The second assumption is questionable. Consider: 1) The universe has been capable of supporting sentient life for billions of years 2) it took 14 billion years for our planet to get to the point where it has a single civilization capable of being detected from space 3) after less than 100 years of having a civilization detectable from space we appear to be about to destroy that civilization 4) we are currently scanning less than 3% of the night sky for alien civilizations 5) we hav been doing that scanning for less than 75 years. It would be mathematically more likely for two people at opposite ends of a pitch black football stadium armed with pistols to shoot each other bullets out of the air in a single try than for us to be in exact the right time and place to detect an alien civilization using the methods that we are using.
Thats a smart take on it. I thought of it inna way that IF we are alive at the same time as an inteligent alien species.... what makes us think they have ANY interest in communicating with us?? What reasons would they have to contact us? Humans are already in mass anti social these days... why would an alien species want to talk to us? If they picked up ANY images or footage of War from us they would like to stay away from us as far as possible
(1) is extremely misleading. Evolution, especially from early life to multicellular life, takes an immense amount of time. Just because sentient life technically could have existed for billions of years *doesn't* mean it spontaneously appeared on planets. Rather, it would take billions of years of evolution and be subject to all the dangers that the galaxy poses to life. As for the rest, if you assume we're looking for civilizations at the same technological level as our own... yeah, that's not gonna happen. However, a type II-III civilization would be trivial to spot with even the technology we had 100 years ago. Imagine looking at the Earth from, say, Jupiter. It would be blatantly obvious that non-mineral activities are going on, which would result in a higher focus on confirmation on the Earth and relatively quick realization that there is not only life, but a civilization there pulling the strings. That's about how obvious it would be for us to see a type II civilization somewhere else in the galaxy. There would simply be obvious indicators that, by virtue of their energy consumption, would reveal them. And before you bring up the "dark forest" hypothesis, that doesn't make any sense. Any civilization that came before us would realize they are "the first", and rather than try to hide their presence from a hypothetical threat, would spend their energy growing, as civilizations do. This isn't a trait unique to humans... on the contrary, it's necessary for any species at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
@@TheFinalChapters Detecting an advanced civilization would be impossible if they chose to make it so :) Nothing is "trivial" across millions of light-years Only in Hollywood can NASA detect Cybertrons inbound at a third the speed of light from across the galaxy (and that was with Arecibo :)
The problem with “communicating” is the assumption that a large portion of the signals are detectable. Earth discovered radio more or less yesterday and since then our use of information technology has exploded. We are already transforming our technology from large inefficient broadcast signals to tiny low-power digital cells and optics that barely leaks any signals at all and, if they do, looks a lot like noise. At that point, we need to put efforts into making ourselves heard to stay detectable. Learning from our own progress, we might need to add to the equation: Civilisations who choose to search and communicate with other life.
Exactly along my thoughts, based on our technological progress, we ourselves from not being detectible, to detectable, and are now rapidly becoming undetectable in a span of 150 years. If that progress is normal then the idea of catching someone exactly within 150 year window right now becomes kind of absurd.
The equation already takes this into account as L is the length of time a civilization is detectable by human means. The reason their detectability ends doesn't change the equation. It doesn't matter if they become quieter by design or by necessity or if they extinguish themselves in war. All of that is accounted for in L.
@@SpaceCowboyfromNJ Broadcasts are not the only way to detect civilizations though. Artificial gasses in their atmospheres give away an industrial age for centuries and if they become spacefaring many megastructures are detectable from many light years, ie. Dyson Spheres and the like, extending L. Outer worlds in their system being mined or "terra" formed would also be detectable as dust rings and extra infrared emissions, etc.
@@filonin2 (sigh) Dyson spheres again. Gigantic fictional structures that claim to be able to solve problems that would have to be solved before it can even be built.
I'm not so certain of that. This is one of those potentially career ending topics, or at least it was. Given how well talk of extra terrestrials were received at the time, the most mind-blowing fact is that they felt secure enough in their careers to admit that their esteemed coworker thought about these things. Note that they didn't admit that they had all been talking about aliens when Fermi asked the question until after it became clear that they weren't going t be shunned for it. They're all certain that's what he was talking about, but they don't admit to enough context for them to have intuited it. "Just knowing who he was" means that he clearly had talked a lot about aliens in the past, but they didn't give details on those prior conversations. Eventually, it became clear that being associated with theoretic alien discussions wasn't going to be the end to their credibility, so they were more forthcoming on things. However, given that caution, I wonder if it really was Fermi who actually asked the question, or whether they were simply attributing the question to him as a way to check if it was safe to come out of their closet. (To be clear, I'm not trying to say it wasn't him, merely that I could see them wanting to blame him for the question that they were wanting to publicize. If he really did pose the question, that would have been particularly convenient for them.)
That’s the least surprising, u only get credit when can’t benefit from it. And it also assumes we are intelligent life! No comment, I see orcas living and whales doing well and we’re the idiots who think pain is the enemy, 😢they’re living we are existing
Plot twist, with a choose your own adventure plot.. Fermi secured his name because he.. A: Was secretly a serial killer B: Roofied & blackmailed his competition, I mean his fellow scientist only to steal their ideas & present them as his own C: It was actually his idea, therefore that's why it's named after him
She may be a biologist, and he may be a physicist, but it's the chemistry between them that is the most endearing. I wish I had that kind of marriage. Bless you both!
Superb presentation. Love the scientific teamwork. Being a "radio person" I think the detectability is an issue. From the first low and medium frequency "spark" signals around the year 1900 which did not escape Earth's ionosphere, over the course of the next 100 years we developed (at least here in Europe) million-watt UHF TV analogue transmitters which sprayed out their signal in all directions easily punching their way to outer space. These signals would look structured to even quite casual examination.This era has sadly now passed and we are in the digital age which tends to consist of vast numbers of very low power signals which overlap and mix, and basically sound or look like random noise at any distance from the source - if they even appear in the radio spectrum. The internet for example started on old-fashioned copper telephone wires, went patchily and briefly to (radio) satellites then mostly migrated to fibre-optic cables. Some satellite usage is returning with the likes of Starlink and Oneweb but again these are digital signals and will be just contributions to the "galactic mush" when observed beyond the solar system.
I question the 'casual examination' descriptor, but I like the general line of thinking. It's interesting to consider that digital signals would basically just look like noise without knowing the exact frequencies, data rates, and decryption algorithms. I'd considered that in a more nebulous sense, but not quite as clearly as you put it here. But even those high-powered analog signals, from far away, competing with the entire EM output of the Sun I'm not at all certain would be detectable above the level of noise, regardless of how they were structured. Inverse square is a b*tch... even barely out of our own heliosphere, we can just _barely_ detect the signals coming from our own probes... and that's knowing exactly where to look and what to look for. From even farther? I just don't know... Even to our most vast arrays of radio telescopes, acting as planet-sized interferometers, a planet in even a very nearby star system within our "radio bubble" is basically the equivalent of a single pixel. Sure, it might be a very _bright_ pixel that flickers in a suspiciously unnatural way... but it does so maybe a couple of pixels away from a _star._ How much power does the Sun put out in the UHF band?
I feel like many people think about evolution as a process of constant improvement towards "better" species, which in a sense it is, but only towards species being better adapted to their environment. Intelligence is not the natural endgame of evolution. I think intelligence, meaning a species being eventually capable to build a radio as you said, is incredibly uncommon. We can see species that communicate in some sense, species that use objects as tools, species that solve conceptual problems and puzzles. But what none of those have is the capacity to be self aware of their own instincts or behaviors or the ability to make objects out of their imagination. What evolutionary pressures would drive species into having those abilities? I just think we got lucky.
There are some other species on earth that seem to be self aware: chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, orcas, dolphins, elephants, magpies and even ants have all had individuals that have been able to pass the mirror test.
@@Ge1Ri4 self aware is not the same as aware of their instincts and behaviors as I said. I'm sure there are many more species on earth than we think that are self aware in the meaning you are refering to.
Agree with you 100%. There is no evolutionary imperative for intelligence. The most successful species are bacteria, which is what most life in the universe is likely to be.
I agree that many/most people misunderstand evolution as having a goal &/or "up-only" direction. But in the case of intelligence, I think it's generally true. If intelligence is the ability to predict future outcomes, it's easy to see how there's a selective pressure for it, especially in predators. Similarly, eyesight and flight are two other characteristics that keep popping up. Interestingly, lots of brains seem "overbuilt" (particularly humans), but to ever be technological, you need other parts to match. Dolphins & crows may be intelligent, but they don't have hands. Octopus may be intelligent & have excess manipulators, but they'll never develop radios underwater.
THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD WATCH. I especially like the part about questioning what constitutes intelligence. Intelligence that might be geared in completely different fashions or motivations or ability and how that communicates is something we should examine before we regard any life as intelligent. We are only intelligent in what we as humans do and what is relevent to us. I loved this debate. Thanks for recording this.
I miss this stuff, been too caught up in pandemic noise for the last 2 years, but look forward to focusing on interesting things with you guys, thanks Nick.
I keep geeking out and gushing over this video over and over again. Love the dynamics between you two, and meshing biology + physics is just so fun here.
I so enjoyed this video! When she brought up the intelligence of certain animals and asked him about whether scientists would see aliens as the intelligent life they’re looking for if they were similar to that of an octopus was such a great question. Begs the question of could the reason aliens haven’t contacted or made themselves known to us is because they see us as having the intelligence of an octopus? I believe there’s really one thing humans need to learn before being capable of detecting aliens (and it doesn’t look like a number of them want to learn it) but love the vibe you two have!!
I think the "intelligent" life we're always talking about is when you reach the stage of metathinking - when you can think about thinking - and take your evolution into your own hands and determine the course of your population.
I really enjoy when Mrs. Asylum joins. She's smart, she's entertaining and she will tell you if you aren't making sense. Thanks for the content. I think the real answer to the Fermi paradox is the mind boggling large amounts of time where no life or simple life exists compared to the infinitesimal fraction of time when intelligent life does exist. This along with the vast galactic distances makes the synchronicity of two neighboring intelligent species very very very small. Our current technology is only capable of detecting TV/radio transmissions to about 16 LYs.
What about when you factor in radars which are very high power, high gain/directional, and have very distinct waveforms which aren't typically seen in nature (allowing for match filtering to bring them above the background noise). I reckon that would push how far we could detect by quite a bit (well maybe ~50 LY or so).
@@Logarithm906 I'm no expert but won't that involve knowing exactly where to "point" or receivers/ transmitters and knowing what protocols they are using to transmit like an alien version of TCP/IP. Seems pretty unlikely to happen by chance.
There's also the fact that our planet currently supports a fairly wide range of fairly intelligent groups (not just individual species, but whole groups of them, like e.g. the Corvidae birds), but only one group has reached our level of intelligence (apes or primates), and only along a single branch _of_ that group (Homo). When you compare the times/chances involved with _that,_ the numbers take another big dip.
I think the real solution to the Fermi Paradox is likely that radio is actually terrible for long range communication. It's good for long range planetary communication. But over the vast distances of space the signal gets distorted and eventually redshifted out of usability. Radio is simply too low energy to have signals convey useful information over inter-system ranges. I would guess most species only use radio for medium range communication. Depending on the nature of quantum reality, most species will default to instantaneous communication if that turns out to be possible. Otherwise, I would expect they either use a different method, or interplanetary society is much less interconnected than we expect based on modern society, simply due to the nature of the distances.
No "instantaneous" communication is possible, the speed of light is a hard limit on how fast information can be transmitted. That means that interstellar communication is highly impractical. Any civilization that does choose to expand beyond their original solar system (which is something that I believe is pretty questionable to begin with) is going to have to accept that each colony is going to exist mostly in isolation. There would be some limited communication, but not the constant back and forth stream of communication that we expect from modern societies.
If a species can do interstellar travel, then it must be able to communicate via quantum space - via quantum entanglement, which is instantaneous and is not limited by speed of light.
@@arunkottolli It is impossible to transmit information faster than the speed of light through quantum entanglement. If it were possible then all sorts of causality paradoxes would be opened up.
@@arunkottolli thing is you cant really transmit information via quantum entanglement since theres no way to control it over a large scale All it tell us is what side the other particle is rotating with isnt really usefull for large scale communication nor is any information actually being send there
@@kered13 Well you can get around this by allowing the information to travel through shorter paths than large scale objects can. Discovering a wormhole that is large enough to move a ship through and remain stable, that's fairly unlikely anytime soon. Discovering a microwormhole, warping space at the micro scale, or discovering the true nature of quantum entanglement could all be plausible directions for seemingly FTL communication. As we understand it, none of these involve actually transmitting the signal itself faster than the speed of light.
Scientists. They only use physical senses and thus notice only physical forces, events. An Out of Body Experience could cure them one by one. We all get one when we die, but there is no return to this life, so no record. Extremely few people have such good memories that they rediscover past lives, but they do exist.
You aren't right. See what meens theory in science. Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations. There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math"). Any way it's about how all designed, not how to live life and why aliens may be kind - "evolution of cooperation and altruizm" and so on.
Mostly true. Everything they're talking about is based statistical probabilities. But, without hard data they'll never know for sure and we simply don't have the tech to get at that information. Because you can say statistically that a planet should develop intelligent life, but, without a galactic survey there is no way of proving that statistical assumption is correct or in error. So you're right, its a guess. Its an educated guess, but, you are still right that we have no idea wtf is out there simply because we're stuck here.
I think when most people say "intelligent life" they mean the ability to develop and utilize complex tools. Many animals use tools from nature for survival but they do not modify those tools such as sharpening stone into an axe that is strapped to a wooden pole to cut down trees, etc.
yes they do. New Caledonian crows modify twigs into spears and hooks, and chimpanzees also modify twigs and leaves in order to optimise their function, like fraying the ends of their sticks to fish for termites. Neither just find something and use it. They change what they found and then use it.
@@rruysch I think a more useful solution, which he should have originally said is the ability to work with metal. No animal except humans(I don't know if other hominids developed metallurgy, though I am pretty sure they didn't) can actually work with metal in a way conducive to developing potentially detectable communication.
@@OnyxVortex. Why is that the bar tho? Crows understand traffic. They can pick locks. So they understand complexities about our world that most animals don't. Communication wise there are many who believe dolphins have "languages" and learn to hunt and survive through "oral" tradition. They've been observed coming up with strategies and teaching those strategies to the young. When comparing animal intelligence to our own we forget humans have no natural defenses. We only survived the wild due to brain size which some scientists think only came when we figured out how to cook food and extract the most calories. Dolphins, chimps, crows, parrots and other intelligent animals have no need for this because the have natural defenses from predators and to help them find food.
Humans. The great paradox. Capable of the most amazing things. Just take a look around at any city, or superstructure, or our endeavors, such as getting to the moon, soon to be Mars.... Then, watch us. As we destroy our precious planet, let millions die from sickness, drought, war, famine, and turn a blind eye for money. Its absolutely unbelievable. We basically kill ourselves
"Either we're alone in the universe or we're not. Both possibilities are terrifying." Personally I think there is a lot of life out there, but not a lot of technologically advanced life. There are still a lot of humans here living off the grid lives that wouldn't be detectable to an alien, and it's perfectly plausible that whole planets exist with lifeforms at that stage. Maybe there's no metal or something I don't know on their planet.
well, I agree, but I also think something trivial like the metal comment is just wrong, namely because a planet having "intelligent" life, which I think the video indirectly described as basically a multi-celled organism that is visible to the eye/capable of some level of decision making, there will probably have to be metals and certain elements, based off what we know about ourselves and the Earth (there is metal in humans). A planet that is gaseous, like the other ones we have in our solar system, are very unlikely to contain life and if they do, are probably going to be undetectable by us forever. It is more likely that we just cannot reach the distance required to find the other forms of life, seeing as we can't even communication with our own solar system at all lengths reliably, or at all.
A planet with no metals ? That's absurd, even far flung worlds in our solar system are pretty metalic, to say nothing of our inner planets which are almost exclusively made of the stuff.
@@danfontaine8179 this hit me hard. Wow. I never really considered that an option but I mean based on observations, at this current moment, we are alone so our lives really are precious and rare. We really don't appreciate how special things like individuality could be.
I first learned of Drake's Equations in late 1977 (undergraduate astronomy class). I've grumbled about them ever since. I do not think the paradox is worth more than lunchroom debate (but it excels at that). Why? Several points (some of which the video at least brushed up against): 1) "Intelligent" must also be capable of creating technology. I believe that elephants are intelligent and sentient. However, their physical structures are ill suited to anything approximating technology as we understand it (there goes one of those bias thingies). I also believe that the great whales are intelligent and sentient. Ever try doing electronic circuits in a salt water environment? The list goes on (mercifully, I won't). 2) The alien's environment must be conducive to the use of electromagnetic signal transmission. A fun exercise would be to imagine an atmospheric composition and structure plus planetary magnetic properties and perhaps even stellar environment factors (winds of charged particles, etc.) that would produce an environment unfriendly to electromagnetic signal transmission. Could such an environment still support life? The signal problem presented could range from propagation failure, to rapid signal attenuation, to rapid signal scattering, to signals being overwhelmed by "natural" electromagnetic noise (there are some mighty noisy planets out there). 3) The alien signals generated must be strong enough for us to detect them. The signals must make it through the obstacle course of interstellar space with enough energy to be distinguished from the background noise of the universe. If there is a point source, it will sweep past us with amazing speed (yes... the trace of the signal's detectable pass could be moving a super-light speed). We have no reason to believe that this transmission source would be aware of our existence and our precise position/time address in order to focus a beam upon us. Thus, an intense point is unlikely to be detected. If an omnidirectional source is present, its signal strength immediately gets divided by 4 x distance^2 (surface of a sphere = 4 Pi r^2; broadcast energy assumed evenly distributed across surface of a sphere). With the shortest possible transmission distances measured in multiple light years, there won't be much signal left (don't forget additional in-transit attenuation factors and background noise interference). On the other side of the coin, assuming good local signal propagation, why would they use high power? 4) The alien signals generated must be recognizable. Pure AM signals are great for detection. But what if the signals used are all "spread spectrum" along the line of Bluetooth? Or perhaps they are heavily multiplexed? 5) Signals will move at the speed of light. That means that signals will take many years, even many human lifetimes, to transit our own galaxy (remember, our galaxy is on the order of 100,000 light years across). Any signal that we receive will be old (but it still would be very interesting if confirmed). This signal speed limit brings up the dependence of signal path on space-time curvature. The signal will be deflected by every mass it comes near. Thus, the actual path will be longer--so too the transit time--than would a straight line path. 6) Intelligent life could have evolved, developed appropriate technology, and vanished long before we had any hope of detecting its signals. Intelligent life could have evolved, developed appropriate technology, and moved on to other technological means currently undetectable by us, even using science unknown to us. 7) While I both "believe" and hope that there is other intelligent life in our galaxy, We must remember that our solar system is actually quite unique. I've read one article that stated that the proportions of heavy elements in our solar system (or at least on Earth) could only have come from the fragments resulting from the collision of two neutron stars. That precondition cannot be representative of very many systems within our galaxy. Heavier elements are needed to create life as we know it. Thus, not all star/planet systems will have the necessary ingredients. Should a term for "Proportion of solar systems having necessary atomic weights and concentrations thereof" be added to Drake's equations? (Boy have I thrown out a lot of meat for the lions!) (Edit to fix a couple of typing errors. No new content or change of message involved)
All that, in addition to time factors, makes it quite unlikely that we will ever find intelligent life in our galaxy, if it even exists. Humanity certainly doesn't meet the criteria to be called intelligent. We've developed some pretty incredible forms of energy generation, and what do we use it for? Exactly: to eliminate as many lifeforms as we can!
I think wood is an underestimated factor. It's a great material that can be found in great quantities, qualities and shapes (it's hard to make bows and spears without wood, bones could replace it but they are harder to get, i'm not sure the quantity would be enough to sustain a tribe), and it is a great source of fuel, fire being an very important tool in the history of technology. Could we have developped to this point if trees hadn't evolved? I doubt it.
I think the solution to the Fermi Paradox is the inspiration to the Fermi Paradox "There is so much universe." Like you seemed to come to the conclusion of, it's a detection issue, but I'm not sure it's one of lack of tech on either end. It's the analogy of dipping a bucket in the ocean and wondering where all the fish are. We have to look in the right spot in the ocean at the right time if we want to scoop some fish. For the Drake Equation, When it comes to "habitable planets with life" I'm also, as a biologist, comfortable setting that value near one. We only have one data set for abiogenesis, but earth has a multitude of extreme environments and all of them still end up with life. It may not have started in those environments, but it's additional data points saying that if life can, it will. The biggest issue I have with the way we use the drake equation is the "number of habitable planets." This is where we assume far too much that life will be like us. Number of planets inhabitable to us and inhabitable are different values. As such I think life is more likely than we give it credit for. As for the number of habitable planets for life like us, id set the likelihood of intelligence near one. Convergent evolution almost demands it. And when we have several very very different species with near human intelligence, many with self recognition, and atleast one other with theory of mind on our own planet in very different environments and niches, I think the real limiting factor is time. It will EVENTUALLY happen. It's too beneficial a survival strategy to not. It's like eyes. How many times did those evolve independently? The one galactic year time point I think is still missing is genetic recombination, sexual reproduction and other means of swapping DNA. This development accelerated genetic diversity, and gave natural selection much more to act on and "quicker" to us looking at the timeline.
The universe is old. It could have supported life long before our galaxy formed. Maybe it did. That makes the Fermi paradox all the more puzzling. There is so much space and so much time, it seems ludicrous that we should be the first or the only ones. So where is everyone? The fact that multicellular life is relatively young might provide an answer. It is just an experiment that the prokaryotes have started recently. They may shelve it at any time, nothing of value to them would be lost. Meanwhile, we, who as a species wouldn't be able to detect ourselves if we were just a lightyear away, are looking for life communicating at human time scales. Bacterial colonies, forests, fungi, starfish, corals don't do that. And furthermore, why should they want to communicate with us? We're not even part of their biosphere.
@@Wastelandman7000 We are in the Orion spur, near the inner rim, closer to the Sagittarius arm than the Perseus arm. It's not the outward end of anything.
My God! I love when you two collaborate. She has got patience and intelligence to process what you explain! And she represents us audience when asking simple but important questions. Please do more vids together!
I agree. I really enjoyed this video and she asked questions that I was either thinking or saying out loud. I’d turn to my son and say, “see, she’s asking that too!”
@@jd9119they serve to show the content creators that people like this format. On every single channel the people who comment are the vocal minority. So, these kinds of comments, and the reaction to the comment, give a reasonable approximation of the audience’s response.
We need a distinction between "detectable" and a "signal". If bacteria, over time, cover some planet with oxygen, this life activity can be detected (via spectral lines). But intelligent life would need to create a signal (radio, gravity waves etc) which we can not just detect, but recognize as non-natural, created with intent, by an intelligence. This poses a question: can we tell apart non-natural signals?
It should be added that the radio signals we leak out unintentionally into the galaxy are not detectable beyond a rather disappointing radius, of some single-digits number of lightyears. Humanity itself has yet to do something that, by its own standards, would count as "detectable" for the rest of the galaxy. That could be something like constructing a dyson swarm, colonizing the galaxy, or simply deliberately focusing an extremely energetic radio beam that's detectable throughout the galaxy at every star. The question for the filter ahead is, what it could be that it would prevent us from doing so. It might be as disappointingly simple as "lack of interest".
@@user-rh8hi4ph4b the problem is about technology and justifying the cost. We are unlikely to have the technology to transmit such sigal in the near future. Even if we could and also could identify some 1000 suitable target, the distance to the nearest target would mean that we are unlikely to receive a response for several generations. So I don't see why the public would support such costs when they, or their children are unlikely to get any benefit.
I think we're better off trying to find a way to travel between planets. If we're multiplanetary then innovations with come to speed up travel and communications. If faster than light travel/ communication exists, doing that would surely be the way to get the attention of other technologically advanced intelligent life. Light speed is just so slow.
The one thing that was not mentioned was that we as humans have only been detectable for about a 100 year and now we are quite as far as noise in the galaxy so being at the same level of technology is the most unlikely answer to why we have not hear the other civilization
I'm leaning towards the difficulty of detecting alien life as the most likely explanation. Even if there were an Earth 2.0 somewhere out there in the galaxy, an exact copy of ours, so that we know what to look for, would we be able to detect it? How close would it have to be to us for us to detect life and/or intelligent life there?
@@tim40gabby25 but remove the torches because you two will be so far no even a 0.12% of that light wll be seen or make it and make the fog even mass up radio range
Yes. I wonder what the Earth would look like from 200light years, or 1,000 light years out ... Considering that the outer planets in our solar system are so so much bigger and would be the dominant thing to be seen from outside.
@@wayando Well we have to look for the planetary orbital resonance because there will be time when the giants is not in transit and obscuring the inner planets. The outer planets orbit is very long compared to the inner planets so less frequent obscuration and this window would let them observe at the inner planetary orbit, it wouldn't be so difficult for them to detect that some object is orbiting closer to the star, although they may not get the everything right. The dimming will form a pattern if they let it record for a long time, with this they could calculate the orbital period, number of planets, the size of planet, distance, etc
All we have to know about aliens is in this quote: "The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star." - Carl Sagan
@@gray12566 That i do not agree with. The thing is, i do not fall into appeal to authority from anything or anyone. I do not take that quote (the one i wrote) at heart because i agree with it but rather because it agrees with me, in other words, i came to this theory way before i knew about this quote and. This was my logic: > There are only two hypothesis, either the world and science is lying to us, there is no stars or planets out there - in fact, there is no "out there" to begin with, all there is is a giant worldwide cabal; or there are millions of alien civilizations out there since the idea that we are the only one between zillion of planets is just ridiculous. Let's go with the second hypothesis because it makes a lot more sense. So, what do we know after that? That we were never contacted or aliens ever came here (with an agenda, not on a vacation since the last one we don't know). So, what is the logical step after that? Either aliens don't know we exist, they don't care, or they know and they care but they don't intervene. All those hypothesis are valid, so let's put them on a shelf for now and look at another one, types of civilizations. There can only be three types of civilizations when compared to us: the ones less advanced, the ones at the same level, and the ones more advanced. The ones less advanced and the ones at the same level are irrelevant to the discussion since they can't have any interaction with us, just like we can't have with them, which leave us with the ones more advanced. So, in our human logic we will say that there might be the good ones and the evil ones. The evil ones are less logic since there needs to be some sort of utopia for an all civilization to partake in a unified ideology. And even if there are evil ideologies that on a conquest and destruction path across the universe, there needs to good guys as well. So, my take is, there are alien civilizations, they know about us, they care, but they don't intervene. So, taking my quote of Carl Sagan, if there are alien life, and we never found any no matter how much we search for, the logic is that we were born in an empty part of the galaxy, so we can evolve, grow and learn. So, going back to Sagan's quote of "No one is out there to save us from ourselves", i don't believe, and the reasoning is simple. If we destroy ourselves, we are not "just" killing everyone, we are ANNIHILATING AN INTERGALACTIC CIVILIZATION, the HUMAN RACE. And that i don't believe would be allowed.
