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Reminds me of how Star Trek inspired engineers to develop computers or medical tools you could hold in your hand at a time that they relied on bulky devices.
@@smesh4190 Don't you agree that Star Trek created dreamers that grew up to invent modern wonders? Scientists, engineers, and inventors give a lot of credit to ST for ideas.
I'd say sci-fi like Star Trek and the works of writers like Clarke and Asimov provided a lot of the inspiration, whereas the military and space programs provided the practical need and funding for development.
I came down to the comments to make almost exactly the same comment... he didn't invent the equation expecting it to be solved, he invented it to start this very conversation and get people thinking.
I often like to think of our cultural fields in terms of “trees”...especially art, music and science. If Carl Sagan is a trunk, you, David, are a major branch...articulate, interesting and with a sense of the poetic.
Part 1 and part 2 really flowed nicely together. The atmospheric music that plays in the background is a great touch. Thank you Frank Drake and Dr. Kipping!
Indeed, all terms are even already ordered in their causal and therefore temporal succession in the original formula. But how much does the error of taking the current star formation rate matter, if most of the other terms are completely unknown? A lot! It turns out we don’t even know how far we have to go back in time to pick the correct one, as long as we do not know what to put into the other terms. So we have no good known values for any of the terms in the Drake equation. We need to make contact with and learn about a statistically significant number of civilisations from other stars, this would help a lot with solving this puzzle :-D
@@CoolWorldsLab I know it must be a stupid question, but why can't the first term in the equation simply refer to the average number of "habitable stars" in a given time interval (in the galaxy) rather than the rate of star formation?
Totally agree with your final thoughts but you already know that 😂 When we eventually find life on other planets I don't believe it will be on a world in the habitable zone of its star or that we'll be able to communicate with it because we'll just be too different.. that's the thing, there's no way to know. I do believe that there is life beyond our planet and once we know what to look for we'll see it everywhere but we're a long way off from that. We can't even come together as a species so how could we ever hope to communicate with anyone else? I love this topic and all the ways it makes us think and consider the possibilities and that's thanks to TDE. Loved the 2 parter on this subject, Thank you 😍
what does "coming together as a species" has to do with a development of civilazations? I think if we weren't different, we wouldn't have come this far in such a short amount of time.
@@ibrahimseyba I meant if we can't agree to at least stop killing each other over things like religion and race then what hope do we have to understand and accept a civilisation that is literally totally alien to us? We're just not ready 🤷♀️
Thank you for doing content like this. I think its vital to the health of science that these "fundamental" aspects of science are dissected and prodded to see if they really do a well-enough job explaining what they attempt to.
Loved the point in the end. This formula might be less useful for calculations but all the discussion gives it merritt. I never really been taking it that serious but the subject itself is and that makes a contribution that inspires participation important.
That is the most elegant way of reducing a complex series of unknowns to two digestible factors, while realizing the unknowns can and will always come to an answer of no less than I don't know. Absolutely beautiful.
Wow.. You deserve millions of subscriptions and views. This channel deserve so much more than this. Keep up the excellent work! Thank you so much for the great content!
I don't think a single day goes by where I do not spend at least some time wondering about the possibility of other life in our Universe, and maybe, even in our own Galaxy. I will therefore always appreciate a serious and intellectual investigation into one of the biggest and most perplexing questions humanity could conceive to ask itself. Thankyou for making this two part video!
@@christinearmington Honestly, didn't know about it but if it's just stories, I tend not to be interested in UFO sightings, although the Lex Friedman David Fravor Interview was an exception
@@MrBendybruce Well, there’s a video of a ufo following a missile launch. And the nuclear warhead deactivations were reported by military personnel, so I take them pretty seriously. I think the US case was in North Dakota and the UK was at Rendelsham.
But there is an issue he doesn't make clear: *Drakes Equation does not factor the entire Universe. It factors **_only_** the Milky Way Galaxy. It also factors **_out all life except_** intelligent, extraterrestrial, communicative civilizations.*
Here is a great equation. Cool Worlds +1= Brilliant 🇮🇪☘️Thanks from Ireland. As a child I loved Patrick Moor . Now as an old Man I still love the same format. ASKING Questions. Getting answers is brilliant, but the magic is the ability to ASK Thanks for all you Creativity
It upsets me that there isn't at LEAST a million subscribers on this channel.... this is so intelligent and well produced.. and it's immensely valuable that you've condensed these incredibly complex ideas into videos that someone like I can understand/appreciate.
Great timing to broadcast the two parts in Good Friday. I feel that I have been crucified with a new approach to the Drake Equation and have the whole weekend to digest the information before I can ascend to the reality of existence. Thank you.
Gonna be honest, your best work on this topic (in my mind) remains the objective bayesian "Odds of Intelligent Life" paper/video. This one is solid, but that one was mind-blowingly awesome.
Jolly good! I got a great deal out of these two vids. You explained the concepts well enough that while the first vid was playing in the background (while I was making a curry), I said out aloud, re the unknowns in the Drake Equation, "Our basic assumptions for life are intrinsically anthropomorphic" and in second vid you said it (OWTTE) - so I must've been tuned in. Where I am the Magellanic Clouds are very clear in the sky tonight. I wonder what the Milky Way would look like from a planet in that dwarf galaxy?
This channel clearly appeals to those who're very much into futuristic considerations, the galaxy(ies) and the universe in its entirety but also for those who enjoy a little ASMR mixed into their appreciation of space.
Hey there. I'm someone who is dealing with a lot of stuff at the moment and watching your videos brings me peace. I've just found the channel and it's been few weeks. For years I've been reading about cosmos related stuff but you put it together in a structured way. Whenever I feel down I watch such videos. I hope the world population falls and we won't have to fight over resources and we will be able to focus our energy and money for exploration.
@@Hrshsngh_19 hey. even remotely, where do you see correlation with "people coming together" and "population falls" ? (rhetorical question) The "overpopulation" concept is a wide spread *myth* - an exceptionally anti-human, deeply cynical one though. Think about it. i mean really do think about this,... there is more to find. it's right in all our faces. the root cause/mechanisms here^ and with so, so many other existential problems (we kind of take for granted..) can only be understood on system-design level. The way resources are managed aka what is falsely called "the economy" - is sheer insanity. To be clear: it is not a natural law. it is a misunderstanding [...] and yes there are sane, clear and solutions - that also rock and carry hope for the future... and meaning. (the actual scarce resources btw, oddly..) interestingly are there (still) kind of collective denial/delusions going on, i mean a lot. (our psychology is master with doing exactly that) , it is working grand scale. especially to supress and externalise the horror, the fundamental contradictions plaguing our infantile world civilisation, raging in our everyday faces. (e.g "cognitive dissonance" isn't only a curse word people throw at each other, words mean something, hence why i use many fancy terms here ;p, trying) find out more , think in structural mechanism of things, it will help you to make sense of things. and maybe helping others out of the cave. X!
