettier than the other finalists. 🤪🤣🙏
I just wanted to say thank you for inspiring my father. Hes 65 and has always love space and science ever since I was alive-he actually told me to watch this, said it was his "favorite yt video". It helped breathe new life into him. He said "the last part is my favorite. I watch it all the time."- He has been struggling with addiction for the past few years since my grandparents passed away and he had to retire from a back injury on the job.; but your last sentiment "that makes us special and incredibly rare like diamonds." It really touched his heart. Thank you so much for helping give my father new life
@@GBNationalist There is exactly ZERO way to know for sure whether you are right or whether the person you are responding to is right. Which makes you as big a fool as what you accuse them of.
I've always said this, that there doesn't necessarily have to be other life out there. I actually like that we might be unique, whereas others seem to be the other way out and want nothing more than other life out there.
I love how he was able to take the sadness of possibly being absolutley alone in the universe and turn it into romanticism and a perspective of profound beauty. Always well spoken!
@@SovereignStatesman Exactly! If there are other civilizations out also colinizing the universe that would just mean more compitition for us also trying to expand. If there was no life thay wouln no compitition and we could exand and colinize freely with the universe. If there was no life one possibility is that we could just stay hers on tnis planet or solar system and let the rest of universe die. If there was other life and we just stayed here would be just letting them take all that space for them selves! If you did leave to colinize other planets and star and maybe eventualy galexys and there is onther life out there, there would probobly be some compitition or war I mean unless you make some sort of treaty or get endorsed or somthing.
@@Gizziiusa , only 2 possibilities exist , if we are simulated it means we exists and so does someone else , so it pretty much is the second possibility that we are indeed not alone.
If we are alone we can own it all. That’s cool not really scary. We can do whatever we want and control the life we put out there. I’m just trying to be optimistic I guess.
@@subspace666 granted, your point is valid. I didnt elaborate with the possibility/probability of a intelligently designed "reality construct" wherein with our limited ability of perception (3 dimensional reality with time), we will never really know if we are alone or not. thus, this third option is still on the table, the third option of "never knowing". aka neither A or B.
In my childhood, the very thought that "we are not alone" used to give me goosebumps. Now as an adult, the very thought that "we are alone" gives me more goosebumps....
@David Lucey yes but what if you could bend space time to your will? Given enough energy the laws of physics allow for the creation of a wormhole. A super advanced species might be able to pull that off and would thus be able to visit other areas of the universe that would otherwise be impossible. Also... you have to consider that a super advanced species might not even be 100 percent biological anymore out of shear necessity to adapt to the elements of space and foreign worlds and would be able to live for thousands maybe even millions of years therefore distances wouldn’t even matter. Or both.... 🤔🤭
Well they found the way to us still after the Pentagon officially confirmed the existence of UFOs and they have no idea what’s going on. Apparently even the US Senate wants to investigate this further… th-cam.com/video/ZBtMbBPzqHY/w-d-xo.html
@@chadwomack919 For wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her. I, possess knowledge and discretion; wisdom dwell together with prudence. To fear the Lord is to hate evil. I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. Counsel and sound judgement are mine; I have understanding and power. By me kings reign and rulers make laws that are just: by me princes govern and all nobles who rule on earth.” These things stand out clearly here: • Wisdom is to depart from evil: “I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.” • Wisdom is greater than rubies which is money • Wisdom is knowledge, discernment, power, sound judgement, understanding and discretion. • Wisdom is to listen to God’s word.
@Zurround100: The great thing about actual scientists is that they have to publish results to get noticed. They have to defend their theses, or the models they create via peer review. The geologist who first theorized plate tectonics was laughed to scorn. Time has a way of correcting or at least adjusting false theories.
Such a intriguing & profound video that gives one a lot to think about. I appreciated the part saying it’s ok to admit when we don’t know something. I’ve always thought given the # of galaxies, stars etc life is likely elsewhere, however recently I’ve been much more conscience & appreciate what life had to go through to be here today & it’s simply remarkable. One of the best quotes all time “either we are alone in the universe or we aren’t, either answer is terrifying”
Man... as a 29 year old that's been walking a pretty lame existence for the past 8 years, this brought me to tears at the end. I spend so much time hating my life and hoping that something brings an end to it because I don't have the bottle to do it myself, but the ending of this video just brought me out of that temporarily, to the point that I had tears streaming down my face. If we're truly all there is, there's not a single monetary value you could place on what we're going through. If you could sell your "existence" (the existence which I hate so much a lot of the time, that I complain about, and feel excited to be over with) there is not an amount high enough that would put a fair value on it. If we're truly alone, it's the most valuable thing in the entire universe. I guess I mean, if there were ever electronic-non-physical beings that knew we existed, and could some how buy our existence to try it for themselves, to see how it truly feels to walk on a planet in a real human body, there is no amount that could buy it. Crazy thought, and it's definitely shifted my view on things. Man I hope I start feeling like life is worth sticking out. I know life's a beautiful thing, I just can't bring myself to open my eyes and see it recently.
@@SuperYtc1 I agree. Although I'd argue that beauty is in the "eye of the beholder" as they say, and although I struggle to see it sometimes, other times I absolutely love life, but you're right.
@Pedro Ortega Everyone has a place in this world, I am sure there is a woman somewhere that would love you for who you are. "Good genes" are just an arbitrary value we made as a society. What is beautiful about humans is the diversity, everyone is unique and that makes us special for someone. That was also the point of the video, if we are trully alone in the universe, every single person is worth so much and you are one of those person. You deserve as much as anyone else. I hope you can find a way to love yourself :)
@John Grygus No, moron. Even if I did believe that, adding a god to that theory would recreate the exact same problem. It would only add an extra unnecessary step and would solve nothing. Believing in god is shallow thinking for simpletons. Everything changes states but nothing is created nor destroyed. I don't think there even is such a thing as a "void". What you think of as a void is just non-oscillating quantum fields. And why would you assume that nothingness is more probable than the existence of matter?
@cesarrobledo2583 yeah, but for most of that peace period, from the end of WW2, we've developed swathes of WMD that, if misused, could threaten human existence. Best case scenario, devolved society. Worst case scenario, slow and painful extinction due to mass famine, disease and radiation.
Wow, you are one of the rare speaker on TH-cam to speak slowly. But I watch all the video. You are the proof that it is possible to do more slow pace video!
Which is why I think what you're doing with your staff is precisely what you should be doing. Youre teaching the general public of exactly what you're supposed to be doing! Kudos to you and your team. Keep keeping it simple so all understand the big picture. Diamonds of the Universe! Rock Onward
18:49 "I can live with doubt.....and uncertainty.....and not knowing. I find it more interesting to live not knowing than have answers that might be wrong" -Richard Feynman Imo, probably the greatest lesson that nearly no one wants to learn, let alone take the time to make it a part of their everyday life. Because I think most people find it too scary to be humble.
it takes an idiot to think doubt is good. knowledge transcends everything. Ive spoken to aliens face to face I don't have to dumb down and live like a retard. Ive learned the secret to reality and mind. Mind is the final frontier not space
The reason I love your videos isnt because they are so wonderfully informational or well put together, they are, but it's not that at all. It is simply this, ALL your videos ALWAYS sparks my imagination and THAT is what makes them so wonderful! Thank you!
The last few minutes of the presentation touched me to my very most deepest core and humbled my perception of what my life is currently and what surrounds me daily.Truly makes me think that we should all find it in our human hearts and minds to respect and love one another unconditionally for as long as we have a breath in our bodies.We right here and right now are truly a living miracle.
I agree. The more I, as an armchair layperson scientist; learn about fields like Astrobiology, the more I'm drawn to questions being answered essentially with more questions. Of course, I'm fully comfortable with "I don't know" and I think it's the most *correct* possible answer any of us can have at this point in time. Of course, I'd love for humanity to address the question of just how likely Abiogenesis is. I'd do a lot to try and get that central question answered. Having a sample size of 1 is wonderful - so much better than no sample at all, but man it can be infuriating as well!
@@normjohn217 Like so many millions, or billions of trees or trillions of plankton that live and die, and nobody notice any particular one of them fall or die or ever be alive in the first place.
Every time I watch this video, I feel a certain way that I can't quite describe. I don't know if it's sadness, wonderment, fear, loneliness, or simply a longing for answers. Regardless, I keep coming back to experience it again.
Your Feelings of sadness and loneliness comes from not knowing God...? Your wonderment is knowing that there is indeed a Devine plan in the creation of the universe and Life on Earth and your feelings of fear is the acknowledgement of God and the true reality of your existence this understanding would have in your daily life...? Possibly?
Inside the Casino There are enough life forms here on earth, yet humans cannot live in peace among them. Why look for life elsewhere in the universe...start a war over there too?
@@truthseeker3857 its true that discovering something has risks associated with it. However risks have never stopped us from discovering. Its our nature. Its how we progressed. An alien contact is risky, but we humans will pursue it regardless. This is why we have progressed so far.
We are the only ones , If there ARE others it is because God created them also , not because there are so many planets, That there just has to be others ! the only proff is ourselves , our awareness of ourselves is a special abilty that God gave us ,that no other creature developed or needed !!
I like this theory. I've always thought we are alone. It shouldn't be scary. It's amazing and it should make you feel more special and therefore appreciate life more.
Nope sorry. I don't care how any smarter person than me tries to make it sound. If we are alone for the size of the universe then we are in an experiment. Some form of captivity and what we see as the universe might be a type of gel holding us in our fish tank. For reason I cannot fathom.
Lovely quote, a true testament to the human ability to state the obvious, however, those words are vain. We are not alone, we have never been alone. The question is not who they are and where they come from, but why.
To be honest there almost no chance we are alone, the argument that we are lucky that we survived through so many disastrous events only points towards that its not that hard for life to evolve! If you look at thousands of different species that live today on our planet and someone tells you that 99% of species that were alive on planet earth are extinct I would think that its impossible (if planet earth itself wont collapse) for living organism to go extinct! So being able to survive through 5 mass extinctions seems to point out to that its nearly impossible to go extinct once life started! Also if from simple bacteria evolved millions of animal, fish species then it seems in the Universe should be the same, from star dust there must evolve life and it must evolve everywhere! So it seems based on evolution on earth and based on how hard for living organism to die out and how easy through time for it to multiply and evolve (from small rat mammal to lions, monkeys, humans, zebras, elephants, giraffes....), Life in the Universe should and it did (from big bang to stars to galaxies to planets to life) to evolve in big abundance and variety!
This was such a fantastic take, David. The end even moved me to tears. It's happy to see that I am not "alone" in having this point of view within science. But this is the most elegant elucidation I've seen on the topic.
And how will the Webb telescope will change this if at all, will it find oxygen, chlorocarbons and oxides of nitrogen on any other planets indicating an artificial origin?
Your way of presenting ideas is so non invasive and neutral that I instantly like the video and subscribed. You give room and food for thought and I just love your approach on these subjects
From another commenter, I picked up the scary thought that sometimes , some of us, can feel alone even here on Earth, and now we contemplate being further alone in the universe, by god, that is a heck of a lot of loneliness! The other sad thought, is, and i agree with the video, we are truly rare , truly diamonds in the universe, yet as we sit here and watch this video, humans are actively working to destroy life on Earth and even to destroy themselves into extinction. This is very sad, but very true.
