I’m writing a science fiction story that combines both hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi elements, and it is next to impossible to overstate how absurdly helpful your channel and videos have been. I can’t even quantify how many hours of monotonous, tireless research you’ve saved me. Thank you so much for everything you do!
I say make it as hard sci-fi as possible because with Isaac’s channel you can basically show up to low technology Type IV civilization, but easily a true Type III.
29:00 “Uh, sklepnep I think that planet we sampled had live on it.” “Eh, it’s fine, what did we hit something?” “It looks like a bunch of bit reptile things. I think we just caused a mass extinction.”
I can't imagine better timing for the video than this. Just as I'm readying up to write a sci-fi novel about realistic arrival and adventure on a planet in a different stellar system. Eager to see different videos about probes, exploring planets, life of an explorer. So happy to stumble upon this channel.
Theoretically the flyby probe could also jettison a clanking self-replicator, altering it's own trajectory on the way out of the system in the process, which we don't care about as much. That self replicator can then build stelaser infrastructure designed to help slow down future protracted surveying probes.
Yes. A stelaser to hit solar sails on the incoming probe #2? The laser would reduce probe 2s spectrum of telescope ability, but only in that narrow band of one frequency of light. But could it damage the instruments if further focused into a spot on the detector?
What is the hypothetical mass and velocity of the clanking self replicator? We could then figure out how much reaction mass is required to slow it down to solar orbit velocity. Even at .01 c it would be not be a trivial amount.
@@slabrankle9588 depending on how nano-technology developed. It may only require a couple of tons of material, and we could also potentially use an Orion Project style nuclear bomb and pusher plate design to reduce that velocity quite rapidly.
I have always imagined surveying probes as being fired by railguns out of the back end of flyby probes a few months before arrival. They show up, do a deep Oberth Dive burning all the high-mass fuel they've got and going retrograde, then doing gravity slingshots in-system to slow down enough to stay inside the planet's Hill Sphere, probably on a cometary orbit.
Maybe a one time only as compared to a heavy Civil War cannon. The payload would still have to deal with the high acceleration without losing sensor weight to structure support.
I like to think that I am part of a species that may one day roam the Universe, manipulating matter and energy and re-engineering spacetime to suit our own purposes.
@@skipperofschool8325 And the kind who possess your thinking also will die the soonest in our hostile universe, theres no law other than a man or woman saying we have too much, the universe has shown if we don't expand or advance we can easily die off as a species. Think about it
I'm glad you decided to split up the various methods for surveying habitable systems. Didn't realize just how complex each could be... which considering how in depth SFIA tends to get, I should have suspected.
"Venus orbits backward..." That confused me for a bit until you mentioned Uranus and I understood you meant Venus orbits rotating backward. Made me pay attention more closely, that's for sure. You know what you're talking about and that's why I'm a fan.
Yea it would be pretty fucking wild if a planet revolved opposite the rest of the planets in the system. Would be very cool though, would have(?) to be a rogue planet captured by a passing star.
@@Yvaelle Yeah, it would be possible if there is enough distance so that the capture of the rouge planet does not eject the existing planets and the orbits afterwards are not substantially destabilizing to each other over time. Otherwise the rouge planet can still be successfully captured if is the only planet in orbit with roughly equal or greater mass (say a huge gas giant). Just like Triton orbiting Neptune. When Triton was captured it probably ejected the rest of the large moons from Neptune's orbit. There are still smaller ones like Nereid, but that defeats the purpose of getting a large body in retrograde at the same time as there still being large prograde bodies.
It's a good question. But probably simpler than you think. If you want gasses, for hydrogen and helium, visit a gas giant. For ammonium, ice giant, methane, co2, nitrogen, argon, could all be found on the surface of large terrestrial planets. Then if you want stuff heavier than or = to sodium visit the surface of the planet. However, we may find asteroids more convenient for elements heavier than sodium. I suspect we will skim atmospheres for what gasses we can get and further search for metal asteroids with valuable resources. So when are we building a rocket?
I think the problem is just like what you stated before, looking for phosphorus. Most life essential elements can be searched through spectral analysis as they have a gaseous state or compound with the exception of phosphorus. You can easily look for water, nitrogen, sulfur and carbon dioxide in the spectrum but that's not the case for phosphorus. So we need a way to look for sign of phosphorus element from the distance.
Great comment! Very prescient! I believe that they just reported the presence of phosphorus in the water vapor on Enceladus and it's exciting for it's value as an indicator of the possibility of life there. You called it here a year ago!
Isaac is correct that a post-scarcity civilization will exert significant resources on surveying homework before sending a ship. After all, there is always an opportunity cost. It’s just that civilization manages its resources efficiently so that these endeavors do not impact its survival. We think of this as colonizing a planet in some distant star system, but the concept still applies in colonizing a moon or an asteroid in the Sol system.
Okay before I watch episode my opinion first. Every star system is habitable! There's a star right? By definition. We're never going leapfrog one, space is to vast. Even brown dwarves and stellar remnants have things to offer. You show up you start sucking energy, building habitats and using local resources. The question will be what type of stellar body is anchoring the system and that will determine what type of infrastructure you build. Key in deciding what you build will be size and lifespan of the star.
I would imagine that any creatures that were living on a planet might have quite a huge problem with a probe's blasting craters on that planet to analyze the resultant debris. In fact, if they were sentient, they might feel impelled to hunt down and destroy the aliens that had launched an unprovoked attack on their world.
A possible episode about pulsar planets, and colonization of a pulsar system. A pulsar is a mind blowingly dense power source being a natural fly wheel, pre-magnatized, around 2 solar masses ( give or take half a solar mass) and spun up to possibly 20 percent light speed. Boron lithium beryllium and uncommon atomic isotopes such as helium 3 would be relatively plentiful here as well.