@@aerobiqueLet's take America and Canada for example. They share border and majority speak the speak language. They also look the same, drive same cars, wear similar clothes , similar food etc. But it will thousand of years before they come together because America has its baggage of gun violence, drug problem, international scrutiny, population difference between America and Canada. Now let's look at Europe. 26 odd countries with different and sometimes similar culture working together in peace, most of the times. Their borders are also quite lucid and its easier to move. They have a set of requirements that they need to maintain to be part of the European union. Now let's look at India. Hundreds of languages, cultures, festivals, food habits all just in one country. The way people dress, they way they look, their food habits everything changes every 100 km. But they still exist together in a chaotic yet structured manner. The west is developed. Asia is developing, Middle East is developing. Africa is under developed and soon will come under the category of developing and somewhere along the line every country will be developed. Now let's talk about population. It's projected the population will reach 9.7 billion in 2064 and then it will start to decline. According to my calculations the population should be around 2.5 - 3 billion. The reason is most of the jobs can be automated in the coming years and there will not be any need to rely on humans. When every country is developed and the population is also stable it will be quite easier for us to sit on the table and maybe form just one world government. People won't have any salaries. Whether you're an astronaut or a vegetable vendor your salary will be the same. Housing will be the same all over the world with same square foot and all the bills will be paid by the government. Now you may say that it's bullshit to not have different salaries. Let's look at the profession of doctors. The reason someone wants to be a doctor are, someone from their family is a doctor like mom or dad, they want to be rich and have the status, some want to do good for the masses with their profession, some like me were good at chemistry and bio and hence wanted to be a doctor. So when you remove the money and the status part your motivation to be a doctor will come on its own and with automation we will be able to do what we want to become. I mean hell we spend close 2.3 trillion dollars just on military as a world. But before all the countries come together many countries will be broken and formed. Also when the world is developed and people have money they tend to be not religious. So any extremists countries will also become non-religious slowly slowly and it won't play a part in countries coming together or not. It's just a dream which will take few hundred years before it's even possible.
Yeah I suspect the Drake equation is missing a lot. Particularly n(e), which may require things like a yellow dwarf star, a large planet to moon mass ratio, an outer gas giant, a lack of an inner gas giant, the lack of a binary star companion, the proper radial distance from the galactic core, the proper cyclical distances from the galactic plane, the proper Oort cloud size, the proper ratio of number and size of cometary strikes over time, etc etc. Also f(c) is frustrating because for many (or probably most) ice moons, even if life and civilization arise, the odds of being able to breach the surface could be problematic.
Thanks for your honest dedication to a logical process and analysis that addresses this and other topics. Our existence is "obviously" more than just science. I was glad when the movie Ad Astra was made. The masses need to see the other valid possibility that contradicts the Star Trek/Star Wars paradigm. Ask anyone about to die or a parent seeing their child being born about the specialness of being alive. And, I don't think conflating intuition with emotion is valid. As the world sinks into totalitarianism that looks at individual Life and Liberty as inconsequential and inconvenient, many will hopefully realize the importance of our families, neighbors and the "forgotten powerless".
That was my favorite of all your posts. Thank you! (I find all of your posts that I have seen so far) quite wonderful. I wish I had stumbled on 'Cool Worlds' sooner, but I am grateful I found it.
I think it's actually very highly rated...by those who have the curiosity, intelligence, and educational background to appreciate it. What falls short is the number of people fitting that description, unfortunately.
Indeed, it is highly rated; and yes, it is unfortunate that there's not more people able to appreciate this kind of knowledge. But there's a positive side about it all, the number of us being able to value it is increasing, thanks to all the good people working/investing to educate everyone.
Great video as always. I have had many questions regarding the Drake equation and I appreciated your attempt to review it and put it into perspective. I was puzzled why you were comparing the civilisations that were being born and those that were dying by division and ratio. I would have thought that a subtraction between the two allowing for growth within the Galaxy rather than comparing by division. A rate minus a rate gives us a rate which for a positive number would give us a growth rate and a negative number a dying out rate. A rate divided by a rate gives us an index without units. Either way, they must inevitably change over time, not only because the galaxy and the conditions for life are changing but there may be saturation or extinction scenarios depending on whether it is growth or dying out which is prevailing. Having said all that. I have felt for a long time we have needed to consider a Drake equation version 2.0. Perhaps that is your equation. If so we now need v2.1 to put back the detail for discussion that has been omitted. What should be considered? Do we need to take into account panspermia or abiogenesis? I have never seen the Drake equation used with respect to life on the moons of planets. And yet for our solar system, if we consider Europa and Titan, that is what we are contemplating. Maybe there are other sources of energy that can support life other than the home star. How do we factor in the observations that we appear to be living around a very stable star in a very quiet part of the Galaxy; Earth is of sufficient mass to retain its atmosphere; we have a moon that provides tides which helps circulate the water and moderate the climate; and we have Jupiter strategically situated mopping up most of the stray asteroids that could otherwise bombard and threaten us? And then there are the intrinsic threats. There have been times when there has been too much or too little carbon dioxide; too much or too little oxygen. There have been erupting super volcanoes cutting out the sunlight and switching off photosynthesis. What I think needs to be taken into account is the resilience of life on Earth. While Venus and Mars may just be within Sol's habitable zone, it suggests to me that while being on the edge may be compatible with life, it is being in the very middle that increases the chances for long term survivability leading to a technological civilisation. Otherwise and life would not have survived the harsh conditions. It seems to me that life on earth has survived because of the sheer numbers and diversity of species, so that even if 90% of species become extinct, there are still enough for an ecosystem to survive. It also seems to me that these existential threats have also been the stimulus for life to move onto the next stage. And finally, I think as you have done in other videos, we cannot isolate the development of a civilisation as though everything else remains constant. The surrounding universe has been changing. Perhaps there has been an optimum time for life to start and an optimum place for life to survive, thrive and develop. To sum up, rather than have a single equation, perhaps the analysis needs to be undertaken by a computer running a sophisticated mathematical model. Any formulation may need to consider different parts of the galaxy separately, defining the steps in the progress and taking into account the probability of completing each of the many steps before an inevitable fatal event. Alternatively and perhaps better is to consider the probability of simple life/complex life/civilisation not in the whole galaxy, but say within 100 light years from us. This would provide us with a far more meaningful expectation of who is out there and if in galactic terms they are close by.