@@gray12566 Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general. Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever. I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's TH-cam channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!
@@matheus5230 "Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever." So, basically become gods......not going to happen...ever....i don't even know what that means. Unless we are talking about an artificial reality, in that sure, we made it and so we control it. As for "living forever", i have a lot of problems with that assumption. Not only it will never be possible, death is part of life and all, but i find it incredibly disrespectful for the zillions of people that died throughout history....even you and all of us will die before that will be a reality (which is never, but still the point stands).
@@JustaGuy2.0 I hope we will be able to have total control over reality, reverse entropy and so on, no matter how long it takes. Such civilization would never go extinct. I know I'm not going to see it, regardless if it will happen or not. But it's not bad to hope. I don't think that wanting to live forever is a disrespect to all humans who died.
I like that you used the term “habitable worlds” as opposed to just planets, because moons are also possible candidates for life. I fall in with the rare earth hypothesis folks only because there seems to have been a number of things or events that contribute to “Goldilocks” scenarios for life surviving long enough to evolve intelligence like how earth’s internal dynamo and heat both nurtured early single cell life and provided protection from harmful space born radiation. We talk about worlds being in habitable zones of their stars, but how exceedingly rare are worlds with strong magnetospheres, or with large tide causing moons, or axial tilts, or favorable galactic neighborhoods. etc.. All these things contributed to life’s evolution on our world. There is an almost never ending plethora of things that can be classified as great filters which can stop life cold… at least the kind of life we know of. That said, I do like the idea that there my be life so alien to us that we are yet still clueless how to even begin looking for it 🤔
Never got the "goldylocks" thing as we are on a planet with a massive EM field or its size in an orbit ("shields at maxim" )between 2 planets wrecked by the solar wind because they have no EM fields able to keep the solar wind from ripping off lighter gases like nitrogen and oxygen It goes from absolute Zero in the Menosphere up to 750f in the Thermosphere, the moon Day side is up to 250f and just outside the Earth's EM is the 2500f-4000f solar wind(though its the cosmic and gama rays that will kill you in a improperly shielded ship)
One thing that always bothers me when people talk about the great filter, is they assume there's only one big filter, but there could just as well be two big filters or more. So, even if you think we have passed a great filter doesn't mean we are save from big filters.
I feel like the very hubris of thinking that we've passed the great filter is the constant great filter. Thinking that we are any better than any other species might be another great filter. Cos, the very great filter argument feels weird when you compare ourselves with other mammal species.
All the Great Filters that we can think of (and also the ones we can't imagine) that really exist, all operate at the same time. Most scientists have decided that life similar to us humans really is very very very rare. This gives us a big responsibility to protect ourselves, for the sake of whatever Force created us, in case we have a Purpose.
"The Great Filter" doesn't have to be only *one* filter. There can be several filters that restrict the numbers of intelligent species that can communicate long-distance. Also, this discussion didn't get into how L can affect our ability to detect life on other planets. Let's say that the equation spits out 1,000 planets with intelligent life that can communicate via radio waves. But, if L=150 years (the length of time that a species is able to broadcast). After broadcasting for that amount of time they may discover cable or point-to-point communication. So, if L=150 years, even if there are 1,000 species that make it, the chance of 2 or more existing in their L phase simultaneously is vanishing small, given that they could have begun broadcasting at any time during the past, say, 2 billion years.
I may be wrong but the second point you make is not entirely true. It is true that L is an important factor, but you need to remember that R (the first variable of the equation) is the rate of star formation which is dimentionally a number per unit of time. This means that when you multiply by L in the formula you get a simple number that indicates the amount of civilizations that are CURRENTLY detectable by us (not the total in history). However the fact that we can detect them at this point in time does not necessarily mean that they still exist as the signal may have travelled for thousands of years to reach us
Came here for this and happily found it up at the top. I think it's limiting to think of the filter as a single slot, perhaps more of a game of Plinko.
Funny how nobody is talking about the bright shinny filter that keeps our little planet warm. A super flare or micro nova will filter everything away....lol
@@ScienceAsylum love the content and quality. I'm no scientist and anyone who can do probability calculations fascinates me. It's more likely I'm wrong than I'm correct, but it seems to me the most common conception is that there is a single event that all possible species either overcome or don't. I'm inclined to think all possible known and unknown scenarios are potential filters, and they exist, reasonably, for all possible species. Therefore, every species that exists surpasses filter events until they either find an insurmountable filter or they achieve the ability to contact/be contacted. Then it would become the chance of another species achieving the same level, and finally as William Blaker said, those species exist close enough in space and time for their detection and communication with the other. I hope I'm making sense.
The most amazing thing about this video is this couple's ability to have a logical discussion without getting into an argument which ends up with them not speaking to each other for a week.
@@gregallen1it's their chemistry. They are a great couple and they don't try to our do each other and rudely correct each other like most married couples do. This is a real power couple, because they are working together to bring more knowledge to other humans.
Aliens are a DLC that costs extra. We’re NPCs in the base game. The player-character gets special abilities like turning water into wine, walking on water, parting the seas. (They chose Water as their element in the player creation screen.). But one time the player’s son logged on instead of his dad. It started off well, but he tried to go against high-level Romans and didn’t realize he hadn’t leveled up enough yet to enter that part of the open world. He’s going to be grounded for a while, might take 1,000 in-game years before he’s allowed back. We’re just lucky he leaves the PC running while he’s afk.
The most likely solution is the one rarely mentioned. That by the time their radio signals reach us, they're too weak to be detected. Even if a clone of earth existed around the nearest star, it would take all of the solar energy hitting their planet just to generate a signal as weak as the voyager probes by the time it got here. Double the distance a couple times, and even things like focused arrays and fusion power become a moot consideration.
@@matthewviramontes3131 Either there is a great filter, or its likely another intelligent life or its stuff, is already here in our solar system, in some form. We took a ridiculous 1.5 billion years to reach our current state, but only like 10,000 years to go from agriculture to space travel. Theoretically, self replicating spaceships should be able to explore the entire galaxy in about 500,000 years. I think the best option is to stop wasting resources scanning for signals, and instead focus on finding and mining out every object and planet in our solar system. If we are not the first intelligent life, there is probably an alien probe or Von Neumann machine somewhere in our solar system, which may have completed its mission and gone inactive long before there was anything to see here intelligent life-wise. Finding such a thing would answer the question definitively, and probably contain some clues as to what our next move should be. Also, we are going to need all the materials in our solar system to send out our own ships/probes/machines, unless we do something 'space weird', like build a stellar engine and launch our entire solar system to another nearby solar system (!!)
I remember a few years ago watching a science video on TH-cam which stated that our signals, because they are not focussed, fade into the background noise after 2 light years. I've been severely trolled on TH-cam because I can't recall the video I watched but I remember it very well. It was plausible and backed up with research data. I'm not a sceptic that there could be life out there, even intelligent and technologically advanced but unless they were sending a very powerful signal direct to us, how would we detect it. I would really like us to be visited by extraterrestrials but I don't believe we ever have been, after 50 plus years of studying the "evidence". Many examples taken as fact when I was younger have since been debunked. You have to rely on the integrity of witnesses and people want their 15 minutes. I believe that any unusual craft which have been seen were built by us. Anything unidentified is that. Changing the designation from UFO, the important word is "unidentified" to, UAP doesn't really make for clarity as the "Unidentified" is still the important word. The problem is that many people, generally ignorant of unusual craft or ariel phenomena, automatically assume that unidentified means unidentified extraterrestrial craft.
@@matthewviramontes3131 That's assuming FTL travel is possible in some way that another species has figured out. Even if FTL is figured out, there's no saying how fast that would be. There may be hundreds of advanced civilizations out there that can barely get to their nearest neighboring stars and perhaps radio or radio like communication is the only way any have come up with. If no one can get here or be "loud" enough to hear then we will likely never see them. I think the only chance we have of detecting an advanced civ is if it's a sphere builder. That might make them visible to us.
@Christopher Suit There doesn't need to be FTL travel. It would only take a few tens of million years to colonize the whole galaxy at even 20% the speed of light. That's nothing in astronomical terms. Meaning if we don't see them in our solar system, i.e. the fact we exist and our asteroids don't seem to have been mined, then we can safely say no hyper advanced aliens exist in our arm of the galaxy and we have the chance to be the first.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around some factors, like the age of the universe (still relatively young) which means the 'when in time' is a huge consideration. The speed of light is an issue due to the size of it and the ability to travel, and the fact our radio signals have only been going for around 120 years, which is nothing. It hasn't travelled far enough yet. We can all continue to imagine though.
The 120 year radio number is irrelevant. No radio signal we have ever produced (with only a few exceptions) can be received past 1 light year. It drops below noise at that distance. Inverse square is the issue.
In either case Fin has a valid point and imo would likely be a good reason for us not to have received any signals also. I think the theory of emergence is in its infancy and will add a lot of better assumptions to the Drake equation once it finds its legs. I think we’re the first life to willingly leave its planet, and earth/sun has had the best factors to get life to this stage so far.
It's easy that we almost for sure are alone. We got aliens all around 🌎 and any of them are not close to be TECHNICAL and won't be. EDIT It's really wishful thinking when u see where we are RIGHT NOW and we are so far away to be able communicate. Even intelligent 🐙🦑 /mother 🌎 no matter what it won't be able communicate if they gonna thrive in their environments they won't build tech anyway. We see that life don't need any understable intelligent (to make sense of world they in) to thrive or be dominant one. Our super calm 🌎 and 🌞 are not safe for us, so if u think that other forms of life can predict that done flare will kill, i don't get it why it's not obvious. WE KNOW THIS AND WE STILL END UP IN WARS ETC ETC. DON'T TRY TELL ME THAT IT'S BECAUSE OF CULTURE OR RELIGION (IT IS BUT ITS NOT A POINT), WE CREATE THEM BECAUSE WE TRYED MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AND LIFE TO EXIST DON'T NEED THAT AND WON'T GET DO MUCH TIME OR LUCK AS WE DID. Maybe we are first one, but with time going on we won't be able to communicate either because of vast distances and i don't think local group are big enough to makes other form of life (we would conquer them before it would happen). There is much more reasons i can think of but u will try anyway fit this info your worldviews. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's amazing to me that u still think that intelligence is special, it's not. Invented tools such as language and writing make US possible, but intelligence is not some ABSOLUTE that will conquer the cosmos, it's just POSSIBLE in our universe. U think to much about this in mathematical sense (it's the only way we can, even biology, chemistry etc etc) but we use other tools and imagination (do intelligence need that, every sensor in body etc is a tool). You consider so many things too literally and that's how SCIENCE work not LIFE (even most exotic u can think of). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@Hecarim420 Communication/detection is the barrier so we can never know 100% that we are alone unless we can visually detect physical objects that cannot possible be natural.
This is arguably one of the best episodes or shows you've done... and yes the great filter is ahead of us. In the spirit of drakes equations, I think an octopus would be a very good candidate for this reason, an octopus already has the ability to use tools.
As to the detection issue: here is a data point we have with our own species: cell service. As spectrum is a limited resource, we are always _decreasing_ the level of transmission power. So, instead of 50000 2G cell towers we have 300,000 4G cell towers; for 5G there will be many millions. So, we ourselves are getting harder to hear with lower transmission power to increase density. Plus to speed things us we use compression, which removes redundancy to increase throughput. In other words, high compression sounds like random noise. So, ever lower power levels and ever more random-like signals. We not trying to hide, yet we ourselves are getting harder to hear in the radio spectrum; not less. Our blasting analog black & white I Love Lucy episodes in the 1950s was a *very* short window of time. I can imagine a more advanced species being nearly impossible to detect even if they are not hiding; at least with radio.
Just finished the Three Body Problem series and... his answer is kinda scary. Anyone successful enough to be interstellar will probably be very aggressive. Being aggressive, they will expect others to be aggressive. So ... will evolve to a) hide from others and b) aggressively remove competition before it becomes a threat.
There's a video of something moving into low earth orbit and then stops and Flys away at a different angle very fast. What following it is a large cylinder type object. This happend over Australia where we do have a very secretive base used for different functions and roles in space.
@@johntrek187 See I don't buy that crap. We have high enough resolution in our cameras that we can capture a fly wiping its butt from the surface of the moon, yet every one of those videos is so grainy that you can't really see what the objects are. And a lot of these videos come from the government. They of all people would have high-quality video, but instead give you worse video than on Bigfoot fakes.
I tend to believe in the “Prime Directive” option. Any civilization advanced enough to traverse the vast distance of space would be advanced enough to cloak themselves from us until it is determined if we are a benefit to the galactic community or a threat. I hope for the former and fear the latter. If this is true, I’m sure they have been keeping a close eye out on us.
You're right. It's exactly what the Galactic Federation of Worlds and other benevolent Alliances follow to ensure the growth of a civilization as long as the inhabitants learn to get along with one another and respect other cultures to join in....
This would imply multiple space going groups, none of them being instantly dominant. Or else there would be no real union of groups. We are tucked out of the way in the galaxy. Maybe they just can't see us
Do you cloack yourself from the ants when you go to your work ? Since when are we capable of detecting signals ? one century ? But the whole galaxy would be already aware of it ? Even then, shouldn't we able to detect signals emitted millions or billions years ago whith the distance between us ?
Alien 1 (watching): "What is that one doing?" Alien 2: "It appears to be pulling fauna from the ground and shoving it into its extra face hole." Alien 1: "Gross. Let's not talk to these ones."
The thing with the Great Filter is that there are many great filters! Forming cells out of dead matter was surely one of them. Forming complex multicell organisms was another. Developing from animals/primates to modern humans that do very sophisticated science might be another. Not killing ourselves with nuclear war or human-caused climate change might be another. But the vastness and hostility of space and the finite lifetime of our planet and sun will maybe be the biggest.
You know, modern humans existed for about 300 thousands years. The people back then were not intellectually inferior to us, despite that our species spend most of it's time as hunter gatherers. After that another long period as farmers. Only about 8000 years ago did people invent writing. Then it took until the 16th century for modern science to begin. There was no gurantee that any of that would happen. We are just lucky that some individuals took the time to think and figure out stuff for the rest of us, if not for those few individuals who carried us along throughout human history, then we'd all still be running naked through the forests.
Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general. Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever. I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's TH-cam channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!
@@P-7 Putin won't do that. I have hope no one will. Nukes are to preserve peace and the worst conflicts. We are way past the worst of the threat, which was during the Cold War. Nukes are like doomsday machines: it's not a weapon that anyone actually wants to use. It's only as a threat.
1) Life did begin early on Earth, but it only began once as far as we know. It probably isn't just a matter of 'water+Goldie Locks zone = life'. The actual catalyst for the chemical reaction may be fairly rare. Some factors we don't know were involved like having a Moon the size and distance (which was much closer then). We can't even guess at what specific factors caused the chemical reaction known as life to start. Maybe it has to start early as a planet cools or it can't start at all and maybe it rare that everything aligns. 2) The planet needs to be conducive to development of a technological spices. A water world for example is highly unlikely to develop a spices capable of harnessing fire. Too large a world and are things like body structures capable of producing spices biologically capable of wielding certain tools advancements. How common is the relative solar and system stability we enjoy? Many systems have gas giants closer to their star, how would effect the magnetic shield we enjoy? You have life but not the physical traits to develop tools and such. 3) Taking the early two into account; how likely is it then that a spices evolves that has 'technical intelligence', physical traits conducive to technological development, and sociocultural structures for a technical 'human like' spices? 66 billion years ago a big arse rock doesn't fall from the sky how likely is it that Technoraptor puts a Dino on the Moon? Throw the die again on the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction and maybe that techno-capable number doesn't come up again. 4) Time: there may be only a small window of say 100,000 to 500,000 years when an alien civilization is between a type 1 to type 2 civilizations on the Kardashev scale where they would be detectable to another species of our level. It seems pretty unreasonable to think we'd be able to detect a type 3 civilization as their technology would be so far beyond our level to understand what we were seeing. Even at that, were there a spices only a few score light years away of similar technologically development to us we'd not be able to detect them. Not only do radio waves need time to travel but by the time 'I Love Lucy' reached 5) There may be a limit to how far we or any spices can advance technologically, either to create or detect information from another spices. Not some 'end of the world' but by the laws of physics. Hyper space, worm holes, warp drives, inter-dimensional travel... may just not be possible given the amount of energy in the universe and/or its underlying structure even for a full on type 3 civilizations. And even if we can advance technologically ad infginitum things like the cosmic speed limit and constraints of getting around it with something like worm holes or warp space would require us to not have physical bodies. At that point what then would be the point? We be a virtual spices living in a virtual universe and probably undetectable to our current universe. We may someday send 'arcs' to distant star systems either with seeds or our world or as a desperate attempt with generational ships, but our current spices will never travel to them like Star Trek or Star Wars. This is why I don't believe we've been visited by aliens: if they had the technology to visit us they would have no reason to visit us. It would be like developing the technology to shrink yourself to the size of a bacteria then jumping down the petri dish instead of using that same level of technology to analyze the petri dish in far greater detail than a physical visit ever could. (And on a technical capability scale the distance between us and bacteria is less than us and a type 3 civilization. which begs the question even if it is possible does a star system capable of developing the request species have a life span long enough for that spices to develop the technical level to migrate to another star system.)
Regarding your last point:The development of species and their capabilities seems to be logarithmic, not linear. The time it takes for a type 1 civilization to develop into type 3 may be a lot smaller than for apes to develop into humans. We don't know. But judging by how quickly life exploded once it reached multi cellular forms, and how quickly technology exploded, once it reached engines and then when it reached computers, it's likely that tech breakthroughs will come quicker and quicker. There is a reason ai researchers are worried about hyper intelligent ai appearing out of nowhere and immediately overtaking is.
@colpul2: What a great comment! I support every point. @sertaki: good point. Such an interesting topic, yet I feel like everything has been said. More discussions don't lead anywhere at this point. The only thing that would change that is faster than light travel. For now, we are on our own, and it looks like one intelligent species is hard enough to take care off.
Interesting comment. Apparently your spell checker is consistently replacing the word 'species' with 'spices'. I have to go to work, but I would like to rebut a few points that you made...Hopefully when I get back from work.
It "began" once as far as the dictionary definition yes. But life may have started and stopped more than once. The most recent research and understanding is pointing us more toward it developing more than once. We now have some evidence (selenium isotope ratios in rock) that oxygen increased on Earth, reached high levels, then fell dramatically low BEFORE what we thought was the time life first developed. This period was enough time for life to develop, but not enough to evolve intensely (at least based on our understanding of how fast evolution and speciation takes place) before being apparently wiped out by environmental changes. We know the conditions for it existed prior to the theoretical timeline for origin.
You've got point (4) completely backwards. Type III civilizations wouldn't just be obvious that they exist... they would have long since colonized the Earth. Imagine what a zoo looks like from the monkey's perspective. How could you NOT tell there's a "higher being" out there?
love the wife explains series! The thing that always stands out to me about the fermi paradox is everyone always focuses on the distance/space hurdles but no one ever mentions the time hurdles. Our radio capable timeframe is the blink of an eye on galactic timeline, why should we expect our blink to be simultaneous to the other blinks?
Yes but in terms of the universe, distance is time, in a way. Scientists include the time variable. It's part of the paradox's discussion: the fact that we may be existing very early in terms of intelligence developing in the universe and therefore, not only would the chances of us detecting a cosmically short lived signal be slim because the timing would have to match up just so, but we may not be seeing any signals because everything we see out there is relatively young in the grand scheme and most of the intelligent life forms have yet to begun let alone evolve. Distance and time are intricately intertwined in space such that you can't think about one without the other, hence our usage of the combined term spacetime. What's really crazy is this- we have no ideq how big the universe is. We only have information about our personal observable universe surrounding us. We cannot get any information about anything beyond it. We do have a pretty good way of calculating how long ago the big bang and recombination occurred, but we don't know how large it actually is. Within our observable universe, the paradox seems like a legitimate issue.
I love it when scientists stray into the realm of philosophy. I remember this question when I was taking my first Astronomy class in college. "Do you believe there is intelligent life in the universe, and why or why not?" It was posed as an essay question on my final exam. My answer was based in part on the geological principal of Uniformitarianism, expanded to cover other planetary environments specific to evolution of intelligence. In other words I looked at our own planet, and assuming the same evolutionary conditions existed on other planets, counted the number of intelligent species on it relative to all life. My conclusion also depended greatly upon the definition of "intelligence." To be brutally concise, based upon my observations I postulated that intelligence was not a binary condition, but one of kind and of degree. There are many intelligent species on our planet, but only one that has evolved the ability to think in abstracts to the degree that the human species has. So if that's the kind of intelligence we're looking for, it has to be a rare thing. My conclusion was that while life itself was probably common, the chances that a species would develop intelligence beyond the need to survive and reproduce is rare but possible, and that our very existence is proof. I got an "A" in Astronomy 101 by the way. ;-)
A key part of what makes us "intelligent" is having evolved a physiology that gives us the ability to shape (and unfortunately destroy) our environment. Dolphins, octopus et al are not able to manipulate their surroundings in the way we can.
@@malectric What you said is true, however there is more to it than simply having the physiology that enables us to manipulate our environment. Our ability to communicate symbolically both in words and in writing to the degree we do, for example. The very concept of symbolism itself demonstrates a level of abstract thought found in no other species on this planet. And while we are not octopuses, we have very real physical limitations too. But here is where the big difference is: We can conceive of and create tools that allow us to transcend the limitations of our bodies. Language is one example, both written and verbal, and so is math, hammers, power sources, ships designed for water, air, and space. We are surrounded by our tools, and we use them so naturally we sometimes forget they are not part of us. But that's how we survived as a species. Most animals evolve to adapt to their environment. And that adaptation is part of their intelligence. Humans don't do that so much. We have survived because we can adapt our environment to us. Our intelligence has not been constrained by the vagaries of our natural environment. Rather, we use nature, and to what extent we can, we bend her to our will. That is not to say we are all powerful, we're not. I'm just saying we're the biggest fish in this fish bowl.
Human need to be very smart to survive in wild even 40 000 years ago (when our specy formed, whith no doubt). Then brain become smaller due specialisation or optimisations (why birds and ants "too smart"). Life couldn't develope mush earlier than at Earth because of radiation from black holes and so on. So we are one of the first. About evolution of culture on base of ability to transfer knowledge by abstract language (and so on) - books like "The WEIRDest people" by Henrich. The smarter one become the more it cooperates, move to "win-win" strategy, simbiosis and specialisation. Find "evolution of cooperation and altruizm". Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations. There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").
While I'd say the "great filter" is always ahead of us, especially while we are a species who lives on a single planet. I also think that humanity, as a species, is capable and adaptive enough to survive through pretty much anything short of the destruction of our entire planet. Of course the chances of the entire species being obliterated will massively reduce if and when we get off our little blue marble and start infect... erm... colonising other planets.
I would argue that any intelligent life that is technology superior to us, would have a vested interest in preventing human colonization. What if they have already decided we should be quarantined to this back water blue planet?
@@bluntsimracing Could be, who knows? However if they were concerned about our existence or see us as a potential threat, wouldn't they just great filter us?
@@sharonjuniorchess You're most definitely not wrong but at some point humanity is going to have to move flesh and blood people to other planets or our species will reach its' expiration date.
I've always felt that the fermi paradox makes the assumption that we _know_ how these aliens travel around or they aren't already here and we can't detect them.
Life couldn't develope mush earlier than at Earth because of radiation from black holes and so on. So we are one of the first. About evolution of culture on base of ability to transfer knowledge by abstract language (and so on) - books like "The WEIRDest people" by Henrich. The smarter one become the more it cooperates, move to "win-win" strategy, simbiosis and specialisation. Find "evolution of cooperation and altruizm". Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations. There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").
Leaving aside the detectability issues other commenters have noted, I like the elegant solution to the Fermi paradox proposed by the science fiction writer Iain M. Banks. Any technological species will have discovered the scientific method. Being intelligent, they will want to assess the wisdom of making contact with pre-starfaring species, for the welfare of those species. So they will set up a controlled study. Species they detect will be assigned to either a contact group or a control group, and the consequences of either contacting them or leaving them to develop in their own time will be assessed. We have been randomly assigned to the control group.
A society capable of doing this long term would have to be totally unified or some faction could just ignore the rules. Knowing humans, this seems to be an unlikely solution. The great filter has to be universal and this solution would not apply to us, at least for now.
@@jamesn0va "Knowing humans" While it is very human to try and empathize with others using our own experiences and there are likely several elements of psichology that all species capable of advancing technologically enough to become interstellar, it is worth nothing that assuming that they will be anything like us is foolish.
Hey I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the content you guys put out, it's all so interesting, simple yet comprehensive and entertaining. I can confidently say that this channel has, at least somewhat, helped and inspired me to decide in taking a Physics course in University by the end of the year! Thank you for it all :)
A limitation on how many habitable planets there are - specifically with life similar to Earth's - is that we live in a double-planet system. Our huge moon has a lot of interaction with Earth & many of those interactions make life more probable on Earth than if Earth had no large moon. What we have detected around other stars are, so far, not that similar to our (double) planet. In fact, smaller rocky planets close to their stars seem the exception, with gas giants being dominant. We're all hoping the new telescope will reveal more Earth-like planets!
This is true, but it's worth mentioning the heavy measurement bias. We have no way of reliably detecting exomoons right now, and our methods are predisposed to reveal big planets that are close to their stars. Earth-size planets in the goldilocks zone are much less detectable. This is why we find a lot of "hot Jupiters" despite the general consensus that such a strange planet should be rather rare. Hopefully we'll get a more accurate survey of nearby planets soon.
Nor do we know that our moon earth system is the ONLY configuration that can produce a life sustaining planet. It is simply bias because that is where we find ourselves. I understand the long odds given over the past couple decades of life elsewhere, but we are discovering that the various contingencies may not be as tight as previously required. For instance, the goldilocks zone is given as a narrow band. However, there is more to the goldilocks zone than merely distance from the star. One of the many variable that comes to mind is the type of star the planet finds itself orbiting. Other factors, such as the fine tuning of the universal constants are more observations that factors. Until we know it could have been different we cannot assume a wide variety of possible universes just to decrease the odds of these constants being friendly toward life. Just as some smuggle in the multiverse to expand probabilistic resources (time and matter/energy interactions pretty much) others try to assume MANY possible universes and ours was turned to be perfect by an outside force. Both are assumptions.
First of all, I love you guys! This is wonderful. Secondly, as an alien I can assure you the great filter has passed, we've worked hard to keep you occupied with your screens so you don't have time (energy) for wars. You're safe. Oh, and don't worry about the radio signals, nobody in the universe really uses EM waves for communication, they're just too slow. You guys are the only species who loves this stuff.
@@brad5938 I agree! But this war has to be fought through these very screens and devices...with trolling and hurtful words like "butt hurt" and angry gasps at inappropriate slaps...oh...
It may be all true, but even behind of one of those screens my 12yo son have energy enough to explode the Sun and, at the same time, give you some disturbing news about your "female" progenitor.
Fermi's question wasn't why can't we detect alien civilizations. His question was why aren't they here? The time it takes to colonize the whole galaxy is small compared to the age of the galaxy.