This totally gave me shivers all over the body. Especially the part when you said: "..the only intellectual answer to this question is: I don't know". The ending with the Hans Zimmer's soundtrack from the "Interstellar" - purely amazing. Music that is slowly ascending to the dynamic culmination so that it would instantly descend to the quietness can be metaphor for the whole subject of us being one special *diamond* - as you said. Thank you for the amazing content!
Emerging scientific data in the journals agrees that life is rare. The increasing habitable zones means that less then 1% of the planets in each galaxy being unsuitable for life. Known Current Habitable zones as of 2017: - Water habitable zone - Ultraviolet/Radiation habitable zone - Photosynthetic habitable zone - Ozone habitable zone - Planetary rotation rate habitable zone - Planetary obliquity habitable zone - Tidal habitable zone - Astrosphere habitable zone - Electric wind habitable zone
For host stars with an effective temperature more than 7,100 K (7,100 °C above absolute zero) or less than 4,600 K, even for just microbes, a team of four Chinese astronomers showed that the liquid water and ultraviolet habitable zones will not overlap. This may seem like a fairly wide effective temperature range, but it is narrow enough to eliminate all but 3 percent of the Milky Way Galaxy’s stars.
Japanese astronomers Midori Oishi and Hideyuki Kamaya established that the zone of overlap is even narrower including the metallicity requirements of the Host star, this leaves less than 1 percent of our galaxy stars as candidates for bacterial life. Advanced life has even more stringent requirements.
Scientific Articles: - Jianpo Guo et al., “Probability Distribution of Terrestrial Planets in Habitable Zones Around Host Stars,” Astrophysics and Space Science 323 (October 2009): 367-73 - Rory Barnes et al., "Tidal Limits to Planetary Habitability," Astrophysical Journal Letters 700 (July 20, 2009): L30-L33 - David S. Smith and John M. Scalo, “Habitable Zones Exposed: Astrosphere Collapse Frequency as a Function of Stellar Mass,” Astrobiology 9 (September 2009): 673-81 - Midori Oishi and Hideyuki Kamaya, “A Simple Evolutionary Model of the UV Habitable Zone and the Possibility of Persistent Life Existence: The Effects of Mass and Metallicity,” Astrophysical Journal 833 (December 2016): id. 293, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/833/2/293 - Glyn Collinson et al., “The Electric Wind of Venus: A Global and Persistent ‘Polar Wind’-Like Ambipolar Electric Field Sufficient for the Direct Escape of Heavy Ionospheric Ions: Venus Has Potential,” Geophysical Research Letters (June 2016): doi:10.1002/2016GL068327 - Glyn Collinson et al., “Electric Mars: The First Direct Measurement of an Upper Limit for the Martian ‘Polar Wind’ Electric Potential,” Geophysical Research Letters 42 (November 2015): 9128-34, doi:10.1002/2015GL065084 - adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-ref_query?bibcode=2003ARA%26A..41..429K&refs=CITATIONS&db_key=AST
unbelievably brilliant analysis...should be mandatory viewing in every school on the planet. I have just discovered your channel and you guys are truly the diamonds holding up a candle to a world full of doubt
David is so good at getting points across. No matter what the subject matter, I think he could put the proper words together to hold our attention. If he were a psychologist, he could probably offer unique insights in the same way he does the universe and help a lot of people.
The most beautiful conclusion to any science video , lecture , paper or text book I have ever experienced. And I am 63 years old Thank You Professor David Kipping .
If that is so, I highly recommend you to read the book "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe" by Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee". It is one of the best books I have ever read.
Yes, in this video, Dr. Kipping neatly encapsulates and articulates my worldview. The conclusion elaborates a philosophy of existence I find compelling and breathtakingly beautiful.
...and not to forget another haunting question: why is it of all things me, who can think about it. In other words: why am I Me and not someone else???
@@kloboklonz9589 I think consciousness and sense of self is universal. Just like with our appearance, tastes, traits, features - condense it all down, and it's really all the same, save for some subtle differences. The differences all add up of course... but really, I think nature cheats - individuality is just another magic trick. We all have subjective experiences, but those experiences are all incredibly normalised - to another intelligence, we might not even appear sentient.
@@kloboklonz9589 It's not you, it's us. Imagine being born and growing up in an empty tube. When you turn 20 the only think you would think is the dark tube and nothing else. It would be you and the mighty tube then. Humans evolve collectively.
Do not propose that "I don't know" is a valid answer about the mystery of life to any religious person. Such people go to a lot of trouble persuading themselves that they do know, and rely on constant affirmation from fellow believers. Faith is the capacity to believe something that is not true but must be true because it supports a person's world view. And that is why religious people put so much emphasis on having faith. If something was obviously true -- for instance, that we are born and eventually die -- not a shred of faith would be required to believe it. On the other hand, believing there is life after death requires a huge amount of faith -- often backed up by some hefty tome of dogma describing supernatural beings who create us in their image, or similar nonsense.
Fascinating talk. It's refereshing to hear the subject of one of humanity's most compelling questions being discussed so rationally and so intellectually. Whatever the answer, it does indeed have profound implications for our species. I just hope we do find the answer some day, though I'm not certain we ever will, and that prospect is somewhat depressing. But that's exactly why we must keep looking. Our pursuit of the answer may yet also reveal the answer to that other compelling question humanity has been asking itself since we first gazed up at the stars..."Why am I here?"
Gotta admit that even tho I am a firm believer that life exists elsewhere, this is such a brilliantly made video accompanied by your soothing voice and hard facts. Absolutely amazing!!
I don't agree. All the statistical analysis seems to leave out the immense time and space involved. The little experiment with electricity and amino acids didn't result in life within days, but the Earth had billions of years as well as an entire planet. It's failure really doesn't tell us anything. Give everyone billions of years to pick the locks, and you'll get a lot more open doors.
My best guess is it is somewhere between the "crowded universe" and us being totally alone. It's extremely rare, but not so rare that we are literally the only ones. And the universe is also very big, the raw amount of empty space is much greater than the number of potential words. If other civilisations are so far away from us that we will never come into contact with them or find evidence of them, we might as well be alone. The most boring and realistic answer to this question is probably "it doesn't matter because we will never encounter it either way".
@@jrpipik did you not watch the video? The immense time and space is irrelevant. That is the whole point. Yes, that experiment tells us nothing, but no experiment ever conducted gives us any idea how rare life is. Your assumption on more locks being picked if you give them billions of years ignores the possibility that the difficulty of picking the lock could be scaled up billions of times(thus the probability would be the same). It is simply an incomplete equation. We cannot comprehend how immense the universe is(infinite?), could it be that we cannot comprehend how rare intelligent life is? (infinitely rare?). Believing there has to be life elsewhere is no different than believing there has to be a God. (By the way, I have no problem with "believing" either, you just can't use science or statistics to back the belief of either one)
Maybe life is just a fluke... as stated on this video... and even if there is life out there in the universe... it may just be unicelullar life. It took billions of years for life to evolve from unicelludar to multicellular, it may had just been a fluke... and then to evolve for multicelluar life to inteligent multicelular life... may be even another fluke. Occam's razor... at the lack of evidence of life outside of our planet, the most simples answer is there is no life outside of this planet.
Well, not really. This whole video is trying to assess the probability of abiogenesis. He spends 25 minutes telling us: we don't know. We just need more data and to explore other places to find out. Brilliant, can you give me the 25 minutes back? For a more useful analysis, I suggest to check out Jeremy England.
I really enjoyed your video, at the end it reminds me of a quote from Saint Augustine "Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the long courses of the rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the circular motion of the stars, but they pass by themselves and they dont even notice"
Sir I applaud you and this video. It's one of my favorite videos I've watched on TH-cam. Love the passion you have for this it really just draws you in. Thank you for your work and time
Can we just take a second to appreciate how beautiful of a soul this man has? To merge art, poetry and science into such a balanced video is really difficult. This man feels for this race in a way that all of us should.
I absolutely agree, Andras. I’ve noticed that even the comments are gently progressive and humbly intelligent. Unlike the depressing juvenalia and vulgarity TH-cam often presents, and provokes.
@@prototropo 'Progressive' can mean regressive, and it very much depends on what one is talking about. 'Progressive' is politics on earthly affairs is a deadly characteristic.
Just beautifully presented, soothing voice, and I have to say these videos are just so well written. The ending monologue said much more than 'we might very well be alone', it celebrated the possibility that each and every human is very rare and very special - which consequently makes our duty to look after this very special planet so vital.
The most beautiful part of the idea that we're alone, and that each of us is the result of impossible odds and precious, is that whether or not that's true, we should still treat each other that way. Thank you for this, it's lovely to listen to and very encouraging and inspiring.
This video has once again instilled in my subconscuosness, the fact that I should see the person next to me as a special, rare breed in this lonely planet who deserves my respect.
There is something in that statement that deeply resonates with me too. Although diamonds are quite common in the universe, but that's beside the point.
Amazing video! Finally some sense concerning extraterrestial life, rather than the ignorant/ unrealistic broken record that we always hear from 'experts'. Thank you!
This must be the best video on TH-cam out of..."billions and billions and billions" of videos! Fantastic! Simply and honestly stating what the data says, keeping opinions, feelings and theories to a minimum. THANK YOU!
Imagine the billions of years of evolution and it took us humans less than 2000 years to be technologically advanced. We became intelligent and curious of other intelligent lifeforms AFTER billions of years of evolution. So my point is, I think every habitable planet has their own specific evolution timer of its lifeforms. As an example, maybe our closest habitable planet currently has lifeforms that is equivalent to 500 million years ago on Earth. So we don't see intelligent lifeforms now since they're in their prehistoric period. Maybe we'll go extinct 50,000 years later and 500 million years later, those lifeforms are celebrating their first space flight to their moon and wondering if they are alone. In conclusion, the odds of two intelligent lifeforms being within close proximity and within the same narrow evolution window is astronomically low.
@@ungmd21 Abiogenesis is and always will be an unproven theory. To say Life was started by non-life is as crazy a theory as we were created by a divine being.
@@ungmd21 Evolution is fact. Species evolve every day. Offspring are more adapted every time. Look at every mammal in the Ocean and how they changed from living on the land. They are evolved from the land, other than fish such as sharks. There's so many proof in bonestructures that you cannot say that it is a theory.
My confusion and curiosity lies in the fact there are likely many other sentient civilizations out there BUT we're still seeing their universes as they were dozens of millions of years ago and thus we can't see them and they can't see us...yet
I appreciate that you have no idea but the fcuk is "a sentient civilisation"? what is the magic in " civilisation" which only means living in cities(or in reality you are not sure what it means nor what you seek to convey when you use the word) which is derived from civis - a citizen or one who lives in a city or large enclave)
The inhabitants of the earth have only been able to send radio and TV signals out into Space for about 75 years out of our long history,so the chances of another civilisation being at the stage of being able to communicate across the vastness of the Galaxy alone is not very great,If they can launch a small probe to the nearest star,Alpha Centauri,,which could travel at one tenth the speed of light,it would take 40 years to get there ,and another 40 years to beam the information back to Earth. "They" have had 80years to receive our signals and send back a reply.The silence is deafening! Nothing has been received
Superbly done. I've read and listened to nearly every argument and sets of scientific analysis that exist to date and I find that this discussion is the best and most intelligently presented of all. "We do not know." Good enough for me.