very good points. civilization: rate creation minus rate death gives either an increasing or decreasing current existence ( although this is completely unknowable now), seems an improvement. Since Webb up there now, with its ability to detect O2 in planetary atmospheres, I would like to see it substituted for the life factor. Time ( let's say 4.5 billion years) and relative stability (your point that we're in the *middle* of the goldilocks zone, plus of course a whole bunch of other factors, but resilience is very important) substituted for tech civilization maybe. Appreciate your thoughts. Overly simplified, but could grow towards complexity ( like life!).
Thanks! I agree with you that the Drake Equation is simply a way to organize our thoughts. And as we learn more, and certain things become knowable, the equation can be altered.
As a child in Norwood, Ohio one of my favorite things to do was go to the Drake planetarium. We were lucky enough to have one in our HS. It’s what got me into this stuff to begin with.
Wow! I never really thought about extinction level events on other planets before...but this video sparked a whole new avenue of thoughts for me...imagine all the planets out there that maybe had the spark of life ignite for a while...only then to have been wiped out by super big asteroid strikes or gamma ray bursts... it's just wow³ to think about all this stuff!... thanks again professor Kipping 💫
You are totally right about the best of the Drake equation: it gives a a way to cut down the uncertainty. First you find out the birth rate of stars etc. This way don't face an unsolvable problem like the birth rate of communicating civilizations. It is pinning down the conditions that are needed for a civilization to be born. In the end it provides a way of how to find civilizations: you define where you might find civilizations so you in know where to look. It is exactly what it was intended for: an equation to start discussing how and where to find civilizations. If we find life on Venus, Titan or Europa it will change the way we search for civilizations but ultimately we might never know N with any certainty.
Absolutely correct. There are many different variables that would need to be applied. Each star and galaxy are as different as humans. They evolve at different rates and some even went extinct. In my Texan term, one shoe does not fit all.
Great video ! Here are my thoughts. Life could exist in anywhere in so many different formations outside human knowledge. Our scientific knowledge on things are ever evolving and whats right in todays world could be wrong in another hundreds years. Think about the recent videos released by the pentagon regarding ufos. Some ufos showing no signs of our physics laws limitations. Sometimes when you really think about the infinity vastness of the universe and the countless possibilities and variations, does it make sense what you have learned so far about life on earth ? Sometimes if something doesn’t look right or doesn’t make sense we try to reason. Humans are curious creatures and good story tellers. We always try to give something a definition. I personally think prof is getting ready for the june 1st reveal on ET ;) either way a great topic and a great video as usual ! Food for thought !
You touched oh and every single topic that has always bugged me about the Drake equation. Plus, I always thought there was no way in heck I was the only person they had thought about this stuff LOL. Thank you guys for all the hard work and great content!!
Well done Sir ,my favorite online professor ☆ Always had my critique on the drakes equasion , to dictated on such few terms. Terms very difficult to measure , and we know so little about life combinate in other places of an un imageble big universe ... Love your clear narration on the doubt full terms . Is 46 y to old , to study astronomy ? I would love to study further than i , should done . My physics was intrigued by some of my questions about light physics . At age 14 y , i asked why it could be that photons with a mass of zero , could be attracted by an black hole ? His reply after that physcs class : -Its based on the duality of light . And he suggested to realy study further physics , even i followed a technical school .☆ Had developt the first CD lazers for phillips . The same feeling he gave me , left me even more curious ... And you Sir are the modern version of him ! My unstoppable hunger for facts about space and cutting edge physics you provides us alll. A very big thak you , SIR ♡☆☆☆☆☆ GRTS JOHNY GEERTS OR MDT
Enjoying your video. I bet your going to mention stable climate....no ice ages or drought or high heat. Constant ambient temps between 5 C and 40 C. Perhaps the best temp range could also be determined by atmospheric pressure too?
Thank you David for another thought provoking video. I must say straight off the bat that I am a simple man. I don't have any qualifications except as an electrician but I do think about thinks a lot. My views on life beyond earth as expressed before are from what I've read in books that have reported military witness accounts of UAP around the global spanning many decades. I like the way as a scientist you can agree there must be other life in the Milky Way other than on Earth. I appreciate that, because scientific peers have laughed loud at the notion for years because as a primitive species they haven't detected it yet. How utterly arrogant of them is my view. I saw a talk July 2020 on TH-cam by Michio Kaku, he had a peculiar stance. He uncomfortable mumbled "We are know they exist, but we don't talk about it!". Why? Fear of ridicule from main stream science or the public? (Who are completely asleep on the subject.) I did not know there was around 400 billion stars in the Milk Way, I only thought it was a 100. Now that we agree there is life beyond earth right now in the Milky Way is a a good start. If you can listen or read the reports in many books spanning decades from the UK, US and other military around there world and the UAP they have witness by sea or plane or the radar operators in many countries witnessing a blip leave their air space with seconds at thousands of miles an hour without a sonic boom detected. If you can think of a country capable of this when NASA is still spending millions on rockets and the US spends $142 million per unit on each Raptor fighter plane. Link:www.airforce-technology.com/features/most-expensive-military-aircraft/ Then someone with a technology that: - is not using any visible propulsion is able to travel many times the speed of sound without a sonic boom. - Move in ways not possible for winged craft. - Craft is circular. If you could harness gravity as a propulsion and could travel in any direction, then the most efficient shape would be circular because turning is not required. If you can imagine that is one of Earths many neighbours and they have been witnessed by military for years and they have ever once approached nor harmed anyone, then it is plausible to believe they are a benevolent species not interested in violence just observation and understanding. If you can believe we have neighbours visiting us then, they must know how to travel faster than light as Proxima centauri is at least 7 light years away. They understand what Gravity actually is and can harness it as a propulsion around the perimeter of the circular craft because there's no visible propulsion. I happened to notice on The Guardian website that the US government are going to publish a lot more on the subject of UAP in June 2021 by listening to John Ratcliffe of the previous Trump Administration discussing it on Fox News. He makes some interesting comments that I commend him for doing so. His views are exactly what I have read in books at least ten years ago. "We see and detect them across the entire globe". The Guardian news article which has an embedded link to the news bulletin dated 23/3/2021 from John Ratcliffe www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/22/us-government-ufo-report-sightings I also feel the American CIA are a worthy mention too as they have released their documents on the topic. Link to CIA article: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/13/cia-thousands-documents-ufos-cache It would appear the US is doing it's bit to try and educate it's population while