What If We're Alone Featuring Fraser Cain
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2024
- What if we are completely alone in the universe? Is that the worst or best possible solution to the fermi paradox? Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today, joins John Michael Godier to discuss his preferred solution to the fermi paradox.
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Is it better if we're alone or the worst case scenario? Let John and Fraser know what you think.
I would prefer if we were alone, but on the other hand it would be cool to meet some aliens.
Also Life has to start only once, maybe in like 1,000,000 years we will have a Star trek situation. They all came from the same species and diverged.
If we are alone, we can stop worrying about being ignored.
Pondering on the obvious.
@@xanider5098 why would you prefer to be alone?
Well.. I guess since we might not have anyone to borrow money from mild downside.. if we are truly alone then the universe is for our taking and we should do so quickly. So big upside...
The discussion around intelligent life reminds me of the discussions we had about exoplanets in the late 80s early 90s. Once we found the first one the floodgates opened and thousands followed.
Intelligent life on these planets is just the next step in the chain of discovery and once we reach the point where we can look closley enough more will follow.
This is just a gut feeling like anything else of course, but we cant say at this point that we have looked close enough yet to say that we for sure are behind a great filter.
Hear here
Why is it so hard to say ‘we have no idea whether we are alone or not’
It's just not the way humans work. Maybe a design flaw? 😀
Because the reason for our confusion is more interesting than the actual confusion. Do we see no life out there because it's not there yet, we don't have the technology, because it's dead, because humanity is unique in the universe, because we're in a simulation, etc.. The answer is not as interesting as the potential reason, and the potential reasons are wildly divergent in their implications.
Our own signals and presence is so dim that a civilization identical to ours would not see us if they were any more than 100 light years away. Even within that sphere they would have to look very carefully and with great precision. So, the fact that we see nothing is exactly what we should expect!
Agreed!
+100 for you! An advance civilization may have a small population and not build crazy large projects.
We would not be able to catch out own signals even at ten light years, regardless of how carefully we look. The signal we emit is simply too weak, it’s something like 3 orders of magnitude weaker than our first radio emissions
I don't see us staying in this state for very long. Either we collapse to a preindustrial (or worse) or we go towards massive orbital solar collectors. Orbital solar collectors and eventual Dyson swarms are very noticeable. I think the odds that another civilization is at our same observed stage (adjusting for the speed of light) seems highly unlikely.
@Peri. We don't see any Kardashev 3 civilisations gobbling up a galaxy, and they've had plenty of time to occur. Look how far we've come in since the industrial revolution to now, then imagine how far we'll be in another 2 million years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. If the universe was teeming with intelligent civs, then you'd think we'd see one. I suspect time is the issue, it took us a few billion years to evolve, and in a few hundred million more earth will be uninhabitable, so we only just made it ourselves.
As an introvert, being completely alone in the universe suits me fine.
As an extrovert I’m tryin to turnup with aliens and fly some spaceship
@@prithvitanna2011 Okay, but text first.
I'd still like to roam the universe one day, explore everything there's to see.
@@ximalas Have you explored the Earth?
@@legamature Many times. Overall it's great, but the people in charge …
Than you for the amazing content over the years, I'm going through a difficult time, my dog is getting put down tomorrow, I've had her since 2006. These videos keep me entertained and keep my mind busy, thank you john and the team ❤
Sorry to here that, be thankful for the long happy life you have given her and know you are doing the kindest thing and letting her go to sleep. Remember all the good times and be strong. All the best ❤️
So sad, it happened in our family about 18 months ago. I still think of her every day.
Be well. The next phase of life will be different and good. Trust me as we also just went through it. Thinking positive for ya from here on east coast 🙏
Our best to you Ryan. Pets are very special.
@@EventHorizonShow thank you everyone for your kind words ❤
My favorite TH-cam channel, thanks for keeping me entertained John. 🙌🏽
More Fraser please! Two unbridled minds working together on the great questions of life and everything else - fantastic!
The Great Filter could be one guy in the right position who decides to throw rocks at his homeworld.
Hi John another great video, just wanted to thank you for all of this year's content and looking forward to next year's. Hope you had a good Christmas and all the best for new year, as always from your wee man in Scotland 👍🏴❤️
You and Fraser are great communicators.
Love the channel. I have for a while now.
Keep it up. I’m watching.
Some of the most recent research into the RNA world hypthesis and abiogenesis seems to me to almost gaurentee the universe to be teeming with microbial life. The biggest great filter in my opinion is the jump to Eukaryotic life. It's seems to be the most unnatural of evolutionary processes we have observed.
To be the only higher life form in a universe of green goo; a scary thought indeed.
I personally think that the jump from unicellular to multicellular is much more likely to be a great filter over the transition from prokaryota to eukaryota. An endosymbiosis is just a form of common mutualism between two prokaryotic species taken to its extreme level, it's not so unimaginable from an evolutionary perspective and some studies have shown that it possibly occurred multiple times throughout life's evolutionary history. On the other hand in our current understanding of microbial evolution, the jump to multicellular organisms was pretty much just a random fluke - some species had a replication error which resulted in multiple copies of its genetic material being present, and over the generations resulting in separation into individual specialised cells.
For all we know this jump happened only once in life's history and was a total accident, and some scientists believe that it should be selected against in most cases because while there are some benefits to being multicellular over unicellular the evolutionary state in between those two has the downsides of both without many upsides to counteract that - in this specific hypothetical look us, the life on earth, are just all strugglers who got lucky and somehow pushed it through with that evolutionary path against the odds.
"Green goo" is still very beatiful and complex under the microscope!
In a universe of green goo, we're the flock of geese at three AM
@@PrimatoFortunato To be beautiful it has to be looked at by something using a microscope.
@@nomdeguerre7265 sure, us in particular. I was answering to that being a scary prospect. I believe it isn't. Reality can offer views of beauty even in the bacterial colonies that form in the decomposition of a carcass. If you don't see beauty there, it's because you are lacking info or a wider point of view.