I don't find being alone in the universe frightening. What really awes me is thinking that only single cell life lived for 3 billion years, then multi-cellular life. To think of all the life that had to survive through, natural disasters, mass extinctions, being eaten, diseases, famine, changes in climate, geological changes, growing old enough to reproduce, etc.. All the animals there were before the form we are today, over millions of years. All those humans that survived, natural disasters, climate changes, diseases, famine, wars, murder and grew old enough to reproduce, etc.. All those things that life had to survived just so we can be here watching this excellent video. The thought that we're here at all, and with a complex thinking brain, awes me.
Brilliantly presented Prof. Kipping. Thank you. One of my favorite quotes from Carl Sagan's 1980 book Cosmos is: 'We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself'.
@@sakesithole6295 Yes some species which could answer Why or How everything started which I think our species would take very very long time or never cause the Question is not for us to answer I suppose.
I think intelligent life is extremely common, just because we can't prove it yet, it doesn't mean we are special and unique. Mathematically is just impossible, we have gazillion planets and we're supposed to be the only ones or first ones lmao don't be so naive people. Life doesn't start out of nothingness like scientists been telling us, we're the seed of much intelligent life. Every single DNA on Earth wasn't born out of nothing, someone put us here. (And no, not an imaginary god).
sigh...all this video said was 'we don't know', while logic dictates (considering how unimaginably numerous planets are in the universe, and the unimaginably numerous environments on said planets, and that we know it happened at least once) the chances that life doesn't happen elsewhere are damn near impossible. I mean, we've created amino acids in an early Earth environment, and like the narrator said "maybe we haven't run these experiments long enough" (especially when the Earth is 4 BILLION years old) is a very likely scenario. Even if life only happens on one in a billion planets, that still means there's trillions of planets with life out there. This 20 min video could be summed up in 10 seconds 'numbers suggest it's probable, but we don't actually know if life exists elsewhere'...a waste of my time.
Bottom line is - It’s all speculation. Until we find life anywhere else, we cannot draw any conclusions. And currently, and for the foreseeable future, we will not be able to properly examine even a minuscule part of the universe ... even a minuscule part of our own galaxy.
there is nothing to examine, everything we see is so far in the past. closest galaxy we see it as it was over 2 milion years ago. we are out of our depth here.
The next generation of a space telescope is going into space soon. It could very well give us photos of several identified Earth-Like worlds (size, mass, location in life zone around parent star) and analyze their surface temperatures and compositions of their atmospheres. We could likely identify if they have plant life.
I’ve loved astronomy since I was a kid. It’s the only thing that keeps my attention and focus and I find everything about it fascinating. I’m so glad I found this channel. Keep up the great work and thanks for making me feel infinitely tiny and infinitely special at the same time
@@derangedking117 Where is everyone? The Aliens? Not even old Radio signals from past civilizations have ever been detected. The Truth is, its nothing but fresh eating radio activity from pulsars out there. The Standard Model of particle physics shows how impossible it is to understand the basic foundations of the universe so that we can traverse it in any reasonable time. The more we know, the more we don't. Meaning, even if there were to be aliens in the past, they would have hit a snag and gone extinct before they figured it out.
@@Rockfanist i dont need to argue. ive spoken to aliens face to face this man is an idiot and anyone who doesnt know aliens are all over this world is living under a rock with their head up their ass.
Yes, we are alone in the universe and I'm a loner of this lonely planet, called Earth and your video is very uniquely special, especially its ending and tonight that has made me feel really special about myself and also about life in general. Thanks.
@@GBNationalist Did you not watch the video? You cannot say whether or not there is a high chance of life existing. You have no other data points. You have no idea if we are alone or not.
@@GBNationalist you're the sad one here we are "SPECIAL" because we are special have you seen any other humans on other planets other than earth?? None!!! You're just nihilistic
@@GBNationalist and also by saying humanity is pathetic arent you also pathetic? You should stop being negative and be positive all that bitchiness wont make you happier
Thank you sooo much for your incredibly interesting videos!!! They open up one's mind! And: I really appreciate your speech speed and pronunciation! It allows non-native english speakers to fully enjoy your content! THANK YOU!
This is one of the best videos of your channel, crystal clear explanation and perfect reasoning flow. Extremely easy to follow, yet no stone is left unturned
"We don't know " is absolutely a great human statement. Its profound. Its a starting point to curiosity and knowledge. Look at years of earthcentric views, etc...where did "knowing " beyond a doubt get us?
As a teenager I got in trouble for telling my science teacher what you said in this video. He was going on and on about the Drake equation and I felt like I was the only one that noticed that the most important variable was a guess. He basically called me a dummy in front of the whole class. All I asked was, how can we possibly know what the chances of life appearing on a planet are if we only have ourselves as an example of it? I think it's why I got a B in the class.
The cleverer you are the fewer people will understand you... Repeating what the majority say and do feels stupid and boring. But doing and saying something of your own means to be constantly condemned to indifference, misunderstanding and rebukes. It may be even dangerous... Yet, you have a chance to get into history as a hero and leaving something named after you by grateful descendants.
You got a B because you got B's on exams, this drivel of ET life and its probability is just 5 minutes in physics lectures, Drake equation is easy and you should know it, but its not even tested. You didn't get a B because you disagreed with the science teacher, you got a B because your level of understanding the basics tenets of science in that class when tested was B level.
@@fitnesspoint2006 I live in Europe, and here different systems of notes are used in different countries. But many years ago when I was a schoolboy I got in a similar situation. There was an exam and I explained the subject as I understood it. I was even proud that I found some meaningful explanation because the one offered in the textbook was impossible to make sense of, just some word hodgepodge... And I got very bad note for that my understanding. But a decade later that "science" seized even to exist, because of the radical change of political system in that country I lived.
Sounds like a biased jerk! I'm an ESL teacher working abroad and I always encourage my students to think for themselves regardless whether I agree with them or not! That's why I bailed on Asia permanently 10 years ago. I didn't get anywhere there!
I cannot say I followed every part of this argument. But the overall impression is great indeed, and the conclusion of our simply not knowing seems indisputably correct. An exceptionally interesting and convincing presentation.
I have to admit that this video completely destroyed me. By the end I was weeping uncontrollably. I was ready for a universe without other intelligences, but to face the possibility that there is NO OTHER LIFE IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE is absolutely terrifying.
I hear you. People can be edgelords about this subject, but it doesn't take a philosopher to recognize there's a profound, existential component to this idea. Especially when you consider that the human race is less likely to survive as long as people often imagine, in science fiction. There may not be an inhabitable world within reach, and the less inhabitable ones like Mars may not be practical. We might have a few thousand years left, and after that, sentience leaves the universe. Maybe it'll return, maybe it won't. We might be living in the only little sliver of time that the universe had life, had consciousness.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 no it depends how far away they are if they are a trillion lightyears away it Will take Forever for those signals to get here and we see a LOT of signals most of them we rly dont know what it is a signal traveling a long way also gets blurred in the cosmic noise
@@Thedrunkenswede1337 True, but we have lots of candidates within 500 light years. Plus major space-faring civilizations should already have made their presence known.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 space is wast and 500 lightyears are nothing space can be full of life but just be too far away hos many years since we invented the radio its not that Long let that sink in
@@scottslotterbeck3796 This explanation is predicated on two very weighty assumptions: firstly, that the physical distribution of life across the universe is even, and secondly, that our perspective of the outside universe from the vantage point of Earth is not skewed by the correlation of distance and time. For example, if indeed life has developed concurrently across great distances, it would be impossible for each respective sentient species (if they are sentient to begin with) to observe one another given the vast amount of time that each would have to survive in order to do so. Even if sentient life developed elsewhere in our own galaxy tens of millions of years ago and developed to the point where there would actually be technological or biological markers to indicate its presence, the probability of us observing it at that precise window of time decreases with distance, as beyond a certain threshold we are observing a time before such a species existed. Even more challenging is the belief that a species older than this (say, one that appeared hundreds of millions of years ago) could sustain itself for a duration long enough for us to observe it; our own species' limited longevity and challenges with finite resource capacity so far have not borne out the conclusion that this is even possible. By the time we peer in its direction, the civilization could have long ceased to exist and we would have no indication of its former presence. Overall, the likelihood that our limited technologies which have existed for an incredibly short period of time are sufficient to pinpoint life that is widely distributed over distance and time seems very low. Life could be a relatively common occurrence in the universe, but our inability to observe it from our narrow vantage point may be a limitation we will never overcome. Thus discounting the possibilty of life existing elsewhere because we have no evidence of it seems as foolhardy as claiming we will eventually find evidence for life - we may simply never know.
I think a reasonable argument for there being life out there in the universe would be that every time we thought we were special, we have been proven to be ordinary.
Though that's not always the case. We now know that certain things close to us really ARE rare, unique or special. For instance, humanity itself is a unique mammal. Not only our intelligence, but other factors, eg bipedalism, our running endurance, our dextrous hands, our capacity to sweat, our long growth phase. Our sun, too is quite rare. It is a G-type yellow dwarf star, not very common compared to the vast majority of stars, which are M-type (red dwarfs) or K-type (orange dwarfs). And even among G-type stars, our sun is still unusual. It is unusually bright and hot for its mass compared to other G stars. Our moon, too, is unusual. For one, no other moon in the solar system formed the way it did. Our moon is also the largest proportionally to its planet, of any planet in the solar system, and plays a big role in stabilising Earth's orbit. This is again, very rare for planets anywhere. TLDR; the factors that make Earth, Earth, and us, us, are very rare in the universe, and are anything but ordinary. Many times, new discoveries have violated the Copernican principle and challenged our assumptions of mediocrity.
"we" being you and which other identifiable other? To whom has it been proven that you and whoever are ordinary?Who told you that you and whoever have ben" proven (to whom?) to be whatever you mean by ordinary, and why do you believe them? If only you had the faintest idea what you mean by prove, proof or proven,or "the universe" but you are about to demonstrate that you have not. Is there a " we"? Decartes walked into his usual bar and the barman said to him" shall you have your usual Pernod Monsieur?" Descartes replied " I think not" - and promptly disappeared. Why do you suppose whatever you mean by " the universe" to be " out there?
Might not the totality or Megalocosmos(which I grant you can only be imaginary) be what you call " life" in and of itself? I of course accept that universals can only be imaginary(or perhaps just supposed). I wonder if the bricks in a wall can sensibly suppose themselves to be the wall(or perhaps even the building of which the wall may be a part There are so many -or as many as there ae men(human beings/dreaming machines) of life, and I note that you creatures suppose yourselves yo be what you call "intelligent"(not of course, being dreaming machines) having the slightest idea what intelligence may be) Of course the bricks that constitute the parts of a building can have no idea of the building are the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle have any idea of the puzzle of which they are parts or any idea at all of jigsaw puzzle in which hey have a role or position being no more than painted pieces of card or board, or some sort of ceramic if bricks and without at least *some*some* idea of of what they are parts or pieces they can have very little-if any, idea, of what they are parts and or where they belong, if they belong at all, and of course the very idea that there is a building puzzle or greater whole can only be fanciful to put it at its most charitable. It is surely axiomatic that the fragments of a whole can know nothing or are not able to *know*being no more that fragments of some*Un*_known
Exactly that’s what I’ve been saying just because humans need a planet that is warm doesn’t mean an alien civilization could have evolved on a cold or extremely hot planet
Very very very possible if not for certain! I read a few articles that called into question, why haven’t we heard from anyone (obviously insane distances, and all that good stuff are definitely part of it)? But it focused on how we search, precisely what you just said! They are soooo stuck on water and other variables that we may have already over looked exactly what we were looking for lol.