"The time it takes to colonize the whole galaxy is small" You are making a ton of assumptions for that -- all of this is guess work until we have more data or technology.
Not if the universe's expansion rate expresses as an increasing distance between everything that your local acceleration can't overcome. There is a theoretical point in deep space where everything is moving away from you so quickly that you seem to be (a) standing still in a void, and (b) getting smaller from the perspective of everything else. Or increasingly distant from every entity around you, as Robert A. Heinlein so eloquently illustrated (without explanation) in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), with Valentine Michael Smith's ability to make things "go" away.
Why aren't they here?? Here, let me clarify that for you. AHEM! Lets say 1 billion solar systems in our galaxy: 0.1% contains life = 1.000.000 systems. 0.1% has inteligent life varying from Ancient greeks to modern humans in inteligence = 1.000 solar systems with civilizations in our galaxy alone. NICE! Until you realize... that even 50% of them = 500 are capable of space travel of OUR technology OR EVEN SLIGHTY BETTER... It would still take about 50 to 100 years to LEAVE their solar system... LET ALONE GOING TO ANOTHER ONE WITH ENOUGH STUFF AND INDIVIDUALS TO COLONIZE THE PLACE... You can easily say that it might take Longer for said civilizations to Colonize 1 other Solar system then ALL of humanity has ever existed in terms of time.
Don't just assume all of them can travel space at ANY rate. Don't assume any of them can do it ALOT better then us. Space travel is fucking hard. And colonizing other planets is even harder.
Detection is also assuming any signal still intact after a great distance (as we know, space isn't a perfect vacuum). Also assuming any viable signal is sustained for long enough and pointed at the exact perfect direction to not miss us. Even using advanced techniques that don't rely on "signals", we have trouble detecting planets. Nevermind activity on or near said planet.
Life on earth is so insanely diverse, that I find it hard to believe even civilized intelligent life across our galaxy would use the same kind of communication. Plus they could be millions of years ahead of us and have technology and understanding of science totally unlike ours or they could be millions of years behind us and no where near technological yet
Our, this galaxy... universe is teeming with all sorts of life. Some similar to us. Yet, we still haven't explored enough of this wonderful place. So many places in plain sight if you know how to bend light and blend. Things may be right under our feet and we never look correctly. Does one truly wish to find something that doesn't want to be found? There may be a price. Be careful what you wish for because you may get it.
Try taking a smart phone to a Neanderthal, that's us trying understand tech from intelligent life millions of years ahead of us. We will be able to realize that it's tech but understand it at a glance nah.
Given the size of our galaxy, and our location therein being waaaaayyyy out in the veritable middle of nowhere, it's estimated that whole kardashev 2 civilizations could have been born, searched for earth with all their interstellar capabilities they could spare, and break down and fall into obscurity WITHOUT finding earth, let alone humans. Evem the distance our radio signals have reached is comparatively TINY and at the edge of the galaxy. Not only that, our evolution on earth from proto-celular chemical patches to fully functioning sentient humans with still plenty of problens moderating our base instincts took 4 BILLION years, and a LOT of luck. Odds are, if sentient life is anywhere near our neck of the woods, it didn't/won't have our level of luck, and either could have died out, got stuck in feudal era wars, or even gone extinct, or just won't exist for another few dozen million years. We could be the first, or even just the first this far out on our galactic arm. As such, we have the responsability to get over ourselves and leave a good impression for the galaxy in our wake.
That also assumes that science and biology is correct and humans aren't the offspring of aliens who deposited us eons ago. I mean, just doing the Darwinian math would indicate we would have more than one competing intelligent life form on this planet, but the best we have are some fossils and theories. I'm not saying it's aliens, bro....but it's aliens.
@@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012 I believe mars was habitable before the ice age, and we grew and colonized it; but then humans being humans, went to war, mars prompted earth's ice age, and earth nuked mars, which would create a landscape as we see today, even assuming NASA is being truthful about its inhosptability.
@@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012 We did have more then ome intellifent lifeform competing with us, we outcomputed or assimilated them. Other then that, theres no such thing as "Darwinian math". We fulfill a tool using niche and as far as we can tell, the biosphere would be incapable of supporting a competing tool using niche similar to ours. Even if another species independently evolved into that niche, the competition would have been fierce and one would have wiped the other long ago. There is zero reason to even consider the idea that biology is wrong to the scale that would completely sever us from the tree of life. If we were seeded by aliens, it would have been early single cellular life, or our evolution would have been influenced by aliens.
A civilization could colonize the whole of galaxy in a few million years, and could explore it in a few hundred thousand years with simple probes. Given the scale and energy consumption of a type 2 civilization, i would find any argument of that nature to be unlikely. A telescope set up in a crater on the dark side of our moon for example would have the resolution to identify individual planets and would be well within the capabilities of a type 2 civilization.
Love a discussion about Fermi Paradox, because I wonder about it a lot. My fear (after much more research) is that Earth is an anomaly, somehow. I'm in the "Rare Earth Hypothesis" camp.
Based on our own species I make these assumptions. We’ve been detectable for roughly a century and great minds have pondered our extinction in another century. So it could be that most civilizations ‘out there’ may only be 200-300 years to be detectable. This would explain why we keep missing each other. A couple centuries is nothing in a sea of a million years, much less a billion years.
Considering the communication part, it's really tough to extract "intelligent" signals from the noise we receive. I wonder what Earth's signal would look like a few light-years away. Would we be able to identify intelligent life from such a signal just a few ly away yet alone thousands of ly away? Guess it would be below a detectable threshold pretty fast and I guess signals are not supposed to have a high enough energy to be meaningful after over those very long distances. I mean we are just a few years into the age of radio emission and have already figures out that it's not really feasible for anything 'stellar'. Fermis paradox could be answered if there a technological leaps ahead of us the we just don't know about yet, Dyson spheres being just one of those ideas. Also the idea of warping spacetime for travel or communication would be something we can not detect.
Using our current best technology and radio telescopes, Earth's radio signals would be almost indistinguishable from background radio signals from our nearest neighbor at about 4 light years. Even if you could receive it, You might be able to pick up the signal and it might look "unnatural", but you probably wouldn't be able to get any useful information off of it. A few dozen light years away, and I doubt there would be anything there strong enough to recognize.
I think one has to consider that the FORM of life could affect whether intelligent life is constrained in progress. An octopus cannot see the stars, dabble with electricity, and so on. This would severely limit progress of communicating with species on other planets, using fire, etc. Same with dolphins (lacking hands and fingers.)
My feeling is that we only need to consider two factors: time and space... There is a lot of both! The chance that these factors line up for inhabitants of the Universe to meet one another is extremely small.
Galaxy. We're only considering the galaxy. Universe is too large. But for the galaxy, it's likely We're the first. If we weren’t, we wouldn't exist, as aliens would have already sent probes here.
@@cortster12 Even at the size of the galaxy, when factoring in the inverse square law I am assuming the radio signals get lost in the noise pretty quick. Of course you could use directional beams to negate this but then you have to know where to aim it which given the size of the galaxy would be very time intensive.
@@13lacle I said probes. as in, physical objects. It would only take a few million years at 10% the speed of light to send one to every star in the galaxy.
Thank you! The moment you said L meant ability to be detected via radio the idea that L isn't close to ZERO became ridiculous. We are a weird species even for planet earth and one way we are weird is how focused humanity is on the electro-magnetic spectrum. Other species focus on radar or sonar, they focus on chemical senses like taste and smell. . . but we take it further than either highly vision focused groups like the birds. We actually use fire to pre-digest our food. With our focus not just on binocular color vision but also fire we have a very specific set of unique skills. We also live on land during a period where the oxygen levels aren't too low to support our big brains, or so high that fire is explosive and dangerous . . . Could we detect a race of intelligent tool users on Europa IF they saw using sonar and had a clockwork technology based on carving materials based on their density, and utilizing water currents (which they can see) as motive power? No radio, no visible cities, no contact with the surface at all . . . their form of life is powered by geo-thermal activity around numerous vents at the bottom of an ocean below miles of ice and there is a LOT of it just as we see on the moons neighbor IO. I don't think we see them. Their L period starts only when we land on the moon and drill down. Even then they aren't immediately visible. We have to develop craft that can survive the pressure and actually go down there and see one of their cities using a spotlight or something and we could miss them so easily. How about a species that focused entirely on chemistry because taste and smell are their main senses? They don't even know the stars or outer space exist. They aren't using radio, or television, or even light. Picture an eco-system that had a chemical arms race like what we see among insects only on a much bigger scale . . . they see, communicate, and do everything else using chemical secretions and they've domesticated other critters to get an even bigger library, before finally beginning to mix things. They heat stuff up using chemical reactions, forming new materials without ever touching fire . . . Perhaps because their atmosphere lacks oxygen, maybe their chemistry is based on it being extremely cold out around one of those plentiful long lived red dwarf stars? Maybe their "heat" is just enough to let them "forge and shape" exotic ice of various sorts. I don't think we'd see them either. Even if we landed on their planet we might not be able to tell the difference between this race and some very advanced form of Ant or Bee. At least not at first. They are "talking" using chemistry, and we are talking using sound plus body language. We are literally talking past each other. They can't see or hear us, and we need advanced machinery to detect the scents and secretions they use to "talk". I think L for them is VERY close to zero. They aren't detectable. But lets come closer to home. Squid have existed almost as long as multi-cellular life. We've seen them use tools. They solve complex puzzles. They build villages on the ocean floor off the coast of Australia. But we couldn't detect alien squid. How about dolphins? Something that looks like a dolphin has evolved repeatedly throughout history. If we count dolphins as intelligent they also are invisible from space. The same goes for whales. I figure the basic assumption that L should be high is obviously wrong. First you have to develop a race extremely like us. Then they have to be in an environment that allows for our sort of higher technology. You have to be able to forge metals and develop electronics so your limited to the habitable zone and to planets with a decent amount of free oxygen for combustion. Otherwise you slow the development of technology down to a crawl. It's not enough to develop machinery, you are asking for very SPECIFIC machinery. Clockwork doesn't count. Hydraulic or Pneumatic technology doesn't count, extremely advanced chemistry or use of sonic force doesn't count. Only technology that sends out far traveling energy signitures like radio waves makes a species have an L value that we could currently measure as being above ZERO. That's a pretty big filter. We aren't looking for a planet with microbes, bugs, plants, dinosaurs. No we don't even want a planet with intelligent life, which if squid count is still probably really common. Squid have been around forever. We are looking for a race that is both like us AND at a very specific point in their technological development where they are leaking energy out into space where we can eventually see it . . . they aren't efficiently bouncing it back down off satellites, or moving it around using wires. It has to be a powerful and wide beamed broadcast of energy that escapes their planet and travels all the way to us. So we are looking for 1950s-1990s clones of ourselves? It could happen, but the chance of it happening NEAR us, at the same time we are LOOKING is statistically so low that I'd bet on radio silence before I even started looking to check my assumption. Why would you expect anything else? This assumption that L should be higher than zero just puzzles me. Why would anyone ever assume that given the examples of life we observe all around us on planet earth, and the environments we see when we look out at our own solar system and the stars? It just doesn't make any sense.
L is the length of time such a species is detectable. 300 years was the example value. Detectability would be under fc, the fraction of civilizations that communicate. Communicate in this case meaning casting light in a way we can detect, like radio or infra-red, not "uses language". All of your examples of intelligent civilizations would not count under fc, and we probably won't count soon either, as we get more efficient broadcasters, and switch to narrowcasting. That's assuming these civilizations don't try and communicate on purpose of course, and we have sent somewhat powerful radio transmissions to certain stars in the past. I see no reason for a spacefaring civilization to not use some form of electromagnetic radiation to communicate within a star system; sound, smell, and electricity just don't travel through vacuum, and light is really good at moving very far, very fast. Even then, electromagnetic communication isn't the only option for fc, blocking starlight with a dyson swarm could work, as could unusual radiation from high energy events, although those would be rarer than just communication.
@@TlalocTemporal *Humans are not from Planet Earth Ellis Silver now….. Quran 1500 years back 2;36 / 7;24 / 67;2 / 11;7 / 6;165 / 20;115* Understanding How, Why and When Humans were created by One God of all…. *YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND THIS UNTILL YOU ARRANGE VERSES IN CORONOLOGY* Decision to Create humans or Man came 9 billion years after Big Bang with creation of Blood and sounding Clay and then verse….. 2;30 The Point to note in verse is, still humans was not named Insaan or Humans but Dominants or Rulers of Earth and other point is….. *How Angels know man or dominant or successor, will spread mischief Corruption and bloodshed?* How Angles know of Blo od 2;30? Angles don't have blo od in their body..... This clearly means the verse is talking of creature with blood in them. There were creatures that had Blo od before humans and that use to fight, create mischief and corruption according to verse. So it was dinosaurs before man and there was blood in their bodies that use to fight to control territory and fight of resources of territory SO CLEAR SO EVIDENT.... The verse also means, Man is built basically by animal material so by nature he is animal and made greedy and fights and control all resources/wealth for himself. (See the humans as nations, as America, Europe, Russia and their bl ood shed) 91;8 But education taught by God or Religion, makes him Civilized, Sacrificing, Loving and Caring others (Sultanate Osmaniya). 96;4 / 95;4 / 4;1 Now let’s start again from Big Bang 2;117 / to organization of universe 21;30 / 41;11 and 9 billion years after big bang the decision of Creation of Earth 79;30/ 2;29 Decisions to create earth or process of creation of earth after Big Bang with Pre-Earth and planet Theia collusion 79;29 Make up of Earth from Hot boiling lava earth to cool watery earth to support creation of life with blood on earth 2:29 *Sending of Iron the important constitution of Blood and to create gravity and electricity before water 57;25* No Iron, No Blood. *Then sending of freezed water by meteoroids 78; 14 to first Hot Earth and first sea and first microbial life* 29;19-20 Then creation of plants and Botanical Big bang 78;16 / 19;31 and Creation of Oxygen and Ozone for protection from sun and skies 21;32 / 52;8 / 86;11 to help development of warm blooded animals Panspermia and their stability 79;33 Then Panspermia and sending of 8 pairs of animals from other planet and evolution in 3 dark periods (unknown to man/science) 39;6 and Then Creation of dirty stinking black mud from dying or Corpus of animal life 55;14 and from this and after this black mud (Teen), decision of creation of humans 15;26-33… No black Mud or Teen no Humans… *Creation of man on planet Paradise: with black Mud 7;12 38;76 / 15;28 /15;29 / 38;75 / 23:100* *After creation of Black, decaying Mud or Teen 7;12 38;76 / 15;28 Decision of Creation of man on planet Paradise 2;30* *Still Humans was not named Insaan or Basher 2;30 but Dominant/Rulers/Successors of earth* *Then! Creation of Souls 17;85 or pre humans first 19;9 / 2;28 on other planet and called first time called Insaan/humans after education 33;72 / 2;31* They lived in the different world 33;72 where souls of humans return, after death of Physical Body (Barzaq) 15;29 / 38;75 / 23:100. Then loading of all soul or all pre humans, in body made of black mud man and giving life to first man Adam and taking oath 7:172. *Creation of Adam in cool Sun / Heat less / Hunger less, Planet Paradise 20;118/119* Then creation of Adam from black mud from earth 55;14 / 38;75 and educating Adam 2;31 / 7;11 (still not Eve or Hawa AS) They Adam show his education and Prostration by Angles and Creation of Satan 2;34 / 7;12 Creation of Satan 15;31 / 17;61 / 20;116 / 38;74 Then creation of Eve / Hawa AS and advised to live *““both of you””* in Planet Paradise 2;35 / 7;19 / 20;117-119 *Then test of free will on planet other than earth, and they ate from the tree (first use of free will) and sent down on earth temporarily, to check / test use of free will* 2;38 / 7;24 / 20;123 *Descending of man on Earth as punishment 2;36 / 7;24 67;2 / 11;7 / 6;165 / 20;115* *Then Humans started life on earth, as short period 2;36 / 7;24 / 79;46 and as test* 67;2 / 11;7 / 6;165 / 20;115. And the purpose of sending humans on earth is test of freedom of choice 21;18 / 11;7 / 67;2 / 6;165 / 91;8. And purpose of Sending Humans on earth to show Mercy and forgiveness 6:12 / 5;54 / 11:119 / 7:18 / 32:13 / 38:85.
I love to see how two different scientists get on chatting to each other; two very different sciences that are far enough apart that one is unlikely to ever earn a salary doing the other's job, but still effectively communicating and enjoying each other's company because they are also similar... Tis harmonious... :D
Ok I had to pause at 3:28. What shape eggs would a cubic chicken lay? From which facet would it be laid? And would chicks be two dimensional squares that grow up, literally, to become cubic chickens? Upon deeper consideration; what shape is an individual chicken feather? Would it be a rectangle? Or a two dimensional rhombus?
Wow we actually agree! I also think the great filter is behind us, this vast amount time that was needed for multicellular life to evolve is pretty convincing. Add the other thing, that it's just a miserably puny time window that we've been looking for signs of life out there, and our equipment is not THAT hyperadvanced, and it almost inevitably leads to the conclusion that it's not a surprise NOT to find anyone out there... yet. I think life is pretty common in the universe. Complex life however, is a whole other question. I'm really looking forward to see an expedition to Europa (I mean, the moon). I hope it'll happen in my lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised if we found simple life there. Heck, even in the clouds of Venus it's not yet ruled out. That would shape that Drake equation a lot.
Hahaha, I laughed when you feel you needed to specify you were talking about the moon. I wonder if there is some wierd conspiracy group in America thinking there is no life in Europe and planning to do an expedition there
What about our star? Is it not a filter? It is overdue to send us back to the stone age. How many other habitable planets have to deal with CME...super flares...or micro nova from their star? To ignore the sun would seem very, very foolish and reckless.
@@jonasdaverio9369 Noooo! Please don't give them ideas haha! Btw I actually heard rumours about people believeing in that Australia does not exist, so... who knows?
@@BlazinRiver1 Good point! But doesn't that fall under the category (or factor) of n(lowerindex)e in the Drake equation, aka number of habitable words per star? I mean, I wouldn't consider a planet habitable, if it orbits around a wild red dwarf that goes brrrr every several years. I'm not an expert so feel free to doubt my idea.
I agree that it's detection. Just as we don't appreciate the timescales of the universe, we also don't appreciate the size, much less the effect of the Inverse Square Law. There is no way an alien at Alpha Centauri could detect our radio signals, or tell them apart from our solar radiation from that distance.
Actually, the radius of the sphere beyond which our signal is indistinguishable from the galactic background is closer to 80 light years. Unfortunately, a very optimistic set of solutions to the Drake Equation put communicating civilizations about 1000 light years apart.
@@Egilhelmson do you mean in principle or in practice? And how advanced of technology would it take. Also, I mean specifically noise caused by our star.
Intelligent life is an interesting argument. In theory, you could make the case for intelligence being measured by a species learning to use tools, in which case, yes, we have a step up over other species here. But a factor in that is environment/how species adapt to that environment. As Mrs Asylum mentions, octopuses, dolphins, ravens, etc, are intelligent; but they're impaired by, for instance, octopuses and dolphins can't harness fire (because, aquatic), plus dolphins not having appendages that can manipulate objects. Same with ravens, in that sense. BUT, all of these species have proven problem-solving abilities and are shown to be quite intelligent, within their natural environment. Personally, I think the only thing really holding back octopuses is that they're aquatic. If they ever adapted to live for long periods on land, I think it's at least possible that they could learn how to use fire (way down the road, obviously). I'm of the opinion that there is intelligent life out there; whether or not it's trying to communicate, I don't know, but I think once we find it, it's going to blow our minds with how similar, and different, it is from us. Right now, we only have a sample size of one to work with, because life here is all we know. But once we start really being able to explore, it's gonna get all kinds of crazy.
I don't consider any species currently alive on the planet, with the exception of humans, to be sufficiently "intelligent". Why? Because none of them are capable of language or, more critically, culture. The entire reason humans were able to form civilization was because of their unique ability to grow and share information with future generations. This simply doesn't happen with other animals. There are a few that can understand simple sentences from humans, but none of them are capable of having that same conversation with another of their own species. This is the key difference between why humans formed a civilization and not the monkeys and apes we see around us.
@@TheFinalChapters Birds and whales & dolphins have very sophisticated vocalizations, and even grunts & growls are the original roots of language All shades & grades, no "quantum leap", differences of degree but not of kind Other animals can also communicate complex color patterns. Humans have more language & more tool usage in more combination, but are not the only examples of any one criterion
17:42 the great filter event is the ability to be aware of the necessity of leaving the crude oil in the ground, as it may well be integral to keeping the ecology static. It may provide combustable material inorder to smelt the mantle down into both ferromagnetic metals( which sink) and non ferrous metals that get ejected in volcanic eruptions along with the CO2 rich magma. Life may well be key in keeping the earths core liquid and the magnetic field active. Once the " excess " hydrocarbon waste has been consumed by technology... The magnetic field could collapse... No van allen belts, no sunscreen... No more civilization, a great silence, only the wind moaning over a denuded landscape. Didnt percy Shelley write a poem? Ozymandias? Fitting i think...
My problem with the Drake Equation is that it's just too coarse. My factors are something like N=R * f(p) * n(e) * f(L) * f(i) * f(c) * L with: R = 5 (known) f(p) = 1 (mostly-known) n(e) = 0.5 (most stars are binaries and probably toss out most planets, and/or are red dwarves and have tiny or nonexistent habitable zones) f(L) = 1 (life seems to develop literally anywhere there's a chance, and no, our sample size is _not_ 1. There seem to be _many_ completely separate instances of life starting on Earth, through time and in particular extreme environments.) f(i) = 10^-10 (This one is where I think it gets difficult... specifically Eukaryotic life, habitability of a planet for long enough to get past that, proportion of advanced (multi-cellular) life in situations in which the development of technology is feasible, etc.) f(c) = 0.8 (I think most technological species will develop radio... though I _don't_ think that's particularly relevant because...) L = 50 (This is about how long we emitted powerful analog radio signals that could even conceivably be detected, which makes it a very thin radio shell, not a bubble.) Which gives 10^-8 civilizations per galaxy and we definitely shouldn't expect to see anyone else anywhere nearby. But _why?_ Where does that humongous gap between expecting basically all habitable planets to have life, but almost none of them to develop intelligent life come from? That's where the Drake Equation just utterly falls on its face. There's a reason I had to list multiple examples in that one, and those are still _woefully_ oversimplified. For example, your wife brought up a great point about octopi and dolphins. They probably aren't, but even if they were _twice_ as smart as we are, it will never matter at all, because they live underwater, which means no fire, no electronics, no durable artifacts, no advancement. I'm not fond of the hyper-detailed versions with hundreds of factors either, as the chance that we even _know_ about all the factors is basically zero. But I do think there needs to at least be "chance for life to make the transition to complex life" and maybe "proportion of stars stable enough to allow planets to retain atmosphere" and "proportion of planets with stable enough orbital parameters to be _consistently_ habitable". I also very much agree that it's incredibly arrogant to assume that we could detect life. I think just in the last few years, we _might_ have gotten to the point at which we could detect a copy of _ourselves..._ but only within maybe 500 light-years, and even then only in a brief 50-year window. Compared to the vastness of time... it's absurd to even _call_ this a "paradox".
Interesting comment! You say for f(L)=1 that “there are many completely separate instances of life starting on Earth, through time and in particularly extreme environments.” Please could you justify this claim with some citations? My understanding of terrestrial biology is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestry, that life began once, very early in the planet’s history, in circumstances unknown, and has since adapted to every possible environment. What are these many separate origins of life that you assert?
The Drake equation was never meant to be scientifically rigorous, so I agree that it's coarse. To start, I think "f(i)" could be expanded into multiple factors. Why such a small value for "L" though? What happens at the end of that 50 years? Better communication tech or extinction?
@@ScienceAsylum Better communication tech, yeah. That's a generous estimate of how long we used high-power broadcast radio transmission as our primary communication means. As others have pointed out in the comments here, it doesn't take very long after that to figure out how to narrow the angle of a transmission (actually, we did it _very_ quickly in the form of radar), and once that is industrialized/commercialized, it would be pretty silly to use broadcast for very long after that. Once you start using focused beam transmission, the power level of your signals drops by orders of magnitude, and the chances of a distant observer being in just the right place to be able to see th em drops dramatically as well. Of course, this is assuming that alien civilizations aren't deliberately trying to be found by new species just starting to master their environment. If an advanced alien race _wanted_ to be found, they could surely broadcast a stupendously powerful omnidirectional radio signal visible for very long distances. If we put our collective effort toward it, I'm sure broadcasting something visible through at least our quadrant of the galaxy would be quite doable for us. So yeah, L=50 is my napkin estimate of how long a developing civilization would, by pure chance and the logical progression through science and technology, and on average, use megawatt scale omnidirectional broadcast for internal communication before learning better methods. In other words, I think most people _severely_ overestimate our ability to detect alien civilizations.
@@ScienceAsylum Oh, are you familiar with Isaac Arthur and his channel Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur? He has a really good way of looking at futurism and parsing it in a manner that is so much more logical than typical sci-fi that it makes most people's vision of what the future looks like seem just goofy. Like, the idea that we're going to be terraforming planets, that we'd ever even _want_ to go back down a steep gravity well once we've escaped the one we were born in, when building rotating habitats with the _vastly_ more abundant and easily obtainable resources in space is so much easier, is bizarre. It's just a thought-form, little more than tradition for its own sake. Sci-fi has taught us to think of space as vast, empty, and barren. And comparatively speaking, it is... but gravity wells are what makes things hard to get to and get away from in space, not distance. And when you look at equal-energy orbital distributions, once you get to the outer solar system, past the gas giants, the resources available are _staggering_ and make Earth look very confining by comparison, especially accounting for how difficult the resources here are to acquire and then get up out of its gravity well. Anyway... where was I going with this?? Oh yeah... he has a lot of episodes focusing on the Fermi Paradox, discussing potential solutions to it in _extraordinary_ detail... and in the introductory series to it, he lays out a much more detailed equivalent to the Drake Equation. In it, he goes through and details out _hundreds_ of potential "great filters", each of which seem extremely reasonable one by one. Many of them, we don't have any real idea what numbers to plug in to them, or how important their relative weighting factors might be, but at the end, even if you just assign each of them a 50/50 chance, it comes out to expecting our nearest neighbors to be at least a billion light-years away, statistically speaking.
I made a similar comment about the main factor being the development of complex and intelligent life. This is mainly due to the absolutely, mindblowingly low odds of a planet remaining habitable for such a long period of time so that those leaps can take place (given enough time, random chance can lead to all sorts of wonderful innovations amongst life. The main issue here is time). We don't appreciate it here on Earth due to observer bias, but pretty much everything had to go nearly perfectly for conditions to be good, and every time things went the slightest bit wrong a mass extinction occurred and life barely limped through. I think a focus on the ability for life to evolve to such a point would be very fruitful for both solving the paradox and helping humanity appreciate how very precious our Earth is in the grand scheme of things.