At least that's what I believe.
I say that if we are alone in all this then its GOT to be a simulation!
Great show once again Mr. Godier 👍👏👏
Possibly the best show thus far on this subject. Thank you for all the hard work thru all these years.💙
Oh and Happy New Year!!🥂🌌
My preferred solution is the early bird hypothesis and the most scary one would be a dark forrest.
The dark forest hypothesis is plainly false. The universe is brightly lit and has almost no tactical cover; it only appears dark because there's so little matter to reflect the light towards us. We have direct line-of-sight to locations billions of light-years away, anything coming towards us would be visible in some wavelength, and we have telescopes that can observe everything from radio to X-rays. The universe actually has more in common with an open savannah after a brush fire.
I have an inclination to believe that bacteria is abundant in the universe, however the leap to complex life is exceedingly rare.
@@deusexaethera it's as plausible as the zoo hypothesis or any other solution. Not seeing something doesn't mean it can't exist.
@@Syv_
I would have expected that once bacteria is established, an arms race begins between the bacteria which quickly results in intelligent life - due to its many advantages.
Intelligent life however needs to be paired with the right body type in order to exploit it's advantages.
@@mth469AND the body type reciprocally creates a positive feedback loop for intelligence to develop
What about a bronze age universe? Where most intelligent species evolve when fossil fuels aren't readily available and just never advance their tech because of that? It looks like most of our coal came from the Carboniferous and Cretaceous periods. For a big chunk of Earth's history that coal would either not had formed or been much poorer in quality (less energy). And if those time periods had different life/climate then coal would not have formed. A similar story can be told for gas and oil. Just makes me wonder about the timing--perhaps a lack of fossil fuels keeps some intelligent species from becoming technologically advanced. And if you use up all your easy to find fossil fuels and then for some reason collapse back you might be in a similar spot. Just something I have been wondering about--it would be interesting if the universe is filled with intelligent species that are just for one reason or another unable to reach a spacefaring or even radio level of development. Ultimately the great filter just has to keep life from communicating to the stars--it doesn't have to wipe them out.
I cannot imagine any place where there are lots of minerals and chemicals and water over a long period of time NOT having some form of life evolve there.
Thank you John for an entertaining and thought provoking video. On Saturday last, I found out that I have a illness with the number 19 in it. I have been feeling pretty lousy but programs like yours certainly help me through the day. I don't remember when I subscribed to your channel but it has been on the order of years. I haven't read any of your books yet, I think it is time that I did.
@dinodasbunce6224 I hope you get better soon. I think it is certainly a positive thing that you are watching content like this, and further educating yourself and setting a goal like reading John's book, instead of being "down and out" over your illness. Please keep that outlook, course of action, and once you are better, stay as safe and healthy as you can. Learn what you can and continue on. May you have a happy life!
Hang in there. John is under the weather right now too. Try to sleep as much as you can.
Syphilis-19? We've all been there.
@dinodasbunce6224 get a pulse oxymeter, that can warn you in case you need to go to the hospital.
I'm sorry you are not well....do you mean covid-19? If so don't worry you'll be better soon...Happy new year❤
It’s ludicrously premature to suppose we are alone in the universe. Think how little of the galaxy we could be able to observe life even life of our level. It’s 26000 light years to the centre of our galaxy let alone incomprehensible distances to the furthest galaxies. Best answer is we don’t know.
I find the Fermi paradox to be silly and pointless. It's like taking your car into a mechanic, having him pop the hood and look at the engine for five seconds and then say "Well, damned if I know what the problem is."
@@JakeyMan Hardly. I'm not insisting on anything. I'm saying that the Fermi Paradox is pointless. Space is unimaginably vast, and we've barely started looking with tools that are completely inadequate.
I feel the same. I think most people just don't understand how vast the distances in space are and how even if an alien civilization were to be fairly close to us (eg. in our own galaxy), we might never know it.
@Ffollies I think the vastness argument is very misleading because people also aren't good at quantifying numbers. Space might seem vast, but the odds of having the right conditions for technological life might exceed the magnitude of the universe or at least render is as being so rare we'll never observe it.
I love how your guests range from Loeb who postulates about aliens in our solar system, and then this. Really interesting stuff!
The solution to the Fermi Paradox may just be the separation in time & space between extremely rare advanced civilizations is so infinitesimal that mutual contact within the same space-time window just can't happen.
So instead of being frustrated at our lack of "results" we should just "get over it" & instead do everything we can to preserve our own jewel of planetary existence until such time as we can terraform another astronomical body within our galactic range, and/or modify human physiology to exist on other space bodies in some form.
Yep
@@JakeyMan Thank you I stand corrected !! I meant to say infinite, inferring very large beyond range. Happy New Year
i think i agree with John here, intelligent life is just extremely rare - both in space and in time. i feel like most of the talk is about how physical distance might be a problem but there's not enough talk about time - given the age and the possible future lifetime of the universe even a million year long civilization is just a tiny slice on the timeline.
but.... once a civilization starts spreading it's wings, there really shouldnt be an end to it at all. unless there is a great filter before...
Given the hundreds of billions of galaxies, extremely rare could still be abundant. E.g., one per 100 galaxies is still billions of civilisations, but we may likely never be able to know this. Certainly not based on the laws of physics as currently understood.
Until we can proven otherwise, we must assume we are alone.
thats the best case scenario tbh
@@NineSeptims ehhh there are better but yeah kinda :P
Life here has taken root in everything from ocean vents to living in ice in Antarctica. Happened here, could happen anywhere
On this flat earth.
Almost all life is plants, animals and other forms of small or microscopic life. SETI will probably NEVER find a "radio signal'. Only a VERY TINY PERCENTAGE of life ever gets intelligent and sophisticated enough to send radio signals many light years across space.
@@Zurround Or not, maybe it's been a fairly standard process and we're all closer than ever.