Knowing that there is a concrete answer to that question out there is somehow terrifying to me. It’s just a matter of going out there and finding it ourselves, but it’s impossible, and probably will always be.
I would bet we are alone. The reason why is there's a distinct possibility we may be the first. And if we aren't, there's a high probability that we will never get to meet them anyway.
This is one of the rare "we-are-alone" videos on youtube where the comments are civil and thoughtful, suggesting Professor Kipping did a great job communicating this unpopular view and gently undermining the defective intuitions of people such as Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He takes an elegiac tone towards the conclusion he's driven to however, which I don't agree with. Since I always doubted the existence of aliens, I am emotionally neutral to the prospect that we may well be the only intelligent beings in the universe. Of course I believe we should continue looking and refining our instruments and so on, but we should also be contemplating the desires and anxieties that make us cling so desperately to the hope that life must exist elsewhere.
excellent post, fellow rare earther! Cool worlds in indeed one of the few places on YT that is friendly towards rare earth theory... Maybe consider watching Isaacs Great filters series too...
@@SKBottom Does our loneliness take precedence over the truth? We have been looking out at the cosmos for centuries now, and it seems fairly obvious that there are no large sectors of the universe that are artificially altered in a way that might indicate the existence of alien super-civilizations. Such evidence, if it existed, would be the most exciting and loneliness-busting discovery of all, but it does not exist (of course we must keep looking). Anything short of that does not do much to alleviate loneliness (say the detection of pond-scum on some remote planet where the vast distance along with cognitive and technological disparities pose unsurpassable barriers to communication and interaction). Robin Hanson's recent paper on "grabby aliens" concludes that humans are early arrivals in the development of the universe.
How fortunate we are never really hit me until I heard Isaac Arthur say that the sun only needed to be a few percent more massive to have become too hot too soon. That’s not even taking into account mitochondrial symbiosis, fortuitous extinctions and the questionable utility of a pre frontal cortex
So you now know how I answer the question “do you think we’re alone?” - but how about you? ;-) thanks for watching guys!
Amazing video! Please keep them coming!
Very thought provoking. Good job, thank you.
Technically, you cannot answer that question, only the person you are addressing can do that.
Also, if the universe is infinite, which it almost certainly is, then the emergence of life in an infinite number of places becomes (by extension) an absolute certainty.
I thought this video was all scientific and sht, showcasing something that is essential for life to grow and can only be happening on this planet or some sht. Not an ideology about life itself >.<
Good video tho, keep it up!
Very good video! I agree that we cannot currently know. I guess and speculate, and I think we can look at the ribosome as a key here. A very basic proto-ribosome could have formed in two ways, with protein first or RNA first. Also a mechanism of inheritance could have formed either way first too. As long as at least one can occur easily enough abiotically, and give rise to the other (these are the things we don't know, except knowing RNA can probably form proteins on its own in a purely-RNA proto-ribosome and that proteins can certainly form RNA). If and only if it requires both to be simultaneously initiated, and that that is unlikely even in a vast ocean of hot chemical soup, then life could be much rarer. The problem I see is that although we can "initiate" some very basic form of chemical self-replicator via RNA or proteins (proteins being more likely to be capable of replication especially in a bath of amino acids), for actual viable life beyond just random chemistry we require RNA, proteins and lipids to come together in a special way. That might IMO be the hardest step.
Despite that, I think that life can form relatively "easily" enough to be common. With lipids self-aggregating into capsules easily, amino acids being common in the universe and nucleic acids at least being present (haven't we detected evidence for that? Not sure) or being able to be naturally formed catalysed by volcanism or similar in a chemical soup, then life should be common. The problem i see is if amino acids and/or nucleic acids won't randomly polymerise enough abiotically. That woukd be a big problem.
RNA is what really needs to form for life to begin IMO (I am no expert! And have little evidence). RNA can both code information like its stable cousin DNA can, but it can also fold into complex shapes and thus perform as a controlled repeatable catalyst for chemical reactions - like proteins. It can then form structures to replicate itself, and that is all that is needed (though it needs to happen 'en masse') for Darwinian evolution to begin. It can then later start catalysing the polymerisation of amino acids into proteins, and then those proteins can later start catalysing the copying of RNA into DNA. RNA is very much a poorer version of proteins and DNA.
But we look at life from a very DNA-oriented perspective. I studied mechanisms in yeast by which proteins themselves carry inheritance and participate in evolution - unique prion-like proteins that can do some special things similar to RNA. This appears rare in nature, but it exists and happens. What if proteins like these (which are capable of converting other similar proteins into copies of themselves and aggregating into complexes, which can do stuff such as catalysing reactions) came first, and quickly gained the ability to produce RNA. We lost most of these Darwinian proteins over the aeons as they would be very poor in comparison to RNA, the RNA life they could have created would quickly overtake them. If amino acids, but not nucleic acids, are present in abiotic conditions throughout the universe, and polymerisation of amino acids can occur via common but abiotic means, then this protein-first start to life could be far more feasible than RNA first and solve the problem of either naturally-occuring nucleic acids or natural mechanisms to polymerise them, needed to form sufficiently long chains of RNA, being very rare or unlikely to be produced randomly. Excuse that awfully written sentence.
If you’re right and we’re the only ones out there, it makes it all the more tragic with what we do to each other.
INDEED, MR. FOLEY..
foley15136 Yeah! Because if there were others out there we could be doing it to them or vice versa.
Woyam Chny
It was more of a commentary on the idea that if there’s only 7 billion intelligent beings currently alive in this universe, we’re even more rare and precious. If that were so, it makes it extremely sad. To us, 7 billion sounds like a lot, but on a universal scale, it’s almost nothing.
True, we need to take care of one another and move forward into the universe.
Yep. It would mean life is extremely delicate. We could ultimately be the reason life ends in the entire universe lol.
But I dont believe we're alone in the universe. Just because we dont see it doesnt mean it's not there. We dont even know that life doesnt exist in our own solar system (outside Earth, I mean). We dont know that at some point in the past that life didnt exist elsewhere in the Solar System. To find evidence of life, we'd have to be looking in the exact right place at the exact right time. I also doubt that intelligent life would be so careless as to shoot radio signals off into the universe like we do. History has shown that lifeforms finding other lifeforms when they migrate doesnt fair well for the less advanced lifeforms. Native Americans are prime examples of that.
At least it would explain why Earth keeps winning Miss Universe every year
😂😂😂😂
That is so awesome!
😀😀😀 best comment of Internet 😀
Depends who you ask, once we agree that a miss is the best on the planet, it's safe to say that she's the prettiest in 'our' universe since beauty is in the eye of the human beholder. I'm sure every alien being that has beauty contests feels the same way as it's very difficult to think of a sexier lifeform than the ones that have evolved attributes to make us want to reproduce with them. We could never truly judge an unbiased interplanetary miss universe unless we judged our local lifeforms and then asked God to pick the winner...I think God is smart enough to not tell any single female lifeform that she is prettier than the other finalists. 🤪🤣🙏
Umm...Excuse me, did you just ASSUME the Earth's gender?
I just wanted to say thank you for inspiring my father. Hes 65 and has always love space and science ever since I was alive-he actually told me to watch this, said it was his "favorite yt video". It helped breathe new life into him. He said "the last part is my favorite. I watch it all the time."-
He has been struggling with addiction for the past few years since my grandparents passed away and he had to retire from a back injury on the job.; but your last sentiment "that makes us special and incredibly rare like diamonds." It really touched his heart.
Thank you so much for helping give my father new life
Agree this channel is really inspiring and uplifting! It really does breathe new life into me as well
Man yearns for everlasting life because man is made in the image of God. There's the natural and the Spiritual so life does exist .
A single candle holding back the darkness.
OK, you make me laugh, and cry, and want to hug you, all at the same time. But here's the deal. I'm 70, and frankly you sound like me.
@@GBNationalist There is exactly ZERO way to know for sure whether you are right or whether the person you are responding to is right. Which makes you as big a fool as what you accuse them of.
I've always said this, that there doesn't necessarily have to be other life out there. I actually like that we might be unique, whereas others seem to be the other way out and want nothing more than other life out there.
I love how he was able to take the sadness of possibly being absolutley alone in the universe and turn it into romanticism and a perspective of profound beauty.
Always well spoken!
no one really knows to be honest
Hey, I just say "More for US!"
It only takes 10,000 years to colonize the entire universe, plus travel-time.
@@SovereignStatesman Exactly! If there are other civilizations out also colinizing the universe that would just mean more compitition for us also trying to expand. If there was no life thay wouln no compitition and we could exand and colinize freely with the universe. If there was no life one possibility is that we could just stay hers on tnis planet or solar system and let the rest of universe die. If there was other life and we just stayed here would be just letting them take all that space for them selves! If you did leave to colinize other planets and star and maybe eventualy galexys and there is onther life out there, there would probobly be some compitition or war I mean unless you make some sort of treaty or get endorsed or somthing.
People see what they want to see.
Indeed!
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke
The hell that´s right
...and what if we are in some extremely complex simulated reality ? oops, a third possibility has entered the chat.
@@Gizziiusa , only 2 possibilities exist , if we are simulated it means we exists and so does someone else , so it pretty much is the second possibility that we are indeed not alone.
If we are alone we can own it all. That’s cool not really scary. We can do whatever we want and control the life we put out there.
I’m just trying to be optimistic I guess.
@@subspace666 granted, your point is valid. I didnt elaborate with the possibility/probability of a intelligently designed "reality construct" wherein with our limited ability of perception (3 dimensional reality with time), we will never really know if we are alone or not. thus, this third option is still on the table, the third option of "never knowing". aka neither A or B.
In my childhood, the very thought that "we are not alone" used to give me goosebumps. Now as an adult, the very thought that "we are alone" gives me more goosebumps....
@Nick Miller who asked nigga
@@JJBenavidez Who is this Nigga you speak of? I've never heard of him. Does he usually know these types of questions?
@@mikeytodd7 bruh
@@JJBenavidez hey it's the nigga guy
@@mikeytodd7 im dead ahaahahahahahha
Even if there is other life, the distance makes all of it effectively isolated.
Which is unfortunate. As the universe continues to expand, any civilization will become completely isolated.
@David Lucey yes but what if you could bend space time to your will? Given enough energy the laws of physics allow for the creation of a wormhole. A super advanced species might be able to pull that off and would thus be able to visit other areas of the universe that would otherwise be impossible. Also... you have to consider that a super advanced species might not even be 100 percent biological anymore out of shear necessity to adapt to the elements of space and foreign worlds and would be able to live for thousands maybe even millions of years therefore distances wouldn’t even matter. Or both.... 🤔🤭
@@all0utmetal735 interesting tell me more
Well they found the way to us still after the Pentagon officially confirmed the existence of UFOs and they have no idea what’s going on. Apparently even the US Senate wants to investigate this further… th-cam.com/video/ZBtMbBPzqHY/w-d-xo.html
@@doesnotexist305 Yess but is a paradigm rather than crude reality when science of 👽 have already Tahionic speed spacetime traveling.
"I don't know" is the beginning of wisdom. A brilliant presentation. Thank you.