Isaac, you always seem averse to mentioning actual missions. Hubble detected water vapor in an exoplanetary atmosphere (K2-18b), which will surely be a target for Webb and other instruments, and Breakthrough Starshot, which admittedly may never be built, is at least a viable near future system for interstellar flybys. Surely these merit some discussion.
@@ThatGuy-kz3fx You're heading to K2-18b? If you're thinking of hitching a ride with the Vogons then think again. They don't take kindly to hitchhikers.
@@ESL-O.G. He did an entire episode on it, although I don't recall what his conclusions where. He has stated mamy times his belief that technological species are extremely rare in the universe.
I very much enjoyed the brief explanations on how we are able to detect characteristics of planets, like through the emmissions from different molecules.
Isaac what is the potential to head out to interstellar rogue planets, construct industries there, construct a very powerful "anchored" linear accelerator and have those interstellar bases acceleate refueling pods (or lasers, to jack forward a solar sail) to interstellar vessels? For a typical interstellar lightyear unit of travel, what would be a "pearl strand" of such relay stations make in terms of difference of travel time? How sopisticated would those booster colonies be? Could their construction be largely automated or would people live there, in the unbfathomable lonely abyss?
What we have to take into account is what kinds of scales we are talking about. When we are making stuff like this, we are far beyond most need for human input.
Paraphrasing at about 29 minutes: "Send a 100 kg rod at half the speed of light to impact the planet, with the energy of a million Hiroshima bombs. That will kick up enough debris to determine crustal composition..." And if there are any resident lifeforms there, it should also allow them to determine that they are under attack by hostile aliens. "We come in peace. We leave you in pieces."
I’ve often thought that a good approach to sending out interstellar probes, might involve three components, similar to a three stage rocket/spacecraft. At the rear would be essentially just a rocket, to accelerate the entire set up to speed including a final push upon separation. The other two components (which would be two individual probes) would then coast towards the target system. Upon reaching the target, the rearmost probe would initiate the appropriate burn (thrusting against the probe out in front... which would probably be of greater mass). This would give a little kick to the heavier probe, while decelerating the lighter probe so that it could remain in the system to begin collecting data. The heavier probe would then continue on to serve as a flyby probe, potentially towards a secondary target... or even just to scan along its trajectory for any potential targets for the future.
By the time we are technologically ready to send out interstellar probes much less manned missions the planetary target systems will have been pretty thoroughly mapped out. Any potential habitual planets physical geography and climate will be well understood. What happens when somebody decides to build an optical telescope with a mirror tens or hundreds of kilometers in diameter.
Isaac has a way of conveying info like you are the only subscriber, focused on conversation. Consistently Interesting in content. I look forward to all vids
We should totally settle a planet with bacteria and simple plants, because that would give us the potential for a biosphere already in place. I draw the line at replicating the Trail of Tears, or Last of the Mohicans.
Last time I ran the numbers for an aluminum mirror that would be enough to solve Earth's global warming problem, it would have cost about half of a USS Gerald R. Ford to build and ship to Earth's L1 Lagrange point. Isaac is very much correct to say that terraforming some planets and moons is hardly the realm of science fiction.
Not necessarily to commode7x. Do remember; redundancy, over tolerancing, over engineering, and cleaning requirements for any orbital object will at least triple the cost from any calculations based on available prices and rates. So that's either one sixth the cost but over tested; or costing one and a half of a USS Gerald R Ford.
For the Oort Cloud objects, the best option would likely be to tunnel inside the comet and build a spacestead habitat (rotating space station) within it.
It's very likely they will skimp on the data - just as we did with sub-prime real estate. 10:42: Venus+Uranus is not 25% of the planets. We have 40+ planets in our system; and while there are a few more oddballs like Triton, we can see with the true sample size, it's a general rule, with a few exceptions. 29:30: you absolutely do NOT want to get surface samples that way, as what if you wreak havoc on a technological civilization, such as Earth today…
@@lightyagami3492 I don't think it would wipe out all life, or even all human life, but it would certainly cause an extinction level event, not seen since the fall of the non-avian dinosaurs. I do think there would be a couple million survivors at least, if not tens of millions.
@@benjystrauss2524 Regardless it would be a hard sell to convince an intelligent species that hitting their planet with what they would perceive to be a weapon at half of light speed isn't an act of war LOL.
Why is this video 37 minutes long? All you need is to build a science ship at your home station for 50 alloys then recruit a scientist for 100 energy credits... Wait this isn't a stellaris tutorial, where am I?
I mean.... It IS an attack regardless of intent so if an advanced civilization lived on that planet or multiple planets it would be within theirs rights to obliterate our colony ship and more.
In few ether decades or centuries, this is possible that we can probe the probe to find other star systems outside our solar system. We can use laser propulsion of the solar sail probes like the concept from Russian billionaire and theory sciencist, Steven Hawks.
By the time we're able to send probes we can probably have space telescopes with primary mirrors (or lenses) in the 5 mile diameter magnitude. Calculate what the resolution would be for that kind of Interstellar Peeper. Ooops. That planet HAD dinosaurs but we accidentally tungsten-rodded them.
I'm curious if there have been any videos done on the potential of interstellar/planetary travel in regards to shipments, pirates, bounty hunters, etc. Ie Cowboy Bebop
I may have said it before, but if/when we finally learn how to colonize the Earth-Sol 4th and 5th LaGrange points, there won't be much of the universe at all we can't colonize. And we won't even need planets.
Discovered in 2008, the V Puppis system has the closest black hole to the Earth at 960±80 light year. This our ticket to the galaxy with the Kippering Halo Drive - using a black hole to slight-shot about interstellar space at relativistic speeds. We would need massive shielding or deflector lasers and perhaps a Bussard ramjet for deceleration (but only deceleration) until a more robust drive is invented. Or a single well stocked colony ship to V Puppis might be the ancestor of an Galactic Civilization with all other traffic to Earthward one way only. The Halo Drive has to have a black hole for two-way travel.