Well, your example of the Octopus is something to seriously consider. "Intelligent" life can develop/evolve in numerous ways. But if, for example, the intelligent life on one of these planets has developed let's say, without ears, then developing technology which would broadcast sound across vast distances would be pointless. And, if those beings found themselves looking to the stars for the sake of traveling to other planets or even communicating with other planets then perhaps they would consider an entirely different means of attempting to communicate to other stars. Maybe their version of the Fermi Paradox involves the idea of a baseline technology which *their* species would use to communicate with. Alternatively, the alien species in question could, like the octopus, require different environmental qualities in what they consider "habitable" planets than what we deal with on Earth. Maybe they require liquid that isn't water to support their own version of life, so they point their telescopes/detection devices towards planets unlike our own. And thus it isn't that they don't want another planet, they're just not so into ours that we'd get a phone call or a visit.
You're thinking analog. Even species without hearing, could still interpret radio signals which are meant to convey sound, by examining the raw data. Same with TV signals. A species might not have sight, but if they have technology, they could tell that there is a signal with patterns.
Or, if they are humanoid, they could simply never develop beyond agrarian and don’t see the need to go beyond it. All intelligent life done need to be humanoid, like the octopus.
16:30 Self aware sentience with an ability to manipulate the environment to the species own advantage, such as using and making complex tools. I think that covers the the spirit of what is intended with the Drake Equation.
So if the consequences of our "ability to manipulate the environment to the species own advantage" is to destroy ourselves for example from the climate change or maybe a nuclear war then the humankind doesn't count as an intelligent life?
Great content for my first view of the channel, you guys are fun. My opinion is that there are a few of the Fermi Paradox 'answer' hypotheses in play. The evidence pointing to the number of factors that had to be just right for multi-cellular organisms on Earth (as we know it projecting to the galaxy and universe as a whole) to arise makes it reasonable to assume the Earth is rare as a cradle for life. This has been further supported by exoplanet research that shows the wide range of conditions that can exist. Prokaryote life may be somewhat common outside our solar system, but the conditions necessary and time it took on Earth seems to indicate at least one 'early' great filter has been passed. Still the number of possible instances is so large, that it is reasonable to think that if we passed that filter on Earth, than it has been passed on other worlds. This is further supported by the fact that the constituent matter that was necessary for life is seen no matter where we look in the universe. However the distances are immense. Even if there were multiple instances of species capable of producing techno signatures within our galaxy overlapping each other time-wise, the distances between them make that detection unlikely, at least for now (detection capability advancement plus time/distance involved). Other answers such as the Zoo and Dark Forest hypotheses are interesting but I believe that with the reasons outlined above it is very unlikely these come into play, yet. Another fascinating idea is that we may be one of the first species capable of producing techno signatures based on the age of the universe and recycling/distribution of heavier elements needed for such technologies to arise.
I've always been intrigued by how early life developed on Earth but then how long it took for the emergence of complex life. One argument is energy utilization needed for complex life was not possible until sufficient free oxygen was present. One take I personally like is that we may be one of the first intelligent specifies to develop. A lot had to happen: the right collection of elements in the cloud that formed the solar system (we are star stuff meme), the creation of the moon, plate tectonics, a protective magnetic field, development of photosynthesis, and the die off of the dinosaurs were all necessary components. Finding the first life will be exciting no matter what the form.
Don’t forget the Theia hypothesis. It’s possible that the Theia impact and fallout (the formation of the moon as a ‘sister-planet’ rather than a typical satellite, the remnant Theia masses - the LLSVPs- in the Earth’s mantle) is also important to the development of life.
Assumption #2 in the Fermi paradox ought to be revised: "We are capable of detecting nearby alien civilizations if they communicate using powerful omnidirectional radio waves" (like we did back in Fermi's day).
It's easy that we almost for sure are alone. We got aliens all around 🌎 and any of them are not close to be TECHNICAL and won't be. EDIT It's really wishful thinking when u see where we are RIGHT NOW and we are so far away to be able communicate. Even intelligent 🐙🦑 /mother 🌎 no matter what it won't be able communicate if they gonna thrive in their environments they won't build tech anyway. We see that life don't need any understable intelligent (to make sense of world they in) to thrive or be dominant one. Our super calm 🌎 and 🌞 are not safe for us, so if u think that other forms of life can predict that done flare will kill, i don't get it why it's not obvious. WE KNOW THIS AND WE STILL END UP IN WARS ETC ETC. DON'T TRY TELL ME THAT IT'S BECAUSE OF CULTURE OR RELIGION (IT IS BUT ITS NOT A POINT), WE CREATE THEM BECAUSE WE TRYED MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AND LIFE TO EXIST DON'T NEED THAT AND WON'T GET DO MUCH TIME OR LUCK AS WE DID. Maybe we are first one, but with time going on we won't be able to communicate either because of vast distances and i don't think local group are big enough to makes other form of life (we would conquer them before it would happen). There is much more reasons i can think of but u will try anyway fit this info your worldviews. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's amazing to me that u still think that intelligence is special, it's not. Invented tools such as language and writing make US possible, but intelligence is not some ABSOLUTE that will conquer the cosmos, it's just POSSIBLE in our universe. U think to much about this in mathematical sense (it's the only way we can, even biology, chemistry etc etc) but we use other tools and imagination (do intelligence need that, every sensor in body etc is a tool). You consider so many things too literally and that's how SCIENCE work not LIFE (even most exotic u can think of). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Our signals are indistinguishable from background noise once your about 100 light years out due to the inverse square law and the rate at which signals fade. We broadcast much less now
The very early appearance of simple life on Earth cannot be used to deduce the ease or frequency of life elsewhere, despite the intuitive temptation to do so. It’s like having a single point on a graph and asking what is the gradient of the line going through that point; it could be absolutely anything. The early start to simple life on Earth actually reveals how extremely long it has taken for complex multicellular life and then intelligence to evolve. It has taken essentially the entire age of the Earth for a communicating civilisation to evolve from self-replicating slime. This is about one third of the age of the Universe. So from our single data point, the time taken to go from proto-planet to radio telescope is of similar order of magnitude to the age of the Universe. This is a strong candidate for a one line explanation to the Fermi Paradox. This reasoning also argues that life HAD to begin very early in order for us to be here. The Earth is predicted to remain habitable for another billion years or so, but we have already used up 4.5 billion years to get this far, which is 9/11ths or about 82% of the available time. Again, from our single data point, it appears that the production of communicating intelligence is an exceptionally slow process requiring cosmically significant timescales.
A billion years might be optimistic even, I've certainly heard lower estimates for it. Like for instance rate of water loss, I thought might be critical with in half a billion or less I thought. Also in general towards the end of the habitable period it is likely the planet will already have become so inhospitable that complex life was no longer possible. So presumably the time for intelligence being possible is even shorter then the end date.
Can't really assume the time scales from simple life to complex life would be similar to Earth either. It's unknown whether we took the fast or slow path.
@@miniverse2002 Actually we have some evidence towards that we probably evolved fast. Nothing very strong but statistically speaking it tilts it in that favor. For instance, if we evolved at a normal to slow rate, there should be a fair chance that the planet would still have a long chunk of habitable life left, because the habitable period of the planet isn't a constraint. But if the length of habitability was a constraint and you had to evolve fast to succeed, then the chance of still having a lot of time left on the clock would be low. So basically more chance it was fast if we used almost all the habitable time on the planet to evolve, which is what we find, Earth doesn't have long left for complex life like us, just some hundreds of millions of years probably. Another is that harder to evolve steps should take long to evolve then easier to evolve steps. So if one compared important evolutionary steps, the hardest one of those should stand out for being so much longer then the others. If how ever you evolved fast, that step and perhaps a few others got really lucky boosts and happened fast, in that case each of of these steps should have some what random lengths. We found that step lengths on Earth for significant evolutionary developments seemed to be random. Which suggests fast. Now of course there's some assumptions in there and it doesn't definitively prove anything. But it probably tilts the chance towards us being a fast evolving world to at least 10 to 1 or more.
I'm that friend. Lol. I'm with you guys, I think detecting a signal, let alone a signal we recognize as such, means we essentially have to be within range of where it could go/ be received. That's just one complication. The galaxy is so large, in sure someone in Maine would have a bigger chance of receiving a message in a bottle from Morocco. . And do we even know what the space currents are around the galaxy? What even comprises those? There's just too too much we don't know. We are definitely being visited by something. By things we refer to as "aliens". But we don't even know if they are "aliens", demons, ghosts, other dimensional entities, thought forms or something we haven't even conceived of. It could be easier to communicate with something from a neighboring galaxy than our own. It's certainly would seem easier to map the moon and all its inhabitants than the ocean. Or even some places on dry land. There just so much we don't know. And if we did detect someone from our galaxy, the chances that the signal was from 200 million years ago and those made the signal, or received it, forgot about it more than 199 million years ago, is pretty high. They/ we wouldn't even be the same creatures anymore. Maybe 200 million years from now, we will be able to send and receive signals from one another.
I think the solution is the second option, that we are not able to detect them. We have started to think about the possibility of life roughly around 90 yrs ago and its not been a long time since we have started to work out for our quest. So I think, since, we have just started to search for them, there may be intelligent life existing (maybe far more advanced than us), but we don't know, either because of technological limitations or maybe the natural hurdles like the slow speed of light (c is slow when talking about the vastness of our galaxy).
A hundred years ago it was assumed that there was life on Mars. Books detailing the canals and cities were top sellers. Not until the probes of the 1960's arrived showing the lifeless deserts did we let go of the idea of Martins. We have always been convinced there are aliens just out of sight.
The Hubble Extreme Deep field took 10 years to image 1/26,000,000th of the sky. To scan the whole sky with HXDF level of scrutiny would take 260,000,000 years = quarter billion years Calling the search complete is extremely premature
The speed of light is actually not a hurdle at all, it simply means that when you are looking far away you're looking back in time. There could still have been civilizations billions of years ago. With the vastness of space it is extremely unlikely we will ever find a concurrent civilization with ours so our best bet is looking far away and ago. The only way a civilization can be in our own galaxy is if it doesn't do megaprojects like Dyson Spheres for some reason or they are younger than ~55,000 years as that is the radius of the galaxy, which again would be unlikely that we would both come of age so to speak at the same (galactically speaking) time. We are likely firstborn of the galaxy for this reason, although it could be the case that the galaxy had to develop through nuclear evolution to this stage of metallicity in order to support life and civilizations are all springing up at the same time. Time will tell.
@@filonin2 I would think a lot of people wouldn't think about the implication of the fact that the light we see now, tells us about the past and not the here and now. It's really strange thinking about things considering the vast numbers that are involved.
I've always thought, as with most things, it's a combination of multiple factors. Our detection ability is not even close to adequate to say we wouldn't miss a signal, there are probably multiple "Great Filters", both ahead and behind us, and maybe life is common enough to where we simply aren't interesting enough to have been directly reached out to yet. The earth is about a 1/3 the age of the Universe, and life probably wasn't possible for the entire time. We probably aren't the first civilization, but it's not inconceivable that we are among the first. Hopefully, we don't blow our selves up before we get a chance to find the answer.
Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general. Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever. I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's TH-cam channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!
As rare as intelligent life seems to be (by Earth standards at least), it seems to me that the sheer vastness of the observable universe with the trillions of galaxies would indicate that the chances of there being no other intelligent life at all is highly improbable.
That's true, but please check out Isaac Arthur's SFIA Channel. If we, for example, went on in a million years to harness the power of our entire galaxy, a big part of the Universe could look right at us and say "WTF is wrong with that galaxy over there?????" because all they would be able to see was infrared (heat) radiation and no light. But we've looked at thousands and millions of the galaxies around us, and see nothing weird anywhere. And many thousands of stars in our galaxy, but don't see any sign of weird artificial stuff going on. Sure, it is crazy big technology but our galaxy has been making planets for billions of years. (But the above assumes that other creatures are power hogs like us.)
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field wowed everyone with thousands of galaxies, never before known, lurking in the darkness of an "empty" patch of sky. It took 10 years to image 1/26,000,000th of the sky. To complete the all-sky Extreme Deep Field will require 260,000,000 years = quarter billion years
@Mike ... Considering that we are already knee capping ourselves technologically, we may end up being the same or even worse in 100yrs ... Check out the "Right to repair" crowd ... Or the "Planned obsolescence" crowd ... The individuals (and companies) that are responsible for making our tech are intentionally making it impossible to understand the bells and whistles underneath .... Meaning the vast majority of the population is locked out of MOST technologies ... And when the companies owning this tech go under, they retain the Intellectual Property rights and keep causing terror in the market for anyone that makes tech with similar functionality. Meaning with time, no one will be able to make anything useful without fearing to be sued by some else ...
I'd definitely go with the filter being behind us, based on how long it took for eukaryotic, then multicellular life to evolve here on Earth, where the conditions for carbon-based life were pretty much ideal. The fact that it took so long, on a planet where life was so abundant, shows how incredibly ulikely it was to happen at all. Also, that fact that for this to happen required a pretty stable environment to persist for an uncommonly long period of time. There may be many other planets out there that have environments well-suited to life now but how long have those conditions existed? Yep... I'll go with that one!
Also take into account the very brief time period we have been able to understand these things.out of the billions of years earth has existed and taken to form. Just a hundred or two years difference between these things happening for us and another species, and us being able to detect them, and we could easily miss them. It's just not feasible that we'd exist at the same time.
@@maleprincess62 At the same time? If none in this galaxy have surpassed our level then the filter is ahead of us. That's the whole point of the great filter hypothesis.
@@antonystringfellow5152 all I'm saying is if an intelligent species evolved and died a pretty measly 100,000 years before us, it would be very easy to miss them. This theory doesn't take into account the massive timescales that the universe deals with
Intelligence and communication are two different things. Octopodes are intelligent but are unlikely to need to talk with one another. Communications seem to develop when group survival strategies become dominant for a species. This might mean pack hunting, herd defenses, or even predator satiation like cicadas use. So we need a species to develop intelligence, communications, and tool use if we want to find a species.
That's not what the equation means when it refers to communication. It's talking about on the level that it is transmitted from the planet, or whatever body the life would be on, into space.
Also I think it is referring to a civilization communicating it's existence whether that be intentional or not. IE elemental markers, energy output, etc etc. Not necessarily communication in the sense of them sending information laden radio waves or even photons, basically anything on the electromagnetic spectrum that doesn't occur naturally, to one another.
There is no filter. Finding things in space is just really hard. Even the early radio signals everyone loves get buried and lost in background radiation after a while.
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field took 10 years to image 1/26,000,000 of the sky. 260,000,000 years = quarter billion years until the all sky survey is complete The whole point of the HXDF was how amazed everyone was by how much stuff was lurking in the distant dimness If we haven't even looked closely, how can we say we know what is (not) there? An actual alien Dyson swarm would be dark on our skies, not seeing any glowing point of light, we'd never think to train our telescopes in that direction. The SLOAN digital sky survey used plates to block OUT light, only light from known galaxies was admitted through tiny holes (into fiber optic cables). Does that really count as a "search" for undiscovered civilizations, when we are intentionally putting blinders on, and only acknowledging the existence of already discovered galaxies? Again, the whole point of the HXDF was how much amazingness was lurking in seemingly "empty" space. Our estimate of the number of galaxies in the universe increased by a hundred-fold. Astronomers have imaged millions of galaxies. But, thanks to the Hubble deep fields, we know there are BILLIONS of galaxies. We have blurry grainy smudgy images of (perhaps) one out of every thousand galaxies. And that doesn't even include the "empty" space between bright glowing galaxies -- perhaps an actual alien civilization, comprising millions of Dyson swarms throughout its galaxy, would appear DARK and not even telegraph its presence to us, without looking closely? We are 260,000,000 years from completing an all-sky survey at even the blurry HXDF level of resolution. Hundreds of billions of galaxies, which we expect to exist, have yet to be imaged even once... We think we know what, exactly ?
I also feel detectability is an issue. Though there has been some recent improvement on detection methods using circularly polarized light. Some say this tech could eventually be used to scan the stars and see what's out there, even if it can't yet communicate with us. That'll chop Fc and L right off the end of the Drake equation.
The only thing missing from the equation, is something to factor in timeline alignment. Time dilation, the speed of light, and the age of a planet compared to ours. A civilization may have come and gone long before, or will come after, the end of our solar system. Our timelines would need to align in such a way that we are alive at the time the signal they send reaches us, which could be millions of years difference! If we didn't catch the last signal of a dying civilization as we started listening, the best we can hope for is the first signal from a brand new civilization that just started looking for us. Nothing more, nothing less. If they are far enough away, they are already dead. If they are really close, we have a chance. The equation now has a 0.00001 chance by default. You are welcome.
Exactly! And the next question that we should ask: even IF we detected someone out there, would it mean anything at all if we already know our possibilities to interact with them in any meaningful way (like sending messages back and forth, or going there) are as good as zero because of the time and space alignment?
Yes I can here to say that. Professor Brian Cox talked about that a few years ago. I think we should send out loads of "messages in bottles" across the galaxy so the next one's have the chance of learning from us.
If we looked at a Planet or Solar System when life is still in single Cell or even multicellular stage could we even detect it? Human lifetimes are so short in the life of the Universe ( or even Multiverse) we would need to look at just the right time Evolutionarily in Their life cycles to detect them.
@@robertadams6606 Exactly! In our tiny slice of time in the universe, there must also be Life elsewhere + They have to be far along enough for us to notice.
As far as I understand it, the "L" factor is in the equation for _exactly_ this reason. It makes the result the number of intelligent communicative civilizations in the galaxy _right now._
I think, it's the second option, we aren't just able to detect another civilization. At least for now, maybe we find it in a near future or maybe we last zousands of years to detect it, but I'm optimistic, and I'm pretty sure we will find it 😊. Excelent video, I've liked it so much ☺️.
With this much time, there could have been millions or billions of species that meet the criteria that have already risen, thrived and collapsed before we ever began our first attempts to detect other life in the galaxy.
I sometimes think that the "solution" to the Fermi Paradox might actually be some combination of both assumptions. A little of Option A mixed in with a bit of Option B. They're not completely mutually exclusive if you think about it. After all, since we only have a data set of one, we most likely will eventually have to modify those two assumptions slightly, or even a lot. Who knows, there's a non-zero chance that there's a whole THIRD assumption that we're already making and just not acknowledging. Or not. 😁
@@A_Stereotypical_Heretic Correction: It's like scooping up a cup of water from the ocean and not finding any bacterium *without using a microscope.* Because we don't have instruments that could detect intelligent radio from very far away. And nearly everything is very far away -- even in our own galaxy.
One thing to keep in mind is that in earth we had an pretty specific condition to be able to signal our existence. Maybe intelligent life capable and willing/motivated to communicate its existence has an small window to appear before other strategies arises in the planet. Maybe most planets that developed life are just planet-sized ant hills capable of defending themselves from asteroids but simply didn't had the need to developed abstract thought. Maybe if the asteroid didn't hit us at the right time we would still have dinosaurs dominating small intelligent mammals for billions of years.
see this the point willing/motivated to communicate as this why we cant meet other life on other world it because we not willing to go so many mile that even if we alive our home world cant pick up us on radio no more because how far it is by luck to make a other world with life a number so high it can only be that far and even then we only half way and that only f we go the right way and dont no to turn for ever star that we get too close to
I think abstract thought is required to solve problems that are both great in magnitude and diverse in scope The ability to come up with mathematics is truly mind-blowing
@@olbluelips the number is something my mind makeup i cant be sure if i right about how far it will be for there be life but i dont think it i let my mind make it but that because how can i be sure i know there a limit on radio and too truly know we have to go but as war making gas price go up and the maronemission was cut because they run out of money too sad i wanted to know we gone on another world then our own even if it still inside our range to go because think about this what if there a war and a weapon was make that can kill everyone more deadly than a nuke the only way for people to live is being in space or on a another world and if we set up a base on mar that can withstand the weather there and have a inside farm as long we set up to a underwater or ice we can live there true the internet will stuck for some time maybe will 400 year but there way to make it faster so going on mar can maybe help our and even if it dont think of how much more people our will can take true the number sill high but that only if we stop making house and more hotel unless we want to leave no space for animal
well, it is always an interesting question... considering what i have learnt the last couple of decades i think that of the great filters, asteroids come out on top of the underestimated filters for civilization, given their ability to really wreck havoc on a massive scale while still leaving most life possible to survive, any intelligent(tool using) species that could have coexisted with the dinosaurs would not have been able to survive the hit that killed them off, even today if something like that happened humanity would not be leaving any traces of itself excepting a brief 100+ year period with increasing em transmissions and while alien species with sufficient capacity might see that earth is green and have a lot of industrial products in the atmosphere right now, those would also be gone very quickly... leaving it up to alien explorers to come visit to find traces of us rather than do much from afar and we are also in the same boat while looking for them
I would say that we need to differentiate between intelligent civilizations and technological civilizations. I would also say that technological civilizations need to be on the surface of a planet to have fire and electricity and all that. With most stars being red dwarves which you need to be tidally locked to be in the habitable zone of, I would say it would be very hard to have intelligent life on the surface of a tightly locked planet to havea chance of creating technology.
The ring between the always-day and always-night sides could be habitable. It would make for odd politics, only having neighbors to the north or south, but you could have civilization there... It'd probably advance more slowly, with it being very difficult to go around any impassable obstacles like mountains or agriculturally dead zones... And the weather would be awful. But it's still possible. And with an always-night side not far from you, it could make for more rapid advances in astronomy, once optics are invented - always a night sky available whenever the weather permits...
Damon electricity doesn't work underground? I wonder how Churchill was able to manage the war against the Nazis from the bunker under Dover castle without electricity! What is it about not having access to the surface that prevents technological advancements?
Actually, aliens know about us. But they don't want to visit because the reviews of our solar system show only one star.
lmaooooo lol xd haaaaaaaaaaa rofl
underrated comment brodogski
Hey... two drums and a symbol just fell off a cliff... did you hear that?
That's hilarious!!!
Wonder what our Yelp reviews say.
The second assumption is questionable. Consider: 1) The universe has been capable of supporting sentient life for billions of years 2) it took 14 billion years for our planet to get to the point where it has a single civilization capable of being detected from space 3) after less than 100 years of having a civilization detectable from space we appear to be about to destroy that civilization 4) we are currently scanning less than 3% of the night sky for alien civilizations 5) we hav been doing that scanning for less than 75 years. It would be mathematically more likely for two people at opposite ends of a pitch black football stadium armed with pistols to shoot each other bullets out of the air in a single try than for us to be in exact the right time and place to detect an alien civilization using the methods that we are using.
I agree with your argument, and its so satisfying, based on the points u gave. r u a scientist? your arguments and way of explaining suggests this.
I agree and commented somewhat along those lines. Capability to detect and actively trying to detect are two different things.
Thats a smart take on it.
I thought of it inna way that IF we are alive at the same time as an inteligent alien species.... what makes us think they have ANY interest in communicating with us?? What reasons would they have to contact us?
Humans are already in mass anti social these days... why would an alien species want to talk to us?
If they picked up ANY images or footage of War from us they would like to stay away from us as far as possible
(1) is extremely misleading. Evolution, especially from early life to multicellular life, takes an immense amount of time. Just because sentient life technically could have existed for billions of years *doesn't* mean it spontaneously appeared on planets. Rather, it would take billions of years of evolution and be subject to all the dangers that the galaxy poses to life.
As for the rest, if you assume we're looking for civilizations at the same technological level as our own... yeah, that's not gonna happen. However, a type II-III civilization would be trivial to spot with even the technology we had 100 years ago. Imagine looking at the Earth from, say, Jupiter. It would be blatantly obvious that non-mineral activities are going on, which would result in a higher focus on confirmation on the Earth and relatively quick realization that there is not only life, but a civilization there pulling the strings. That's about how obvious it would be for us to see a type II civilization somewhere else in the galaxy. There would simply be obvious indicators that, by virtue of their energy consumption, would reveal them.
And before you bring up the "dark forest" hypothesis, that doesn't make any sense. Any civilization that came before us would realize they are "the first", and rather than try to hide their presence from a hypothetical threat, would spend their energy growing, as civilizations do. This isn't a trait unique to humans... on the contrary, it's necessary for any species at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
@@TheFinalChapters Detecting an advanced civilization would be impossible if they chose to make it so :)
Nothing is "trivial" across millions of light-years
Only in Hollywood can NASA detect Cybertrons inbound at a third the speed of light from across the galaxy (and that was with Arecibo :)
The problem with “communicating” is the assumption that a large portion of the signals are detectable. Earth discovered radio more or less yesterday and since then our use of information technology has exploded. We are already transforming our technology from large inefficient broadcast signals to tiny low-power digital cells and optics that barely leaks any signals at all and, if they do, looks a lot like noise. At that point, we need to put efforts into making ourselves heard to stay detectable. Learning from our own progress, we might need to add to the equation: Civilisations who choose to search and communicate with other life.
Exactly along my thoughts, based on our technological progress, we ourselves from not being detectible, to detectable, and are now rapidly becoming undetectable in a span of 150 years. If that progress is normal then the idea of catching someone exactly within 150 year window right now becomes kind of absurd.
The equation already takes this into account as L is the length of time a civilization is detectable by human means. The reason their detectability ends doesn't change the equation. It doesn't matter if they become quieter by design or by necessity or if they extinguish themselves in war. All of that is accounted for in L.
@@SpaceCowboyfromNJ Broadcasts are not the only way to detect civilizations though. Artificial gasses in their atmospheres give away an industrial age for centuries and if they become spacefaring many megastructures are detectable from many light years, ie. Dyson Spheres and the like, extending L. Outer worlds in their system being mined or "terra" formed would also be detectable as dust rings and extra infrared emissions, etc.
@@filonin2 (sigh) Dyson spheres again. Gigantic fictional structures that claim to be able to solve problems that would have to be solved before it can even be built.
@@voxorox So...
We've gone from the Fermi Paradox to the Dyson Paradox.
The most mind-blowing fact is that Fermi's friends gave him the credit posthumously.
Did Crick and Watson similarly acknowledge their debt to Franklin.. not so much.
It goes toward their integrity.
I'm not so certain of that. This is one of those potentially career ending topics, or at least it was. Given how well talk of extra terrestrials were received at the time, the most mind-blowing fact is that they felt secure enough in their careers to admit that their esteemed coworker thought about these things.
Note that they didn't admit that they had all been talking about aliens when Fermi asked the question until after it became clear that they weren't going t be shunned for it. They're all certain that's what he was talking about, but they don't admit to enough context for them to have intuited it. "Just knowing who he was" means that he clearly had talked a lot about aliens in the past, but they didn't give details on those prior conversations.
Eventually, it became clear that being associated with theoretic alien discussions wasn't going to be the end to their credibility, so they were more forthcoming on things. However, given that caution, I wonder if it really was Fermi who actually asked the question, or whether they were simply attributing the question to him as a way to check if it was safe to come out of their closet. (To be clear, I'm not trying to say it wasn't him, merely that I could see them wanting to blame him for the question that they were wanting to publicize. If he really did pose the question, that would have been particularly convenient for them.)
That’s the least surprising, u only get credit when can’t benefit from it. And it also assumes we are intelligent life! No comment, I see orcas living and whales doing well and we’re the idiots who think pain is the enemy, 😢they’re living we are existing
Plot twist, with a choose your own adventure plot..