the topic as become public news again. That is commendable knowning just how serious biosphere change is going to effect all in the coming decades as the CO2 keeps rising into the atmosphere. Now the you agree we have neighbours, Michio Kanu reluctantly agrees we have neighbours, the US military and secret service are disclosing to the public evidence that appears to be our neighbours. Maybe humanUNkind can take it's head out the sand and grow its perspective of existence within the cosmos and be a species that collaborates together, each of us self polices instead of being a slave to our emotions and hurting each other and quickly change they way we live as a species so future wiser generations aren't left to clean up our mess of biosphere change that's going to change a lot of peoples lives before things improve. Links: NASA Climate Charts - www.climatelevels.org/?pid=2degreesinstitute&theme=grid-light 51 Billion Tons of CO2 to ZERO - www.breakthroughenergy.org/our-challenge/getting-to-zero World Population Live Counter - www.worldometers.info/world-population/# Ice Sheets Melt - climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/ Climate Models - climatereanalyzer.org/clim/ecm/ Deforestation Data - glad.umd.edu/gladmaps/globalmap.php# Divided Species indicator - flagsworld.org
What if these UFO/UAP’s arent manned or alien mission to observe but are there version of probes or telescopes they launched into the galaxy just like we do . Because the questions arises if the are so intelligient then why do they crash so often because there is no way to maintain the crafts once they launch
Hi David, this is not directly related to this video, but I am curious if you have a personal telescope at home and if so what type and size is it? Thanks as always for the awesome videos, I am learning a lot and they do make me think about concepts I have never thought of before. You are by far my favourite presenter on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Great stuff mate. How's the search for more computing power going...... Expensive I bet especially now silicon prices are ridiculous. Good luck and thank you
I think I would dispute the idea we are a communicative civilization. First we have scarcely ever intentionally transmitted anything toward another star system and to the extent we ever have they were very short one time transmissions. If an alien SETI following identical rules to our SETI somehow detected those transmissions they would have disregarded the signals because they were too short in duration and never repeated. As far as the rest of our radio noise goes i find it hard to believe a civilization identical to ours could detect our radio noise more than say a dozen or so light years away. The truth is the Milky Way could be thick with civilizations identical to our own and neither we, nor they would know it.
I agree and that’s why I actually removed fc in my version altogether, it’s a better defined problem to talk about civilizations (although even that isn’t easy to pin down a strict definition for)
Well, hm. I sort of regard notions like “communicative” as idealized for the purposes of Drake’s argument, aren’t they? In fact, I think calling ourselves a “civilization” is achingly generous. Dr. Kipping’s incredibly discursive knowledge makes everything more philosophically encompassing and also more specifically meaningful-a fabulous talent. Now, because of his discursions, my opinion of the “Fermi Paradox” is in the basement along with Drake’s! I guess I avoid parsing the authenticity of the Drake factors and instead trek further upstream in the flow of logic-Why, in fact, are we taking Drake’s Equation, Fermi’s Paradox or the Copernican Principle so literally? Isn’t it plausible or probable that these musings of brilliant men about our importance, or our rareness, were not meant by them to solve great questions or even pose them? I think of them as landmarks of curiosity, tantalizing epigraphs dropped along the course of intellectual history-like some inscription on a marble column in Ephesus, recording that the Emperor Hadrian spent the Saturnalia here in 133, epigraphic evidence that reinforces his longing and his reputation to be the most ecumenical and cosmopolitan of Roman “Princeps.” Epigraphy says more about the periphery-about Hadrian, Drake or Fermi-than about Rome, astronomy or intelligent, extra-terrestrial life. It’s the road, not the journey; or the journey, not the destination. A wonderful British biologist, Nick Lane, authored a related exposition of life’s plausibilities in his “Life Ascending.” But he writes from the perspective of organic molecules facing the preposterous requirements to become “us.” After melding his contingencies of our “arrival” with David Kipping’s three discussions and deductions about * our sun and its “typicality,” * the prevalence or incidence of primitive life beyond Earth, * the emergence of complex, sentient, volitional, civilized and technologically advanced life, have, for me, reduced the likelihood of life’s emergence elsewhere to nearly zero. But that’s ok, because my regard for all this happening even once, in all of cosmic history, is luxuriantly high. To my mind, an evening reading John Donne, or paging through a great survey of art from Antiquity, with a glass of sea-dark wine, and Schubert’s late piano sonatas playing nearby, is remarkably like visiting another world-and without the relativistic flat tires.
If we want to use a modification of the Drake Equation for inputting values that we measure from current astronomy (i.e. exoplanet detection and star surveys) to try to predict N, I think your new equation is too reductionist, but the original equation’s inclusion of star formation and the like isn’t very useful. I say it should avoid the rate of creation of planets altogether, as that happens on a timescale that’s not intrinsically useful to think about when wondering if there’s live out there at the moment. Our galaxy is only 180,000 light years across, meaning if we assume light-speed comms are the normal way for species to contact one another, the number of planets will not be appreciably different across timescales that we communicate within. All you’d need to know is the number of stars currently in the galaxy, or the total number of worlds around them. But even multiplying “number of stars” with “chance for a star to have a world” with “chance that a world is habitable to life” isn’t statistically ideal. Because you’re missing out on information from each star that effects habitability, like radiation released. If the majority of planets are around red dwarfs and are so close that they’re sterile from radiation, then we don’t particularly want to let that skew the habitability average for all other stars. Just like habitability should be broken down into ice shell worlds and liquid water worlds and temperate atmospheres and anything else we can think of, we should break down and sum all the different types of stars, all the different types of worlds, et cetera. A series of parallel equations, it would be. But without all that, I think a reasonable simple compromise would be: “number of worlds with life” x “rate of civilisation formation per living world” x “average lifespan”. Importantly, it allows for multiple civilisations to be born per world, but still ignores the possibility of life appearing more than once, since it’s a safe bet that life won’t completely go away until it can never appear again in the vast majority of all cases. Breaking down that first term can be left to the exoplanet surveyors, while the other two are in the domain of exobiology and “exoanthropology” respectively. And perhaps, instead of ending at “communicable civilisations in the whole galaxy”, we should end at “communicable civilisations within 100ca”, or “intelligent civilisations that are close enough for us to profile their atmospheres” or “close enough to notice a Dyson swarm being built” or whatever. The fact that we don’t have a good estimate of the frequency of smaller and longer period planets from transit surveys isn’t very helpful either. It’s rather hard to correct for selection bias while retaining some semblance of statistical significance, say, for earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of their host star. Protoplanetary disc simulations help I guess.