The smartest person or people are/is the one who knows they know nothing
@@Mikey-ym6ok Dunning Kruger syndrome
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
@@zimbabwe_twinnedwithanfield Curious as to why the Lord should be feared?
@@chadwomack919 For wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her. I, possess knowledge and discretion; wisdom dwell together with prudence. To fear the Lord is to hate evil. I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. Counsel and sound judgement are mine; I have understanding and power. By me kings reign and rulers make laws that are just: by me princes govern and all nobles who rule on earth.”
These things stand out clearly here:
• Wisdom is to depart from evil: “I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.”
• Wisdom is greater than rubies which is money
• Wisdom is knowledge, discernment, power, sound judgement, understanding and discretion.
• Wisdom is to listen to God’s word.
Ironically, one of the things that makes me respect a scientist is when he says :
_I don't know !
"I don't know" is the starting point of all science . Pretending to know everything the basis of all religion .
@Zurround100: The great thing about actual scientists is that they have to publish results to get noticed. They have to defend their theses, or the models they create via peer review. The geologist who first theorized plate tectonics was laughed to scorn. Time has a way of correcting or at least adjusting false theories.
@@WyreForestBiker: "I don't know" is the starting point of all science." I disagree, the starting point of science is "WHY"
@@wittwittwer1043 I framed my response in reaction to the original posting. Asking "why" infers that you don't know in any case.
Even more important is that, when new evidence comes in, scientists are willing to update their position to reflect the new data :)
Such a intriguing & profound video that gives one a lot to think about. I appreciated the part saying it’s ok to admit when we don’t know something.
I’ve always thought given the # of galaxies, stars etc life is likely elsewhere, however recently I’ve been much more conscience & appreciate what life had to go through to be here today & it’s simply remarkable. One of the best quotes all time “either we are alone in the universe or we aren’t, either answer is terrifying”
Man... as a 29 year old that's been walking a pretty lame existence for the past 8 years, this brought me to tears at the end. I spend so much time hating my life and hoping that something brings an end to it because I don't have the bottle to do it myself, but the ending of this video just brought me out of that temporarily, to the point that I had tears streaming down my face. If we're truly all there is, there's not a single monetary value you could place on what we're going through. If you could sell your "existence" (the existence which I hate so much a lot of the time, that I complain about, and feel excited to be over with) there is not an amount high enough that would put a fair value on it. If we're truly alone, it's the most valuable thing in the entire universe. I guess I mean, if there were ever electronic-non-physical beings that knew we existed, and could some how buy our existence to try it for themselves, to see how it truly feels to walk on a planet in a real human body, there is no amount that could buy it.
Crazy thought, and it's definitely shifted my view on things. Man I hope I start feeling like life is worth sticking out. I know life's a beautiful thing, I just can't bring myself to open my eyes and see it recently.
@@SuperYtc1 I agree. Although I'd argue that beauty is in the "eye of the beholder" as they say, and although I struggle to see it sometimes, other times I absolutely love life, but you're right.
Right, this just makes me appreciate life more.
@Uranus you seem like fun guy to party with.
@Pedro Ortega Everyone has a place in this world, I am sure there is a woman somewhere that would love you for who you are. "Good genes" are just an arbitrary value we made as a society. What is beautiful about humans is the diversity, everyone is unique and that makes us special for someone. That was also the point of the video, if we are trully alone in the universe, every single person is worth so much and you are one of those person. You deserve as much as anyone else. I hope you can find a way to love yourself :)
@Pedro Ortega There's always a path to redemption :). It's your choice to follow it or not, don't give up on yourself.
If we really are are alone just think how lucky we are to be alive.
Even if we’re not alone, we are still incredibly lucky to exist. Incredibly lucky!
Not currently with the MAGA nuts.
The FPV Life I wish I could argue with that! 😃
@@thefpvlife7785 don't like it then leave.
Luck don't exist
This 25 minute video taught me more about respecting other people on this planet than 30 years of living here. Thank you! That was brilliant.
well that's the if scenario, if we are really alone then yes
Respecting all life.
Being born out of extremely low chance is not a reason to be respected.
@John Grygus No. That's called a FAIRY TALE.
@John Grygus No, moron. Even if I did believe that, adding a god to that theory would recreate the exact same problem. It would only add an extra unnecessary step and would solve nothing. Believing in god is shallow thinking for simpletons.
Everything changes states but nothing is created nor destroyed. I don't think there even is such a thing as a "void". What you think of as a void is just non-oscillating quantum fields. And why would you assume that nothingness is more probable than the existence of matter?
If we really are that special, it makes it so much more tragic and sadder how we are destroying ourselves and other lifeforms currently around.
Why? We’re currently in the most peaceful era in human history
@@cesarrobledo2583even better, we are the most peaceful planet with life that we know of in the universe.
@@cesarrobledo2583 lol you dumb pissbrain we are destroying the planet hahahaha not by wars LOL dont reproduce
@@justinmiller947granted, but there might be just the slightest bit of bias in that sentiment
@cesarrobledo2583 yeah, but for most of that peace period, from the end of WW2, we've developed swathes of WMD that, if misused, could threaten human existence. Best case scenario, devolved society. Worst case scenario, slow and painful extinction due to mass famine, disease and radiation.
One of the most profound videos on this platform.
Wow, you are one of the rare speaker on TH-cam to speak slowly. But I watch all the video. You are the proof that it is possible to do more slow pace video!
IT DOES TAKE AWAY THE FEELING OF BEING STEAM ROLLED ON A GIVEN TOPIC..
That's why I watch the video at 1.45 speed.
@@martinkunev9911 poor thing..
Which is why I think what you're doing with your staff is precisely what you should be doing. Youre teaching the general public of exactly what you're supposed to be doing! Kudos to you and your team. Keep keeping it simple so all understand the big picture. Diamonds of the Universe!
Rock Onward
The way you narrate is perfect. You don't draw conclusions but instead let the viewer reach their own decisions with the info you give
I've watched probably tens of thousands of videos in youtube, and this is in the top1% of it. the ending statement is just marvelous.
18:49
"I can live with doubt.....and uncertainty.....and not knowing. I find it more interesting to live not knowing than have answers that might be wrong"
-Richard Feynman
Imo, probably the greatest lesson that nearly no one wants to learn, let alone take the time to make it a part of their everyday life. Because I think most people find it too scary to be humble.
it takes an idiot to think doubt is good. knowledge transcends everything. Ive spoken to aliens face to face I don't have to dumb down and live like a retard. Ive learned the secret to reality and mind. Mind is the final frontier not space
then you richard feynman have a small mind!
@@VG-rj8pn Sorry you feel this way.
@@-A-c you need to be sorry YOU FEEL this way. You are the one who will suffer due to the wrong state of mind.
@@-A-c and its not how I feel its how it is.
The reason I love your videos isnt because they are so wonderfully informational or well put together, they are, but it's not that at all. It is simply this, ALL your videos ALWAYS sparks my imagination and THAT is what makes them so wonderful! Thank you!
The last few minutes of the presentation touched me to my very most deepest core and humbled my perception of what my life is currently and what surrounds me daily.Truly makes me think that we should all find it in our human hearts and minds to respect and love one another unconditionally for as long as we have a breath in our bodies.We right here and right now are truly a living miracle.
Outstanding Cruise I couldn't have said it better myself this video was deep
Seek you Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! You will never feel alone again God Bless.
Outstanding Cruise, yes assuming we are alone. This video hit me too bro.
I think this was the most profound, most honest, and most beautiful video I've ever seen on this topic.
I agree. The more I, as an armchair layperson scientist; learn about fields like Astrobiology, the more I'm drawn to questions being answered essentially with more questions. Of course, I'm fully comfortable with "I don't know" and I think it's the most *correct* possible answer any of us can have at this point in time.
Of course, I'd love for humanity to address the question of just how likely Abiogenesis is. I'd do a lot to try and get that central question answered. Having a sample size of 1 is wonderful - so much better than no sample at all, but man it can be infuriating as well!
@@DanielVerberne its an absurd argument that earth is the only planet with life. You dont have to be a scientist to see that
I've never been instilled with existential dread in such a beautifully eloquent way.
Do not fear. You will live until you die and most of the people on this world and all of the people on other worlds will not know of your existence.
@@normjohn217 Like so many millions, or billions of trees or trillions of plankton that live and die, and nobody notice any particular one of them fall or die or ever be alive in the first place.
Beat me to this comment.
By 5 months.
Every time I watch this video, I feel a certain way that I can't quite describe. I don't know if it's sadness, wonderment, fear, loneliness, or simply a longing for answers. Regardless, I keep coming back to experience it again.
Watched it 5 or6 times in the past couple of years. Will probably watch it 5 or 6 times in the next couple of years. Just can’t put it down……
Your Feelings of sadness and loneliness comes from not knowing God...?
Your wonderment is knowing that there is indeed a Devine plan in the creation of the universe and Life on Earth and your feelings of fear is the acknowledgement of God and the true reality of your existence this understanding would have in your daily life...?
Possibly?
this is exactly what happens to me
The feeling is existentialism. Welcome to the club
Yep.
If we’re alone in the universe, that’s one extremely big waste of space.
Inside the Casino
There are enough life forms here on earth, yet humans cannot live in peace among them. Why look for life elsewhere in the universe...start a war over there too?
@@truthseeker3857 for us humans, exploration comes before peace
Dipanjan Ghosal
That’s like putting the cart ahead of the horse. 👌
@@truthseeker3857 its true that discovering something has risks associated with it.
However risks have never stopped us from discovering. Its our nature. Its how we progressed.
An alien contact is risky, but we humans will pursue it regardless.
This is why we have progressed so far.
We are the only ones , If there ARE others it is because God created them also , not because there are so many planets, That there just has to be others ! the only proff is ourselves , our awareness of ourselves is a special abilty that God gave us ,that no other creature developed or needed !!
I like this theory. I've always thought we are alone. It shouldn't be scary. It's amazing and it should make you feel more special and therefore appreciate life more.
yes! completely alone! even simple life form doesnt exist! not in this universe! maybe in another universe!
But unfortunately the democrats ruin the special nature of us. Bunch of dirtt bbags
@@M4R10_ thats hard to say until we send mission to each planet in our solar system its bad idea.
Nope sorry. I don't care how any smarter person than me tries to make it sound. If we are alone for the size of the universe then we are in an experiment. Some form of captivity and what we see as the universe might be a type of gel holding us in our fish tank. For reason I cannot fathom.
I see no reason to believe we're alone. We might be aline but there's no way to know either way.
Lost in the dark, a singular candle holding back the empty void of thoughtlessness, what a responsibility it is then, to be... alive.
lol for someone that doesn't like enormous responsibility that would be like a brink in the face lol
I'm gonna steal that quote.
Lovely quote, a true testament to the human ability to state the obvious, however, those words are vain. We are not alone, we have never been alone. The question is not who they are and where they come from, but why.