Fermi secured his name because he..
A: Was secretly a serial killer
B: Roofied & blackmailed his competition, I mean his fellow scientist only to steal their ideas & present them as his own
C: It was actually his idea, therefore that's why it's named after him
She may be a biologist, and he may be a physicist, but it's the chemistry between them that is the most endearing. I wish I had that kind of marriage. Bless you both!
Awesome comment! And awesome username! Keep your heart upon and you’ll find someone.
She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.
She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.
She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.
She was not necessary here, her interruptions were not welcome.
Superb presentation. Love the scientific teamwork. Being a "radio person" I think the detectability is an issue. From the first low and medium frequency "spark" signals around the year 1900 which did not escape Earth's ionosphere, over the course of the next 100 years we developed (at least here in Europe) million-watt UHF TV analogue transmitters which sprayed out their signal in all directions easily punching their way to outer space. These signals would look structured to even quite casual examination.This era has sadly now passed and we are in the digital age which tends to consist of vast numbers of very low power signals which overlap and mix, and basically sound or look like random noise at any distance from the source - if they even appear in the radio spectrum. The internet for example started on old-fashioned copper telephone wires, went patchily and briefly to (radio) satellites then mostly migrated to fibre-optic cables. Some satellite usage is returning with the likes of Starlink and Oneweb but again these are digital signals and will be just contributions to the "galactic mush" when observed beyond the solar system.
This is a good train of thought.
Does the heliosphere interfere with signals escaping the solar system?
I question the 'casual examination' descriptor, but I like the general line of thinking. It's interesting to consider that digital signals would basically just look like noise without knowing the exact frequencies, data rates, and decryption algorithms. I'd considered that in a more nebulous sense, but not quite as clearly as you put it here.
But even those high-powered analog signals, from far away, competing with the entire EM output of the Sun I'm not at all certain would be detectable above the level of noise, regardless of how they were structured. Inverse square is a b*tch... even barely out of our own heliosphere, we can just _barely_ detect the signals coming from our own probes... and that's knowing exactly where to look and what to look for.
From even farther? I just don't know...
Even to our most vast arrays of radio telescopes, acting as planet-sized interferometers, a planet in even a very nearby star system within our "radio bubble" is basically the equivalent of a single pixel. Sure, it might be a very _bright_ pixel that flickers in a suspiciously unnatural way... but it does so maybe a couple of pixels away from a _star._ How much power does the Sun put out in the UHF band?
@@Priapos93 Great question!
Great point
I feel like many people think about evolution as a process of constant improvement towards "better" species, which in a sense it is, but only towards species being better adapted to their environment. Intelligence is not the natural endgame of evolution.
I think intelligence, meaning a species being eventually capable to build a radio as you said, is incredibly uncommon. We can see species that communicate in some sense, species that use objects as tools, species that solve conceptual problems and puzzles. But what none of those have is the capacity to be self aware of their own instincts or behaviors or the ability to make objects out of their imagination. What evolutionary pressures would drive species into having those abilities? I just think we got lucky.
There are some other species on earth that seem to be self aware: chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, orcas, dolphins, elephants, magpies and even ants have all had individuals that have been able to pass the mirror test.
@@Ge1Ri4 self aware is not the same as aware of their instincts and behaviors as I said. I'm sure there are many more species on earth than we think that are self aware in the meaning you are refering to.
Crabs. Nature is trying way too hard evolving things into crabs. Bet the galaxy is full of them.
Agree with you 100%. There is no evolutionary imperative for intelligence. The most successful species are bacteria, which is what most life in the universe is likely to be.
I agree that many/most people misunderstand evolution as having a goal &/or "up-only" direction. But in the case of intelligence, I think it's generally true. If intelligence is the ability to predict future outcomes, it's easy to see how there's a selective pressure for it, especially in predators. Similarly, eyesight and flight are two other characteristics that keep popping up. Interestingly, lots of brains seem "overbuilt" (particularly humans), but to ever be technological, you need other parts to match. Dolphins & crows may be intelligent, but they don't have hands. Octopus may be intelligent & have excess manipulators, but they'll never develop radios underwater.
THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD WATCH. I especially like the part about questioning what constitutes intelligence. Intelligence that might be geared in completely different fashions or motivations or ability and how that communicates is something we should examine before we regard any life as intelligent. We are only intelligent in what we as humans do and what is relevent to us. I loved this debate. Thanks for recording this.
I miss this stuff, been too caught up in pandemic noise for the last 2 years, but look forward to focusing on interesting things with you guys, thanks Nick.
I keep geeking out and gushing over this video over and over again. Love the dynamics between you two, and meshing biology + physics is just so fun here.
Why? It's scripted
@@kr0b1486 Even something scripted can be cute.
I so enjoyed this video! When she brought up the intelligence of certain animals and asked him about whether scientists would see aliens as the intelligent life they’re looking for if they were similar to that of an octopus was such a great question. Begs the question of could the reason aliens haven’t contacted or made themselves known to us is because they see us as having the intelligence of an octopus? I believe there’s really one thing humans need to learn before being capable of detecting aliens (and it doesn’t look like a number of them want to learn it) but love the vibe you two have!!
I think the "intelligent" life we're always talking about is when you reach the stage of metathinking - when you can think about thinking - and take your evolution into your own hands and determine the course of your population.
That's probably why intelligent life is so rare. Once you start thinking about thinking, you're already on the path to self-destruction.
@@wulf67 Also known as depression.
I prefer proof... in the form of metalworking.
there's a single word for it; sapient. Sapient life.
I put it as manipulating your natural environment.
I really enjoy when Mrs. Asylum joins. She's smart, she's entertaining and she will tell you if you aren't making sense. Thanks for the content.
I think the real answer to the Fermi paradox is the mind boggling large amounts of time where no life or simple life exists compared to the infinitesimal fraction of time when intelligent life does exist. This along with the vast galactic distances makes the synchronicity of two neighboring intelligent species very very very small. Our current technology is only capable of detecting TV/radio transmissions to about 16 LYs.
What about when you factor in radars which are very high power, high gain/directional, and have very distinct waveforms which aren't typically seen in nature (allowing for match filtering to bring them above the background noise). I reckon that would push how far we could detect by quite a bit (well maybe ~50 LY or so).
@@Logarithm906 I'm no expert but won't that involve knowing exactly where to "point" or receivers/ transmitters and knowing what protocols they are using to transmit like an alien version of TCP/IP. Seems pretty unlikely to happen by chance.
@@jasonsahadeo5740 : Also, 50 light years ISN'T that big of an area on these scales anyways.
There's also the fact that our planet currently supports a fairly wide range of fairly intelligent groups (not just individual species, but whole groups of them, like e.g. the Corvidae birds), but only one group has reached our level of intelligence (apes or primates), and only along a single branch _of_ that group (Homo). When you compare the times/chances involved with _that,_ the numbers take another big dip.
Is Mrs. Asylum the interviewer? To me they're probably one of worst interviewers I've seen in a while.
I think the real solution to the Fermi Paradox is likely that radio is actually terrible for long range communication. It's good for long range planetary communication. But over the vast distances of space the signal gets distorted and eventually redshifted out of usability. Radio is simply too low energy to have signals convey useful information over inter-system ranges. I would guess most species only use radio for medium range communication. Depending on the nature of quantum reality, most species will default to instantaneous communication if that turns out to be possible. Otherwise, I would expect they either use a different method, or interplanetary society is much less interconnected than we expect based on modern society, simply due to the nature of the distances.
No "instantaneous" communication is possible, the speed of light is a hard limit on how fast information can be transmitted. That means that interstellar communication is highly impractical. Any civilization that does choose to expand beyond their original solar system (which is something that I believe is pretty questionable to begin with) is going to have to accept that each colony is going to exist mostly in isolation. There would be some limited communication, but not the constant back and forth stream of communication that we expect from modern societies.
If a species can do interstellar travel, then it must be able to communicate via quantum space - via quantum entanglement, which is instantaneous and is not limited by speed of light.
@@arunkottolli It is impossible to transmit information faster than the speed of light through quantum entanglement. If it were possible then all sorts of causality paradoxes would be opened up.
@@arunkottolli thing is you cant really transmit information via quantum entanglement since theres no way to control it over a large scale
All it tell us is what side the other particle is rotating with isnt really usefull for large scale communication nor is any information actually being send there
@@kered13 Well you can get around this by allowing the information to travel through shorter paths than large scale objects can. Discovering a wormhole that is large enough to move a ship through and remain stable, that's fairly unlikely anytime soon. Discovering a microwormhole, warping space at the micro scale, or discovering the true nature of quantum entanglement could all be plausible directions for seemingly FTL communication. As we understand it, none of these involve actually transmitting the signal itself faster than the speed of light.
I love how much the experts talk so confident about things they are 100% guessing about.
We have no idea wtf is out there.
Scientists. They only use physical senses and thus notice only physical forces, events. An Out of Body Experience could cure them one by one. We all get one when we die, but there is no return to this life, so no record. Extremely few people have such good memories that they rediscover past lives, but they do exist.
You aren't right. See what meens theory in science.
Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations.
There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").
Any way it's about how all designed, not how to live life and why aliens may be kind - "evolution of cooperation and altruizm" and so on.
Mostly true. Everything they're talking about is based statistical probabilities. But, without hard data they'll never know for sure and we simply don't have the tech to get at that information. Because you can say statistically that a planet should develop intelligent life, but, without a galactic survey there is no way of proving that statistical assumption is correct or in error. So you're right, its a guess. Its an educated guess, but, you are still right that we have no idea wtf is out there simply because we're stuck here.
We don't even know what's in the ocean!
@@Wastelandman7000 i used to believe it was sci fi for profits only. But now its different. Just let me work in Aerospace if open! thanks
I think when most people say "intelligent life" they mean the ability to develop and utilize complex tools. Many animals use tools from nature for survival but they do not modify those tools such as sharpening stone into an axe that is strapped to a wooden pole to cut down trees, etc.
yes they do. New Caledonian crows modify twigs into spears and hooks, and chimpanzees also modify twigs and leaves in order to optimise their function, like fraying the ends of their sticks to fish for termites. Neither just find something and use it. They change what they found and then use it.
@@rruysch I think a more useful solution, which he should have originally said is the ability to work with metal. No animal except humans(I don't know if other hominids developed metallurgy, though I am pretty sure they didn't) can actually work with metal in a way conducive to developing potentially detectable communication.
@@OnyxVortex. Why is that the bar tho? Crows understand traffic. They can pick locks. So they understand complexities about our world that most animals don't. Communication wise there are many who believe dolphins have "languages" and learn to hunt and survive through "oral" tradition. They've been observed coming up with strategies and teaching those strategies to the young. When comparing animal intelligence to our own we forget humans have no natural defenses. We only survived the wild due to brain size which some scientists think only came when we figured out how to cook food and extract the most calories. Dolphins, chimps, crows, parrots and other intelligent animals have no need for this because the have natural defenses from predators and to help them find food.
@@randomcharacter6501 Intelligence would have to be less than 100 years for us!
Humans. The great paradox. Capable of the most amazing things. Just take a look around at any city, or superstructure, or our endeavors, such as getting to the moon, soon to be Mars....
Then, watch us. As we destroy our precious planet, let millions die from sickness, drought, war, famine, and turn a blind eye for money.
Its absolutely unbelievable. We basically kill ourselves
"Either we're alone in the universe or we're not. Both possibilities are terrifying."
Personally I think there is a lot of life out there, but not a lot of technologically advanced life. There are still a lot of humans here living off the grid lives that wouldn't be detectable to an alien, and it's perfectly plausible that whole planets exist with lifeforms at that stage. Maybe there's no metal or something I don't know on their planet.
well, I agree, but I also think something trivial like the metal comment is just wrong, namely because a planet having "intelligent" life, which I think the video indirectly described as basically a multi-celled organism that is visible to the eye/capable of some level of decision making, there will probably have to be metals and certain elements, based off what we know about ourselves and the Earth (there is metal in humans). A planet that is gaseous, like the other ones we have in our solar system, are very unlikely to contain life and if they do, are probably going to be undetectable by us forever. It is more likely that we just cannot reach the distance required to find the other forms of life, seeing as we can't even communication with our own solar system at all lengths reliably, or at all.
Who here didn't make their own multicells?
A planet with no metals ? That's absurd, even far flung worlds in our solar system are pretty metalic, to say nothing of our inner planets which are almost exclusively made of the stuff.
I think it’s more terrifying if we’re alone.. that means our lives are so precious there’s like no possible way not to be wasting our lives lol
@@danfontaine8179 this hit me hard. Wow. I never really considered that an option but I mean based on observations, at this current moment, we are alone so our lives really are precious and rare. We really don't appreciate how special things like individuality could be.
I first learned of Drake's Equations in late 1977 (undergraduate astronomy class). I've grumbled about them ever since. I do not think the paradox is worth more than lunchroom debate (but it excels at that). Why? Several points (some of which the video at least brushed up against):
1) "Intelligent" must also be capable of creating technology. I believe that elephants are intelligent and sentient. However, their physical structures are ill suited to anything approximating technology as we understand it (there goes one of those bias thingies). I also believe that the great whales are intelligent and sentient. Ever try doing electronic circuits in a salt water environment? The list goes on (mercifully, I won't).
2) The alien's environment must be conducive to the use of electromagnetic signal transmission. A fun exercise would be to imagine an atmospheric composition and structure plus planetary magnetic properties and perhaps even stellar environment factors (winds of charged particles, etc.) that would produce an environment unfriendly to electromagnetic signal transmission. Could such an environment still support life? The signal problem presented could range from propagation failure, to rapid signal attenuation, to rapid signal scattering, to signals being overwhelmed by "natural" electromagnetic noise (there are some mighty noisy planets out there).
3) The alien signals generated must be strong enough for us to detect them. The signals must make it through the obstacle course of interstellar space with enough energy to be distinguished from the background noise of the universe. If there is a point source, it will sweep past us with amazing speed (yes... the trace of the signal's detectable pass could be moving a super-light speed). We have no reason to believe that this transmission source would be aware of our existence and our precise position/time address in order to focus a beam upon us. Thus, an intense point is unlikely to be detected. If an omnidirectional source is present, its signal strength immediately gets divided by 4 x distance^2 (surface of a sphere = 4 Pi r^2; broadcast energy assumed evenly distributed across surface of a sphere). With the shortest possible transmission distances measured in multiple light years, there won't be much signal left (don't forget additional in-transit attenuation factors and background noise interference). On the other side of the coin, assuming good local signal propagation, why would they use high power?
4) The alien signals generated must be recognizable. Pure AM signals are great for detection. But what if the signals used are all "spread spectrum" along the line of Bluetooth? Or perhaps they are heavily multiplexed?
5) Signals will move at the speed of light. That means that signals will take many years, even many human lifetimes, to transit our own galaxy (remember, our galaxy is on the order of 100,000 light years across). Any signal that we receive will be old (but it still would be very interesting if confirmed). This signal speed limit brings up the dependence of signal path on space-time curvature. The signal will be deflected by every mass it comes near. Thus, the actual path will be longer--so too the transit time--than would a straight line path.
6) Intelligent life could have evolved, developed appropriate technology, and vanished long before we had any hope of detecting its signals. Intelligent life could have evolved, developed appropriate technology, and moved on to other technological means currently undetectable by us, even using science unknown to us.
7) While I both "believe" and hope that there is other intelligent life in our galaxy, We must remember that our solar system is actually quite unique. I've read one article that stated that the proportions of heavy elements in our solar system (or at least on Earth) could only have come from the fragments resulting from the collision of two neutron stars. That precondition cannot be representative of very many systems within our galaxy. Heavier elements are needed to create life as we know it. Thus, not all star/planet systems will have the necessary ingredients. Should a term for "Proportion of solar systems having necessary atomic weights and concentrations thereof" be added to Drake's equations?
(Boy have I thrown out a lot of meat for the lions!)
(Edit to fix a couple of typing errors. No new content or change of message involved)
Great reading, thank you for that!
All that, in addition to time factors, makes it quite unlikely that we will ever find intelligent life in our galaxy, if it even exists.
Humanity certainly doesn't meet the criteria to be called intelligent. We've developed some pretty incredible forms of energy generation, and what do we use it for? Exactly: to eliminate as many lifeforms as we can!
0k
I think wood is an underestimated factor. It's a great material that can be found in great quantities, qualities and shapes (it's hard to make bows and spears without wood, bones could replace it but they are harder to get, i'm not sure the quantity would be enough to sustain a tribe), and it is a great source of fuel, fire being an very important tool in the history of technology. Could we have developped to this point if trees hadn't evolved? I doubt it.
I couldn't of said it better myself :)
I think the solution to the Fermi Paradox is the inspiration to the Fermi Paradox
"There is so much universe."
Like you seemed to come to the conclusion of, it's a detection issue, but I'm not sure it's one of lack of tech on either end. It's the analogy of dipping a bucket in the ocean and wondering where all the fish are. We have to look in the right spot in the ocean at the right time if we want to scoop some fish.
For the Drake Equation,
When it comes to "habitable planets with life" I'm also, as a biologist, comfortable setting that value near one. We only have one data set for abiogenesis, but earth has a multitude of extreme environments and all of them still end up with life. It may not have started in those environments, but it's additional data points saying that if life can, it will.
The biggest issue I have with the way we use the drake equation is the "number of habitable planets." This is where we assume far too much that life will be like us. Number of planets inhabitable to us and inhabitable are different values. As such I think life is more likely than we give it credit for.
As for the number of habitable planets for life like us, id set the likelihood of intelligence near one.
Convergent evolution almost demands it. And when we have several very very different species with near human intelligence, many with self recognition, and atleast one other with theory of mind on our own planet in very different environments and niches, I think the real limiting factor is time. It will EVENTUALLY happen. It's too beneficial a survival strategy to not. It's like eyes. How many times did those evolve independently?
The one galactic year time point I think is still missing is genetic recombination, sexual reproduction and other means of swapping DNA. This development accelerated genetic diversity, and gave natural selection much more to act on and "quicker" to us looking at the timeline.
The universe is old. It could have supported life long before our galaxy formed. Maybe it did.
That makes the Fermi paradox all the more puzzling. There is so much space and so much time, it seems ludicrous that we should be the first or the only ones.
So where is everyone?
The fact that multicellular life is relatively young might provide an answer. It is just an experiment that the prokaryotes have started recently. They may shelve it at any time, nothing of value to them would be lost.
Meanwhile, we, who as a species wouldn't be able to detect ourselves if we were just a lightyear away, are looking for life communicating at human time scales. Bacterial colonies, forests, fungi, starfish, corals don't do that.
And furthermore, why should they want to communicate with us? We're not even part of their biosphere.
Plus, is our location. We are on the outward end of a spiral arm. You've heard of the middle of nowhere? You are there.
@@Wastelandman7000 We are in the Orion spur, near the inner rim, closer to the Sagittarius arm than the Perseus arm.
It's not the outward end of anything.
My God! I love when you two collaborate. She has got patience and intelligence to process what you explain! And she represents us audience when asking simple but important questions. Please do more vids together!
Other than to brown-nose, what purpose do comments like this serve?
I agree. I really enjoyed this video and she asked questions that I was either thinking or saying out loud. I’d turn to my son and say, “see, she’s asking that too!”
@@jd9119they serve to show the content creators that people like this format. On every single channel the people who comment are the vocal minority. So, these kinds of comments, and the reaction to the comment, give a reasonable approximation of the audience’s response.
We need a distinction between "detectable" and a "signal". If bacteria, over time, cover some planet with oxygen, this life activity can be detected (via spectral lines). But intelligent life would need to create a signal (radio, gravity waves etc) which we can not just detect, but recognize as non-natural, created with intent, by an intelligence. This poses a question: can we tell apart non-natural signals?
Give us an example of a "non-natural" signal. What is non-natural?
It should be added that the radio signals we leak out unintentionally into the galaxy are not detectable beyond a rather disappointing radius, of some single-digits number of lightyears. Humanity itself has yet to do something that, by its own standards, would count as "detectable" for the rest of the galaxy. That could be something like constructing a dyson swarm, colonizing the galaxy, or simply deliberately focusing an extremely energetic radio beam that's detectable throughout the galaxy at every star. The question for the filter ahead is, what it could be that it would prevent us from doing so. It might be as disappointingly simple as "lack of interest".
@@user-rh8hi4ph4b the problem is about technology and justifying the cost. We are unlikely to have the technology to transmit such sigal in the near future. Even if we could and also could identify some 1000 suitable target, the distance to the nearest target would mean that we are unlikely to receive a response for several generations. So I don't see why the public would support such costs when they, or their children are unlikely to get any benefit.
I think we're better off trying to find a way to travel between planets. If we're multiplanetary then innovations with come to speed up travel and communications. If faster than light travel/ communication exists, doing that would surely be the way to get the attention of other technologically advanced intelligent life. Light speed is just so slow.
YOU ALWAYS INSPIRE ME FOR THINKING SOMETHING DIFFERENT
Your dialogue "It's okay to be little crazy" changed my life!
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
The one thing that was not mentioned was that we as humans have only been detectable for about a 100 year and now we are quite as far as noise in the galaxy so being at the same level of technology is the most unlikely answer to why we have not hear the other civilization
I'm leaning towards the difficulty of detecting alien life as the most likely explanation. Even if there were an Earth 2.0 somewhere out there in the galaxy, an exact copy of ours, so that we know what to look for, would we be able to detect it? How close would it have to be to us for us to detect life and/or intelligent life there?
Like looking for a friend also lost at night in the fog on a moor - both with crappy little dim torches
@@tim40gabby25 but remove the torches because you two will be so far no even a 0.12% of that light wll be seen or make it and make the fog even mass up radio range
How do we know that we aren't "Earth 2.0"... or 3.02...
Yes. I wonder what the Earth would look like from 200light years, or 1,000 light years out ... Considering that the outer planets in our solar system are so so much bigger and would be the dominant thing to be seen from outside.
@@wayando Well we have to look for the planetary orbital resonance because there will be time when the giants is not in transit and obscuring the inner planets. The outer planets orbit is very long compared to the inner planets so less frequent obscuration and this window would let them observe at the inner planetary orbit, it wouldn't be so difficult for them to detect that some object is orbiting closer to the star, although they may not get the everything right.
The dimming will form a pattern if they let it record for a long time, with this they could calculate the orbital period, number of planets, the size of planet, distance, etc
All we have to know about aliens is in this quote:
"The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star."
- Carl Sagan
No one is out there to save us from ourselves..... Also by Carl
@@gray12566 That i do not agree with.
The thing is, i do not fall into appeal to authority from anything or anyone.
I do not take that quote (the one i wrote) at heart because i agree with it but rather because it agrees with me, in other words, i came to this theory way before i knew about this quote and.
This was my logic:
> There are only two hypothesis, either the world and science is lying to us, there is no stars or planets out there - in fact, there is no "out there" to begin with, all there is is a giant worldwide cabal; or there are millions of alien civilizations out there since the idea that we are the only one between zillion of planets is just ridiculous.
Let's go with the second hypothesis because it makes a lot more sense.
So, what do we know after that? That we were never contacted or aliens ever came here (with an agenda, not on a vacation since the last one we don't know).
So, what is the logical step after that? Either aliens don't know we exist, they don't care, or they know and they care but they don't intervene.
All those hypothesis are valid, so let's put them on a shelf for now and look at another one, types of civilizations.
There can only be three types of civilizations when compared to us: the ones less advanced, the ones at the same level, and the ones more advanced.
The ones less advanced and the ones at the same level are irrelevant to the discussion since they can't have any interaction with us, just like we can't have with them, which leave us with the ones more advanced.
So, in our human logic we will say that there might be the good ones and the evil ones. The evil ones are less logic since there needs to be some sort of utopia for an all civilization to partake in a unified ideology. And even if there are evil ideologies that on a conquest and destruction path across the universe, there needs to good guys as well.
So, my take is, there are alien civilizations, they know about us, they care, but they don't intervene.
So, taking my quote of Carl Sagan, if there are alien life, and we never found any no matter how much we search for, the logic is that we were born in an empty part of the galaxy, so we can evolve, grow and learn.
So, going back to Sagan's quote of "No one is out there to save us from ourselves", i don't believe, and the reasoning is simple.
If we destroy ourselves, we are not "just" killing everyone, we are ANNIHILATING AN INTERGALACTIC CIVILIZATION, the HUMAN RACE.
And that i don't believe would be allowed.
@@gray12566 Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general.
Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever.
I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's TH-cam channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!
@@matheus5230
"Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever."
So, basically become gods......not going to happen...ever....i don't even know what that means.
Unless we are talking about an artificial reality, in that sure, we made it and so we control it.
As for "living forever", i have a lot of problems with that assumption.
Not only it will never be possible, death is part of life and all, but i find it incredibly disrespectful for the zillions of people that died throughout history....even you and all of us will die before that will be a reality (which is never, but still the point stands).
@@JustaGuy2.0 I hope we will be able to have total control over reality, reverse entropy and so on, no matter how long it takes. Such civilization would never go extinct. I know I'm not going to see it, regardless if it will happen or not. But it's not bad to hope.
I don't think that wanting to live forever is a disrespect to all humans who died.
I like that you used the term “habitable worlds” as opposed to just planets, because moons are also possible candidates for life.
I fall in with the rare earth hypothesis folks only because there seems to have been a number of things or events that contribute to “Goldilocks” scenarios for life surviving long enough to evolve intelligence like how earth’s internal dynamo and heat both nurtured early single cell life and provided protection from harmful space born radiation. We talk about worlds being in habitable zones of their stars, but how exceedingly rare are worlds with strong magnetospheres, or with large tide causing moons, or axial tilts, or favorable galactic neighborhoods. etc.. All these things contributed to life’s evolution on our world. There is an almost never ending plethora of things that can be classified as great filters which can stop life cold… at least the kind of life we know of.
That said, I do like the idea that there my be life so alien to us that we are yet still clueless how to even begin looking for it 🤔
Habitable for whom? I think this idea is flawed. There's a clear bias in the term "habitable ".
Silicon based.
Cool
The world doesn't even need to be naturally habitable, looking at the plans for Mars, there are ways to get around that.
Never got the "goldylocks" thing as we are on a planet with a massive EM field or its size in an orbit ("shields at maxim" )between 2 planets wrecked by the solar wind because they have no EM fields able to keep the solar wind from ripping off lighter gases like nitrogen and oxygen
It goes from absolute Zero in the Menosphere up to 750f in the Thermosphere, the moon Day side is up to 250f and just outside the Earth's EM is the 2500f-4000f solar wind(though its the cosmic and gama rays that will kill you in a improperly shielded ship)
Great conversation , glad I stumbled upon this ! Keep up the good work
One thing that always bothers me when people talk about the great filter, is they assume there's only one big filter, but there could just as well be two big filters or more. So, even if you think we have passed a great filter doesn't mean we are save from big filters.
I feel like the very hubris of thinking that we've passed the great filter is the constant great filter. Thinking that we are any better than any other species might be another great filter. Cos, the very great filter argument feels weird when you compare ourselves with other mammal species.