I think my issue with the Drake Eqn is that a large number of people significantly more intelligent than just us lay people were using it to calculate N. When like you say even a child can understand it and IMO a fair few will be able to simplify it to N = Guess. Interesting the discussion about R* as even if you could calculate it it still doesn't help with calculating or modifying the range of N. Overall I agree it's been pretty good as it's promoted science and it's how you sell spending money on looking (or self profit by way of a book for the masses). Although not as romantic looking for bio signatures clearly has the largest chance of success... if we don't find any Bio Signatures... which have been detectable on earth for Billions of years.. then it brings into question the point of looking for intelligent signals. Maybe there is some fear of looking for Bio Signatures as we may not want to know because if we don't find any in a known habitable region of the Galaxy.... well that's probably that.
I have heard lots of criticisms of the Drake equation. Many have been reasonable. But I think the best is the one I heard from Sean Carroll… “We cannot confirm the likelihood of life until we have a good explanation of what “life” is “.
I was thinking about N equals 1 (or more) through this Part 2, and there you said it! For a moment I felt a good mathematician :) Now here is my question: given the N number approximately average 1.. can we determine the other variables just playing with this value "certainly not less than 1", just to find the bottom value of every other variables of the equation? At least I guess we can get a bottom reference. Thanks for treating this subject with such passion! Cheers!
In principle yes you could do that but we don’t know that N is at least 1 because it’s the average over all times, we could just live in a brief episode where there’s a success but the average is very close to 0
@@r2out I think it's more complex than that. Yes, we do have the capacity for always wanting more, but we also have the drive to ask 'why' for the sheer joy of learning to understand our universe. The majority of scholars are born out of their passion for a subject, rather than from greed.
I think the Drake equation is extremely important since in the past, many people have just focused on the first term, saying that since there are so many stars in the galaxy (or universe) that the chance of intelligent life must be relative large. But as the Drake equation indicates, and you have discussed in previous videos, if one or more of the other terms is very small (such as the fraction of planets with life where life develops intelligence), and arguments can be made that that could indeed be the case, then the final result could be very small and even equal to 1.
![ค้างคืนโรงเก็บกระสวยอวกาศร้างกลางทะเลทราย [Around The World Ep. 3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E5bWZQhABJE/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks for watching everyone and thanks to our sponsor, CuriosityStream. You can sign up for CuriosityStream here: curiositystream.com/CoolWorlds and be sure to use the code: "CoolWorlds".
Im sure you could make a far better equation with a little guidance, keep up the great work.
Hi! Great channel. What’s your take on the evolution of humanity?
In a way, Drake was succesful with his equation.
He created it to start a conversation, and that conversation hasn't stopped ever since.
Reminds me of how Star Trek inspired engineers to develop computers or medical tools you could hold in your hand at a time that they relied on bulky devices.
@@charlescook5542 actually it was the military and spaceflight that did that
@@smesh4190 Don't you agree that Star Trek created dreamers that grew up to invent modern wonders? Scientists, engineers, and inventors give a lot of credit to ST for ideas.
I'd say sci-fi like Star Trek and the works of writers like Clarke and Asimov provided a lot of the inspiration, whereas the military and space programs provided the practical need and funding for development.
I came down to the comments to make almost exactly the same comment... he didn't invent the equation expecting it to be solved, he invented it to start this very conversation and get people thinking.
"Stay thoughtful and stay curious." That, my friend, you succeed with every video you make. Thank you.
I always watch your presentations at least twice. Lots of grist for the mill. Thank you Professor Kipping.
Yup. Same here.
There have been many videos on the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation, and somehow you manage to bring something more to the table, just brilliant!
I often like to think of our cultural fields in terms of “trees”...especially art, music and science. If Carl Sagan is a trunk, you, David, are a major branch...articulate, interesting and with a sense of the poetic.
2 videos the same evening, I will bring my popcorn!
I should go to bed, 2:40 here :D
I can relate. Was watching this at 4 AM. Watching again at 9PM. Wish I had such an engaging teacher growing up.
Just watched this video while eating popcorn. Normally zone out with Netflix & popcorn, but this is much better!
This is the greatest TH-cam channel of all time.
Thank you so much for your hard work on both of these videos. I loved them both!
Part 1 and part 2 really flowed nicely together. The atmospheric music that plays in the background is a great touch. Thank you Frank Drake and Dr. Kipping!
That observation about the current rate of star formation is so obvious in retrospect that it actually made me laugh. Great videos as always.
Right? I'm kind of amazed no-one has pointed this out before (as far as I can tell?)
Indeed, all terms are even already ordered in their causal and therefore temporal succession in the original formula. But how much does the error of taking the current star formation rate matter, if most of the other terms are completely unknown? A lot! It turns out we don’t even know how far we have to go back in time to pick the correct one, as long as we do not know what to put into the other terms. So we have no good known values for any of the terms in the Drake equation. We need to make contact with and learn about a statistically significant number of civilisations from other stars, this would help a lot with solving this puzzle :-D
Yeah, I also always wondered about why use a rate of formation, why not simply take the current number of stars as a starting point.
@@CoolWorldsLab , Your daughter was very cute!
@@CoolWorldsLab I know it must be a stupid question, but why can't the first term in the equation simply refer to the average number of "habitable stars" in a given time interval (in the galaxy) rather than the rate of star formation?
Totally agree with your final thoughts but you already know that 😂
When we eventually find life on other planets I don't believe it will be on a world in the habitable zone of its star or that we'll be able to communicate with it because we'll just be too different.. that's the thing, there's no way to know.