I think you're probably right though.
“Here” might be a very rare condition. Correct type of star, limited radiation, right Atmosphere, tides, etc.
As far as we currently understand, all life, in all kingdoms, originated from a single instance of life, even on earth, with its very specific situation, life only happened once. Life being found in all types of locations on earth is not a result of life starting everywhere, rather it's life adapting to anywhere.
Another solution to the Fermi Paradox is the possibility that we are the first advanced intelligent lifeform in the universe. In the full time scale of the universe, we are still in it's infancy, so maybe the right conditions for intelligent life are extremely rare and took 13 billion years to finally come together to make us. If we are the first civilization, then we are alone, but that doesn't mean we will always be alone. In an almost biblical sense, we were given this chance to exist in an empty hostile universe, and now it is up to us to spread life throughout the universe. We are the candle in the storm, and if our light is extinguished, then it might be another 13 billion years before life re-appears, if ever.
Question: could it be that we have already passed a great filter and not even realised it? By chance or coincidence of biology there was a leap we made that most will never be able to? Similar to what John suggests about water worlds but more broadly applicable to life theoretically emerging in any environment?
Yes. He's discussed that topic many times in past shows.
it's quite likely, seeing as we are the only self-aware species in 3.5 billion years of life on this planet, that our level of intelligence is an evolutionary anomaly and great filter
Living in a dream world if you cant tell we have about 15 filters closing in on us in the next 15 years
@@skizz741 Correct, shit, we refuse to upgrade our power lines, a bad CME would send us to the stone age.
@@grindcoreninja6527 cme isn't the problem tbh, I'm sure we might snuff our self's out before that...our systems crumbed at Corona..and most are still in recovery debt wise.. only takes something a few magnitudes greater and people will be eating ourselves in the street..
I'm just saying...our own threats are growing exponentially with the growth of civilization
The flaw with Fermi paradox and great filter talk is that it relies on the base assumption that interstellar capable intelligence is still motivated to spread in all directions like unintelligent life. I'm sure they have much better things to do than rearranging galaxys.
And if our experiments in space travel are any indication, that's exactly true. John likes to bring up the Copernican Principle whenever he can, and if we really are in a non-priviliged position, then you're likely right. It would be just as unlikely for us to be alone in the universe as for us to be the only intelligent species not building Dyson's spheres or zipping around in warp drives, and as such we should probably expect a universe full of intelligent life fighting wars, building cool infrastructure, and occasionally looking up and going "where is everybody?"
Finally, an episode that is realistic and more down to Earth as opposed to "everything aliens" all the time.
It's nice to hear John say there probably aren't aliens. That being said it's strange he still talks about it all the time and interviews people on the topic. It's most like he talks about it for the views as opposed to putting out relavant content that actually matters.
That isn't true, it's more that you have biases you haven't identified and confronted on the topic. I'm not scared of a question, but I'm also no scared of being wrong or finding something out about the universe that I did not previously know. There is no Bible Cody, whether religious or scientific. Do not go through life as though there is.
@@JohnMichaelGodier You comment like I don't watch every video you put out whether I think I might agree with it or not. I honestly don't think it brings/adds much to the table, so to speak, at this point in time.
I have never heard any information from a scientist that makes me believe that there is alien life out there, intelligent or otherwise that is in our "near" vicinity, other than maybe dead microbial/bacteria on Mars. I could be wrong, I could be right. I am not worried about ending up in either camp.
In the grand scheme of the whole universe I do think that there is the possibility of life. Probably a decent chance even. Again, it could be intelligent or not. But on that scale I don't think it really matters much other than "oh hey there may be life here" because of the distances involved. That is unless the life has found a way to travel at ridiculous speeds and solve a whole host of other issues that come with traveling that fast, which I don't have a lot of confidence in. We sure aren't making much headway in that department. That doesn't mean others can't, I just don't think it's a high probability.
And without that ability it makes conformation near to next impossible and basically renders the possible discovery as conjecture. And conjecture is where it will reside for a very long time, if not forever.
@@dr4d1s I think it does. I think the question of other intelligence in the universe is the most profound question we could ask in which we can actually attempt to find an answer. I could play it safe and just talk about nebulas for the next 40 years, but what exactly does that bring to the table of human experience? Little. It's nice, not thrilling, but nice. And it wouldn't be me. And it it's not what my audience wants.
Rather I'm a science fiction author and TH-camr. I'm not a science reporter, per se. I merely dabble in it. As a writer it is my job to speculate, imagine, and report back to the subscribers in the same grain and tradition as Arthur Clarke. Given that the very first video I ever posted to TH-cam was about a potential alien megastructure around Tabby's star, I haven't ever altered or changed that focus.
As to the likelihood of intelligent alien life, it's a question of two choices. You are either a member of a unique unicorn species living on a magical planet where unrepeatable outcomes of organic chemistry happen that are not repeated anywhere else in the universe, or some shade or variation thereof, or you are not. If you're not, then you run up against the statistics which are overwhelmingly against uniqueness or even rarity. This is the copernican or mediocrity principle. As Enrico Fermi pointed out, they should be everywhere. It's Occam's razor, the simplest answer is they should be everywhere and evident. This eliminates the time and distance problem as a serious argument, they've had the time. General relativity also eliminates it if you don't care about time dilation and energy consumption. That we don't see aliens everywhere presents somewhat of a problem in the context of physics just as much as it does the question of are we alone. Someone out there should have done this, it's not prohibited by the laws of physics, so there is some reason that they don't do it. That reason could be a great filter and I don't think anyone could make an argument against why that shouldn't be speculated on and talked about. It's not just relevant, but existentially so.
And as far as conjecture, that could evaporate in a week. Someone picks up an anomalous narrowband radio signal and it gets confirmed. Done. Aliens exist and we know they have radar. I would not bet against black swan events like that. History is full of them.