Oort cloud drone swarm solar-gravitational lensing telescopes are the most exciting option, but it's no loss to build a Kipping terrascope around a low population planet (Neptune or Uranus) and look in every direction. The halo of light distortion around our sun can be used as a lens beyond 600 au (Madurowicz and Macintosh 2022), and even if a mission is only positioned to continuously monitor a single target, from Earth it only requires one high delta-V launch and a swarm of small drones.
Shooting rods at a potential habitable planet is a terrible idea for more then one reason. 1 If a collany ship is close behind then you could potentially stir up toxic or radioactive material contaminating the environment. 2 . If it is already supporting a ecosystem it could damage that ecosystem greatly 3. If inhabited by an intelligent civilization we could cause a technology boom on the world because of the confusion caused. Or worse yet an advanced civilization we could suddenly be flying at a now angered group of advanced people who could potentially destroy our ship on the way there.
The longer I listen to Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, the more convinced I become that until we have practical space travel at speeds of at least .25C, interstellar colonization is a pipe dream. The foreseeable future lies in building space habitats like O'Neill cylinders and otherwise utilizing the resources within our own solar system. Frankly, I foresee a Dyson Swarm with a trillion inhabitants before I foresee colonies on extrasolar planets.
@@sciencerscientifico310 And multiple practical ways to begin constructing space habitats within our own solar system right now; no fundamental technological breakthroughs required. The only reason we have not had established lunar bases, or manned missions to Mars, or orbital habitats already is that the USA basically gave up on manned space exploration.
What about a telescope whose lens is the Sun? Already in this century, it would be possible to send telescopes to a distance of 6 hundred astronomical units to collect data from the solar gravitational lens, process the data to obtain images of the planets.
What would a space faring race do with a planet in a ice age? Settle it and wait for the ice to hopefully melt at some point? Warm the planet up? Or keep an eye on it in the hopes that it would melt?
They'd probably set up a mirror swarm to slowly warm it up(if you care about planetary surfaces) or, more likely, shade it so it freezes completely making mining off the atmos easier for disassembly.
Considering how fast AI and machines like drones are advancing I think machines will be the best option to go and set up footholds in our solar system and building a lot of the structures first. Machines could go there and use the Carbon Dioxide atmosphere into oxygen and store up tanks of it, build structures, all of these things are going to get easier to do as AI machines progress. Going outside of our solar system is another matter entirely that will be for generations much later to solve.
You're such a value to humanity. But seriously who the fuck is making these graphics/videos for you?? Give that person 100 medals. It's like Hollywood.
Interesting type of habitable planet might be one that is in a leading or following larange asteroid field of a large gas giant or smaller orbiting star to another star.
28:40 "...probably overdoing it..." Understatement of the century lol. This method of determining crustal composition seems like it would be a very bad idea if you weren't already virtually 100% sure there was no complex life on the target planet from bio signatures (or lack thereof) and other observations. It would certainly be one heck of a way to say hello. Humans: *whack planet with tungsten rods* Hidden Aliens: "Is this a declaration of war?" Humans: "It was just a science experiment bro." Hidden Aliens: "bruh" Wonderful episode as always though. Didn't watch these as much as I'd like to have during the semester, so binge watching them now :D
If aliens are hiding so good we can't tell then it's their own fault. There's no obvious signs of life elsewhere as far as we can tell so the onus is on them to announce & mark their territory
@@virutech32 Yah, probably by the time a civilization has technology to launch large probes to another star system at 0.5c, it also has the technology to do very detailed remote scans of the surface of an explanet for bio signatures, and probably even direct imagery. So my speculation of a rude hello is likely overblown. I think it's wise to be careful with these things though, because it's not like we have a large sample size that we made predictions of "this exoplanet doesn't have life. This one does" and then went there and verified those predictions. It's been a while since I watched the episodes on silicon and other non-carbon based lifeform, but it occurs to me that, if we didn't have direct imaging capability, there could be some non-carbon based life out there that's so far out of left field that we wouldn't dream up appropriate biosignatures for in a million years, especially if it was not yet advanced enough to be receiving or beaming out signals from interstellar distances. That being said, again, we haven't seen any evidence of other life out there so far, and it may well be that it's extremely, extremely rare, in any form, carbon or otherwise. Who knows.
@@epicspacetroll1399 Yeah alternative biologies does muck things up a bit. Until we have firmer numbers on abiogenesis & the plausibility of various chemistries this'll have to remain an unknown. For simple subsophont life the biosignatures can get pretty subtle. Definitely not the case with generally intelligent life. Even long before radio we've been broadcasting various technosignatures since before anatomically modern humans were on the scene. More recently, in the last few thousand years we had built canal/road systems that were visible from obit to the naked eye. A relativistic flyby probe could unfurl a telescope kilometers across & we would probably be fielding telescopes hundreds of millions of kilometers across. I feel like we would notice their technosignatures from pretty far away, regardless of biology.
@@captsorghum I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. You'd need a whole lot iridium to get a layer like the KT boundary though, so as interesting a theory as it is, I don't think a small, relativistic iridium projectile would fit the data as well as a much, much larger and slower moving one. I suppose in theory, aliens could probably figure out a way to remotely steer an asteroid into a planet if they wanted to nudge (or more like sucker punch) evolution to go a different direction. Would make an interesting premise to a sci-fi novel! Really cool idea! :D
I wonder if by the time we're capable of traveling to different solar systems, we'll not care about whether they are "habitable" or not, and just care what mineral resources they would have, since we would just go to build massive space station swarms and never even intend to land on any planets to live.