I do believe that there is life beyond our planet and once we know what to look for we'll see it everywhere but we're a long way off from that. We can't even come together as a species so how could we ever hope to communicate with anyone else? I love this topic and all the ways it makes us think and consider the possibilities and that's thanks to TDE. Loved the 2 parter on this subject, Thank you 😍
what does "coming together as a species" has to do with a development of civilazations? I think if we weren't different, we wouldn't have come this far in such a short amount of time.
@@ibrahimseyba I meant if we can't agree to at least stop killing each other over things like religion and race then what hope do we have to understand and accept a civilisation that is literally totally alien to us? We're just not ready 🤷♀️
Life will be cell like not ilife we are alone in the galaxy
@@Psalm1101what? There’s definitely cell like life but also definitely Intelligent life as well
Thank you for doing content like this. I think its vital to the health of science that these "fundamental" aspects of science are dissected and prodded to see if they really do a well-enough job explaining what they attempt to.
"Probability that we exist given that we exist" HILARIOUS statement and wonderfull video, btw!
Loved the point in the end. This formula might be less useful for calculations but all the discussion gives it merritt. I never really been taking it that serious but the subject itself is and that makes a contribution that inspires participation important.
Thank you for willingness to do the hard work.
It's my pleasure
How does this not have 1 million views yet? Pure gold
Back to back uploads in a matter of minutes... oh Professor, you are spoiling us!
That is the most elegant way of reducing a complex series of unknowns to two digestible factors, while realizing the unknowns can and will always come to an answer of no less than I don't know. Absolutely beautiful.
Wow.. You deserve millions of subscriptions and views. This channel deserve so much more than this. Keep up the excellent work! Thank you so much for the great content!
I don't think a single day goes by where I do not spend at least some time wondering about the possibility of other life in our Universe, and maybe, even in our own Galaxy. I will therefore always appreciate a serious and intellectual investigation into one of the biggest and most perplexing questions humanity could conceive to ask itself. Thankyou for making this two part video!
What do you make of the stories of UFOs deactivating nuclear ☢️ missiles, once in the UK 🇬🇧 and once in the US?
@@christinearmington Honestly, didn't know about it but if it's just stories, I tend not to be interested in UFO sightings, although the Lex Friedman David Fravor Interview was an exception
@@MrBendybruce Well, there’s a video of a ufo following a missile launch. And the nuclear warhead deactivations were reported by military personnel, so I take them pretty seriously. I think the US case was in North Dakota and the UK was at Rendelsham.
But there is an issue he doesn't make clear: *Drakes Equation does not factor the entire Universe. It factors **_only_** the Milky Way Galaxy. It also factors **_out all life except_** intelligent, extraterrestrial, communicative civilizations.*
Here is a great equation. Cool Worlds +1= Brilliant 🇮🇪☘️Thanks from Ireland. As a child I loved Patrick Moor . Now as an old Man I still love the same format. ASKING Questions. Getting answers is brilliant, but the magic is the ability to ASK Thanks for all you Creativity
I always thought about the issue with current rate of star formation, but I could never put it into words. Thanks for another great video!
It upsets me that there isn't at LEAST a million subscribers on this channel.... this is so intelligent and well produced.. and it's immensely valuable that you've condensed these incredibly complex ideas into videos that someone like I can understand/appreciate.
Thanks for the hard work you are putting to create these videos.
Wow! … uh how is this not the most viewed video ever? This is so thought provoking…you’ve made my brain forever different
two great video's on the drake equation made me subscribe, keep up the great work.
Excellent final thoughts.
this is really a MUST WATCH for anyone discussing this question
Great timing to broadcast the two parts in Good Friday. I feel that I have been crucified with a new approach to the Drake Equation and have the whole weekend to digest the information before I can ascend to the reality of existence. Thank you.
The little assistant definitely had a sneaky peak into the bag before the green one came out 🤓
Gonna be honest, your best work on this topic (in my mind) remains the objective bayesian "Odds of Intelligent Life" paper/video. This one is solid, but that one was mind-blowingly awesome.
This is what TH-cam was made for!
Dr. Kipping - do you have a Patreon page for those of us who would like to support your channel?
Even better you can make tax deductible contributions to our research lab www.coolworldslab.com/support
Did you low-key throw shade at @askanastronomer ?? Lol 😅
Jolly good! I got a great deal out of these two vids. You explained the concepts well enough that while the first vid was playing in the background (while I was making a curry), I said out aloud, re the unknowns in the Drake Equation, "Our basic assumptions for life are intrinsically anthropomorphic" and in second vid you said it (OWTTE) - so I must've been tuned in.
Where I am the Magellanic Clouds are very clear in the sky tonight. I wonder what the Milky Way would look like from a planet in that dwarf galaxy?
Great minds think alike
I LOVE how you take big questions frequently asked in popular science and criticize the popular solution in a way that MAKES SENSE :)
This channel clearly appeals to those who're very much into futuristic considerations, the galaxy(ies) and the universe in its entirety but also for those who enjoy a little ASMR mixed into their appreciation of space.
Hey there. I'm someone who is dealing with a lot of stuff at the moment and watching your videos brings me peace. I've just found the channel and it's been few weeks. For years I've been reading about cosmos related stuff but you put it together in a structured way. Whenever I feel down I watch such videos. I hope the world population falls and we won't have to fight over resources and we will be able to focus our energy and money for exploration.
Population number isn't the cause for the (ongoing, cultivated) "fight for resources".
@@aerobique it is one of the most important reasons though. When the population will fall the world will need to come together to manage everything.
@@Hrshsngh_19
hey.
even remotely, where do you see correlation with "people coming together" and "population falls" ?
(rhetorical question)
The "overpopulation" concept is a wide spread *myth* - an exceptionally anti-human, deeply cynical one though. Think about it. i mean really do think about this,... there is more to find.
it's right in all our faces.
the root cause/mechanisms here^ and with so, so many other existential problems (we kind of take for granted..) can only be understood on system-design level.
The way resources are managed aka what is falsely called "the economy" - is sheer insanity.
To be clear: it is not a natural law. it is a misunderstanding [...]
and yes there are sane, clear and solutions - that also rock and carry hope for the future... and meaning. (the actual scarce resources btw, oddly..)
interestingly are there (still) kind of collective denial/delusions going on, i mean a lot. (our psychology is master with doing exactly that) , it is working grand scale. especially to supress and externalise the horror, the fundamental contradictions plaguing our infantile world civilisation, raging in our everyday faces.