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 You speak the words of truth!
All the Great Filters that we can think of (and also the ones we can't imagine) that really exist, all operate at the same time. Most scientists have decided that life similar to us humans really is very very very rare. This gives us a big responsibility to protect ourselves, for the sake of whatever Force created us, in case we have a Purpose.
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 with climate change staring us in the face, it's pretty obvious that there's at least one great filter ahead of us.
@Adam Pope Current events in Europe would suggest we're not out of the woods on the Great Filter of planetary nuclear suicide either.
"The Great Filter" doesn't have to be only *one* filter. There can be several filters that restrict the numbers of intelligent species that can communicate long-distance.
Also, this discussion didn't get into how L can affect our ability to detect life on other planets. Let's say that the equation spits out 1,000 planets with intelligent life that can communicate via radio waves. But, if L=150 years (the length of time that a species is able to broadcast). After broadcasting for that amount of time they may discover cable or point-to-point communication. So, if L=150 years, even if there are 1,000 species that make it, the chance of 2 or more existing in their L phase simultaneously is vanishing small, given that they could have begun broadcasting at any time during the past, say, 2 billion years.
I may be wrong but the second point you make is not entirely true. It is true that L is an important factor, but you need to remember that R (the first variable of the equation) is the rate of star formation which is dimentionally a number per unit of time. This means that when you multiply by L in the formula you get a simple number that indicates the amount of civilizations that are CURRENTLY detectable by us (not the total in history).
However the fact that we can detect them at this point in time does not necessarily mean that they still exist as the signal may have travelled for thousands of years to reach us
Came here for this and happily found it up at the top. I think it's limiting to think of the filter as a single slot, perhaps more of a game of Plinko.
Funny how nobody is talking about the bright shinny filter that keeps our little planet warm. A super flare or micro nova will filter everything away....lol
For the record: Our final calculation in the video (~100 species) included two filters, one before and one after our current stage of existence.
@@ScienceAsylum love the content and quality. I'm no scientist and anyone who can do probability calculations fascinates me. It's more likely I'm wrong than I'm correct, but it seems to me the most common conception is that there is a single event that all possible species either overcome or don't. I'm inclined to think all possible known and unknown scenarios are potential filters, and they exist, reasonably, for all possible species. Therefore, every species that exists surpasses filter events until they either find an insurmountable filter or they achieve the ability to contact/be contacted. Then it would become the chance of another species achieving the same level, and finally as William Blaker said, those species exist close enough in space and time for their detection and communication with the other. I hope I'm making sense.
The most amazing thing about this video is this couple's ability to have a logical discussion without getting into an argument which ends up with them not speaking to each other for a week.
You know it’s a edited scripted video right?? Maybe not verbatim but definitely bullet point smh 🤦♂️
@@gregallen1it's their chemistry. They are a great couple and they don't try to our do each other and rudely correct each other like most married couples do. This is a real power couple, because they are working together to bring more knowledge to other humans.
Aliens are a DLC that costs extra. We’re NPCs in the base game. The player-character gets special abilities like turning water into wine, walking on water, parting the seas. (They chose Water as their element in the player creation screen.). But one time the player’s son logged on instead of his dad. It started off well, but he tried to go against high-level Romans and didn’t realize he hadn’t leveled up enough yet to enter that part of the open world. He’s going to be grounded for a while, might take 1,000 in-game years before he’s allowed back. We’re just lucky he leaves the PC running while he’s afk.
The most likely solution is the one rarely mentioned. That by the time their radio signals reach us, they're too weak to be detected. Even if a clone of earth existed around the nearest star, it would take all of the solar energy hitting their planet just to generate a signal as weak as the voyager probes by the time it got here. Double the distance a couple times, and even things like focused arrays and fusion power become a moot consideration.
But what about more advanced species than humans? Like way more advanced. Why have they not come here to our solar system to contact us?
@@matthewviramontes3131 Either there is a great filter, or its likely another intelligent life or its stuff, is already here in our solar system, in some form. We took a ridiculous 1.5 billion years to reach our current state, but only like 10,000 years to go from agriculture to space travel. Theoretically, self replicating spaceships should be able to explore the entire galaxy in about 500,000 years. I think the best option is to stop wasting resources scanning for signals, and instead focus on finding and mining out every object and planet in our solar system. If we are not the first intelligent life, there is probably an alien probe or Von Neumann machine somewhere in our solar system, which may have completed its mission and gone inactive long before there was anything to see here intelligent life-wise. Finding such a thing would answer the question definitively, and probably contain some clues as to what our next move should be. Also, we are going to need all the materials in our solar system to send out our own ships/probes/machines, unless we do something 'space weird', like build a stellar engine and launch our entire solar system to another nearby solar system (!!)
I remember a few years ago watching a science video on TH-cam which stated that our signals, because they are not focussed, fade into the background noise after 2 light years. I've been severely trolled on TH-cam because I can't recall the video I watched but I remember it very well. It was plausible and backed up with research data. I'm not a sceptic that there could be life out there, even intelligent and technologically advanced but unless they were sending a very powerful signal direct to us, how would we detect it.
I would really like us to be visited by extraterrestrials but I don't believe we ever have been, after 50 plus years of studying the "evidence". Many examples taken as fact when I was younger have since been debunked. You have to rely on the integrity of witnesses and people want their 15 minutes. I believe that any unusual craft which have been seen were built by us. Anything unidentified is that. Changing the designation from UFO, the important word is "unidentified" to, UAP doesn't really make for clarity as the "Unidentified" is still the important word. The problem is that many people, generally ignorant of unusual craft or ariel phenomena, automatically assume that unidentified means unidentified extraterrestrial craft.
@@matthewviramontes3131 That's assuming FTL travel is possible in some way that another species has figured out. Even if FTL is figured out, there's no saying how fast that would be. There may be hundreds of advanced civilizations out there that can barely get to their nearest neighboring stars and perhaps radio or radio like communication is the only way any have come up with. If no one can get here or be "loud" enough to hear then we will likely never see them. I think the only chance we have of detecting an advanced civ is if it's a sphere builder. That might make them visible to us.
@Christopher Suit There doesn't need to be FTL travel. It would only take a few tens of million years to colonize the whole galaxy at even 20% the speed of light. That's nothing in astronomical terms. Meaning if we don't see them in our solar system, i.e. the fact we exist and our asteroids don't seem to have been mined, then we can safely say no hyper advanced aliens exist in our arm of the galaxy and we have the chance to be the first.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around some factors, like the age of the universe (still relatively young) which means the 'when in time' is a huge consideration. The speed of light is an issue due to the size of it and the ability to travel, and the fact our radio signals have only been going for around 120 years, which is nothing. It hasn't travelled far enough yet. We can all continue to imagine though.
The 120 year radio number is irrelevant. No radio signal we have ever produced (with only a few exceptions) can be received past 1 light year. It drops below noise at that distance. Inverse square is the issue.
In either case Fin has a valid point and imo would likely be a good reason for us not to have received any signals also.
I think the theory of emergence is in its infancy and will add a lot of better assumptions to the Drake equation once it finds its legs. I think we’re the first life to willingly leave its planet, and earth/sun has had the best factors to get life to this stage so far.
I imagine we only have hope to ever discover anything else within our own galaxy. Anything outside our own galaxy is just cut off from our existence
It's easy that we almost for sure are alone. We got aliens all around 🌎 and any of them are not close to be TECHNICAL and won't be.
EDIT
It's really wishful thinking when u see where we are RIGHT NOW and we are so far away to be able communicate. Even intelligent 🐙🦑 /mother 🌎 no matter what it won't be able communicate if they gonna thrive in their environments they won't build tech anyway. We see that life don't need any understable intelligent (to make sense of world they in) to thrive or be dominant one.
Our super calm 🌎 and 🌞 are not safe for us, so if u think that other forms of life can predict that done flare will kill, i don't get it why it's not obvious.
WE KNOW THIS AND WE STILL END UP IN WARS ETC ETC. DON'T TRY TELL ME THAT IT'S BECAUSE OF CULTURE OR RELIGION (IT IS BUT ITS NOT A POINT), WE CREATE THEM BECAUSE WE TRYED MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AND LIFE TO EXIST DON'T NEED THAT AND WON'T GET DO MUCH TIME OR LUCK AS WE DID.
Maybe we are first one, but with time going on we won't be able to communicate either because of vast distances and i don't think local group are big enough to makes other form of life (we would conquer them before it would happen). There is much more reasons i can think of but u will try anyway fit this info your worldviews.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's amazing to me that u still think that intelligence is special, it's not.
Invented tools such as language and writing make US possible, but intelligence is not some ABSOLUTE that will conquer the cosmos, it's just POSSIBLE in our universe. U think to much about this in mathematical sense (it's the only way we can, even biology, chemistry etc etc) but we use other tools and imagination (do intelligence need that, every sensor in body etc is a tool). You consider so many things too literally and that's how SCIENCE work not LIFE (even most exotic u can think of).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@Hecarim420 Communication/detection is the barrier so we can never know 100% that we are alone unless we can visually detect physical objects that cannot possible be natural.
This is arguably one of the best episodes or shows you've done... and yes the great filter is ahead of us. In the spirit of drakes equations, I think an octopus would be a very good candidate for this reason, an octopus already has the ability to use tools.
Great show guys amazing to see you guys making a show together ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I love the concept of 20 galactic years. That is so easy to articulate to people. Sub earned.
Earth can't vote, drink, drive or marry yet.
@@NathanielHellersteinin what jurisdiction can a 20 year old not get married, vote, or drive?
I thought to that when they said the “Drake equation”, I thought it would be a little something like this:
Minor = MCTouch
@@PtylerBeats Americans always think that the universe revolves around them and the entire cosmos is American.
@@areshera4039 what are you yapping about?
As to the detection issue: here is a data point we have with our own species: cell service. As spectrum is a limited resource, we are always _decreasing_ the level of transmission power. So, instead of 50000 2G cell towers we have 300,000 4G cell towers; for 5G there will be many millions. So, we ourselves are getting harder to hear with lower transmission power to increase density. Plus to speed things us we use compression, which removes redundancy to increase throughput. In other words, high compression sounds like random noise. So, ever lower power levels and ever more random-like signals. We not trying to hide, yet we ourselves are getting harder to hear in the radio spectrum; not less. Our blasting analog black & white I Love Lucy episodes in the 1950s was a *very* short window of time. I can imagine a more advanced species being nearly impossible to detect even if they are not hiding; at least with radio.
it still that one spaceship we send out many year ago to search but we lost touch to it i think and i hope it still working and not destroy
@@helperdude8205 The voyagers probes but even they need like 40.000 years to reach the closest star.
@@DarkNexarius well we found it but thought it was a spec of dust
Good point
@@duality4y really cool
Just finished the Three Body Problem series and... his answer is kinda scary. Anyone successful enough to be interstellar will probably be very aggressive. Being aggressive, they will expect others to be aggressive. So ... will evolve to a) hide from others and b) aggressively remove competition before it becomes a threat.
There's a video of something moving into low earth orbit and then stops and Flys away at a different angle very fast. What following it is a large cylinder type object. This happend over Australia where we do have a very secretive base used for different functions and roles in space.
Would we recognize non-carbon based life?
What makes you think they'd be aggressive? And what makes you think they even bothered preparing their spacecraft for other aggressive lifeforms?
@@johntrek187 See I don't buy that crap. We have high enough resolution in our cameras that we can capture a fly wiping its butt from the surface of the moon, yet every one of those videos is so grainy that you can't really see what the objects are.
And a lot of these videos come from the government. They of all people would have high-quality video, but instead give you worse video than on Bigfoot fakes.
I'm almost through book one. Fantastic writing. Can't wait to read the next 2.
I tend to believe in the “Prime Directive” option. Any civilization advanced enough to traverse the vast distance of space would be advanced enough to cloak themselves from us until it is determined if we are a benefit to the galactic community or a threat. I hope for the former and fear the latter. If this is true, I’m sure they have been keeping a close eye out on us.
You're right. It's exactly what the Galactic Federation of Worlds and other benevolent Alliances follow to ensure the growth of a civilization as long as the inhabitants learn to get along with one another and respect other cultures to join in....
This would imply multiple space going groups, none of them being instantly dominant.
Or else there would be no real union of groups.
We are tucked out of the way in the galaxy.
Maybe they just can't see us
Do you cloack yourself from the ants when you go to your work ? Since when are we capable of detecting signals ? one century ? But the whole galaxy would be already aware of it ? Even then, shouldn't we able to detect signals emitted millions or billions years ago whith the distance between us ?
Wouldn't you be keeping a close eye on the "thoughtful beings" here?
Alien 1 (watching): "What is that one doing?"
Alien 2: "It appears to be pulling fauna from the ground and shoving it into its extra face hole."
Alien 1: "Gross. Let's not talk to these ones."
It was brilliant bringing your wife on to the show! It changed my whole perception of everything else involved. Now, I even listen to the material.
Love these discussions! Keep them coming! Thanks!
The thing with the Great Filter is that there are many great filters!
Forming cells out of dead matter was surely one of them.
Forming complex multicell organisms was another.
Developing from animals/primates to modern humans that do very sophisticated science might be another.
Not killing ourselves with nuclear war or human-caused climate change might be another.
But the vastness and hostility of space and the finite lifetime of our planet and sun will maybe be the biggest.
You know, modern humans existed for about 300 thousands years. The people back then were not intellectually inferior to us, despite that our species spend most of it's time as hunter gatherers. After that another long period as farmers. Only about 8000 years ago did people invent writing. Then it took until the 16th century for modern science to begin. There was no gurantee that any of that would happen. We are just lucky that some individuals took the time to think and figure out stuff for the rest of us, if not for those few individuals who carried us along throughout human history, then we'd all still be running naked through the forests.
@@maythesciencebewithyou Not sure what your point is.
Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general.
Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever.
I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's TH-cam channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!
@@matheus5230 all it takes is one crazy leader with nukes to end humanity
@@P-7 Putin won't do that. I have hope no one will. Nukes are to preserve peace and the worst conflicts. We are way past the worst of the threat, which was during the Cold War. Nukes are like doomsday machines: it's not a weapon that anyone actually wants to use. It's only as a threat.
1) Life did begin early on Earth, but it only began once as far as we know. It probably isn't just a matter of 'water+Goldie Locks zone = life'. The actual catalyst for the chemical reaction may be fairly rare. Some factors we don't know were involved like having a Moon the size and distance (which was much closer then). We can't even guess at what specific factors caused the chemical reaction known as life to start. Maybe it has to start early as a planet cools or it can't start at all and maybe it rare that everything aligns.
2) The planet needs to be conducive to development of a technological spices. A water world for example is highly unlikely to develop a spices capable of harnessing fire. Too large a world and are things like body structures capable of producing spices biologically capable of wielding certain tools advancements. How common is the relative solar and system stability we enjoy? Many systems have gas giants closer to their star, how would effect the magnetic shield we enjoy? You have life but not the physical traits to develop tools and such.
3) Taking the early two into account; how likely is it then that a spices evolves that has 'technical intelligence', physical traits conducive to technological development, and sociocultural structures for a technical 'human like' spices? 66 billion years ago a big arse rock doesn't fall from the sky how likely is it that Technoraptor puts a Dino on the Moon? Throw the die again on the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction and maybe that techno-capable number doesn't come up again.
4) Time: there may be only a small window of say 100,000 to 500,000 years when an alien civilization is between a type 1 to type 2 civilizations on the Kardashev scale where they would be detectable to another species of our level. It seems pretty unreasonable to think we'd be able to detect a type 3 civilization as their technology would be so far beyond our level to understand what we were seeing. Even at that, were there a spices only a few score light years away of similar technologically development to us we'd not be able to detect them. Not only do radio waves need time to travel but by the time 'I Love Lucy' reached
5) There may be a limit to how far we or any spices can advance technologically, either to create or detect information from another spices. Not some 'end of the world' but by the laws of physics. Hyper space, worm holes, warp drives, inter-dimensional travel... may just not be possible given the amount of energy in the universe and/or its underlying structure even for a full on type 3 civilizations. And even if we can advance technologically ad infginitum things like the cosmic speed limit and constraints of getting around it with something like worm holes or warp space would require us to not have physical bodies. At that point what then would be the point? We be a virtual spices living in a virtual universe and probably undetectable to our current universe. We may someday send 'arcs' to distant star systems either with seeds or our world or as a desperate attempt with generational ships, but our current spices will never travel to them like Star Trek or Star Wars. This is why I don't believe we've been visited by aliens: if they had the technology to visit us they would have no reason to visit us. It would be like developing the technology to shrink yourself to the size of a bacteria then jumping down the petri dish instead of using that same level of technology to analyze the petri dish in far greater detail than a physical visit ever could.
(And on a technical capability scale the distance between us and bacteria is less than us and a type 3 civilization. which begs the question even if it is possible does a star system capable of developing the request species have a life span long enough for that spices to develop the technical level to migrate to another star system.)
Regarding your last point:The development of species and their capabilities seems to be logarithmic, not linear.
The time it takes for a type 1 civilization to develop into type 3 may be a lot smaller than for apes to develop into humans.
We don't know.
But judging by how quickly life exploded once it reached multi cellular forms, and how quickly technology exploded, once it reached engines and then when it reached computers, it's likely that tech breakthroughs will come quicker and quicker.
There is a reason ai researchers are worried about hyper intelligent ai appearing out of nowhere and immediately overtaking is.
@colpul2: What a great comment! I support every point.
@sertaki: good point.
Such an interesting topic, yet I feel like everything has been said. More discussions don't lead anywhere at this point. The only thing that would change that is faster than light travel.
For now, we are on our own, and it looks like one intelligent species is hard enough to take care off.
Interesting comment. Apparently your spell checker is consistently replacing the word 'species' with 'spices'. I have to go to work, but I would like to rebut a few points that you made...Hopefully when I get back from work.
It "began" once as far as the dictionary definition yes. But life may have started and stopped more than once.
The most recent research and understanding is pointing us more toward it developing more than once.
We now have some evidence (selenium isotope ratios in rock) that oxygen increased on Earth, reached high levels, then fell dramatically low BEFORE what we thought was the time life first developed. This period was enough time for life to develop, but not enough to evolve intensely (at least based on our understanding of how fast evolution and speciation takes place) before being apparently wiped out by environmental changes.
We know the conditions for it existed prior to the theoretical timeline for origin.
You've got point (4) completely backwards. Type III civilizations wouldn't just be obvious that they exist... they would have long since colonized the Earth. Imagine what a zoo looks like from the monkey's perspective. How could you NOT tell there's a "higher being" out there?
This was surprisingly enjoyable, good job, ty
love the wife explains series! The thing that always stands out to me about the fermi paradox is everyone always focuses on the distance/space hurdles but no one ever mentions the time hurdles. Our radio capable timeframe is the blink of an eye on galactic timeline, why should we expect our blink to be simultaneous to the other blinks?
Yes but in terms of the universe, distance is time, in a way.
Scientists include the time variable. It's part of the paradox's discussion: the fact that we may be existing very early in terms of intelligence developing in the universe and therefore, not only would the chances of us detecting a cosmically short lived signal be slim because the timing would have to match up just so, but we may not be seeing any signals because everything we see out there is relatively young in the grand scheme and most of the intelligent life forms have yet to begun let alone evolve.
Distance and time are intricately intertwined in space such that you can't think about one without the other, hence our usage of the combined term spacetime.
What's really crazy is this- we have no ideq how big the universe is. We only have information about our personal observable universe surrounding us. We cannot get any information about anything beyond it. We do have a pretty good way of calculating how long ago the big bang and recombination occurred, but we don't know how large it actually is. Within our observable universe, the paradox seems like a legitimate issue.
I love it when scientists stray into the realm of philosophy. I remember this question when I was taking my first Astronomy class in college. "Do you believe there is intelligent life in the universe, and why or why not?" It was posed as an essay question on my final exam. My answer was based in part on the geological principal of Uniformitarianism, expanded to cover other planetary environments specific to evolution of intelligence. In other words I looked at our own planet, and assuming the same evolutionary conditions existed on other planets, counted the number of intelligent species on it relative to all life. My conclusion also depended greatly upon the definition of "intelligence." To be brutally concise, based upon my observations I postulated that intelligence was not a binary condition, but one of kind and of degree. There are many intelligent species on our planet, but only one that has evolved the ability to think in abstracts to the degree that the human species has. So if that's the kind of intelligence we're looking for, it has to be a rare thing. My conclusion was that while life itself was probably common, the chances that a species would develop intelligence beyond the need to survive and reproduce is rare but possible, and that our very existence is proof. I got an "A" in Astronomy 101 by the way. ;-)
Would be nice if it could be proven more than once
A key part of what makes us "intelligent" is having evolved a physiology that gives us the ability to shape (and unfortunately destroy) our environment. Dolphins, octopus et al are not able to manipulate their surroundings in the way we can.
@@malectric What you said is true, however there is more to it than simply having the physiology that enables us to manipulate our environment. Our ability to communicate symbolically both in words and in writing to the degree we do, for example. The very concept of symbolism itself demonstrates a level of abstract thought found in no other species on this planet. And while we are not octopuses, we have very real physical limitations too. But here is where the big difference is: We can conceive of and create tools that allow us to transcend the limitations of our bodies. Language is one example, both written and verbal, and so is math, hammers, power sources, ships designed for water, air, and space. We are surrounded by our tools, and we use them so naturally we sometimes forget they are not part of us. But that's how we survived as a species. Most animals evolve to adapt to their environment. And that adaptation is part of their intelligence. Humans don't do that so much. We have survived because we can adapt our environment to us. Our intelligence has not been constrained by the vagaries of our natural environment. Rather, we use nature, and to what extent we can, we bend her to our will. That is not to say we are all powerful, we're not. I'm just saying we're the biggest fish in this fish bowl.
Human need to be very smart to survive in wild even 40 000 years ago (when our specy formed, whith no doubt). Then brain become smaller due specialisation or optimisations (why birds and ants "too smart").
Life couldn't develope mush earlier than at Earth because of radiation from black holes and so on. So we are one of the first.
About evolution of culture on base of ability to transfer knowledge by abstract language (and so on) - books like "The WEIRDest people" by Henrich.
The smarter one become the more it cooperates, move to "win-win" strategy, simbiosis and specialisation. Find "evolution of cooperation and altruizm".
Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations.
There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").
@@FlamingRobzilla So much ink, so little writing?
While I'd say the "great filter" is always ahead of us, especially while we are a species who lives on a single planet. I also think that humanity, as a species, is capable and adaptive enough to survive through pretty much anything short of the destruction of our entire planet. Of course the chances of the entire species being obliterated will massively reduce if and when we get off our little blue marble and start infect... erm... colonising other planets.
I would argue that any intelligent life that is technology superior to us, would have a vested interest in preventing human colonization. What if they have already decided we should be quarantined to this back water blue planet?
@@bluntsimracing Could be, who knows? However if they were concerned about our existence or see us as a potential threat, wouldn't they just great filter us?
Our species is not well adapted to life in space. But machine are. They will be better positioned to do exploration in space and survive.
@@sharonjuniorchess You're most definitely not wrong but at some point humanity is going to have to move flesh and blood people to other planets or our species will reach its' expiration date.
i have a question if your a physicist
Great show. Keep it up . I shared with my brothers !
I've always felt that the fermi paradox makes the assumption that we _know_ how these aliens travel around or they aren't already here and we can't detect them.
Right! The assumptions are misleading at best
No.
The question why they aren't already here. Even given they only travel at 1% of the speed of light.
@@MrCmon113 how do you know how they travel?
Life couldn't develope mush earlier than at Earth because of radiation from black holes and so on. So we are one of the first.
About evolution of culture on base of ability to transfer knowledge by abstract language (and so on) - books like "The WEIRDest people" by Henrich.
The smarter one become the more it cooperates, move to "win-win" strategy, simbiosis and specialisation. Find "evolution of cooperation and altruizm".
Near it the video "How to take over the Universe" by Rational Animations.
There are space travelling problem: it takes a lot of time. Even if Universe don't splitted to regions by black holes (another video here and by Veritasium - "Einstein's math").
Leaving aside the detectability issues other commenters have noted, I like the elegant solution to the Fermi paradox proposed by the science fiction writer Iain M. Banks.
Any technological species will have discovered the scientific method. Being intelligent, they will want to assess the wisdom of making contact with pre-starfaring species, for the welfare of those species. So they will set up a controlled study. Species they detect will be assigned to either a contact group or a control group, and the consequences of either contacting them or leaving them to develop in their own time will be assessed.
We have been randomly assigned to the control group.
Great theory...look up a short YT video on grabby aliens.
...by everyone?
That is harsh.
If the galaxy was a simple narrative, the experimental group will have turned evil and we will have to defeat them.
A society capable of doing this long term would have to be totally unified or some faction could just ignore the rules. Knowing humans, this seems to be an unlikely solution. The great filter has to be universal and this solution would not apply to us, at least for now.
@@jamesn0va "Knowing humans"
While it is very human to try and empathize with others using our own experiences and there are likely several elements of psichology that all species capable of advancing technologically enough to become interstellar, it is worth nothing that assuming that they will be anything like us is foolish.
Hey I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the content you guys put out, it's all so interesting, simple yet comprehensive and entertaining. I can confidently say that this channel has, at least somewhat, helped and inspired me to decide in taking a Physics course in University by the end of the year! Thank you for it all :)
Good luck with your physics course!
Love your videos! Making information fun. I encourage my grand children to watch them.
Awesome! Thank you!
@@ScienceAsylum You are welcome!
A limitation on how many habitable planets there are - specifically with life similar to Earth's - is that we live in a double-planet system. Our huge moon has a lot of interaction with Earth & many of those interactions make life more probable on Earth than if Earth had no large moon. What we have detected around other stars are, so far, not that similar to our (double) planet. In fact, smaller rocky planets close to their stars seem the exception, with gas giants being dominant. We're all hoping the new telescope will reveal more Earth-like planets!
This is true, but it's worth mentioning the heavy measurement bias. We have no way of reliably detecting exomoons right now, and our methods are predisposed to reveal big planets that are close to their stars. Earth-size planets in the goldilocks zone are much less detectable. This is why we find a lot of "hot Jupiters" despite the general consensus that such a strange planet should be rather rare. Hopefully we'll get a more accurate survey of nearby planets soon.
Nor do we know that our moon earth system is the ONLY configuration that can produce a life sustaining planet. It is simply bias because that is where we find ourselves. I understand the long odds given over the past couple decades of life elsewhere, but we are discovering that the various contingencies may not be as tight as previously required.
For instance, the goldilocks zone is given as a narrow band. However, there is more to the goldilocks zone than merely distance from the star. One of the many variable that comes to mind is the type of star the planet finds itself orbiting.
Other factors, such as the fine tuning of the universal constants are more observations that factors. Until we know it could have been different we cannot assume a wide variety of possible universes just to decrease the odds of these constants being friendly toward life. Just as some smuggle in the multiverse to expand probabilistic resources (time and matter/energy interactions pretty much) others try to assume MANY possible universes and ours was turned to be perfect by an outside force. Both are assumptions.
@@jsnel9185... Pardon?