We have to develop "warp drive" in order to be able to colonize other systems so we will not be eliminated by a large asteroid here on Earth. Yes we probably will harvest metals, etc. from planetary objects (as with the movie Avatar) but we will still need habitable planets.
@@retired5218 Well my point is, if we reach that technological phase where we can travel between stars, especially if we _don't_ develop warp drive and have to go the slow way, then would we even _care_ about living on the planets anymore? Like if you spend decades or centuries traveling between the stars, you're pretty comfortable in space, and can make space pretty comfortable to humans, so why not just build more space stations when you get there and that's all you do? You move into a system that is "safe" in a galactic sense, but in which none of the planets are remotely habitable, but that's fine, because you can mine them for materials to build millions of space stations of varying sizes and that's just where everyone lives, perfectly content to not be on a planet.
33:59 The question you asked is not the question I see on the screen. The answer to your question cannot be determined from the information in the question. The answer to the question on the screen is 2.
We could theoretically get a megapixel image of a nearby exoplanet using the Sun's gravitational lensing, if we sent a telescope out to 500 AU. There's a mission being studied for this.
I think galactic colonization will only be possible when the question is if matter and energy is there, to be converted to something usable by humans. Time and distance are such Fermi problems that it will take "replicator" like tech to turn any star with planets into a "gold" mine because you can make "gold" from almost any matter.
Do we get a SciFI Sunday where you discus how the Existence of Arthurian Legends proves time travel to the past, since they obviously describe the SFIA host?
Dont waste fuel an reaction mass on slowing down an interstellar craft. Use an E-Sail or magsail to slow down instead they take up much less mass. The higher your velocity the better they are at slowing you down.
If the star is cooler and less bright that should mean that it is easier for a planet to retain an atmosphere. That would mean that Mars could have had a much thicker greenhouse gas rich atmosphere to warm it.
28:46 hmm the thought oocuers that instead of 1 big probe it you dint just fire a few tonnes of cube sat sized one that each had there our function and then have them leave as a swarm that waid you could have more redundancy
If you send people to space for centuries or thousands of years of travel, travel becomes normal life for most of them. That, probably, even if they are not aging and will be alive in hundreds of stops. The dream destination will not remain immensely important for very long. Because the constant in human condition is that we adapt to life as it is. Give enough time and you are likely to see being leaved on a paradise planet as a punishment almost as severe as death penalty, for those born and raised inside space vessels.
JWST finished it's second study of the Trappist-1 Solar System, but they haven't released anything as of yet, or does anyone know if a report has been released?
I’m writing a science fiction story that combines both hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi elements, and it is next to impossible to overstate how absurdly helpful your channel and videos have been. I can’t even quantify how many hours of monotonous, tireless research you’ve saved me. Thank you so much for everything you do!
Nice. You might also want to check out orion's arm. They helped me a lot in a similar project
I've been watching Isaac's videos to help with a similar kind of project, except I'm looking to make a game out of my ideas.
Thanks for researching. So many stories seem to be about topics the author doesn't know much about.
Hear, hear!
I say make it as hard sci-fi as possible because with Isaac’s channel you can basically show up to low technology Type IV civilization, but easily a true Type III.
29:00 “Uh, sklepnep I think that planet we sampled had live on it.”
“Eh, it’s fine, what did we hit something?”
“It looks like a bunch of bit reptile things. I think we just caused a mass extinction.”
I can't imagine better timing for the video than this. Just as I'm readying up to write a sci-fi novel about realistic arrival and adventure on a planet in a different stellar system. Eager to see different videos about probes, exploring planets, life of an explorer. So happy to stumble upon this channel.
Theoretically the flyby probe could also jettison a clanking self-replicator, altering it's own trajectory on the way out of the system in the process, which we don't care about as much. That self replicator can then build stelaser infrastructure designed to help slow down future protracted surveying probes.
I was thinking the same thing.
Yes. A stelaser to hit solar sails on the incoming probe #2? The laser would reduce probe 2s spectrum of telescope ability, but only in that narrow band of one frequency of light. But could it damage the instruments if further focused into a spot on the detector?
What is the hypothetical mass and velocity of the clanking self replicator? We could then figure out how much reaction mass is required to slow it down to solar orbit velocity. Even at .01 c it would be not be a trivial amount.
@@slabrankle9588 depending on how nano-technology developed. It may only require a couple of tons of material, and we could also potentially use an Orion Project style nuclear bomb and pusher plate design to reduce that velocity quite rapidly.
@@sethapex9670 True. If your miniaturization and cybernetics are good enough then almost anything is possible, especially if you're not in a hurry.
I have always imagined surveying probes as being fired by railguns out of the back end of flyby probes a few months before arrival. They show up, do a deep Oberth Dive burning all the high-mass fuel they've got and going retrograde, then doing gravity slingshots in-system to slow down enough to stay inside the planet's Hill Sphere, probably on a cometary orbit.
Maybe a one time only as compared to a heavy Civil War cannon.
The payload would still have to deal with the high acceleration without losing sensor weight to structure support.
@@greggweber9967 Make it nice box with sensors.
The railguns could not achieve the relativistic speed of the probe.
@@maxkronader5225 So, use a laser array that’s built for astroid defense to push the probe after a certain distance.
That's a great use of resources to use a probe as reaction mass. Good show
I like to think that I am part of a species that may one day roam the Universe, manipulating matter and energy and re-engineering spacetime to suit our own purposes.
No single specie should wield such power. Unless you consider other sentients and the universe in general...
Humans will be replaced by then
@@skipperofschool8325 And the kind who possess your thinking also will die the soonest in our hostile universe, theres no law other than a man or woman saying we have too much, the universe has shown if we don't expand or advance we can easily die off as a species. Think about it
@The European Bee
"Solweb" in English is my guess
@@bluenightfury4365
Doesn't mean we have to completely disregard ethics. Besides, the life that arises might be of help to us in the future.