To be honest there almost no chance we are alone, the argument that we are lucky that we survived through so many disastrous events only points towards that its not that hard for life to evolve! If you look at thousands of different species that live today on our planet and someone tells you that 99% of species that were alive on planet earth are extinct I would think that its impossible (if planet earth itself wont collapse) for living organism to go extinct! So being able to survive through 5 mass extinctions seems to point out to that its nearly impossible to go extinct once life started! Also if from simple bacteria evolved millions of animal, fish species then it seems in the Universe should be the same, from star dust there must evolve life and it must evolve everywhere! So it seems based on evolution on earth and based on how hard for living organism to die out and how easy through time for it to multiply and evolve (from small rat mammal to lions, monkeys, humans, zebras, elephants, giraffes....), Life in the Universe should and it did (from big bang to stars to galaxies to planets to life) to evolve in big abundance and variety!
@@PowerMixxes Surviving disaster is great but that has nothing to do with how likely or often life gets started.
This was such a fantastic take, David. The end even moved me to tears. It's happy to see that I am not "alone" in having this point of view within science. But this is the most elegant elucidation I've seen on the topic.
“Elucidation”…….there’s a word you don’t hear every day.
Agreed best video I have seen on the subject.
And how will the Webb telescope will change this if at all, will it find oxygen, chlorocarbons and oxides of nitrogen on any other planets indicating an artificial origin?
Your way of presenting ideas is so non invasive and neutral that I instantly like the video and subscribed. You give room and food for thought and I just love your approach on these subjects
From another commenter, I picked up the scary thought that sometimes , some of us, can feel alone even here on Earth, and now we contemplate being further alone in the universe, by god, that is a heck of a lot of loneliness! The other sad thought, is, and i agree with the video, we are truly rare , truly diamonds in the universe, yet as we sit here and watch this video, humans are actively working to destroy life on Earth and even to destroy themselves into extinction. This is very sad, but very true.
"How rare and beautiful it truly is to even exist" - Sleeping at Last
This totally gave me shivers all over the body. Especially the part when you said: "..the only intellectual answer to this question is: I don't know". The ending with the Hans Zimmer's soundtrack from the "Interstellar" - purely amazing. Music that is slowly ascending to the dynamic culmination so that it would instantly descend to the quietness can be metaphor for the whole subject of us being one special *diamond* - as you said. Thank you for the amazing content!
Upravo tako. Svaka mu cast.
He's exactly right.
Emerging scientific data in the journals agrees that life is rare. The increasing habitable zones means that less then 1% of the planets in each galaxy being unsuitable for life.
Known Current Habitable zones as of 2017:
- Water habitable zone
- Ultraviolet/Radiation habitable zone
- Photosynthetic habitable zone
- Ozone habitable zone
- Planetary rotation rate habitable zone
- Planetary obliquity habitable zone
- Tidal habitable zone
- Astrosphere habitable zone
- Electric wind habitable zone
For host stars with an effective temperature more than 7,100 K (7,100 °C above absolute zero) or less than 4,600 K, even for just microbes, a team of four Chinese astronomers showed that the liquid water and ultraviolet habitable zones will not overlap. This may seem like a fairly wide effective temperature range, but it is narrow enough to eliminate all but 3 percent of the Milky Way Galaxy’s stars.
Japanese astronomers Midori Oishi and Hideyuki Kamaya established that the zone of overlap is even narrower including the metallicity requirements of the Host star, this leaves less than 1 percent of our galaxy stars as candidates for bacterial life. Advanced life has even more stringent requirements.
Scientific Articles:
- Jianpo Guo et al., “Probability Distribution of Terrestrial Planets in Habitable Zones Around Host Stars,” Astrophysics and Space Science 323 (October 2009): 367-73
- Rory Barnes et al., "Tidal Limits to Planetary Habitability," Astrophysical Journal Letters 700 (July 20, 2009): L30-L33
- David S. Smith and John M. Scalo, “Habitable Zones Exposed: Astrosphere Collapse Frequency as a Function of Stellar Mass,” Astrobiology 9 (September 2009): 673-81
- Midori Oishi and Hideyuki Kamaya, “A Simple Evolutionary Model of the UV Habitable Zone and the Possibility of Persistent Life Existence: The Effects of Mass and Metallicity,” Astrophysical Journal 833 (December 2016): id. 293, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/833/2/293
- Glyn Collinson et al., “The Electric Wind of Venus: A Global and Persistent ‘Polar Wind’-Like Ambipolar Electric Field Sufficient for the Direct Escape of Heavy Ionospheric Ions: Venus Has Potential,” Geophysical Research Letters (June 2016): doi:10.1002/2016GL068327
- Glyn Collinson et al., “Electric Mars: The First Direct Measurement of an Upper Limit for the Martian ‘Polar Wind’ Electric Potential,” Geophysical Research Letters 42 (November 2015): 9128-34, doi:10.1002/2015GL065084
- adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-ref_query?bibcode=2003ARA%26A..41..429K&refs=CITATIONS&db_key=AST
I don't know of the gaps
unbelievably brilliant analysis...should be mandatory viewing in every school on the planet. I have just discovered your channel and you guys are truly the diamonds holding up a candle to a world full of doubt
David T62, or every school in the universe. 😜
It is good to read comments from someone who actually watched the entire video. Your sentiments mirror my own.
Should be put out on public TV at least once a year perhaps on christmas day
David T62, doubt and ignorance - and much of it willful and determined.
David is so good at getting points across. No matter what the subject matter, I think he could put the proper words together to hold our attention. If he were a psychologist, he could probably offer unique insights in the same way he does the universe and help a lot of people.
The most beautiful conclusion to any science video , lecture , paper or text book I have ever experienced. And I am 63 years old Thank You Professor David Kipping .
If that is so, I highly recommend you to read the book "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe" by Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee". It is one of the best books I have ever read.
@@NomenNominandum Thank you Nomen. I will look this book up.
Yes, in this video, Dr. Kipping neatly encapsulates and articulates my worldview. The conclusion elaborates a philosophy of existence I find compelling and breathtakingly beautiful.
@@RodrigoTechador Indeed. Me too
And the background music really made it extra special. It's from one of the best movies ever !!!
I believe there is life out there, but my real question is why does the universe exist at all, and how
This is also a question that fascinates me
...and not to forget another haunting question: why is it of all things me, who can think about it. In other words: why am I Me and not someone else???
@@kloboklonz9589 I think consciousness and sense of self is universal. Just like with our appearance, tastes, traits, features - condense it all down, and it's really all the same, save for some subtle differences. The differences all add up of course... but really, I think nature cheats - individuality is just another magic trick. We all have subjective experiences, but those experiences are all incredibly normalised - to another intelligence, we might not even appear sentient.
Now that's a deep question and a brilliant one. Why how when what for.
@@kloboklonz9589 It's not you, it's us. Imagine being born and growing up in an empty tube. When you turn 20 the only think you would think is the dark tube and nothing else. It would be you and the mighty tube then. Humans evolve collectively.
I love how you say we should not be afraid to be honest. "I Don't Know" perfect way to answer such questions.
Do not propose that "I don't know" is a valid answer about the mystery of life to any religious person. Such people go to a lot of trouble persuading themselves that they do know, and rely on constant affirmation from fellow believers. Faith is the capacity to believe something that is not true but must be true because it supports a person's world view. And that is why religious people put so much emphasis on having faith. If something was obviously true -- for instance, that we are born and eventually die -- not a shred of faith would be required to believe it. On the other hand, believing there is life after death requires a huge amount of faith -- often backed up by some hefty tome of dogma describing supernatural beings who create us in their image, or similar nonsense.
Fascinating talk. It's refereshing to hear the subject of one of humanity's most compelling questions being discussed so rationally and so intellectually. Whatever the answer, it does indeed have profound implications for our species. I just hope we do find the answer some day, though I'm not certain we ever will, and that prospect is somewhat depressing. But that's exactly why we must keep looking. Our pursuit of the answer may yet also reveal the answer to that other compelling question humanity has been asking itself since we first gazed up at the stars..."Why am I here?"
Gotta admit that even tho I am a firm believer that life exists elsewhere, this is such a brilliantly made video accompanied by your soothing voice and hard facts. Absolutely amazing!!
I don't agree. All the statistical analysis seems to leave out the immense time and space involved. The little experiment with electricity and amino acids didn't result in life within days, but the Earth had billions of years as well as an entire planet. It's failure really doesn't tell us anything. Give everyone billions of years to pick the locks, and you'll get a lot more open doors.
@Oni 100% agree the odds are just so insane that it would be crazy not to think this has happened before else where
My best guess is it is somewhere between the "crowded universe" and us being totally alone. It's extremely rare, but not so rare that we are literally the only ones. And the universe is also very big, the raw amount of empty space is much greater than the number of potential words. If other civilisations are so far away from us that we will never come into contact with them or find evidence of them, we might as well be alone. The most boring and realistic answer to this question is probably "it doesn't matter because we will never encounter it either way".
@@jrpipik did you not watch the video? The immense time and space is irrelevant. That is the whole point. Yes, that experiment tells us nothing, but no experiment ever conducted gives us any idea how rare life is. Your assumption on more locks being picked if you give them billions of years ignores the possibility that the difficulty of picking the lock could be scaled up billions of times(thus the probability would be the same). It is simply an incomplete equation. We cannot comprehend how immense the universe is(infinite?), could it be that we cannot comprehend how rare intelligent life is? (infinitely rare?). Believing there has to be life elsewhere is no different than believing there has to be a God. (By the way, I have no problem with "believing" either, you just can't use science or statistics to back the belief of either one)
This is the best analysis I've seen on this question. Very well done.
This kind of video makes me proud of being a human
@@erikincph Yes, this is very well-done. He changed my view on life in the universe. And, sadly, I hate him for it. GRIN ...
He is absolutely BRILLIANT
Maybe life is just a fluke... as stated on this video...
and even if there is life out there in the universe... it may just be unicelullar life. It took billions of years for life to evolve from unicelludar to multicellular, it may had just been a fluke...
and then to evolve for multicelluar life to inteligent multicelular life... may be even another fluke.
Occam's razor... at the lack of evidence of life outside of our planet, the most simples answer is there is no life outside of this planet.
Well, not really. This whole video is trying to assess the probability of abiogenesis. He spends 25 minutes telling us: we don't know. We just need more data and to explore other places to find out. Brilliant, can you give me the 25 minutes back?
For a more useful analysis, I suggest to check out Jeremy England.
You are such an easy voice to listen to. I'm a new sub, but I've watched most of them. Keep em coming.
This is one of the best videos on You tube, so interesting and thought provoking. You can watch it over and over, awesome stuff.😊
I really enjoyed your video, at the end it reminds me of a quote from Saint Augustine "Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the long courses of the rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the circular motion of the stars, but they pass by themselves and they dont even notice"
This is one of the best TH-cam video I have seen.
Sir I applaud you and this video. It's one of my favorite videos I've watched on TH-cam. Love the passion you have for this it really just draws you in. Thank you for your work and time
I am upset that this doesn't appear to be in podcast form anywhere I have looked. C'mon guys, this would be a stellar podcast.
"I am apparently known for only one quote." -Arthur C. Clarke
He is known for many.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 lol he said that because in every vid like this one there is 100% chance to find the exact same quote.
LMAO 😂
Feels like it - based upon the repetition rate of the most prolific peppered all over internet comments sections.
“And it isn’t even that one.” - Isaac Asimov
Can we just take a second to appreciate how beautiful of a soul this man has? To merge art, poetry and science into such a balanced video is really difficult. This man feels for this race in a way that all of us should.
yes. and to have an appreciation of such a man needs to be compassionate about all these. cheers to you too Man. Bless you.