(e.g "cognitive dissonance" isn't only a curse word people throw at each other, words mean something, hence why i use many fancy terms here ;p, trying)
find out more , think in structural mechanism of things, it will help you to make sense of things. and maybe helping others out of the cave.
X!
@@aerobiqueLet's take America and Canada for example. They share border and majority speak the speak language. They also look the same, drive same cars, wear similar clothes , similar food etc. But it will thousand of years before they come together because America has its baggage of gun violence, drug problem, international scrutiny, population difference between America and Canada. Now let's look at Europe. 26 odd countries with different and sometimes similar culture working together in peace, most of the times. Their borders are also quite lucid and its easier to move. They have a set of requirements that they need to maintain to be part of the European union. Now let's look at India. Hundreds of languages, cultures, festivals, food habits all just in one country. The way people dress, they way they look, their food habits everything changes every 100 km. But they still exist together in a chaotic yet structured manner. The west is developed. Asia is developing, Middle East is developing. Africa is under developed and soon will come under the category of developing and somewhere along the line every country will be developed. Now let's talk about population. It's projected the population will reach 9.7 billion in 2064 and then it will start to decline. According to my calculations the population should be around 2.5 - 3 billion. The reason is most of the jobs can be automated in the coming years and there will not be any need to rely on humans. When every country is developed and the population is also stable it will be quite easier for us to sit on the table and maybe form just one world government. People won't have any salaries. Whether you're an astronaut or a vegetable vendor your salary will be the same. Housing will be the same all over the world with same square foot and all the bills will be paid by the government. Now you may say that it's bullshit to not have different salaries. Let's look at the profession of doctors. The reason someone wants to be a doctor are, someone from their family is a doctor like mom or dad, they want to be rich and have the status, some want to do good for the masses with their profession, some like me were good at chemistry and bio and hence wanted to be a doctor. So when you remove the money and the status part your motivation to be a doctor will come on its own and with automation we will be able to do what we want to become. I mean hell we spend close 2.3 trillion dollars just on military as a world. But before all the countries come together many countries will be broken and formed. Also when the world is developed and people have money they tend to be not religious. So any extremists countries will also become non-religious slowly slowly and it won't play a part in countries coming together or not. It's just a dream which will take few hundred years before it's even possible.
Double feature? I could get used to this! Great stuff ^^
Yay!👍
Yeah I suspect the Drake equation is missing a lot. Particularly n(e), which may require things like a yellow dwarf star, a large planet to moon mass ratio, an outer gas giant, a lack of an inner gas giant, the lack of a binary star companion, the proper radial distance from the galactic core, the proper cyclical distances from the galactic plane, the proper Oort cloud size, the proper ratio of number and size of cometary strikes over time, etc etc. Also f(c) is frustrating because for many (or probably most) ice moons, even if life and civilization arise, the odds of being able to breach the surface could be problematic.
Probibility numbers are off the chart and life on earth barely made it 5 times and we live ina great stable star and system
Thanks for your honest dedication to a logical process and analysis that addresses this and other topics. Our existence is "obviously" more than just science. I was glad when the movie Ad Astra was made. The masses need to see the other valid possibility that contradicts the Star Trek/Star Wars paradigm. Ask anyone about to die or a parent seeing their child being born about the specialness of being alive. And, I don't think conflating intuition with emotion is valid. As the world sinks into totalitarianism that looks at individual Life and Liberty as inconsequential and inconvenient, many will hopefully realize the importance of our families, neighbors and the "forgotten powerless".
Another epic video. I learn so much from this and all your content. Thank you.
Great discussion, Professor Kipping!
Great presentation. Thanks.
That was my favorite of all your posts. Thank you! (I find all of your posts that I have seen so far) quite wonderful. I wish I had stumbled on 'Cool Worlds' sooner, but I am grateful I found it.
You are spoiling us today! Thanks, I missed you guys.
This caught my eye as the thumbnail is the same as of one of my favorite DnB mixes...turns out if a Cool Worlds upload - which makes this even better!
Liquid Drum and Bass = best genre for getting in the zone to do math haha. Glad to see another fan here.
this channel is so underrated.
I think it's actually very highly rated...by those who have the curiosity, intelligence, and educational background to appreciate it. What falls short is the number of people fitting that description, unfortunately.
Indeed, it is highly rated; and yes, it is unfortunate that there's not more people able to appreciate this kind of knowledge.
But there's a positive side about it all, the number of us being able to value it is increasing, thanks to all the good people working/investing to educate everyone.
Oooooh yeah a 2 part video,Your spoiling us💯😉👍
Great video as always. I have had many questions regarding the Drake equation and I appreciated your attempt to review it and put it into perspective.
I was puzzled why you were comparing the civilisations that were being born and those that were dying by division and ratio. I would have thought that a subtraction between the two allowing for growth within the Galaxy rather than comparing by division. A rate minus a rate gives us a rate which for a positive number would give us a growth rate and a negative number a dying out rate. A rate divided by a rate gives us an index without units. Either way, they must inevitably change over time, not only because the galaxy and the conditions for life are changing but there may be saturation or extinction scenarios depending on whether it is growth or dying out which is prevailing.
Having said all that. I have felt for a long time we have needed to consider a Drake equation version 2.0. Perhaps that is your equation. If so we now need v2.1 to put back the detail for discussion that has been omitted.
What should be considered? Do we need to take into account panspermia or abiogenesis? I have never seen the Drake equation used with respect to life on the moons of planets. And yet for our solar system, if we consider Europa and Titan, that is what we are contemplating. Maybe there are other sources of energy that can support life other than the home star.
How do we factor in the observations that we appear to be living around a very stable star in a very quiet part of the Galaxy; Earth is of sufficient mass to retain its atmosphere; we have a moon that provides tides which helps circulate the water and moderate the climate; and we have Jupiter strategically situated mopping up most of the stray asteroids that could otherwise bombard and threaten us? And then there are the intrinsic threats. There have been times when there has been too much or too little carbon dioxide; too much or too little oxygen. There have been erupting super volcanoes cutting out the sunlight and switching off photosynthesis.