Another week, another Thursday and another wonderful SFIA video.
Wonderful work as always Isaac.
it’s like you’ve been living in my brain with this weeks episodes. amazing topic choices, isaac.
I'm glad you decided to split up the various methods for surveying habitable systems. Didn't realize just how complex each could be... which considering how in depth SFIA tends to get, I should have suspected.
I would love to see an episode about "Planning a colony mission".
Anyone else agree?
Agreed ;)
"Venus orbits backward..." That confused me for a bit until you mentioned Uranus and I understood you meant Venus orbits rotating backward. Made me pay attention more closely, that's for sure. You know what you're talking about and that's why I'm a fan.
Yea it would be pretty fucking wild if a planet revolved opposite the rest of the planets in the system. Would be very cool though, would have(?) to be a rogue planet captured by a passing star.
@@Yvaelle I can't even imagine such an orbit being stable for very long. It would be like finding a green star.
@@Yvaelle Yeah, it would be possible if there is enough distance so that the capture of the rouge planet does not eject the existing planets and the orbits afterwards are not substantially destabilizing to each other over time. Otherwise the rouge planet can still be successfully captured if is the only planet in orbit with roughly equal or greater mass (say a huge gas giant). Just like Triton orbiting Neptune. When Triton was captured it probably ejected the rest of the large moons from Neptune's orbit. There are still smaller ones like Nereid, but that defeats the purpose of getting a large body in retrograde at the same time as there still being large prograde bodies.
dropping relativistic rods on planets to analyze the dust plume without slowing down us a very human way to explore
28:57 that also sounds like a great first impression to start an interspecies relationship if the planet has intelligent life lol
I literally just posted this before I saw your comment 💀💀
Aliens-Fire up the interceptors! Hey idiots! You dropped something!
I am ready for a post scarcity civilization. War is destructive in human lives and natural resources. Great video!
I would love to simulate the stresses of interstellar dust on a ship travel at relativistic speeds. Seems like a CFD sim could do it.
This looks like an exploration of something I’ve always wondered about: if the Cosmos is so huge, how do we find what we need to?
How we define what we need? The answer is -- we adjust our needs to our capabilities; that is what intelligence is for
There is no inherent need applicable to everyone, besides those driven by biological instincts. To find an answer, you should first define your goal.
It's a good question. But probably simpler than you think. If you want gasses, for hydrogen and helium, visit a gas giant. For ammonium, ice giant, methane, co2, nitrogen, argon, could all be found on the surface of large terrestrial planets. Then if you want stuff heavier than or = to sodium visit the surface of the planet.
However, we may find asteroids more convenient for elements heavier than sodium. I suspect we will skim atmospheres for what gasses we can get and further search for metal asteroids with valuable resources. So when are we building a rocket?
With telescopes mostly. Also probably roving swarms of probes & telescopes to really round out our detection capacity.
Google
I think the problem is just like what you stated before, looking for phosphorus. Most life essential elements can be searched through spectral analysis as they have a gaseous state or compound with the exception of phosphorus. You can easily look for water, nitrogen, sulfur and carbon dioxide in the spectrum but that's not the case for phosphorus. So we need a way to look for sign of phosphorus element from the distance.
Great comment! Very prescient! I believe that they just reported the presence of phosphorus in the water vapor on Enceladus and it's exciting for it's value as an indicator of the possibility of life there. You called it here a year ago!
Isaac is correct that a post-scarcity civilization will exert significant resources on surveying homework before sending a ship. After all, there is always an opportunity cost. It’s just that civilization manages its resources efficiently so that these endeavors do not impact its survival.
We think of this as colonizing a planet in some distant star system, but the concept still applies in colonizing a moon or an asteroid in the Sol system.
Okay before I watch episode my opinion first. Every star system is habitable! There's a star right? By definition. We're never going leapfrog one, space is to vast. Even brown dwarves and stellar remnants have things to offer. You show up you start sucking energy, building habitats and using local resources. The question will be what type of stellar body is anchoring the system and that will determine what type of infrastructure you build. Key in deciding what you build will be size and lifespan of the star.
"We wanted to measure the composition of your planet, so we hit it with an RKM. Sorry, we didn't realise you were there."
I would imagine that any creatures that were living on a planet might have quite a huge problem with a probe's blasting craters on that planet to analyze the resultant debris. In fact, if they were sentient, they might feel impelled to hunt down and destroy the aliens that had launched an unprovoked attack on their world.
A possible episode about pulsar planets, and colonization of a pulsar system. A pulsar is a mind blowingly dense power source being a natural fly wheel, pre-magnatized, around 2 solar masses ( give or take half a solar mass) and spun up to possibly 20 percent light speed. Boron lithium beryllium and uncommon atomic isotopes such as helium 3 would be relatively plentiful here as well.
Isaac, you always seem averse to mentioning actual missions. Hubble detected water vapor in an exoplanetary atmosphere (K2-18b), which will surely be a target for Webb and other instruments, and Breakthrough Starshot, which admittedly may never be built, is at least a viable near future system for interstellar flybys. Surely these merit some discussion.
He also, oddly, doesn't acknowledge ANYTHING regarding the ufo phenomenon. It's weird for such a sci fi guy.
@@ThatGuy-kz3fx You're heading to K2-18b? If you're thinking of hitching a ride with the Vogons then think again. They don't take kindly to hitchhikers.
@@ESL-O.G. He did an entire episode on it, although I don't recall what his conclusions where. He has stated mamy times his belief that technological species are extremely rare in the universe.
@@ESL-O.G. It’s super easy to find creators eager to tell you exactly what you want to hear on UFOs.