I absolutely agree, Andras. I’ve noticed that even the comments are gently progressive and humbly intelligent. Unlike the depressing juvenalia and vulgarity TH-cam often presents, and provokes.
I feel like he’s about to demonstrate a dyson vacuum.
@@prototropo 'Progressive' can mean regressive, and it very much depends on what one is talking about. 'Progressive' is politics on earthly affairs is a deadly characteristic.
Just beautifully presented, soothing voice, and I have to say these videos are just so well written. The ending monologue said much more than 'we might very well be alone', it celebrated the possibility that each and every human is very rare and very special - which consequently makes our duty to look after this very special planet so vital.
The most beautiful part of the idea that we're alone, and that each of us is the result of impossible odds and precious, is that whether or not that's true, we should still treat each other that way. Thank you for this, it's lovely to listen to and very encouraging and inspiring.
Well said!
@@MaloPiloto Thank you 🙏💜
This video has once again instilled in my subconscuosness, the fact that I should see the person next to me as a special, rare breed in this lonely planet who deserves my respect.
The algorithm has done it again. Absolutely amazing, thought provoking, content! Glad to have found your channel.
The diamond of the universe ending gave me chills, tears and a large smile at the same time! Thank you! Fk me that was deep
Me too
There is something in that statement that deeply resonates with me too. Although diamonds are quite common in the universe, but that's beside the point.
We may not be the diamonds, but the blemish of the universe.
Amazing video! Finally some sense concerning extraterrestial life, rather than the ignorant/ unrealistic broken record that we always hear from 'experts'. Thank you!
This must be the best video on TH-cam out of..."billions and billions and billions" of videos!
Fantastic! Simply and honestly stating what the data says, keeping opinions, feelings and theories to a minimum.
THANK YOU!
Yes better than reading my astronomy book from year one good stuff
Gary Anderson II Yesss is Good done.
Imagine the billions of years of evolution and it took us humans less than 2000 years to be technologically advanced. We became intelligent and curious of other intelligent lifeforms AFTER billions of years of evolution. So my point is, I think every habitable planet has their own specific evolution timer of its lifeforms. As an example, maybe our closest habitable planet currently has lifeforms that is equivalent to 500 million years ago on Earth. So we don't see intelligent lifeforms now since they're in their prehistoric period. Maybe we'll go extinct 50,000 years later and 500 million years later, those lifeforms are celebrating their first space flight to their moon and wondering if they are alone. In conclusion, the odds of two intelligent lifeforms being within close proximity and within the same narrow evolution window is astronomically low.
By this logic you'd then also expect your other neighbor to be form of life 500 million years more advanced than you.
At least use proper terminology. Abiogenesis NOT evolution
@@ungmd21 Abiogenesis is and always will be an unproven theory. To say Life was started by non-life is as crazy a theory as we were created by a divine being.
@@PaulRobert474 abiogenesis is not a theory but a descriptive term. Evolution IS a theory
@@ungmd21 Evolution is fact. Species evolve every day. Offspring are more adapted every time. Look at every mammal in the Ocean and how they changed from living on the land. They are evolved from the land, other than fish such as sharks. There's so many proof in bonestructures that you cannot say that it is a theory.
One of the best youtube vids I’ve ever seen, so well done, the points made are so thought provoking
Yes, bright guy.
I sure agree with you! He’s very impressive.
My confusion and curiosity lies in the fact there are likely many other sentient civilizations out there BUT we're still seeing their universes as they were dozens of millions of years ago and thus we can't see them and they can't see us...yet
more likely worlds that are nothing more than primitive single cell organisms
"We" being you and which specific identifiable interlocutor?
Is there a "we"?
I appreciate that you have no idea but the fcuk is "a sentient civilisation"? what is the magic in " civilisation" which only means living in cities(or in reality you are not sure what it means nor what you seek to convey when you use the word) which is derived from civis - a citizen or one who lives in a city or large enclave)
Alone or not, unique we are at least. Let's take care of each other and this awesome planet.
Amen brotha
Unique? You sure?
The inhabitants of the earth have only been able to send radio and TV signals out into Space for about 75 years out of our long history,so the chances of another civilisation being at the stage of being able to communicate across the vastness of the Galaxy alone is not very great,If they can launch a small probe to the nearest star,Alpha Centauri,,which could travel at one tenth the speed of light,it would take 40 years to get there ,and another 40 years to beam the information back to Earth.
"They" have had 80years to receive our signals and send back a reply.The silence is deafening! Nothing has been received
Does that include Hitler or people like him?
WE ARE NOT!
Superbly done. I've read and listened to nearly every argument and sets of scientific analysis that exist to date and I find that this discussion is the best and most intelligently presented of all. "We do not know." Good enough for me.
the road to wisdom begins at the first uttering of "I dont know".
@@benedictdonald4338 I think therefore I am biased.
Breathtakingly Frightening. You deserve a big recognition!
I don't find being alone in the universe frightening. What really awes me is thinking that only single cell life lived for 3 billion years, then multi-cellular life. To think of all the life that had to survive through, natural disasters, mass extinctions, being eaten, diseases, famine, changes in climate, geological changes, growing old enough to reproduce, etc.. All the animals there were before the form we are today, over millions of years. All those humans that survived, natural disasters, climate changes, diseases, famine, wars, murder and grew old enough to reproduce, etc.. All those things that life had to survived just so we can be here watching this excellent video. The thought that we're here at all, and with a complex thinking brain, awes me.
I cant believe you're not at +1m subscribers yet dude. This content is gold
23:33 “What a responsibility it is then to be alive.” Best thing I’ve heard all day
Brilliantly presented Prof. Kipping. Thank you. One of my favorite quotes from Carl Sagan's 1980 book Cosmos is: 'We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself'.
Your word for God is cosmos.
_ One possible understanding is that "we", but actually "I AM" the Cosmos.
We are still relatively young as a species, I think eventually we will learn to cherish each other, once we can better comprehend how rare life is.
nah we'll all be dead and extinct well before that occurs
Relative to what?
If we make it that far, let's hope we are smart enough to save ourselves, our politicians certainly are not at the moment.
We don't have to wait to do that.
spencerr2323 I doubt it
Every thought a science video would bring tears streaming down my face. Wow.
"I don't know". After watching this video I have never felt more comfortable thinking that. Brilliant
Just don't go into an exam with that mindset :)
Life has to start somewhere, there has to be a "first time". I think it would be really cool if we were in fact the first!
But it would also be really cool if we're not
@@sakesithole6295 Yes some species which could answer Why or How everything started which I think our species would take very very long time or never cause the Question is not for us to answer I suppose.
I imagine every civilization out there is saying the same thing, we're the only ones in the universe, and every single one is wrong.
Highly doubtful. Are we talking intelligent life or life in general? I think that’s when people get confused.
I think intelligent life is extremely common, just because we can't prove it yet, it doesn't mean we are special and unique. Mathematically is just impossible, we have gazillion planets and we're supposed to be the only ones or first ones lmao don't be so naive people. Life doesn't start out of nothingness like scientists been telling us, we're the seed of much intelligent life. Every single DNA on Earth wasn't born out of nothing, someone put us here. (And no, not an imaginary god).
It's not often you watch a video that completely opens your eyes to another possibility. Fantastic Video.
God made Adam
sigh...all this video said was 'we don't know', while logic dictates (considering how unimaginably numerous planets are in the universe, and the unimaginably numerous environments on said planets, and that we know it happened at least once) the chances that life doesn't happen elsewhere are damn near impossible.
I mean, we've created amino acids in an early Earth environment, and like the narrator said "maybe we haven't run these experiments long enough" (especially when the Earth is 4 BILLION years old) is a very likely scenario.
Even if life only happens on one in a billion planets, that still means there's trillions of planets with life out there.
This 20 min video could be summed up in 10 seconds 'numbers suggest it's probable, but we don't actually know if life exists elsewhere'...a waste of my time.
@@RP_Williams "a waste of my time" if that's the case why comment ? The guy said he enjoyed the video.
@@justanotherdrunk
Don't start with all that!
@@milesstyles7428 Because I was disputing it was "fantastic"...are you new to YT comments or something? It's not all kumbaya, newb.
Bottom line is - It’s all speculation.
Until we find life anywhere else, we cannot draw any conclusions.
And currently, and for the foreseeable future, we will not be able to properly examine even a minuscule part of the universe ... even a minuscule part of our own galaxy.
there is nothing to examine, everything we see is so far in the past. closest galaxy we see it as it was over 2 milion years ago. we are out of our depth here.
The next generation of a space telescope is going into space soon. It could very well give us photos of several identified Earth-Like
worlds (size, mass, location in life zone around parent star) and analyze their surface temperatures and compositions of their atmospheres.
We could likely identify if they have plant life.
I’ve loved astronomy since I was a kid. It’s the only thing that keeps my attention and focus and I find everything about it fascinating. I’m so glad I found this channel. Keep up the great work and thanks for making me feel infinitely tiny and infinitely special at the same time
Yes yes, we are alone. Space is lonely and filled with radiation. Its impossible to travel between stars and preserve life. This we have always known.
@@mbukukanyau I disagree
@@derangedking117 Where is everyone? The Aliens? Not even old Radio signals from past civilizations have ever been detected. The Truth is, its nothing but fresh eating radio activity from pulsars out there. The Standard Model of particle physics shows how impossible it is to understand the basic foundations of the universe so that we can traverse it in any reasonable time. The more we know, the more we don't. Meaning, even if there were to be aliens in the past, they would have hit a snag and gone extinct before they figured it out.
@@mbukukanyau I still disagree
When I first read the channel name, I would never have expected these videos to be this deep... nice job.
Another brilliant piece of imaginative scientific story-telling. Thank you David and the Cool Worlds team!
Person feeling alone: I'm depressed
This guy: WE ARE ALONE IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE
Alone together
Together alone
This is hogwash. You have to be dead in the head to listen to this bufoonery
@@VG-rj8pn ok, then let’s listen to your argument!
@@Rockfanist i dont need to argue. ive spoken to aliens face to face this man is an idiot and anyone who doesnt know aliens are all over this world is living under a rock with their head up their ass.
Yes, we are alone in the universe and I'm a loner of this lonely planet, called Earth and your video is very uniquely special, especially its ending and tonight that has made me feel really special about myself and also about life in general. Thanks.
@@GBNationalist Did you not watch the video? You cannot say whether or not there is a high chance of life existing. You have no other data points.
You have no idea if we are alone or not.
@@GBNationalist you're the sad one here we are "SPECIAL" because we are special have you seen any other humans on other planets other than earth?? None!!! You're just nihilistic
@@GBNationalist and also by saying humanity is pathetic arent you also pathetic? You should stop being negative and be positive all that bitchiness wont make you happier
Thank you sooo much for your incredibly interesting videos!!! They open up one's mind! And: I really appreciate your speech speed and pronunciation! It allows non-native english speakers to fully enjoy your content! THANK YOU!
This is one of the best videos of your channel, crystal clear explanation and perfect reasoning flow. Extremely easy to follow, yet no stone is left unturned
I'm so happy I came across this channel, it's brilliant!
Fantastic video, the argument, music, visuals, editing, and sources were all combined flawlessly. Thank you for creating this!
"We don't know " is absolutely a great human statement. Its profound. Its a starting point to curiosity and knowledge. Look at years of earthcentric views, etc...where did "knowing " beyond a doubt get us?