@@JohnMichaelGodier The problem people have is the starting point assumption that given life, intelligent life must follow. But that assumption is *NOT* true, intelligence is the consequence of a very, very large sequence of random mutations. *LIFE* may be ubiquitous, but as you went on to state: "Intelligence" is probably rare [or even a one off occurrence].
You really got to him lmao
I would like to thank you and Frasier for all the great content over the years
If We are Alone, then Life in the Universe is Doomed! We are not built to last forever.
It's interesting that while astronomers don't seem to report many UAP's (if any), pilots report them fairly frequently.
This may be a case of being focused on a distant mountain range, while missing the bug that's landed right in front of you.
Sort of it. Very different observational methods with very different ability to detect phenomena.
No-one has ever presented any tangible evidence of 'the bug that's landed right in front of them' though have they.
@@stevemumbling7720 So what's your point?
@@TankUni It isn't really happening.
@@stevemumbling7720 My point was regards gathering data to conclude if there is or isn't anything worthy of further research.
The Great Filter could simply be the leap from organic chemistry to self-replicating life; there's no evidence yet that the odds of that are not effectively zero.
I'm glad to see you dealing with a realistic subject.
This isn't a realistic subject. The solution to the fermi paradox is simple. Star Trek isn't real and technology isn't magic. Spaces between stars are huge.
@@screwb1882 that's actually what I meant....😐
@@screwb1882 Star Trek is just a UN conditioning tool to get people to submit to a human authority. God help us all!
@@screwb1882 And you aren't omniscient, as you would lead us to believe.
nobody ever sees themselves as evil... everyone is a hero- to themselves
If the guest had stated that we may be the only complex life in this galaxy, I could get on board, but in the entire Universe?
I don't even think he truly believes that.
What's with people suddenly believing we're all alone? It's like finally nearly everyone agreed how unlikely that is and some people had to be like "well we can't have people finally agree there has to be other life in the universe!" I've seen multiple people go from thinking that's nearly impossible to thinking that somehow, we're super special.
And to be clear, I don't mind theorizing. That can be fun. It's just that I've run into multiple very scientific people who seem to be absolutely on the "no we're special, there's no aliens" train lately.
Fraser has thought we are alone for a long time. See previous debate he had with John in past episode
I know, right? It's like a switch was flipped and suddenly I keep seeing it. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, trillions of galaxies just in the _observable_ universe... and we're alone? Because we've been looking for basically five minutes with ridiculously limited tools and we haven't found anything yet?
We really don't even know what we're looking for. Radio waves? Megastructures? Nothing has changed except people's expectations.
I think the idea that a civilization must "spread across the galaxy" is ridiculous.
Why? Looking for more hydrogen?
Keeping a manageable population and maybe moving to a nearby star system should keep the ball rolling for a few billion years.
The vastness of the galaxy both in scale and in time means that life could just be rare and that would reduce the chances of any contact well enough.
Crazy right when you think that you give into your frustration because there's no evidence yet
@@Evil0tto The best argument i found for us being alone is the almost impossibility of life occuring through random chemical processes in our current observable universe.The observable universe is not big enough for it happening at all, but if the real size universe which is probably millions of times the diamater of the observable one, there's enough room for enough chemical experiments to allow our type of life happening once, and we are the result of that.
I call total BU11$Hit to anyone who says that either we are alone in the universe or we are not and either answer is equally terrifying. BULLCRAP. I take COMFORT in the possibility that there might be other beings out there and being ALONE in the universe scares me WAY MORE.
Yeh it’s kind of depressing to think that WE are IT. A species that is spending more trying to find another planet than fixing our own one and a species that doesn’t know how to get along with eachother.
@@ChrisKlein0 this is and always has been an absolutely ridiculous argument. Instead of worrying about the literal fraction of a percentage point of the budget that gets spent on finding answers to some of the questions we all have ( at least the slightly curious among us) in this amazing mystery of a universe perhaps you could go somewhere and complain about the HALF of the national budget dedicated to killing other sentient beings, or perhaps you could complain about the government dumping our money into corporate welfare. I could go on all day enumerating the horrible ways our “leaders” spend our collective money, all of them far worse ways to spend that money than the pittance that gets spent on science.
Doesn’t the fact that you’re a thinking, feeling collection of non living particles on a rock speeding through a cosmos we barely understand make you curious about the answers to a few of those questions? Not least of which is the question as to whether we’re the only such collections of molecules thinking and feeling and searching? Isn’t it worth less than a penny out of our collective dollar to try to get these answers? Sorry if I sound harsh but I’ve been listening to this and other ridiculous arguments for the last 40 years and am tired.
13:35
>for the Mass Effect people we can call it the Reapers.
These are the kind of reductive analogies I can get behind.
This universe is full of life but intelligent life is very rare
SETI suggests this is a premature conclusion. According to SETI we've spent far too little time searching, even in radio, to come to any conclusion, and have to date examined only a small fraction of the sky. We've just started the development process towards instruments of sufficient resolution. JWST has only just come online. The search for habitable biosphere's has hardly even begun -- and we've no clear idea if terrestrial worlds are the only abode of life. As biologist J.B.S. Haldane said "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than _we can_ imagine."
It's certainly rare on the internet 🤣
Scientists:there are no aliens,we have been sending radio signals,and we have gotten no response.
Aliens:we have been sending signals but we think they are so primitive they might still be communicating with radio waves.
I hope I don’t have to wait a year to catch another interview with you guys. Please go long!!! I want to hear some epic deep dives that just tangent on and on and flow and nerd out till y’all are getting super weird. I feel like you guys could easily go for 3 hours plus. Preferably I would love to see like 5 hours with you guys.
Unfortunately John doesnt go as hard as lex fridman. He's had 5h episode and its a gem
great conversation thank you!
I think the chance is near zero we are alone in the universe.