I want to hear the truth, not my grandma's opinion
I very much enjoyed the brief explanations on how we are able to detect characteristics of planets, like through the emmissions from different molecules.
Amazingly creative idea about a future Oort cloud industry! I want to be around to see it happen!
Isaac what is the potential to head out to interstellar rogue planets, construct industries there, construct a very powerful "anchored" linear accelerator and have those interstellar bases acceleate refueling pods (or lasers, to jack forward a solar sail) to interstellar vessels? For a typical interstellar lightyear unit of travel, what would be a "pearl strand" of such relay stations make in terms of difference of travel time? How sopisticated would those booster colonies be? Could their construction be largely automated or would people live there, in the unbfathomable lonely abyss?
What we have to take into account is what kinds of scales we are talking about. When we are making stuff like this, we are far beyond most need for human input.
He has an episode called interstellar hiways
The abyss, like Walla Walla Washington? Scary.
We already live in the unfathomable abyss?
@@robomonkey1018 Oh wait, the horrors beyond comprehension were always the dots in the sky?
Wow guys awesome video as ever I can only hope humanity stops fighting its self and the progress in our future is as we see here.
Excellent art and visuals for sure in these videos, Production standards of some TH-camrs are far better then linear TV these days.
Paraphrasing at about 29 minutes:
"Send a 100 kg rod at half the speed of light to impact the planet, with the energy of a million Hiroshima bombs. That will kick up enough debris to determine crustal composition..."
And if there are any resident lifeforms there, it should also allow them to determine that they are under attack by hostile aliens. "We come in peace. We leave you in pieces."
This channels helps me cultivate my hope for humanity despite most other media sources leading me down more and more cynical and nihilistic paths
There is Nothing better then listening to Isaac Arthur and his Wonderful videos while I play no man's sky and exploring the stars 👍
Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always say 🌍💯
I’ve often thought that a good approach to sending out interstellar probes, might involve three components, similar to a three stage rocket/spacecraft.
At the rear would be essentially just a rocket, to accelerate the entire set up to speed including a final push upon separation.
The other two components (which would be two individual probes) would then coast towards the target system.
Upon reaching the target, the rearmost probe would initiate the appropriate burn (thrusting against the probe out in front... which would probably be of greater mass).
This would give a little kick to the heavier probe, while decelerating the lighter probe so that it could remain in the system to begin collecting data.
The heavier probe would then continue on to serve as a flyby probe, potentially towards a secondary target... or even just to scan along its trajectory for any potential targets for the future.
I'm surprised you didn't mention "Feminine Intuition" by Isaac Asimov as it deals a great deal with this subject.
Here for the good vibes 😎
By the time we are technologically ready to send out interstellar probes much less manned missions the planetary target systems will have been pretty thoroughly mapped out. Any potential habitual planets physical geography and climate will be well understood. What happens when somebody decides to build an optical telescope with a mirror tens or hundreds of kilometers in diameter.
Isaac has a way of conveying info like you are the only subscriber, focused on conversation. Consistently Interesting in content. I look forward to all vids
We should totally settle a planet with bacteria and simple plants, because that would give us the potential for a biosphere already in place. I draw the line at replicating the Trail of Tears, or Last of the Mohicans.
Well and good, but the equivalent of a fern doesn't have property rights. Species should be preserved, but the Prime Directive is morally absurd.
Last time I ran the numbers for an aluminum mirror that would be enough to solve Earth's global warming problem, it would have cost about half of a USS Gerald R. Ford to build and ship to Earth's L1 Lagrange point. Isaac is very much correct to say that terraforming some planets and moons is hardly the realm of science fiction.
Not necessarily to commode7x.
Do remember; redundancy, over tolerancing, over engineering, and cleaning requirements for any orbital object will at least triple the cost from any calculations based on available prices and rates.
So that's either one sixth the cost but over tested; or costing one and a half of a USS Gerald R Ford.
@@humanistwriting5477 even so it would be a worth while investment.
Nice was just looking for a video to watch and see this was posted 1 min ago
16:46 That make me so happy you say that, Isaac Arthur!
Wouldn't every single large Oort Cloud object be 'habitable' to para-terraforming (dome habitats)?
For the Oort Cloud objects, the best option would likely be to tunnel inside the comet and build a spacestead habitat (rotating space station) within it.
"Uhhhhhh...he said deeper probes." "Yeah, hehe. probes are cool." --Beavis and Butthead
Thank you always!
It's very likely they will skimp on the data - just as we did with sub-prime real estate.
10:42: Venus+Uranus is not 25% of the planets. We have 40+ planets in our system; and while there are a few more oddballs like Triton, we can see with the true sample size, it's a general rule, with a few exceptions.
29:30: you absolutely do NOT want to get surface samples that way, as what if you wreak havoc on a technological civilization, such as Earth today…
Exactly. Not only could you wipe out life on a planet but if that civilization is more advanced than we are... Well we are fucked.
@@lightyagami3492 I don't think it would wipe out all life, or even all human life, but it would certainly cause an extinction level event, not seen since the fall of the non-avian dinosaurs. I do think there would be a couple million survivors at least, if not tens of millions.
@@benjystrauss2524 Regardless it would be a hard sell to convince an intelligent species that hitting their planet with what they would perceive to be a weapon at half of light speed isn't an act of war LOL.
@@lightyagami3492 okay, that I can agree with
So, in a nutshell, we need to build more Bob's.
Why is this video 37 minutes long? All you need is to build a science ship at your home station for 50 alloys then recruit a scientist for 100 energy credits... Wait this isn't a stellaris tutorial, where am I?
is it possible that a "flyby" probe can survive aerobraking or lithibraking?
My daughter has mastered the art of impact braking, much to the displeasure of our auto insurer.
Interesting video topic, I think I'll enjoy this!