Wow, I love the fact that someone else can simply admit... "I don't know"
Only the Father knows
@@voidremoved stop
voidremoved who’s farther
@Slim Hyena if ailiens discover us we might be fucked or fine, noone knows if ailiens are nice, or bad. Noone even knows if their actually real.
The word would be a better place if there were more ppl like that
As a teenager I got in trouble for telling my science teacher what you said in this video. He was going on and on about the Drake equation and I felt like I was the only one that noticed that the most important variable was a guess. He basically called me a dummy in front of the whole class. All I asked was, how can we possibly know what the chances of life appearing on a planet are if we only have ourselves as an example of it? I think it's why I got a B in the class.
The cleverer you are the fewer people will understand you... Repeating what the majority say and do feels stupid and boring. But doing and saying something of your own means to be constantly condemned to indifference, misunderstanding and rebukes. It may be even dangerous... Yet, you have a chance to get into history as a hero and leaving something named after you by grateful descendants.
You got a B because you got B's on exams, this drivel of ET life and its probability is just 5 minutes in physics lectures, Drake equation is easy and you should know it, but its not even tested. You didn't get a B because you disagreed with the science teacher, you got a B because your level of understanding the basics tenets of science in that class when tested was B level.
@@fitnesspoint2006 I live in Europe, and here different systems of notes are used in different countries. But many years ago when I was a schoolboy I got in a similar situation. There was an exam and I explained the subject as I understood it. I was even proud that I found some meaningful explanation because the one offered in the textbook was impossible to make sense of, just some word hodgepodge... And I got very bad note for that my understanding. But a decade later that "science" seized even to exist, because of the radical change of political system in that country I lived.
Sounds like a biased jerk! I'm an ESL teacher working abroad and I always encourage my students to think for themselves regardless whether I agree with them or not! That's why I bailed on Asia permanently 10 years ago. I didn't get anywhere there!
you should have got an A plus Richard
I cannot say I followed every part of this argument. But the overall impression is great indeed, and the conclusion of our simply not knowing seems indisputably correct.
An exceptionally interesting and convincing presentation.
I have to admit that this video completely destroyed me. By the end I was weeping uncontrollably. I was ready for a universe without other intelligences, but to face the possibility that there is NO OTHER LIFE IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE is absolutely terrifying.
Why is it terrifying?
What possible difference does it make to your life?
I'm sorry, but I think you are emotionally underdeveloped.
We won the universe equivalent of the lottery.
The Odds were trillions and trillions to one against winning, but we won it.
I hear you. People can be edgelords about this subject, but it doesn't take a philosopher to recognize there's a profound, existential component to this idea. Especially when you consider that the human race is less likely to survive as long as people often imagine, in science fiction. There may not be an inhabitable world within reach, and the less inhabitable ones like Mars may not be practical. We might have a few thousand years left, and after that, sentience leaves the universe. Maybe it'll return, maybe it won't. We might be living in the only little sliver of time that the universe had life, had consciousness.
I don't know...simple.
The universe size is so great that contact between civilizations is the main issue, not the number of them.
Not really. We simply have no evidence. In a crowded universe, there should be some radio signals to pick up. We see...none.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 no it depends how far away they are if they are a trillion lightyears away it Will take Forever for those signals to get here and we see a LOT of signals most of them we rly dont know what it is a signal traveling a long way also gets blurred in the cosmic noise
@@Thedrunkenswede1337 True, but we have lots of candidates within 500 light years. Plus major space-faring civilizations should already have made their presence known.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 space is wast and 500 lightyears are nothing space can be full of life but just be too far away hos many years since we invented the radio its not that Long let that sink in
@@scottslotterbeck3796 This explanation is predicated on two very weighty assumptions: firstly, that the physical distribution of life across the universe is even, and secondly, that our perspective of the outside universe from the vantage point of Earth is not skewed by the correlation of distance and time.
For example, if indeed life has developed concurrently across great distances, it would be impossible for each respective sentient species (if they are sentient to begin with) to observe one another given the vast amount of time that each would have to survive in order to do so. Even if sentient life developed elsewhere in our own galaxy tens of millions of years ago and developed to the point where there would actually be technological or biological markers to indicate its presence, the probability of us observing it at that precise window of time decreases with distance, as beyond a certain threshold we are observing a time before such a species existed.
Even more challenging is the belief that a species older than this (say, one that appeared hundreds of millions of years ago) could sustain itself for a duration long enough for us to observe it; our own species' limited longevity and challenges with finite resource capacity so far have not borne out the conclusion that this is even possible. By the time we peer in its direction, the civilization could have long ceased to exist and we would have no indication of its former presence.
Overall, the likelihood that our limited technologies which have existed for an incredibly short period of time are sufficient to pinpoint life that is widely distributed over distance and time seems very low. Life could be a relatively common occurrence in the universe, but our inability to observe it from our narrow vantage point may be a limitation we will never overcome. Thus discounting the possibilty of life existing elsewhere because we have no evidence of it seems as foolhardy as claiming we will eventually find evidence for life - we may simply never know.
This is singularly the most remarkable discussion on this topic that I've ever seen.
Agree.
As do I.
go out more man, seriously ?!
@@alext.9271 The irony of your comment is gold 😂
I watch videos about this topic since youtube exists. This one blowed my mind
I think a reasonable argument for there being life out there in the universe would be that every time we thought we were special, we have been proven to be ordinary.
Though that's not always the case. We now know that certain things close to us really ARE rare, unique or special.
For instance, humanity itself is a unique mammal. Not only our intelligence, but other factors, eg bipedalism, our running endurance, our dextrous hands, our capacity to sweat, our long growth phase.
Our sun, too is quite rare. It is a G-type yellow dwarf star, not very common compared to the vast majority of stars, which are M-type (red dwarfs) or K-type (orange dwarfs).
And even among G-type stars, our sun is still unusual. It is unusually bright and hot for its mass compared to other G stars.
Our moon, too, is unusual. For one, no other moon in the solar system formed the way it did. Our moon is also the largest proportionally to its planet, of any planet in the solar system, and plays a big role in stabilising Earth's orbit. This is again, very rare for planets anywhere.
TLDR; the factors that make Earth, Earth, and us, us, are very rare in the universe, and are anything but ordinary. Many times, new discoveries have violated the Copernican principle and challenged our assumptions of mediocrity.
Ordinary compared to whom? How many samples do you have?
"we" being you and which other identifiable other?
To whom has it been proven that you and whoever are ordinary?Who told you that you and whoever have ben" proven (to whom?) to be whatever you mean by ordinary, and why do you believe them?
If only you had the faintest idea what you mean by prove, proof or proven,or "the universe" but you are about to demonstrate that you have not.
Is there a " we"?
Decartes walked into his usual bar and the barman said to him" shall you have your usual Pernod Monsieur?"
Descartes replied " I think not" - and promptly disappeared.
Why do you suppose whatever you mean by " the universe" to be " out there?
Might not the totality or Megalocosmos(which I grant you can only be imaginary) be what you call " life" in and of itself? I of course accept that universals can only be imaginary(or perhaps just supposed). I wonder if the bricks in a wall can sensibly suppose themselves to be the wall(or perhaps even the building of which the wall may be a part There are so many -or as many as there ae men(human beings/dreaming machines) of life, and I note that you creatures suppose yourselves yo be what you call "intelligent"(not of course, being dreaming machines) having the slightest idea what intelligence may be) Of course the bricks that constitute the parts of a building can have no idea of the building are the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle have any idea of the puzzle of which they are parts or any idea at all of jigsaw puzzle in which hey have a role or position being no more than painted pieces of card or board, or some sort of ceramic if bricks and without at least *some*some* idea of of what they are parts or pieces they can have very little-if any, idea, of what they are parts and or where they belong, if they belong at all, and of course the very idea that there is a building puzzle or greater whole can only be fanciful to put it at its most charitable.
It is surely axiomatic that the fragments of a whole can know nothing or are not able to *know*being no more that fragments of some*Un*_known
Other life forms may not require water and oxygen to survive like we do. May be what we think inhabitable is infact habitable for them.
Exactly that’s what I’ve been saying just because humans need a planet that is warm doesn’t mean an alien civilization could have evolved on a cold or extremely hot planet
@@Miguel-nj6en heat is a requirement life needs energy
I'll agree on the oxygen thing though considering the oxygen was originally toxic to all life on earth
@Jean-Paul Teitu II because you're dumb
Very very very possible if not for certain! I read a few articles that called into question, why haven’t we heard from anyone (obviously insane distances, and all that good stuff are definitely part of it)? But it focused on how we search, precisely what you just said! They are soooo stuck on water and other variables that we may have already over looked exactly what we were looking for lol.
"what a responsibility it is to be alive." Very well said
Thank you for this video. Every night, I fall asleep watching, "Watching the end of the world" video its really smoothing & chilling. Thank you.
Thanks for watching!!
@@CoolWorldsLab and, thank you. Its so well put together & very interesting.
Knowing that there is a concrete answer to that question out there is somehow terrifying to me. It’s just a matter of going out there and finding it ourselves, but it’s impossible, and probably will always be.
I would bet we are alone. The reason why is there's a distinct possibility we may be the first. And if we aren't, there's a high probability that we will never get to meet them anyway.
@Jacob G check out some videos on “The Great Filter”. It’s basically exactly what your saying and it’s very interesting.
This is basically similar to the Fermi paradox
Thanks for having the courage to say the truth. We just don't know.
This is one of the rare "we-are-alone" videos on youtube where the comments are civil and thoughtful, suggesting Professor Kipping did a great job communicating this unpopular view and gently undermining the defective intuitions of people such as Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He takes an elegiac tone towards the conclusion he's driven to however, which I don't agree with. Since I always doubted the existence of aliens, I am emotionally neutral to the prospect that we may well be the only intelligent beings in the universe. Of course I believe we should continue looking and refining our instruments and so on, but we should also be contemplating the desires and anxieties that make us cling so desperately to the hope that life must exist elsewhere.
excellent post, fellow rare earther! Cool worlds in indeed one of the few places on YT that is friendly towards rare earth theory... Maybe consider watching Isaacs Great filters series too...
I don't get why people deny God so adamantly but think that denying aliens is jumping to conclusions. There's no scientific evidence of either one.
I still think it would be very sad and unfortunate if we were the only ones. How boring and how lonely.
@@SKBottom Does our loneliness take precedence over the truth? We have been looking out at the cosmos for centuries now, and it seems fairly obvious that there are no large sectors of the universe that are artificially altered in a way that might indicate the existence of alien super-civilizations. Such evidence, if it existed, would be the most exciting and loneliness-busting discovery of all, but it does not exist (of course we must keep looking). Anything short of that does not do much to alleviate loneliness (say the detection of pond-scum on some remote planet where the vast distance along with cognitive and technological disparities pose unsurpassable barriers to communication and interaction). Robin Hanson's recent paper on "grabby aliens" concludes that humans are early arrivals in the development of the universe.
@@SKBottom Yeah, but reality doesn't care about our sadness. At least not according to the secular world.
Beautifully and clearly presented, devoid of sensationalism. Well done and thank you.
How fortunate we are never really hit me until I heard Isaac Arthur say that the sun only needed to be a few percent more massive to have become too hot too soon. That’s not even taking into account mitochondrial symbiosis, fortuitous extinctions and the questionable utility of a pre frontal cortex