With the caveat being, the chance of contact is also near 0%
@@gravelpit5680 hard to argue against this point, well said
yes, but tweak some parameters and you're quickly going from thousand civilications per galaxy to one per thousand or one per million galaxies, impossible to reach eachother (probably). that there are none, is inconceivable though.
There is currently no meaningful way to calculate the chance either way. Without visiting every single object in the universe you can't prove there isn't life, and until life is discovered (or worse yet, discovers us) you can't prove there is. We know there is life on earth, but that's all we know. So speculating about something unknowable is really an act of faith, not logic.
I could say, given the number of stars, planets, and other bodies there are in the universe there must be dragons out there. It's the same thing but sounds less likely when it's dragons.
@@CodepageNet Theres more than one sentient species per each Galaxy lifespan, hell there are probably hundreds in each, however, even if there were thousands at any given moment in a galaxy, contact would still be an infintesemly small chance. All it takes is a dozen lightyears and being a million years too early or too late. The chances of a spacefaring race comimg across early life or the ruins of a previous civilization are likely higher towards the core of the galaxy where star distances are shorter and the stars themselves zip by eachother more often.
In my own opinion, Drake Variables that got humans here include not just a habitable zone rocky planet but also: tidally locked moon, atleast a billion or two billion years, multiple mass extinctions that let mammals proliferate, oil abundancy for an industrial age, and finally among others, a post-industrial space age where post-scarcity energy abundance becomes the norm. Only then can Gen Ships and star colonies begin.
So from that criteria, out of an average galaxy's 100 billion stars, likely fewer than 100 species like us made it thru those filters. So basically, .0000000001 stars have a species like us.
So the nearest average spacefaring aliens existed either 40 milliom years ago, or 40 million years from now, and theyre located about 1000 lightyears away.
Trying to spot city lights on the nightside of an exoplanet 1000 lightyears away is the goal. If we're super lucky we'll see a mega structure of sorts. Chances are though, 40million years from now, THEYLL be seeing OUR megastructure after we're long gone, knock on wood. We will be genemodded so much though within 500 years, we wont even be human at that point. I think we're early for this quadrant of the Milky Way. There are others and will be others....
There is a beauty in solitude I don't deny, but it is funnier to be with friends.
I just watched the latest Lex Fridman podcast with Nathalie Cabrol. We don't know what life would look like because we are looking for the type of signals we would give off and that's probably what we shouldn't be looking for. For all we know mass could be the alien life. We just don't know what to look for yet so alien life could already be all around us.
Nope. That's is very wrong. Life can only exist in the form in which it is found. Imagining other forms of life is pure speculation or science fiction or fantasy, not science.
The second object I discovered resembles the classic flying saucer in shape.
This appears to be a 2-mile diameter "saucer". It has a tail section and a bulge that might be the bridge/ cockpit. A second one is buried under mud a short distance away.
24°55'24"N 170°11'31"W
I agree with John at about 8:14. If we find even a microbe we are not alone.
Technically that may be correct. Practically though it wouldn't make much difference, other than to increased research funding.
You seem to have a really great effect on Fraser! I usually have a hard time listening to him because he has a nervous edge when he talks that stresses me out. I've never heard him this relaxed! He didn't hurt my brain at all this time!
No disrespect intended to Fraser, I have a somewhat elevated state of anxiety. Other peoples nervousness sort of blows up my nervous system.
No one to appreciate the 85 LeBaron? What a shame that would be.
It will create copies of itself so it may be glorified.
I'm still far from convinced we are smart enough to know whether we are smart enough to know whether we are seeing techno-signatures or not. All we know is that we don't THINK see anything. We are far from being able to say they aren't there...
I fully agree with your final statement. "We are far far from being able to say they aren't there."
We've only been casting technosignatures for less than a 100 years and we're disappointed that we haven't found any out there yet lol. If the big bang theory is correct than our section of the universe all got the same starting point. So it wouldn't out of the realm that other technological life is at least within reasonable starting time to us, maybe somewhere within a million or less years. But since we just got started the most likely scenario is that are far ahead of us. So it's also more likely that they find us before we find them.
Actually the entire lifespan of the human technosignature is less than 200 years, and it is detectable only within a handful of light years which is to say that it couldn't be detected as close as Alpha Centauri.
The universe is replete with life, most especially where we won't expect to find it.
The only thing we can be pretty sure about is that we are very likely the only humans in the universe.
Well, yes, and then no. We only know of one instance, and that I'd say, is statistically insignificant to come to any conclusion at all. You have a jar of beans that you can't see inside. You pull out one bean and it's green. What can you say about the other beans? You may have grabbed the only green bean, or maybe all the beans are green. Are there even any other beans?
Let alone human beans.
Is it really more plausible to posit a future great filter that cannot be imagined, foreseen, or avoided than it is to posit that alien civilizations simply use a method of interstellar communication we don't currently have the means to detect?
Maybe they all eventually invent social media and that's the great filter.
Pat, Id lik to solve the puzzle
I don't often visit this channel but I was attracted by the quality of this guest...
It was nice that Godier stopped inviting skinwalker ranch guests on to talk to a normal person for once.
I feel the crushing responsibility of getting life off this planet every day, regardless of whether there might be other life in the universe. It's too risky to let someone else do it. Unfortunately, I don't own a rocket company.
yes, conciousness gives meaning to things. if we would disappear, the universe would really be an enormous waste of space.
It's OK because someone who is a genius does and getting our human consciousness sustainably off the planet is one of his main goals. Very shortly; two things that are critical to that being possible for him will converge. One is the technology and two is the capital. Within just a few years; Elon Musk will have the wherewithal to do it all on his own even if NASA doesn't back the project. He has clearly stated this many times.
Just implement this simple two stage plan. 1. Become a multi-billionaire. 2. Pay people to build a big ass rocket. Simple once you know how. It's not rocket science. Oh, wait...
As far as we know ,we are alone, that may be whats best.
I'm a loner so that would be a pleasing answer.