28:58 You'd better hope that planet is not inhabited with life that would hunt us down to retaliate for what they would think is an attack.
I mean.... It IS an attack regardless of intent so if an advanced civilization lived on that planet or multiple planets it would be within theirs rights to obliterate our colony ship and more.
In few ether decades or centuries, this is possible that we can probe the probe to find other star systems outside our solar system. We can use laser propulsion of the solar sail probes like the concept from Russian billionaire and theory sciencist, Steven Hawks.
Keep on looking
By the time we're able to send probes we can probably have space telescopes with primary mirrors (or lenses) in the 5 mile diameter magnitude. Calculate what the resolution would be for that kind of Interstellar Peeper. Ooops. That planet HAD dinosaurs but we accidentally tungsten-rodded them.
I was thinking about that, lol. Imagine accidentally nuking a civilization like that.
@@n.g.s1mple29 *Conspiracy theorists come up with the idea that we got nuked by aliens 65 million years ago...*
This guy really does his homework !
Thank you for all you do.
Neat!
The Supreme Emperor approves this message.
Thanks Isaac!
Awesome look at how we might go about exploring Star systems. Great job Isaac and team!
I'm curious if there have been any videos done on the potential of interstellar/planetary travel in regards to shipments, pirates, bounty hunters, etc. Ie Cowboy Bebop
I may have said it before, but if/when we finally learn how to colonize the Earth-Sol 4th and 5th LaGrange points, there won't be much of the universe at all we can't colonize. And we won't even need planets.
Well, it's extremely unlikely we'll ever find another planet that is completely Earth-like, even if they are habitable.
Hello and as always thanks for the content.
Love you work mate! Thanks!
Notification Gang
Discovered in 2008, the V Puppis system has the closest black hole to the Earth at 960±80 light year. This our ticket to the galaxy with the Kippering Halo Drive - using a black hole to slight-shot about interstellar space at relativistic speeds. We would need massive shielding or deflector lasers and perhaps a Bussard ramjet for deceleration (but only deceleration) until a more robust drive is invented. Or a single well stocked colony ship to V Puppis might be the ancestor of an Galactic Civilization with all other traffic to Earthward one way only. The Halo Drive has to have a black hole for two-way travel.
Oort cloud drone swarm solar-gravitational lensing telescopes are the most exciting option, but it's no loss to build a Kipping terrascope around a low population planet (Neptune or Uranus) and look in every direction. The halo of light distortion around our sun can be used as a lens beyond 600 au (Madurowicz and Macintosh 2022), and even if a mission is only positioned to continuously monitor a single target, from Earth it only requires one high delta-V launch and a swarm of small drones.
Shooting rods at a potential habitable planet is a terrible idea for more then one reason.
1 If a collany ship is close behind then you could potentially stir up toxic or radioactive material contaminating the environment.
2 . If it is already supporting a ecosystem it could damage that ecosystem greatly
3. If inhabited by an intelligent civilization we could cause a technology boom on the world because of the confusion caused. Or worse yet an advanced civilization we could suddenly be flying at a now angered group of advanced people who could potentially destroy our ship on the way there.
29:25. The possible life there is realy going to like your relevastic rods.
The longer I listen to Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, the more convinced I become that until we have practical space travel at speeds of at least .25C, interstellar colonization is a pipe dream. The foreseeable future lies in building space habitats like O'Neill cylinders and otherwise utilizing the resources within our own solar system. Frankly, I foresee a Dyson Swarm with a trillion inhabitants before I foresee colonies on extrasolar planets.
There's multiple theoretical ways to get relativistic speeds
@@sciencerscientifico310
And multiple practical ways to begin constructing space habitats within our own solar system right now; no fundamental technological breakthroughs required.
The only reason we have not had established lunar bases, or manned missions to Mars, or orbital habitats already is that the USA basically gave up on manned space exploration.
Don't we risk causing a mass extinction if we start dropping gigaton bombs on unexplored planets? I'd also hate that to get a visit from Gort :)
Facts. I was thinking how stupid that idea truly was.
Can't we just beam some Redshirts down there to have a look?
I decided where to move to. Thanks earthlings
Courtesy of our tourism and colonization bureau. Please stop by our kiosk and pick up a brochure.
Greetings from Sweden
11:30 Haha O2 the towns bicycle.
What about a telescope whose lens is the Sun? Already in this century, it would be possible to send telescopes to a distance of 6 hundred astronomical units to collect data from the solar gravitational lens, process the data to obtain images of the planets.
I would love to see this happen aswell. It's literally a built in natural cheating device for exploring the galaxy and even beyond.
Great episode.
What would a space faring race do with a planet in a ice age? Settle it and wait for the ice to hopefully melt at some point? Warm the planet up? Or keep an eye on it in the hopes that it would melt?
They'd probably set up a mirror swarm to slowly warm it up(if you care about planetary surfaces) or, more likely, shade it so it freezes completely making mining off the atmos easier for disassembly.
I see you are a man of culture as well as has been subscribed to PBS Space Time :D
you should do a video about colonizing brown dwarf stars.
Considering how fast AI and machines like drones are advancing I think machines will be the best option to go and set up footholds in our solar system and building a lot of the structures first. Machines could go there and use the Carbon Dioxide atmosphere into oxygen and store up tanks of it, build structures, all of these things are going to get easier to do as AI machines progress.
Going outside of our solar system is another matter entirely that will be for generations much later to solve.
You're such a value to humanity.
But seriously who the fuck is making these graphics/videos for you?? Give that person 100 medals.
It's like Hollywood.
Agree, both excellent art and sound.
Interesting type of habitable planet might be one that is in a leading or following larange asteroid field of a large gas giant or smaller orbiting star to another star.
Some how the simple approach of the tungsten rods got me scared....
28:40 "...probably overdoing it..." Understatement of the century lol.