First of all, I love you guys! This is wonderful. Secondly, as an alien I can assure you the great filter has passed, we've worked hard to keep you occupied with your screens so you don't have time (energy) for wars. You're safe. Oh, and don't worry about the radio signals, nobody in the universe really uses EM waves for communication, they're just too slow. You guys are the only species who loves this stuff.
Humans have an affinity for antiques 😎
If aliens are the ones responsible for screen and cell phone addiction, that just makes me want to start a war.
@@brad5938 I agree! But this war has to be fought through these very screens and devices...with trolling and hurtful words like "butt hurt" and angry gasps at inappropriate slaps...oh...
It may be all true, but even behind of one of those screens my 12yo son have energy enough to explode the Sun and, at the same time, give you some disturbing news about your "female" progenitor.
Fermi's question wasn't why can't we detect alien civilizations. His question was why aren't they here? The time it takes to colonize the whole galaxy is small compared to the age of the galaxy.
"The time it takes to colonize the whole galaxy is small" You are making a ton of assumptions for that -- all of this is guess work until we have more data or technology.
Not if the universe's expansion rate expresses as an increasing distance between everything that your local acceleration can't overcome. There is a theoretical point in deep space where everything is moving away from you so quickly that you seem to be (a) standing still in a void, and (b) getting smaller from the perspective of everything else. Or increasingly distant from every entity around you, as Robert A. Heinlein so eloquently illustrated (without explanation) in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), with Valentine Michael Smith's ability to make things "go" away.
@@asc_missions3080 Understood, but the expansion rate is too slow to be an issue.
Why aren't they here??
Here, let me clarify that for you.
AHEM! Lets say 1 billion solar systems in our galaxy: 0.1% contains life = 1.000.000 systems.
0.1% has inteligent life varying from Ancient greeks to modern humans in inteligence = 1.000 solar systems with civilizations in our galaxy alone.
NICE! Until you realize... that even 50% of them = 500 are capable of space travel of OUR technology OR EVEN SLIGHTY BETTER...
It would still take about 50 to 100 years to LEAVE their solar system... LET ALONE GOING TO ANOTHER ONE WITH ENOUGH STUFF AND INDIVIDUALS TO COLONIZE THE PLACE...
You can easily say that it might take Longer for said civilizations to Colonize 1 other Solar system then ALL of humanity has ever existed in terms of time.
Don't just assume all of them can travel space at ANY rate. Don't assume any of them can do it ALOT better then us. Space travel is fucking hard. And colonizing other planets is even harder.
It's fascinating to watch you two discuss really difficult stuff.
My partner and I usually discuss what to have for dinner the coming day. :/
I love the way my wife challenges me 🤓
Depends on how fast technology evolves too. There might be a short window on species actually using detectable communications.
Or they can be using detectable communication that is completely foreign to us due to the drastic difference in technological advancement.
Detection is also assuming any signal still intact after a great distance (as we know, space isn't a perfect vacuum). Also assuming any viable signal is sustained for long enough and pointed at the exact perfect direction to not miss us.
Even using advanced techniques that don't rely on "signals", we have trouble detecting planets. Nevermind activity on or near said planet.
Are you a physicist? I have a question? 🥺
@@platysmemes7663 negative. I am a meat popsicle. What is the question ?
@@HorizonPaintingHawaiiLLC gravity warps time and warped time creates gravity I’m so confused 🤔 so can you explain
Life on earth is so insanely diverse, that I find it hard to believe even civilized intelligent life across our galaxy would use the same kind of communication. Plus they could be millions of years ahead of us and have technology and understanding of science totally unlike ours or they could be millions of years behind us and no where near technological yet
Are you a physicist? I have a question? 🥺
@@platysmemes7663 shut
@@EinBienenliebhaber what u meen
Our, this galaxy... universe is teeming with all sorts of life. Some similar to us. Yet, we still haven't explored enough of this wonderful place. So many places in plain sight if you know how to bend light and blend. Things may be right under our feet and we never look correctly. Does one truly wish to find something that doesn't want to be found? There may be a price. Be careful what you wish for because you may get it.
Try taking a smart phone to a Neanderthal, that's us trying understand tech from intelligent life millions of years ahead of us. We will be able to realize that it's tech but understand it at a glance nah.
Given the size of our galaxy, and our location therein being waaaaayyyy out in the veritable middle of nowhere, it's estimated that whole kardashev 2 civilizations could have been born, searched for earth with all their interstellar capabilities they could spare, and break down and fall into obscurity WITHOUT finding earth, let alone humans. Evem the distance our radio signals have reached is comparatively TINY and at the edge of the galaxy.
Not only that, our evolution on earth from proto-celular chemical patches to fully functioning sentient humans with still plenty of problens moderating our base instincts took 4 BILLION years, and a LOT of luck. Odds are, if sentient life is anywhere near our neck of the woods, it didn't/won't have our level of luck, and either could have died out, got stuck in feudal era wars, or even gone extinct, or just won't exist for another few dozen million years.
We could be the first, or even just the first this far out on our galactic arm. As such, we have the responsability to get over ourselves and leave a good impression for the galaxy in our wake.
That also assumes that science and biology is correct and humans aren't the offspring of aliens who deposited us eons ago. I mean, just doing the Darwinian math would indicate we would have more than one competing intelligent life form on this planet, but the best we have are some fossils and theories. I'm not saying it's aliens, bro....but it's aliens.
@@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012 I believe mars was habitable before the ice age, and we grew and colonized it; but then humans being humans, went to war, mars prompted earth's ice age, and earth nuked mars, which would create a landscape as we see today, even assuming NASA is being truthful about its inhosptability.
@@HorizonsleatherBlogspot2012 We did have more then ome intellifent lifeform competing with us, we outcomputed or assimilated them.
Other then that, theres no such thing as "Darwinian math". We fulfill a tool using niche and as far as we can tell, the biosphere would be incapable of supporting a competing tool using niche similar to ours. Even if another species independently evolved into that niche, the competition would have been fierce and one would have wiped the other long ago.
There is zero reason to even consider the idea that biology is wrong to the scale that would completely sever us from the tree of life. If we were seeded by aliens, it would have been early single cellular life, or our evolution would have been influenced by aliens.
A civilization could colonize the whole of galaxy in a few million years, and could explore it in a few hundred thousand years with simple probes. Given the scale and energy consumption of a type 2 civilization, i would find any argument of that nature to be unlikely. A telescope set up in a crater on the dark side of our moon for example would have the resolution to identify individual planets and would be well within the capabilities of a type 2 civilization.
You don't have any answers actually. I find it absurd humans think they know everything when actually we don't know anything
Love a discussion about Fermi Paradox, because I wonder about it a lot. My fear (after much more research) is that Earth is an anomaly, somehow. I'm in the "Rare Earth Hypothesis" camp.
Based on our own species I make these assumptions. We’ve been detectable for roughly a century and great minds have pondered our extinction in another century. So it could be that most civilizations ‘out there’ may only be 200-300 years to be detectable. This would explain why we keep missing each other. A couple centuries is nothing in a sea of a million years, much less a billion years.
Considering the communication part, it's really tough to extract "intelligent" signals from the noise we receive. I wonder what Earth's signal would look like a few light-years away. Would we be able to identify intelligent life from such a signal just a few ly away yet alone thousands of ly away? Guess it would be below a detectable threshold pretty fast and I guess signals are not supposed to have a high enough energy to be meaningful after over those very long distances. I mean we are just a few years into the age of radio emission and have already figures out that it's not really feasible for anything 'stellar'. Fermis paradox could be answered if there a technological leaps ahead of us the we just don't know about yet, Dyson spheres being just one of those ideas. Also the idea of warping spacetime for travel or communication would be something we can not detect.
Using our current best technology and radio telescopes, Earth's radio signals would be almost indistinguishable from background radio signals from our nearest neighbor at about 4 light years. Even if you could receive it, You might be able to pick up the signal and it might look "unnatural", but you probably wouldn't be able to get any useful information off of it.
A few dozen light years away, and I doubt there would be anything there strong enough to recognize.
Very good question. Is it possible for that furthest satellite to bounce back sound
I’ve always watched these years after they come out lol
Same
Except this one, you guys mean? I too am used to seeing "4yrs ago" under the titles but here I am only 3hrs late (or 2.85×10^-12 galactic years)
Same
I think one has to consider that the FORM of life could affect whether intelligent life is constrained in progress. An octopus cannot see the stars, dabble with electricity, and so on. This would severely limit progress of communicating with species on other planets, using fire, etc. Same with dolphins (lacking hands and fingers.)
My feeling is that we only need to consider two factors: time and space... There is a lot of both!
The chance that these factors line up for inhabitants of the Universe to meet one another is extremely small.
Very eloquently put!
Galaxy. We're only considering the galaxy. Universe is too large. But for the galaxy, it's likely We're the first. If we weren’t, we wouldn't exist, as aliens would have already sent probes here.
@@cortster12 Even at the size of the galaxy, when factoring in the inverse square law I am assuming the radio signals get lost in the noise pretty quick. Of course you could use directional beams to negate this but then you have to know where to aim it which given the size of the galaxy would be very time intensive.
@@13lacle I said probes. as in, physical objects. It would only take a few million years at 10% the speed of light to send one to every star in the galaxy.
Thank you!
The moment you said L meant ability to be detected via radio the idea that L isn't close to ZERO became ridiculous. We are a weird species even for planet earth and one way we are weird is how focused humanity is on the electro-magnetic spectrum.
Other species focus on radar or sonar, they focus on chemical senses like taste and smell. . . but we take it further than either highly vision focused groups like the birds. We actually use fire to pre-digest our food. With our focus not just on binocular color vision but also fire we have a very specific set of unique skills. We also live on land during a period where the oxygen levels aren't too low to support our big brains, or so high that fire is explosive and dangerous . . .
Could we detect a race of intelligent tool users on Europa IF they saw using sonar and had a clockwork technology based on carving materials based on their density, and utilizing water currents (which they can see) as motive power? No radio, no visible cities, no contact with the surface at all . . . their form of life is powered by geo-thermal activity around numerous vents at the bottom of an ocean below miles of ice and there is a LOT of it just as we see on the moons neighbor IO.
I don't think we see them. Their L period starts only when we land on the moon and drill down. Even then they aren't immediately visible. We have to develop craft that can survive the pressure and actually go down there and see one of their cities using a spotlight or something and we could miss them so easily.
How about a species that focused entirely on chemistry because taste and smell are their main senses? They don't even know the stars or outer space exist. They aren't using radio, or television, or even light. Picture an eco-system that had a chemical arms race like what we see among insects only on a much bigger scale . . . they see, communicate, and do everything else using chemical secretions and they've domesticated other critters to get an even bigger library, before finally beginning to mix things. They heat stuff up using chemical reactions, forming new materials without ever touching fire . . . Perhaps because their atmosphere lacks oxygen, maybe their chemistry is based on it being extremely cold out around one of those plentiful long lived red dwarf stars? Maybe their "heat" is just enough to let them "forge and shape" exotic ice of various sorts.
I don't think we'd see them either. Even if we landed on their planet we might not be able to tell the difference between this race and some very advanced form of Ant or Bee. At least not at first. They are "talking" using chemistry, and we are talking using sound plus body language. We are literally talking past each other. They can't see or hear us, and we need advanced machinery to detect the scents and secretions they use to "talk".
I think L for them is VERY close to zero. They aren't detectable. But lets come closer to home. Squid have existed almost as long as multi-cellular life. We've seen them use tools. They solve complex puzzles. They build villages on the ocean floor off the coast of Australia. But we couldn't detect alien squid. How about dolphins? Something that looks like a dolphin has evolved repeatedly throughout history. If we count dolphins as intelligent they also are invisible from space. The same goes for whales.
I figure the basic assumption that L should be high is obviously wrong. First you have to develop a race extremely like us. Then they have to be in an environment that allows for our sort of higher technology. You have to be able to forge metals and develop electronics so your limited to the habitable zone and to planets with a decent amount of free oxygen for combustion. Otherwise you slow the development of technology down to a crawl.
It's not enough to develop machinery, you are asking for very SPECIFIC machinery. Clockwork doesn't count. Hydraulic or Pneumatic technology doesn't count, extremely advanced chemistry or use of sonic force doesn't count. Only technology that sends out far traveling energy signitures like radio waves makes a species have an L value that we could currently measure as being above ZERO.
That's a pretty big filter. We aren't looking for a planet with microbes, bugs, plants, dinosaurs. No we don't even want a planet with intelligent life, which if squid count is still probably really common. Squid have been around forever. We are looking for a race that is both like us AND at a very specific point in their technological development where they are leaking energy out into space where we can eventually see it . . . they aren't efficiently bouncing it back down off satellites, or moving it around using wires. It has to be a powerful and wide beamed broadcast of energy that escapes their planet and travels all the way to us.
So we are looking for 1950s-1990s clones of ourselves? It could happen, but the chance of it happening NEAR us, at the same time we are LOOKING is statistically so low that I'd bet on radio silence before I even started looking to check my assumption. Why would you expect anything else?
This assumption that L should be higher than zero just puzzles me. Why would anyone ever assume that given the examples of life we observe all around us on planet earth, and the environments we see when we look out at our own solar system and the stars? It just doesn't make any sense.
EXCELLENT EXCELLENT EXCELLENT
biologist? no shes not! she doesnt have a white coat like the real scientist who has one!
L is the length of time such a species is detectable. 300 years was the example value.
Detectability would be under fc, the fraction of civilizations that communicate. Communicate in this case meaning casting light in a way we can detect, like radio or infra-red, not "uses language".
All of your examples of intelligent civilizations would not count under fc, and we probably won't count soon either, as we get more efficient broadcasters, and switch to narrowcasting. That's assuming these civilizations don't try and communicate on purpose of course, and we have sent somewhat powerful radio transmissions to certain stars in the past.
I see no reason for a spacefaring civilization to not use some form of electromagnetic radiation to communicate within a star system; sound, smell, and electricity just don't travel through vacuum, and light is really good at moving very far, very fast.
Even then, electromagnetic communication isn't the only option for fc, blocking starlight with a dyson swarm could work, as could unusual radiation from high energy events, although those would be rarer than just communication.
@@TlalocTemporal *Humans are not from Planet Earth Ellis Silver now….. Quran 1500 years back 2;36 / 7;24 / 67;2 / 11;7 / 6;165 / 20;115*
Understanding How, Why and When Humans were created by One God of all….
*YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND THIS UNTILL YOU ARRANGE VERSES IN CORONOLOGY*
Decision to Create humans or Man came 9 billion years after Big Bang with creation of Blood and sounding Clay and then verse….. 2;30
The Point to note in verse is, still humans was not named Insaan or Humans but Dominants or Rulers of Earth and other point is…..
*How Angels know man or dominant or successor, will spread mischief Corruption and bloodshed?*
How Angles know of Blo od 2;30?
Angles don't have blo od in their body.....
This clearly means the verse is talking of creature with blood in them.
There were creatures that had Blo od before humans and that use to fight, create mischief and corruption according to verse.
So it was dinosaurs before man and there was blood in their bodies that use to fight to control territory and fight of resources of territory
SO CLEAR
SO EVIDENT....
The verse also means, Man is built basically by animal material so by nature he is animal and made greedy and fights and control all resources/wealth for himself. (See the humans as nations, as America, Europe, Russia and their bl ood shed) 91;8
But education taught by God or Religion, makes him Civilized, Sacrificing, Loving and Caring others (Sultanate Osmaniya). 96;4 / 95;4 / 4;1
Now let’s start again from Big Bang 2;117 / to organization of universe 21;30 / 41;11 and 9 billion years after big bang the decision of Creation of Earth 79;30/ 2;29
Decisions to create earth or process of creation of earth after Big Bang with Pre-Earth and planet Theia collusion 79;29
Make up of Earth from Hot boiling lava earth to cool watery earth to support creation of life with blood on earth 2:29
*Sending of Iron the important constitution of Blood and to create gravity and electricity before water 57;25*
No Iron, No Blood.
*Then sending of freezed water by meteoroids 78; 14 to first Hot Earth and first sea and first microbial life* 29;19-20
Then creation of plants and Botanical Big bang 78;16 / 19;31 and Creation of Oxygen and Ozone for protection from sun and skies 21;32 / 52;8 / 86;11 to help development of warm blooded animals Panspermia and their stability 79;33
Then Panspermia and sending of 8 pairs of animals from other planet and evolution in 3 dark periods (unknown to man/science) 39;6 and
Then Creation of dirty stinking black mud from dying or Corpus of animal life 55;14 and from this and after this black mud (Teen), decision of creation of humans 15;26-33…
No black Mud or Teen no Humans…
*Creation of man on planet Paradise: with black Mud 7;12 38;76 / 15;28 /15;29 / 38;75 / 23:100*
*After creation of Black, decaying Mud or Teen 7;12 38;76 / 15;28 Decision of Creation of man on planet Paradise 2;30*
*Still Humans was not named Insaan or Basher 2;30 but Dominant/Rulers/Successors of earth*
*Then! Creation of Souls 17;85 or pre humans first 19;9 / 2;28 on other planet and called first time called Insaan/humans after education 33;72 / 2;31*
They lived in the different world 33;72 where souls of humans return, after death of Physical Body (Barzaq) 15;29 / 38;75 / 23:100.
Then loading of all soul or all pre humans, in body made of black mud man and giving life to first man Adam and taking oath 7:172.
*Creation of Adam in cool Sun / Heat less / Hunger less, Planet Paradise 20;118/119*
Then creation of Adam from black mud from earth 55;14 / 38;75 and educating Adam 2;31 / 7;11 (still not Eve or Hawa AS)
They Adam show his education and Prostration by Angles and Creation of Satan 2;34 / 7;12
Creation of Satan 15;31 / 17;61 / 20;116 / 38;74
Then creation of Eve / Hawa AS and advised to live *““both of you””* in Planet Paradise 2;35 / 7;19 / 20;117-119
*Then test of free will on planet other than earth, and they ate from the tree (first use of free will) and
sent down on earth temporarily, to check / test use of free will* 2;38 / 7;24 / 20;123
*Descending of man on Earth as punishment 2;36 / 7;24 67;2 / 11;7 / 6;165 / 20;115*
*Then Humans started life on earth, as short period 2;36 / 7;24 / 79;46 and as test* 67;2 / 11;7 / 6;165 / 20;115.
And the purpose of sending humans on earth is test of freedom of choice 21;18 / 11;7 / 67;2 / 6;165 / 91;8.
And purpose of Sending Humans on earth to show Mercy and forgiveness 6:12 / 5;54 / 11:119 / 7:18 / 32:13 / 38:85.
I love to see how two different scientists get on chatting to each other; two very different sciences that are far enough apart that one is unlikely to ever earn a salary doing the other's job, but still effectively communicating and enjoying each other's company because they are also similar... Tis harmonious... :D
Ok I had to pause at 3:28.
What shape eggs would a cubic chicken lay? From which facet would it be laid? And would chicks be two dimensional squares that grow up, literally, to become cubic chickens? Upon deeper consideration; what shape is an individual chicken feather? Would it be a rectangle? Or a two dimensional rhombus?
Wow we actually agree! I also think the great filter is behind us, this vast amount time that was needed for multicellular life to evolve is pretty convincing. Add the other thing, that it's just a miserably puny time window that we've been looking for signs of life out there, and our equipment is not THAT hyperadvanced, and it almost inevitably leads to the conclusion that it's not a surprise NOT to find anyone out there... yet.
I think life is pretty common in the universe. Complex life however, is a whole other question.
I'm really looking forward to see an expedition to Europa (I mean, the moon). I hope it'll happen in my lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised if we found simple life there. Heck, even in the clouds of Venus it's not yet ruled out. That would shape that Drake equation a lot.
The universe literally just started existing, like 10b years ago. It will be around for trillions and trillions of years.
Hahaha, I laughed when you feel you needed to specify you were talking about the moon. I wonder if there is some wierd conspiracy group in America thinking there is no life in Europe and planning to do an expedition there
What about our star? Is it not a filter? It is overdue to send us back to the stone age. How many other habitable planets have to deal with CME...super flares...or micro nova from their star? To ignore the sun would seem very, very foolish and reckless.
@@jonasdaverio9369 Noooo! Please don't give them ideas haha! Btw I actually heard rumours about people believeing in that Australia does not exist, so... who knows?
@@BlazinRiver1 Good point! But doesn't that fall under the category (or factor) of n(lowerindex)e in the Drake equation, aka number of habitable words per star? I mean, I wouldn't consider a planet habitable, if it orbits around a wild red dwarf that goes brrrr every several years. I'm not an expert so feel free to doubt my idea.
I agree that it's detection. Just as we don't appreciate the timescales of the universe, we also don't appreciate the size, much less the effect of the Inverse Square Law. There is no way an alien at Alpha Centauri could detect our radio signals, or tell them apart from our solar radiation from that distance.
Actually, the radius of the sphere beyond which our signal is indistinguishable from the galactic background is closer to 80 light years. Unfortunately, a very optimistic set of solutions to the Drake Equation put communicating civilizations about 1000 light years apart.
@@Egilhelmson do you mean in principle or in practice? And how advanced of technology would it take. Also, I mean specifically noise caused by our star.
Intelligent life is an interesting argument. In theory, you could make the case for intelligence being measured by a species learning to use tools, in which case, yes, we have a step up over other species here. But a factor in that is environment/how species adapt to that environment. As Mrs Asylum mentions, octopuses, dolphins, ravens, etc, are intelligent; but they're impaired by, for instance, octopuses and dolphins can't harness fire (because, aquatic), plus dolphins not having appendages that can manipulate objects. Same with ravens, in that sense. BUT, all of these species have proven problem-solving abilities and are shown to be quite intelligent, within their natural environment.
Personally, I think the only thing really holding back octopuses is that they're aquatic. If they ever adapted to live for long periods on land, I think it's at least possible that they could learn how to use fire (way down the road, obviously).
I'm of the opinion that there is intelligent life out there; whether or not it's trying to communicate, I don't know, but I think once we find it, it's going to blow our minds with how similar, and different, it is from us. Right now, we only have a sample size of one to work with, because life here is all we know. But once we start really being able to explore, it's gonna get all kinds of crazy.
I don't consider any species currently alive on the planet, with the exception of humans, to be sufficiently "intelligent". Why? Because none of them are capable of language or, more critically, culture. The entire reason humans were able to form civilization was because of their unique ability to grow and share information with future generations. This simply doesn't happen with other animals. There are a few that can understand simple sentences from humans, but none of them are capable of having that same conversation with another of their own species.
This is the key difference between why humans formed a civilization and not the monkeys and apes we see around us.
@@TheFinalChapters Birds, whales & dolphins, and even many fish have vocalizations which convey specific meanings, i.e. "language"
@@eriknelson2559 Grunts and growls are not the same thing as language. A wide range of variation is required for that.
@@TheFinalChapters Birds and whales & dolphins have very sophisticated vocalizations, and even grunts & growls are the original roots of language
All shades & grades, no "quantum leap", differences of degree but not of kind
Other animals can also communicate complex color patterns. Humans have more language & more tool usage in more combination, but are not the only examples of any one criterion
The great filter is technical development. Another filter is loss of technical development.
17:42 the great filter event is the ability to be aware of the necessity of leaving the crude oil in the ground, as it may well be integral to keeping the ecology static. It may provide combustable material inorder to smelt the mantle down into both ferromagnetic metals( which sink) and non ferrous metals that get ejected in volcanic eruptions along with the CO2 rich magma. Life may well be key in keeping the earths core liquid and the magnetic field active. Once the " excess " hydrocarbon waste has been consumed by technology... The magnetic field could collapse... No van allen belts, no sunscreen... No more civilization, a great silence, only the wind moaning over a denuded landscape. Didnt percy Shelley write a poem? Ozymandias? Fitting i think...
My problem with the Drake Equation is that it's just too coarse.
My factors are something like N=R * f(p) * n(e) * f(L) * f(i) * f(c) * L with:
R = 5 (known)
f(p) = 1 (mostly-known)
n(e) = 0.5 (most stars are binaries and probably toss out most planets, and/or are red dwarves and have tiny or nonexistent habitable zones)
f(L) = 1 (life seems to develop literally anywhere there's a chance, and no, our sample size is _not_ 1. There seem to be _many_ completely separate instances of life starting on Earth, through time and in particular extreme environments.)
f(i) = 10^-10 (This one is where I think it gets difficult... specifically Eukaryotic life, habitability of a planet for long enough to get past that, proportion of advanced (multi-cellular) life in situations in which the development of technology is feasible, etc.)
f(c) = 0.8 (I think most technological species will develop radio... though I _don't_ think that's particularly relevant because...)
L = 50 (This is about how long we emitted powerful analog radio signals that could even conceivably be detected, which makes it a very thin radio shell, not a bubble.)
Which gives 10^-8 civilizations per galaxy and we definitely shouldn't expect to see anyone else anywhere nearby. But _why?_
Where does that humongous gap between expecting basically all habitable planets to have life, but almost none of them to develop intelligent life come from? That's where the Drake Equation just utterly falls on its face. There's a reason I had to list multiple examples in that one, and those are still _woefully_ oversimplified. For example, your wife brought up a great point about octopi and dolphins. They probably aren't, but even if they were _twice_ as smart as we are, it will never matter at all, because they live underwater, which means no fire, no electronics, no durable artifacts, no advancement.
I'm not fond of the hyper-detailed versions with hundreds of factors either, as the chance that we even _know_ about all the factors is basically zero.
But I do think there needs to at least be "chance for life to make the transition to complex life" and maybe "proportion of stars stable enough to allow planets to retain atmosphere" and "proportion of planets with stable enough orbital parameters to be _consistently_ habitable".
I also very much agree that it's incredibly arrogant to assume that we could detect life.
I think just in the last few years, we _might_ have gotten to the point at which we could detect a copy of _ourselves..._ but only within maybe 500 light-years, and even then only in a brief 50-year window. Compared to the vastness of time... it's absurd to even _call_ this a "paradox".
Interesting comment! You say for f(L)=1 that “there are many completely separate instances of life starting on Earth, through time and in particularly extreme environments.” Please could you justify this claim with some citations? My understanding of terrestrial biology is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestry, that life began once, very early in the planet’s history, in circumstances unknown, and has since adapted to every possible environment. What are these many separate origins of life that you assert?
The Drake equation was never meant to be scientifically rigorous, so I agree that it's coarse. To start, I think "f(i)" could be expanded into multiple factors. Why such a small value for "L" though? What happens at the end of that 50 years? Better communication tech or extinction?
@@ScienceAsylum Better communication tech, yeah. That's a generous estimate of how long we used high-power broadcast radio transmission as our primary communication means.
As others have pointed out in the comments here, it doesn't take very long after that to figure out how to narrow the angle of a transmission (actually, we did it _very_ quickly in the form of radar), and once that is industrialized/commercialized, it would be pretty silly to use broadcast for very long after that.
Once you start using focused beam transmission, the power level of your signals drops by orders of magnitude, and the chances of a distant observer being in just the right place to be able to see th em drops dramatically as well.