Don't have even one millisecond of doubt about life elsewhere in the universe. There might not be life in our Universe, but there are a Infinite number of other Universes in a Infinite Multiverse, and the only problem that we might have , is that the distance between various life forms could be Infinite as far as distance is concerned ( Try figuring that out ) . Hopefully that is not the case, and sooner or later we will discover life ( or life will discover us ) here in our own solar system, or if not then for sure in the wider Milky Way. It’s also possible that in a Infinite number of Multiverses, there could be a Infinite number of Earth’s just like ours, with exactly the same history sequences and a Dante writing the very same comment in every one of them. Our problem is that we simply cannot grasp what Infinity is, and it’s better that way cause it would blow our mind. Even those alien civilisations that have a technical advantage of over a million years over ours, are struggling with it and will continue to struggle with what Infinity really means. They too must find it hard to understand that we live in a large room where there are no walls, doors, windows and ceilings, and that in which ever direction you go you will keep going infinitely . I find this a good thing, otherwise if the universe was finite, I would feel like a goldfish in a fishbowl. Science and scientists of the establishment will always try to persuade us that the Universe is finite. There are many reasons why this is so and one of them and the most important one is for the sole preservation of the establishment itself. It was very much the same when Galileo claimed and was right that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe and was almost burnt at the stake for saying so. He was right of course, but was going against the establishments narrative, and the establishment wasn’t really that bothered wether the Earth was or wasn’t in the centre of the Universe, but didn’t want anyone going against the narrative that it was. Basically the establishment doesn’t want anyone going against their narrative even if it’s obvious that that narrative is wrong or even false, and that’s why they are pushing with the Bing Bang narrative even though we all know that the Bing Bang narrative is a wrong narrative and that the Multiverse has existed for a Infinite amount of time, or in other words it never started and can never end cause it’s Infinite. But anyway, you should not worry about the fact that we haven’t discovered any alien life yet out there, that’s not very surprising cause we haven’t ventured out far enough to be able to discover life elsewhere. But I am sure that in the next 100 years, that we might discover life in the clouds of Venus, moons of Jupiter or even under the surface of Mars. There is plenty of life out there, the only problem is that the Multiverse is Infinitely big, and that distance between various life forms could also be infinitely big. In any case there is definitely plenty of room for all of us in Infinity
Thanks for another great interview John and Fraser. Informative and entertaining, as usual. However, I want to point out one oversight regarding the Nimitz incident. This case does not rely only on the testimony of one F-18 pilot. The object in question was seen in broad daylight by 4 pilots for several minutes. Further, these objects were tracked on radar by the USS Princeton and the nearby airborne E2 Hawkeye. Lastly, one object was tracked on the FLIR system of a fifth pilot. As for Mick West, he does some excellent work, and frankly, some shoddy work. His explanations for the videos of the Nimitz object and the gimbal have been shot down by FLIR experts, and do not make sense either on their own merits, or when viewed in context of the ancillary sensor data and the pilots eye witness accounts. UAP are CLEARLY worthy of scientific study; hence, the projects recently launched at Harvard and NASA.
Flir experts and military witnesses are not any more credible than anyone else. There are flir experts who agree with skeptics. Stop getting emotionally invested, it's embarrassing.
Somehow I think that the universe is here and is full of amazing life forms, each with different languages, intelligences and goals. We are not alone at all.
When they find us we are done.
👽 ✅
@@JakeyMan 😆
That may be good news if they are less evolved life forms. However, if they are more evolved it might not be good news. On earth when people have been 'discovered' it's generally been terrible for those 'discovered'. When invasive species, like rats or cats, have got onto islands it's been curtains for the native species. I think the assumption is we will find either new pets or new friends. The reallity could just as equally be more like the movie Alien or The Andromeda Strain. We share our planet with lots of life forms. Many of which we eat.
Well said. We might as well look, and there might very be something to find. I am agnostic on what I want the result to be though. Could be a planet full of viruses and diseases that we find, microscopic warfare, and earth might lose.
How tragically wasted the universe would be if there was nothing else out there to appreciate it's beauty and wonder.
"waste" is an entirely human concept. The universe is incapable of caring either way.
@@RT-xx9tx shame
@@RT-xx9tx exactly. no care, no value. it just is. we are the higgs field of the universe, very tiny, but we give it "weight" 🙂
@@CodepageNet the universe needs to be observed to be real.
Fraser thinks I haven't thought long enough about the Fermi Paradox?
Space is big. That's the answer. (I have thought about it.)
So big that interstellar commerce can not be economically worthwhile, even for ET, even for AI ET. (Except in weird, rare situations.) So there's no motive for anyone to colonize lots of stars. (Maybe you do one or two because it seems cool.) So no sprawl.
It's too big to even usefully communicate with an intetstellar colony, let alone a distant ET.
That's not psychological or cultural, it's physics.
If there were a few dozen or a few thousand civs in the galaxy, each with one or a handful of stars, then they'd likely all be too far away to detect via Radio SETI. We wouldn't see them.
If hundreds of ET civs have each sent out probes and explored the whole galaxy, including us a hundred times, we probably wouldn't know it. How would we know it? Should the probes consume every planet in the galaxy just to make more paperclips, I mean probes? Is that what we're not seeing?
If space is too big for civs to compete for resources, then there's no purpose to a Berserker Reaper Zookeeper fleet.
What's the threshold for detecting a Dyson swarm? Like, would we detect a civ using 1% of its starlight? That's so much energy... I bet we'll never get to 1%, not in a million years. We won't need it.
This unstoppable galactic expansion assumption thing - has that been properly examined? What's the motive? It can't be slaves, spices, gold, farmland, petrochemicals... What is it?