This method of determining crustal composition seems like it would be a very bad idea if you weren't already virtually 100% sure there was no complex life on the target planet from bio signatures (or lack thereof) and other observations. It would certainly be one heck of a way to say hello.
Humans: *whack planet with tungsten rods*
Hidden Aliens: "Is this a declaration of war?"
Humans: "It was just a science experiment bro."
Hidden Aliens: "bruh"
Wonderful episode as always though. Didn't watch these as much as I'd like to have during the semester, so binge watching them now :D
If aliens are hiding so good we can't tell then it's their own fault. There's no obvious signs of life elsewhere as far as we can tell so the onus is on them to announce & mark their territory
@@virutech32 Yah, probably by the time a civilization has technology to launch large probes to another star system at 0.5c, it also has the technology to do very detailed remote scans of the surface of an explanet for bio signatures, and probably even direct imagery. So my speculation of a rude hello is likely overblown.
I think it's wise to be careful with these things though, because it's not like we have a large sample size that we made predictions of "this exoplanet doesn't have life. This one does" and then went there and verified those predictions. It's been a while since I watched the episodes on silicon and other non-carbon based lifeform, but it occurs to me that, if we didn't have direct imaging capability, there could be some non-carbon based life out there that's so far out of left field that we wouldn't dream up appropriate biosignatures for in a million years, especially if it was not yet advanced enough to be receiving or beaming out signals from interstellar distances.
That being said, again, we haven't seen any evidence of other life out there so far, and it may well be that it's extremely, extremely rare, in any form, carbon or otherwise. Who knows.
@@epicspacetroll1399 Yeah alternative biologies does muck things up a bit. Until we have firmer numbers on abiogenesis & the plausibility of various chemistries this'll have to remain an unknown. For simple subsophont life the biosignatures can get pretty subtle.
Definitely not the case with generally intelligent life. Even long before radio we've been broadcasting various technosignatures since before anatomically modern humans were on the scene. More recently, in the last few thousand years we had built canal/road systems that were visible from obit to the naked eye. A relativistic flyby probe could unfurl a telescope kilometers across & we would probably be fielding telescopes hundreds of millions of kilometers across. I feel like we would notice their technosignatures from pretty far away, regardless of biology.
Wouldn't iridium work as well as tungsten? Maybe the KT event wasn't what we thought.
@@captsorghum I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. You'd need a whole lot iridium to get a layer like the KT boundary though, so as interesting a theory as it is, I don't think a small, relativistic iridium projectile would fit the data as well as a much, much larger and slower moving one. I suppose in theory, aliens could probably figure out a way to remotely steer an asteroid into a planet if they wanted to nudge (or more like sucker punch) evolution to go a different direction.
Would make an interesting premise to a sci-fi novel! Really cool idea! :D
I wonder if by the time we're capable of traveling to different solar systems, we'll not care about whether they are "habitable" or not, and just care what mineral resources they would have, since we would just go to build massive space station swarms and never even intend to land on any planets to live.
We have to develop "warp drive" in order to be able to colonize other systems so we will not be eliminated by a large asteroid here on Earth. Yes we probably will harvest metals, etc. from planetary objects (as with the movie Avatar) but we will still need habitable planets.
@@retired5218 Well my point is, if we reach that technological phase where we can travel between stars, especially if we _don't_ develop warp drive and have to go the slow way, then would we even _care_ about living on the planets anymore?
Like if you spend decades or centuries traveling between the stars, you're pretty comfortable in space, and can make space pretty comfortable to humans, so why not just build more space stations when you get there and that's all you do? You move into a system that is "safe" in a galactic sense, but in which none of the planets are remotely habitable, but that's fine, because you can mine them for materials to build millions of space stations of varying sizes and that's just where everyone lives, perfectly content to not be on a planet.
@@timogul it's more convenient to just build rotating habitats for real.
33:59 The question you asked is not the question I see on the screen.
The answer to your question cannot be determined from the information in the question.
The answer to the question on the screen is 2.
We could theoretically get a megapixel image of a nearby exoplanet using the Sun's gravitational lensing, if we sent a telescope out to 500 AU. There's a mission being studied for this.
Thank you for clarifying what "year" meant!
That always irks me.
I think galactic colonization will only be possible when the question is if matter and energy is there, to be converted to something usable by humans. Time and distance are such Fermi problems that it will take "replicator" like tech to turn any star with planets into a "gold" mine because you can make "gold" from almost any matter.
Do we get a SciFI Sunday where you discus how the Existence of Arthurian Legends proves time travel to the past, since they obviously describe the SFIA host?
Meta materials are the future/salvation of physical media and telecommunication.
Dont waste fuel an reaction mass on slowing down an interstellar craft. Use an E-Sail or magsail to slow down instead they take up much less mass. The higher your velocity the better they are at slowing you down.
If the star is cooler and less bright that should mean that it is easier for a planet to retain an atmosphere. That would mean that Mars could have had a much thicker greenhouse gas rich atmosphere to warm it.
28:46 hmm the thought oocuers that instead of 1 big probe it you dint just fire a few tonnes of cube sat sized one that each had there our function and then have them leave as a swarm that waid you could have more redundancy
Isaac testing my new TV for dead pixels
If you send people to space for centuries or thousands of years of travel, travel becomes normal life for most of them. That, probably, even if they are not aging and will be alive in hundreds of stops. The dream destination will not remain immensely important for very long. Because the constant in human condition is that we adapt to life as it is. Give enough time and you are likely to see being leaved on a paradise planet as a punishment almost as severe as death penalty, for those born and raised inside space vessels.
JWST finished it's second study of the Trappist-1 Solar System, but they haven't released anything as of yet, or does anyone know if a report has been released?
Thank - you . ( 2023 / May / 14 )
The astronauts have violet costumes.