Of course, this is assuming that alien civilizations aren't deliberately trying to be found by new species just starting to master their environment. If an advanced alien race _wanted_ to be found, they could surely broadcast a stupendously powerful omnidirectional radio signal visible for very long distances. If we put our collective effort toward it, I'm sure broadcasting something visible through at least our quadrant of the galaxy would be quite doable for us.
So yeah, L=50 is my napkin estimate of how long a developing civilization would, by pure chance and the logical progression through science and technology, and on average, use megawatt scale omnidirectional broadcast for internal communication before learning better methods.
In other words, I think most people _severely_ overestimate our ability to detect alien civilizations.
@@ScienceAsylum Oh, are you familiar with Isaac Arthur and his channel Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur? He has a really good way of looking at futurism and parsing it in a manner that is so much more logical than typical sci-fi that it makes most people's vision of what the future looks like seem just goofy.
Like, the idea that we're going to be terraforming planets, that we'd ever even _want_ to go back down a steep gravity well once we've escaped the one we were born in, when building rotating habitats with the _vastly_ more abundant and easily obtainable resources in space is so much easier, is bizarre. It's just a thought-form, little more than tradition for its own sake.
Sci-fi has taught us to think of space as vast, empty, and barren. And comparatively speaking, it is... but gravity wells are what makes things hard to get to and get away from in space, not distance. And when you look at equal-energy orbital distributions, once you get to the outer solar system, past the gas giants, the resources available are _staggering_ and make Earth look very confining by comparison, especially accounting for how difficult the resources here are to acquire and then get up out of its gravity well.
Anyway... where was I going with this??
Oh yeah... he has a lot of episodes focusing on the Fermi Paradox, discussing potential solutions to it in _extraordinary_ detail... and in the introductory series to it, he lays out a much more detailed equivalent to the Drake Equation.
In it, he goes through and details out _hundreds_ of potential "great filters", each of which seem extremely reasonable one by one. Many of them, we don't have any real idea what numbers to plug in to them, or how important their relative weighting factors might be, but at the end, even if you just assign each of them a 50/50 chance, it comes out to expecting our nearest neighbors to be at least a billion light-years away, statistically speaking.
I made a similar comment about the main factor being the development of complex and intelligent life. This is mainly due to the absolutely, mindblowingly low odds of a planet remaining habitable for such a long period of time so that those leaps can take place (given enough time, random chance can lead to all sorts of wonderful innovations amongst life. The main issue here is time). We don't appreciate it here on Earth due to observer bias, but pretty much everything had to go nearly perfectly for conditions to be good, and every time things went the slightest bit wrong a mass extinction occurred and life barely limped through. I think a focus on the ability for life to evolve to such a point would be very fruitful for both solving the paradox and helping humanity appreciate how very precious our Earth is in the grand scheme of things.
Well, your example of the Octopus is something to seriously consider. "Intelligent" life can develop/evolve in numerous ways. But if, for example, the intelligent life on one of these planets has developed let's say, without ears, then developing technology which would broadcast sound across vast distances would be pointless. And, if those beings found themselves looking to the stars for the sake of traveling to other planets or even communicating with other planets then perhaps they would consider an entirely different means of attempting to communicate to other stars. Maybe their version of the Fermi Paradox involves the idea of a baseline technology which *their* species would use to communicate with.
Alternatively, the alien species in question could, like the octopus, require different environmental qualities in what they consider "habitable" planets than what we deal with on Earth. Maybe they require liquid that isn't water to support their own version of life, so they point their telescopes/detection devices towards planets unlike our own. And thus it isn't that they don't want another planet, they're just not so into ours that we'd get a phone call or a visit.
You're thinking analog. Even species without hearing, could still interpret radio signals which are meant to convey sound, by examining the raw data. Same with TV signals. A species might not have sight, but if they have technology, they could tell that there is a signal with patterns.
Or, if they are humanoid, they could simply never develop beyond agrarian and don’t see the need to go beyond it. All intelligent life done need to be humanoid, like the octopus.
Radio can be used to convey information in general, not just sound.
16:30 Self aware sentience with an ability to manipulate the environment to the species own advantage, such as using and making complex tools. I think that covers the the spirit of what is intended with the Drake Equation.
So if the consequences of our "ability to manipulate the environment to the species own advantage" is to destroy ourselves for example from the climate change or maybe a nuclear war then the humankind doesn't count as an intelligent life?
Great content for my first view of the channel, you guys are fun. My opinion is that there are a few of the Fermi Paradox 'answer' hypotheses in play.
The evidence pointing to the number of factors that had to be just right for multi-cellular organisms on Earth (as we know it projecting to the galaxy and universe as a whole) to arise makes it reasonable to assume the Earth is rare as a cradle for life. This has been further supported by exoplanet research that shows the wide range of conditions that can exist. Prokaryote life may be somewhat common outside our solar system, but the conditions necessary and time it took on Earth seems to indicate at least one 'early' great filter has been passed. Still the number of possible instances is so large, that it is reasonable to think that if we passed that filter on Earth, than it has been passed on other worlds. This is further supported by the fact that the constituent matter that was necessary for life is seen no matter where we look in the universe.
However the distances are immense. Even if there were multiple instances of species capable of producing techno signatures within our galaxy overlapping each other time-wise, the distances between them make that detection unlikely, at least for now (detection capability advancement plus time/distance involved). Other answers such as the Zoo and Dark Forest hypotheses are interesting but I believe that with the reasons outlined above it is very unlikely these come into play, yet.
Another fascinating idea is that we may be one of the first species capable of producing techno signatures based on the age of the universe and recycling/distribution of heavier elements needed for such technologies to arise.
I've always been intrigued by how early life developed on Earth but then how long it took for the emergence of complex life. One argument is energy utilization needed for complex life was not possible until sufficient free oxygen was present.
One take I personally like is that we may be one of the first intelligent specifies to develop. A lot had to happen: the right collection of elements in the cloud that formed the solar system (we are star stuff meme), the creation of the moon, plate tectonics, a protective magnetic field, development of photosynthesis, and the die off of the dinosaurs were all necessary components. Finding the first life will be exciting no matter what the form.
Goldilocks with bells and whistles. Photosynthesis AND nucleation on the same rock is a long shot :)
I think humans are inherently bias when measuring intelligence.
@@RyukyuStyle Agree, as a SciFi fan I love first contact stories.
Don’t forget the Theia hypothesis. It’s possible that the Theia impact and fallout (the formation of the moon as a ‘sister-planet’ rather than a typical satellite, the remnant Theia masses - the LLSVPs- in the Earth’s mantle) is also important to the development of life.
@@DneilB007 especially since the moon is considered vital to many ecosystems on earth
Assumption #2 in the Fermi paradox ought to be revised: "We are capable of detecting nearby alien civilizations if they communicate using powerful omnidirectional radio waves" (like we did back in Fermi's day).
You are correct. Nobody would use omnidirectional radiation to communicate between stars.
It's easy that we almost for sure are alone. We got aliens all around 🌎 and any of them are not close to be TECHNICAL and won't be.
EDIT
It's really wishful thinking when u see where we are RIGHT NOW and we are so far away to be able communicate. Even intelligent 🐙🦑 /mother 🌎 no matter what it won't be able communicate if they gonna thrive in their environments they won't build tech anyway. We see that life don't need any understable intelligent (to make sense of world they in) to thrive or be dominant one.
Our super calm 🌎 and 🌞 are not safe for us, so if u think that other forms of life can predict that done flare will kill, i don't get it why it's not obvious.
WE KNOW THIS AND WE STILL END UP IN WARS ETC ETC. DON'T TRY TELL ME THAT IT'S BECAUSE OF CULTURE OR RELIGION (IT IS BUT ITS NOT A POINT), WE CREATE THEM BECAUSE WE TRYED MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD AROUND YOU AND LIFE TO EXIST DON'T NEED THAT AND WON'T GET DO MUCH TIME OR LUCK AS WE DID.
Maybe we are first one, but with time going on we won't be able to communicate either because of vast distances and i don't think local group are big enough to makes other form of life (we would conquer them before it would happen). There is much more reasons i can think of but u will try anyway fit this info your worldviews.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's amazing to me that u still think that intelligence is special, it's not.
Invented tools such as language and writing make US possible, but intelligence is not some ABSOLUTE that will conquer the cosmos, it's just POSSIBLE in our universe. U think to much about this in mathematical sense (it's the only way we can, even biology, chemistry etc etc) but we use other tools and imagination (do intelligence need that, every sensor in body etc is a tool). You consider so many things too literally and that's how SCIENCE work not LIFE (even most exotic u can think of).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@numbersix8919 : Thank you. And they would need to be NEARBY.
Our signals are indistinguishable from background noise once your about 100 light years out due to the inverse square law and the rate at which signals fade. We broadcast much less now
@@Hecarim420 : Show us your math.
The very early appearance of simple life on Earth cannot be used to deduce the ease or frequency of life elsewhere, despite the intuitive temptation to do so. It’s like having a single point on a graph and asking what is the gradient of the line going through that point; it could be absolutely anything.
The early start to simple life on Earth actually reveals how extremely long it has taken for complex multicellular life and then intelligence to evolve. It has taken essentially the entire age of the Earth for a communicating civilisation to evolve from self-replicating slime. This is about one third of the age of the Universe. So from our single data point, the time taken to go from proto-planet to radio telescope is of similar order of magnitude to the age of the Universe. This is a strong candidate for a one line explanation to the Fermi Paradox.
This reasoning also argues that life HAD to begin very early in order for us to be here. The Earth is predicted to remain habitable for another billion years or so, but we have already used up 4.5 billion years to get this far, which is 9/11ths or about 82% of the available time. Again, from our single data point, it appears that the production of communicating intelligence is an exceptionally slow process requiring cosmically significant timescales.
A billion years might be optimistic even, I've certainly heard lower estimates for it. Like for instance rate of water loss, I thought might be critical with in half a billion or less I thought. Also in general towards the end of the habitable period it is likely the planet will already have become so inhospitable that complex life was no longer possible. So presumably the time for intelligence being possible is even shorter then the end date.
Can't really assume the time scales from simple life to complex life would be similar to Earth either. It's unknown whether we took the fast or slow path.
@@miniverse2002 Actually we have some evidence towards that we probably evolved fast. Nothing very strong but statistically speaking it tilts it in that favor.
For instance, if we evolved at a normal to slow rate, there should be a fair chance that the planet would still have a long chunk of habitable life left, because the habitable period of the planet isn't a constraint. But if the length of habitability was a constraint and you had to evolve fast to succeed, then the chance of still having a lot of time left on the clock would be low. So basically more chance it was fast if we used almost all the habitable time on the planet to evolve, which is what we find, Earth doesn't have long left for complex life like us, just some hundreds of millions of years probably.
Another is that harder to evolve steps should take long to evolve then easier to evolve steps. So if one compared important evolutionary steps, the hardest one of those should stand out for being so much longer then the others. If how ever you evolved fast, that step and perhaps a few others got really lucky boosts and happened fast, in that case each of of these steps should have some what random lengths. We found that step lengths on Earth for significant evolutionary developments seemed to be random. Which suggests fast.
Now of course there's some assumptions in there and it doesn't definitively prove anything. But it probably tilts the chance towards us being a fast evolving world to at least 10 to 1 or more.
@@Quickshot0 Nicely put!
I'm that friend. Lol.
I'm with you guys, I think detecting a signal, let alone a signal we recognize as such, means we essentially have to be within range of where it could go/ be received. That's just one complication.
The galaxy is so large, in sure someone in Maine would have a bigger chance of receiving a message in a bottle from Morocco. .
And do we even know what the space currents are around the galaxy? What even comprises those?
There's just too too much we don't know.
We are definitely being visited by something. By things we refer to as "aliens". But we don't even know if they are "aliens", demons, ghosts, other dimensional entities, thought forms or something we haven't even conceived of.
It could be easier to communicate with something from a neighboring galaxy than our own. It's certainly would seem easier to map the moon and all its inhabitants than the ocean. Or even some places on dry land.
There just so much we don't know. And if we did detect someone from our galaxy, the chances that the signal was from 200 million years ago and those made the signal, or received it, forgot about it more than 199 million years ago, is pretty high. They/ we wouldn't even be the same creatures anymore.
Maybe 200 million years from now, we will be able to send and receive signals from one another.
The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest. Love these books, interesting take on alien existence and communication.
I think the solution is the second option, that we are not able to detect them. We have started to think about the possibility of life roughly around 90 yrs ago and its not been a long time since we have started to work out for our quest.
So I think, since, we have just started to search for them, there may be intelligent life existing (maybe far more advanced than us), but we don't know, either because of technological limitations or maybe the natural hurdles like the slow speed of light (c is slow when talking about the vastness of our galaxy).
A hundred years ago it was assumed that there was life on Mars. Books detailing the canals and cities were top sellers. Not until the probes of the 1960's arrived showing the lifeless deserts did we let go of the idea of Martins. We have always been convinced there are aliens just out of sight.
@@chriskelly6574 Equally wrong to be convinced there aren't
The Hubble Extreme Deep field took 10 years to image 1/26,000,000th of the sky.
To scan the whole sky with HXDF level of scrutiny would take 260,000,000 years = quarter billion years
Calling the search complete is extremely premature
The speed of light is actually not a hurdle at all, it simply means that when you are looking far away you're looking back in time. There could still have been civilizations billions of years ago. With the vastness of space it is extremely unlikely we will ever find a concurrent civilization with ours so our best bet is looking far away and ago. The only way a civilization can be in our own galaxy is if it doesn't do megaprojects like Dyson Spheres for some reason or they are younger than ~55,000 years as that is the radius of the galaxy, which again would be unlikely that we would both come of age so to speak at the same (galactically speaking) time. We are likely firstborn of the galaxy for this reason, although it could be the case that the galaxy had to develop through nuclear evolution to this stage of metallicity in order to support life and civilizations are all springing up at the same time. Time will tell.
@@filonin2 I would think a lot of people wouldn't think about the implication of the fact that the light we see now, tells us about the past and not the here and now. It's really strange thinking about things considering the vast numbers that are involved.
I've always thought, as with most things, it's a combination of multiple factors. Our detection ability is not even close to adequate to say we wouldn't miss a signal, there are probably multiple "Great Filters", both ahead and behind us, and maybe life is common enough to where we simply aren't interesting enough to have been directly reached out to yet.
The earth is about a 1/3 the age of the Universe, and life probably wasn't possible for the entire time. We probably aren't the first civilization, but it's not inconceivable that we are among the first.
Hopefully, we don't blow our selves up before we get a chance to find the answer.
Even with on our problems, I don't believe we'll destroy our civilization, much less extinct our species. I prefer to embrace active hope and optimism. And I say that for life in general.
Hopefully, someday we'll get advanced enough to have total knowledge and control to manipulate reality and even change physical laws as we want. There is plenty of time. That would make us live forever.
I also highly recommend Isaac Arthur's TH-cam channel for all sorts of serious, detailed and fun speculations about alien life!
As rare as intelligent life seems to be (by Earth standards at least), it seems to me that the sheer vastness of the observable universe with the trillions of galaxies would indicate that the chances of there being no other intelligent life at all is highly improbable.
We've barely even started looking for life. So it's insane to think we would've detected it by now if it did exist.
That's true, but please check out Isaac Arthur's SFIA Channel. If we, for example, went on in a million years to harness the power of our entire galaxy, a big part of the Universe could look right at us and say "WTF is wrong with that galaxy over there?????" because all they would be able to see was infrared (heat) radiation and no light.
But we've looked at thousands and millions of the galaxies around us, and see nothing weird anywhere. And many thousands of stars in our galaxy, but don't see any sign of weird artificial stuff going on. Sure, it is crazy big technology but our galaxy has been making planets for billions of years.
(But the above assumes that other creatures are power hogs like us.)
@Mike juicero 2.0
@Mike Metaverse: Beta Version. But Star Citizen is still not done.
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field wowed everyone with thousands of galaxies, never before known, lurking in the darkness of an "empty" patch of sky.
It took 10 years to image 1/26,000,000th of the sky.
To complete the all-sky Extreme Deep Field will require 260,000,000 years = quarter billion years
@Mike ... Considering that we are already knee capping ourselves technologically, we may end up being the same or even worse in 100yrs ...
Check out the "Right to repair" crowd ... Or the "Planned obsolescence" crowd ... The individuals (and companies) that are responsible for making our tech are intentionally making it impossible to understand the bells and whistles underneath .... Meaning the vast majority of the population is locked out of MOST technologies ... And when the companies owning this tech go under, they retain the Intellectual Property rights and keep causing terror in the market for anyone that makes tech with similar functionality.
Meaning with time, no one will be able to make anything useful without fearing to be sued by some else ...
I'd definitely go with the filter being behind us, based on how long it took for eukaryotic, then multicellular life to evolve here on Earth, where the conditions for carbon-based life were pretty much ideal. The fact that it took so long, on a planet where life was so abundant, shows how incredibly ulikely it was to happen at all.
Also, that fact that for this to happen required a pretty stable environment to persist for an uncommonly long period of time. There may be many other planets out there that have environments well-suited to life now but how long have those conditions existed?
Yep... I'll go with that one!
Also take into account the very brief time period we have been able to understand these things.out of the billions of years earth has existed and taken to form. Just a hundred or two years difference between these things happening for us and another species, and us being able to detect them, and we could easily miss them. It's just not feasible that we'd exist at the same time.
For shrews to outcompete fucking dragons some big filter was surpassed ha
We probably wont be past the filter until we can spread past more than just one planet.
@@maleprincess62 At the same time? If none in this galaxy have surpassed our level then the filter is ahead of us. That's the whole point of the great filter hypothesis.
@@antonystringfellow5152 all I'm saying is if an intelligent species evolved and died a pretty measly 100,000 years before us, it would be very easy to miss them. This theory doesn't take into account the massive timescales that the universe deals with
Intelligence and communication are two different things. Octopodes are intelligent but are unlikely to need to talk with one another.
Communications seem to develop when group survival strategies become dominant for a species. This might mean pack hunting, herd defenses, or even predator satiation like cicadas use.
So we need a species to develop intelligence, communications, and tool use if we want to find a species.
Thank you for using 'octopodes'. Nice to know I'm not the only one.
That's not what the equation means when it refers to communication. It's talking about on the level that it is transmitted from the planet, or whatever body the life would be on, into space.
And pigs have reached an evolutionary roadblock where it would be nearly impossible for mutations to result in dexterity.
*"Intelligence and communication are two different things."*
Correct. That's why they're represented by two different factors in the Drake Equation.
Also I think it is referring to a civilization communicating it's existence whether that be intentional or not. IE elemental markers, energy output, etc etc. Not necessarily communication in the sense of them sending information laden radio waves or even photons, basically anything on the electromagnetic spectrum that doesn't occur naturally, to one another.
I’m obsessed with those earrings!! So adorable. 😍
There is no filter. Finding things in space is just really hard. Even the early radio signals everyone loves get buried and lost in background radiation after a while.
The Hubble Extreme Deep Field took 10 years to image 1/26,000,000 of the sky.
260,000,000 years = quarter billion years until the all sky survey is complete
The whole point of the HXDF was how amazed everyone was by how much stuff was lurking in the distant dimness
If we haven't even looked closely, how can we say we know what is (not) there? An actual alien Dyson swarm would be dark on our skies, not seeing any glowing point of light, we'd never think to train our telescopes in that direction.
The SLOAN digital sky survey used plates to block OUT light, only light from known galaxies was admitted through tiny holes (into fiber optic cables). Does that really count as a "search" for undiscovered civilizations, when we are intentionally putting blinders on, and only acknowledging the existence of already discovered galaxies?
Again, the whole point of the HXDF was how much amazingness was lurking in seemingly "empty" space. Our estimate of the number of galaxies in the universe increased by a hundred-fold.
Astronomers have imaged millions of galaxies. But, thanks to the Hubble deep fields, we know there are BILLIONS of galaxies. We have blurry grainy smudgy images of (perhaps) one out of every thousand galaxies.
And that doesn't even include the "empty" space between bright glowing galaxies -- perhaps an actual alien civilization, comprising millions of Dyson swarms throughout its galaxy, would appear DARK and not even telegraph its presence to us, without looking closely?
We are 260,000,000 years from completing an all-sky survey at even the blurry HXDF level of resolution. Hundreds of billions of galaxies, which we expect to exist, have yet to be imaged even once...
We think we know what, exactly ?
I also feel detectability is an issue. Though there has been some recent improvement on detection methods using circularly polarized light. Some say this tech could eventually be used to scan the stars and see what's out there, even if it can't yet communicate with us. That'll chop Fc and L right off the end of the Drake equation.
Are you a physicist? I have a question? 🥺
@@platysmemes7663 Nope, sorry. But there are likely a few physicists reading these comments... Maybe one of them will know?
@@Ayelis ok
The only thing missing from the equation, is something to factor in timeline alignment. Time dilation, the speed of light, and the age of a planet compared to ours. A civilization may have come and gone long before, or will come after, the end of our solar system. Our timelines would need to align in such a way that we are alive at the time the signal they send reaches us, which could be millions of years difference! If we didn't catch the last signal of a dying civilization as we started listening, the best we can hope for is the first signal from a brand new civilization that just started looking for us. Nothing more, nothing less. If they are far enough away, they are already dead. If they are really close, we have a chance.
The equation now has a 0.00001 chance by default. You are welcome.
Exactly! And the next question that we should ask: even IF we detected someone out there, would it mean anything at all if we already know our possibilities to interact with them in any meaningful way (like sending messages back and forth, or going there) are as good as zero because of the time and space alignment?
Yes I can here to say that. Professor Brian Cox talked about that a few years ago. I think we should send out loads of "messages in bottles" across the galaxy so the next one's have the chance of learning from us.
If we looked at a Planet or Solar System when life is still in single Cell or even multicellular stage could we even detect it? Human lifetimes are so short in the life of the Universe ( or even Multiverse) we would need to look at just the right time Evolutionarily in Their life cycles to detect them.
@@robertadams6606 Exactly!
In our tiny slice of time in the universe, there must also be Life elsewhere + They have to be far along enough for us to notice.
As far as I understand it, the "L" factor is in the equation for _exactly_ this reason. It makes the result the number of intelligent communicative civilizations in the galaxy _right now._
You guys are such #goals. Thank you for sharing this!!
Glad you liked it 😊
I think, it's the second option, we aren't just able to detect another civilization. At least for now, maybe we find it in a near future or maybe we last zousands of years to detect it, but I'm optimistic, and I'm pretty sure we will find it 😊.
Excelent video, I've liked it so much ☺️.
With this much time, there could have been millions or billions of species that meet the criteria that have already risen, thrived and collapsed before we ever began our first attempts to detect other life in the galaxy.
I sometimes think that the "solution" to the Fermi Paradox might actually be some combination of both assumptions. A little of Option A mixed in with a bit of Option B. They're not completely mutually exclusive if you think about it. After all, since we only have a data set of one, we most likely will eventually have to modify those two assumptions slightly, or even a lot. Who knows, there's a non-zero chance that there's a whole THIRD assumption that we're already making and just not acknowledging.
Or not. 😁
We literally only started looking.
Its like grabbing a cup of water from the ocean and not seeing any fish.
good analogy
@@professorx9919 no it isn't.
No it isnt...it's like scooping a cup of water from the ocean and not finding a single organism...down to bacterium.
@JZ's Best Friend Yeah but when compared to the scale of galaxies and universe , radio waves tend to fade and become undetectable .
@@A_Stereotypical_Heretic Correction: It's like scooping up a cup of water from the ocean and not finding any bacterium *without using a microscope.* Because we don't have instruments that could detect intelligent radio from very far away. And nearly everything is very far away -- even in our own galaxy.
One thing to keep in mind is that in earth we had an pretty specific condition to be able to signal our existence. Maybe intelligent life capable and willing/motivated to communicate its existence has an small window to appear before other strategies arises in the planet. Maybe most planets that developed life are just planet-sized ant hills capable of defending themselves from asteroids but simply didn't had the need to developed abstract thought. Maybe if the asteroid didn't hit us at the right time we would still have dinosaurs dominating small intelligent mammals for billions of years.
see this the point willing/motivated to communicate as this why we cant meet other life on other world it because we not willing to go so many mile that even if we alive our home world cant pick up us on radio no more because how far it is by luck to make a other world with life a number so high it can only be that far and even then we only half way and that only f we go the right way and dont no to turn for ever star that we get too close to
I think abstract thought is required to solve problems that are both great in magnitude and diverse in scope
The ability to come up with mathematics is truly mind-blowing
@@olbluelips the number is something my mind makeup i cant be sure if i right about how far it will be for there be life but i dont think it i let my mind make it but that because how can i be sure i know there a limit on radio and too truly know we have to go but as war making gas price go up and the maronemission was cut because they run out of money too sad i wanted to know we gone on another world then our own even if it still inside our range to go because think about this what if there a war and a weapon was make that can kill everyone more deadly than a nuke the only way for people to live is being in space or on a another world and if we set up a base on mar that can withstand the weather there and have a inside farm as long we set up to a underwater or ice we can live there true the internet will stuck for some time maybe will 400 year but there way to make it faster so going on mar can maybe help our and even if it dont think of how much more people our will can take true the number sill high but that only if we stop making house and more hotel unless we want to leave no space for animal
@@helperdude8205 no offense but I find this style of writing very difficult to read
well, it is always an interesting question... considering what i have learnt the last couple of decades i think that of the great filters, asteroids come out on top of the underestimated filters for civilization, given their ability to really wreck havoc on a massive scale while still leaving most life possible to survive, any intelligent(tool using) species that could have coexisted with the dinosaurs would not have been able to survive the hit that killed them off, even today if something like that happened humanity would not be leaving any traces of itself excepting a brief 100+ year period with increasing em transmissions and while alien species with sufficient capacity might see that earth is green and have a lot of industrial products in the atmosphere right now, those would also be gone very quickly... leaving it up to alien explorers to come visit to find traces of us rather than do much from afar and we are also in the same boat while looking for them
If we exist, they exist.
That's like saying if I'm smart, you're smart. One might be true but it doesn't mean both are true.
I would say that we need to differentiate between intelligent civilizations and technological civilizations. I would also say that technological civilizations need to be on the surface of a planet to have fire and electricity and all that. With most stars being red dwarves which you need to be tidally locked to be in the habitable zone of, I would say it would be very hard to have intelligent life on the surface of a tightly locked planet to havea chance of creating technology.
The ring between the always-day and always-night sides could be habitable. It would make for odd politics, only having neighbors to the north or south, but you could have civilization there... It'd probably advance more slowly, with it being very difficult to go around any impassable obstacles like mountains or agriculturally dead zones... And the weather would be awful. But it's still possible. And with an always-night side not far from you, it could make for more rapid advances in astronomy, once optics are invented - always a night sky available whenever the weather permits...
Damon electricity doesn't work underground?
I wonder how Churchill was able to manage the war against the Nazis from the bunker under Dover castle without electricity!
What is it about not having access to the surface that prevents technological advancements?
@@jamingaming9251 Fire is a prerequisite for the smelting of metals. Metals are required for technology.
@@Knirin You could discover smelting through magma by observing underwater vulcanic vents, so discovering fire is not exactly a must.