Instead of looking for life in the Universe, target all technology into the galaxy. Let’s focus on our galaxy.
the flying TicTac thing is juvenile. anton did a decebt job debunking it. Anyone who offers UAP/UFO as a serious consideration in the discussion of whether we’re alone needs to grow up
Are you actually that stupid??? The whole UAP/UFO topic is the exact reason this video should be deemed prehistoric, we're on the brink of disclosure, hundreds of reports a day of these objects, new legislation in place so that well established members within the military and intelligence sectors can come forth freely to share their experiences without repercussion. And these dudes are sat here discussing this redundant nonsense.
Or how about we can have discussions and debates about whatever we like? Is that ok, or do we all need to get your approval before speaking about a subject?
@GM pretty sure i never addressed the subject of your freedom to discuss whatever you like. i just offered my opinion about people who can’t see how silly that stuff is. or do i need to get your approval before speaking about a subject? i didn’t even insult flying tic-tac believers’ intelligence, just their maturity
@knut hamsun You said it's juvenile and people who bring it up need to grow up. That's ridiculing people for discussing a subject and an attempt at gatekeeping discussions. Your comment offered nothing of value and was an attempt to shame people for a subject you personally happen to not take seriously.
@GM I don’t think you understand what “gatekeeping” means. whether my comment offered anything of “value“ is subjective, so I don’t need your approval to offer it. I doubt you even looked up Anton’s decent video addressing the topic of flying tic-tacs before making that value statement. but it doesn’t matter because you’re not in charge of whether I’m allowed to offer my opinion. it’s hard to imagine how I would “gatekeep“ a discussion between JMG and Fraser. in this video fraser mentions UAVs as something listeners bring up when discussing whether we are alone and he politely dismisses it. So I used the YT comment function to offer my own opinion that those who don’t understand the myriad reasons why the astrophysics heavyweights don’t give UFOs any consideration despite personally obsessing themselves with the question of whether we are alone “need to grow up.” I guess that does sound abrasive, but what I meant is that they need to spend more time researching the topic from a scientific perspective rather than (for example) theorizing that people like David Kipping are govt agents deliberately concealing the truth of aliens from the public. The only way I can relate to commenters who think that way is to imagine how I viewed things when I was 13 or 14yo
LOL we gotta leave some oil for the octopi!
Love the chemistry in conversation between you two!
Therr reading from a script it’s called B.S
@@kashifmalik2950 That's bs, there was no script. We just connected up and ran with it. Like we did here, unless you call a Margarita a script, you won't find one.
th-cam.com/video/FaL88Ivjx3g/w-d-xo.html
@@JohnMichaelGodier all the other episodes were really intresting I didn’t like this one
i feel like if we discovered life on an alien world and it was a plant, people would be super underwhelmed. a huge discovery like that and people would just shrug and be disappointed til they got a humanoid
The thought of being alone in the universe truly terrifies me, not only because it would be unbelievably Lonley but also would suggest a possible higher power.. Or that we really are just a very very lucky bunch to be here. Can't wait to tune in for the last show of the year. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and I wish everyone a happy new year! 🥳 Now for the final time this year it's time to fire up the bong and fall into... The event horizon 👽
Have a good one Sherpa.
@@EventHorizonShow And you guys! Thank you for such amazing content. Take care ❤️
Yes being alone opens some scary doors but it's highly unlikely to think that is to give into your frustration of no alien contact or clues whats more likely is no 1 has been able to get around time and space itself distance is the great filter
There is nothing that says any life out there would be anything like us, or would be benevolent. If having eight billion of your fellow species on the same planet still leaves you lonely then I don't think a microbe on a planet 800 light years away will help. I'm not sure how the existence or non-existence of life elsewhere implies a higher power (by which I assume you mean some form of creator or God, rather than the Strong Force). You could have either without there being a higher power. Anyway, have a good new year and share your bong then you won't care about life elsewhere (and the other life forms can carry on planning their evil conquest of our little space marble in peace). 🐜😀
@@curious_thinker I think many just think it's a bleak prospect. My mother was religious, I'm not. She would say "you must believe in something". I think it's a similar outlook.
It doesn't matter that much either way until there's positive evidence or an encounter. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but it isn't proof either.
Finding life off world is not necessarily a good thing. It would almost assuredly be virtually impossible for us and/or them would be tollarant to each other. We have barely survived on the same biome that didn't have catastrophically bad effects.
Oh good. Another commenter who fails to comprehend the nature of life.
Sometimes I wonder if life is akin to an infection and the universe has some sort of immune system that kicks in once life leaves it's planet, and that's the solution to the Fermi paradox.
Not only are we fast approaching the great filter but we have already brushed up against it. Most people are not aware of the fact that but for single individuals on both the Russian and American sides during the cold war we would have started nuking each other over mere accidents and mis perceptions. In the end the people responsible for pushing the button did not. Some day someone may. Life does not do well with advanced technology. So it exists but to get to the level of inter stellar travel is rare as that sort of technology can be used by even a single member of the species to wipe out the entire species. We have not done a good job of building an inclusive society.
Is John coming around to be a little more comfortable with the we-are-alone hypothesis? Great news if so. Because there are many conversations to be had on how humanity will react or should react to that hypothesis. Should we lose all hope for the future and let some natural disaster take us out? Or do we take that as an impetus to strive to seed the stars with life?
We are alone opens way more doors not good ones but thats highly unlikely whats more likely no 1 can overcome distance and time in space
If we're alone then it's likely that we won't get the chance, because the universe is billions of years old, there are trillions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars each... and we're going to be the ones who make it? We're going to be just as doomed as all the others that failed to seed the stars with life.
The idea that we're alone is preposterous. We simply have a limited tool set to search with, don't have any real idea what we're looking for, and have been searching for all of ten seconds. Waaaaaay to early to draw any conclusions.
@@Evil0tto We could be alone because we are the first rather than because something wiped out every alien civilization. If that is true, we cannot assume a pessimistic conclusion.
As for the preposterousness of the hypothesis, there are several scientists and papers that back it, but your mind appears closed, so I will not bother with engaging you further.
@@tylermoore4429 Well that's convenient. "I don't like your argument so I'm not going to talk to you anymore. Way to prove you're a rational person.
Love you on Cheers.
I'm listening
@@frasercain Everyone knows your name!
Dark Forest has been weighing more in my mind after finishing The Three Body Problem. The great filter could just be a photoid
The pentagon admitted we know about alien life and we have crashed ships .
We are probably already victims of the great filter, just lost that memory due to cycles of civilization due to the filter itself.
Wait… when was ball lightning observed and understood?! Tell me more!
From a statistical perspective it is absolutely unlikely. It would be even extremely pretentious to assume such a scenario, as Neil degrasse Tyson said.
If however true, it would be a huge waste of space.
A waste of space, or a gift for our own future generations.
Tyson is coming out with some strange things these days. Maybe trying too hard to be scientific clickbait?
@@basfinnis I have no idea how that guy got famous. I can't stand his pretentiousness anymore
Statistics requires data points. We have zero data points.
•AstronomyCast
•Why This Universe?
•Daniel & Jorge Explain the Universe
•Planetary Radio
•Supermassive Podcast
I love ALL of these!!!
The idea that there's no life at all except for on Earth is hilarious, given the 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and hundreds of billions of planets per galaxy, plus the fact that life started on earth as soon as it was possible.
Apparently even more than that, based on the stuff Webb is showing us. Likely _trillions_ of galaxies.
Yep
I am sorry.. That's like version from 1970s..latest I seen is from 6 to 20 trillion only in the observable universe
@@russiansoul6919 And all the ones we have looked at to this point show no evidence of Type II+ civilizations.
@@russiansoul6919 haha sorry, did a quick Google search for that figure.
this is what I have been thinking and we need to start considerating it
I honestly lean towards that we are totally alone in the universe....I don't really even know why but I just feel like we are
Math is not on your side, there's life out there somewhere.
@@daisydog388 right no way
Jim C. Goodfellas, Keep in mind that "feelings" only reflect your internal state, and do not represent knowledge of the vast reaches of the cosmos.
According to SETI we've spent far too little time searching, even in radio, to come to any conclusion, and have to date examined only a small fraction of the sky. We've just started the development process towards instruments of sufficient resolution. JWST has only just come online. The search for habitable biosphere's has hardly even begun -- and we've no clear idea if terrestrial worlds are the only abode of life. As biologist J.B.S. Haldane said "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than _we can_ imagine."
Some of my favorite peeps, great vid
I completely agree with Fraser. We are alone. All those galaxies are perfect whirlpools, none of them have been damaged by war.
According to SETI we've spent far too little time searching, even in radio, to come to any conclusion, and have to date examined only a small fraction of the sky. We've just started the development process towards instruments of sufficient resolution. JWST has only just come online. The search for habitable biosphere's has hardly even begun -- and we've no clear idea if terrestrial worlds are the only abode of life. As biologist J.B.S. Haldane said "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than _we can_ imagine."
@@williamblack4006 no. Given the Copernican principal and the Fermi paradox. If we are here they should be millions of them.
Can someone explain why “we’ve not looked hard enough” would be a bad solution to the paradox, as Cain says in the video? I mean, say technological civilisations are super-rare, say there’re only one or two Dyson spheres in the whole universe, the likelihood of us just not having seen them is fairly high, right?
If a civilization can make one Dyson Sphere, they can make thousands, or millions. It would be an unambiguous signal
@@frasercain Thank you for your reply man! Yes, I see your point. On the other hand, the argument that if something is possible, it has likely been done, only works if there are a large number of civilisations, right? If we are talking five to ten civilisations in the entire universe, there can be myriads of reason for why one of them built one or two Dyson spheres and no more. With so few cases, contingencies (religion and ideology, wars, pandemics) would have great effects, no?
@@frasercain I think the why they would want to explode outwards in dyson spheres is not really answered, specially if civilizations are extremely rare. Maybe the filter is simply a combination of all of small blockades and at the end of the day our observable and detectable range hadn't got anyone for us to see.
Obviously this dude did no research into the the whole UAP subject
Bingo.
Came to these conclusions 2 minutes after a 42 minute video was posted? Truly, you’re the brilliant one.
@@Tenderbits It's not like we could possibly be regular visitors to Universe Today or having listened to Astronomycast for the last 17 years to already know Fraser's position on the subject....
@@NeonVisual He does make his opinions known doesn't he?
People keep asking me. 😀
Really makes ya think. Great conversation dudes.
I feel like we’re in the middle of a rainforest & our telescopes are like having binoculars. We can see just so far & the JWST would be the equivalent of having a small drone. It puts us above the trees but unfortunately we see nothing but miles of more trees & maybe some mountains in the distance. Everything is so spread out, such a vastness but we’re getting closer to finding that other tribe.
I think acouple of lines by Roger Waters off Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album may be relatable:
"...and that is how I know,
When I try to get through, on the telephone to you, I know there'll be, nobody home."
A sad thought, but likely true.
As long as chemistry is the same throughout the universe, then it stands to reason that life is plentiful. The only two real wrenches in this is that on average, oases of life are spaced *very* widely apart, and humankind has really done almost nothing to search for them as of yet. Everything said about this subject is speculation... until we find the first signs of life elsewhere.
@19:45 can Heisenberg‘s uncertainty principle be applied to consider why we don’t see intelligent in life in the “observable universe”?
But here on earth we are not alone, and we can't even get along with each other here.
I genuinely think that something big is on it's way, there's got to be a serious reason that we're being bombarded with all of this UAP stuff. Are they on their way?!
They’re here already, and probably have been for a very long time. Wake up.
Legit read the title as "What if we"re alone facing Frasier Crane."
We’d lose.
I feel like we are the seeds not the weeds. I don't know why everyone hates the more altruistic species to ever roam the planet so much.
As in the X-Files I want to believe....but it's very quiet out there ...
always fantastic thank you as always for the food for thought !!
Thanks!