What I think needs to be taken into account is the resilience of life on Earth. While Venus and Mars may just be within Sol's habitable zone, it suggests to me that while being on the edge may be compatible with life, it is being in the very middle that increases the chances for long term survivability leading to a technological civilisation. Otherwise and life would not have survived the harsh conditions. It seems to me that life on earth has survived because of the sheer numbers and diversity of species, so that even if 90% of species become extinct, there are still enough for an ecosystem to survive. It also seems to me that these existential threats have also been the stimulus for life to move onto the next stage.
And finally, I think as you have done in other videos, we cannot isolate the development of a civilisation as though everything else remains constant. The surrounding universe has been changing. Perhaps there has been an optimum time for life to start and an optimum place for life to survive, thrive and develop.
To sum up, rather than have a single equation, perhaps the analysis needs to be undertaken by a computer running a sophisticated mathematical model. Any formulation may need to consider different parts of the galaxy separately, defining the steps in the progress and taking into account the probability of completing each of the many steps before an inevitable fatal event. Alternatively and perhaps better is to consider the probability of simple life/complex life/civilisation not in the whole galaxy, but say within 100 light years from us. This would provide us with a far more meaningful expectation of who is out there and if in galactic terms they are close by.
very good points. civilization: rate creation minus rate death gives either an increasing or decreasing current existence ( although this is completely unknowable now), seems an improvement.
Since Webb up there now, with its ability to detect O2 in planetary atmospheres, I would like to see it substituted for the life factor. Time ( let's say 4.5 billion years) and relative stability (your point that we're in the *middle* of the goldilocks zone, plus of course a whole bunch of other factors, but resilience is very important) substituted for tech civilization maybe. Appreciate your thoughts. Overly simplified, but could grow towards complexity ( like life!).
I should have said 4.0 billion years rather than 4.5 for life.
This channel is the benchmark for astrology/cosmology education on youtube
Thanks but not astrology! Astronomy
@@CoolWorldsLab hahaha..yes,Astronomy,a typo on my part
Thanks! I agree with you that the Drake Equation is simply a way to organize our thoughts. And as we learn more, and certain things become knowable, the equation can be altered.
My new favourite channel. Thanks for the great content.
Professor Boss Level Up!
Great video.
Very good work, keep at it, Dr. Kipping.
As a child in Norwood, Ohio one of my favorite things to do was go to the Drake planetarium. We were lucky enough to have one in our HS. It’s what got me into this stuff to begin with.
Prof. Kippling's "little assistant" is so adorable!
I love this video because I have already thought about these variants that this equation just ignores. Great content, my friend!
I. Love. This. Channel. I only found you a week or so ago, and you're just about all I can watch on TH-cam right now. Thank you for all of your work
Wow! I never really thought about extinction level events on other planets before...but this video sparked a whole new avenue of thoughts for me...imagine all the planets out there that maybe had the spark of life ignite for a while...only then to have been wiped out by super big asteroid strikes or gamma ray bursts... it's just wow³ to think about all this stuff!... thanks again professor Kipping 💫
!!! TWO IN ONE DAY?!!!! HECK YEAH MAN! THANKS AGAIN! LOL
You are totally right about the best of the Drake equation: it gives a a way to cut down the uncertainty. First you find out the birth rate of stars etc. This way don't face an unsolvable problem like the birth rate of communicating civilizations. It is pinning down the conditions that are needed for a civilization to be born. In the end it provides a way of how to find civilizations: you define where you might find civilizations so you in know where to look. It is exactly what it was intended for: an equation to start discussing how and where to find civilizations. If we find life on Venus, Titan or Europa it will change the way we search for civilizations but ultimately we might never know N with any certainty.
Thanks for an engaging piece,I'm grateful to You and Drake for the direction, but ur assistant stole the show
Amazing as always
No doubt Dr. Kipping will discover something in his lifetime that will change our understanding of the Universe as we know it.
I would tend to agree to that. Passionate people ALWAYS innovate, make human civilization move forward.
Absolutely correct. There are many different variables that would need to be applied. Each star and galaxy are as different as humans. They evolve at different rates and some even went extinct.
In my Texan term, one shoe does not fit all.
More, more, more ... 😉🙏👌 .. think I love you, man.
On it!
Great video ! Here are my thoughts. Life could exist in anywhere in so many different formations outside human knowledge. Our scientific knowledge on things are ever evolving and whats right in todays world could be wrong in another hundreds years. Think about the recent videos released by the pentagon regarding ufos. Some ufos showing no signs of our physics laws limitations. Sometimes when you really think about the infinity vastness of the universe and the countless possibilities and variations, does it make sense what you have learned so far about life on earth ? Sometimes if something doesn’t look right or doesn’t make sense we try to reason. Humans are curious creatures and good story tellers. We always try to give something a definition. I personally think prof is getting ready for the june 1st reveal on ET ;) either way a great topic and a great video as usual ! Food for thought !
Just bitchin to myself about having to wait a week or two for part 2.... This is great!😍😍😍
I know! I got all giddy about it. 😆
You touched oh and every single topic that has always bugged me about the Drake equation. Plus, I always thought there was no way in heck I was the only person they had thought about this stuff LOL.
Thank you guys for all the hard work and great content!!
Well done Sir ,my favorite online professor ☆
Always had my critique on the drakes equasion , to dictated on such few terms.
Terms very difficult to measure , and we know so little about life combinate in other places of an un imageble big universe ...
Love your clear narration on the doubt full terms .
Is 46 y to old , to study astronomy ?
I would love to study further than i , should done .
My physics was intrigued by some of my questions about light physics .
At age 14 y , i asked why it could be that photons with a mass of zero , could be attracted by an black hole ?
His reply after that physcs class :
-Its based on the duality of light .
And he suggested to realy study further physics , even i followed a technical school .☆
Had developt the first CD lazers for phillips .
The same feeling he gave me , left me even more curious ...
And you Sir are the modern version of him !
My unstoppable hunger for facts about space and cutting edge physics you provides us alll.
A very big thak you , SIR ♡☆☆☆☆☆
GRTS JOHNY GEERTS OR MDT
20:45 your assistant's face trying to understand what you said 😂😂😂
18:15 holy shit, Brasil really does have a firm grasp over the internet culture
Hahhaha pensei o mesmo
exatamente hahahahahaha
Your sister professor really is a princess 💗, very intelligent and beautiful. Always remember to take care of yourself and your family.
Not got a clue what a lot of the words you use mean but I love your vdeos
Enjoying your video. I bet your going to mention stable climate....no ice ages or drought or high heat. Constant ambient temps between 5 C and 40 C. Perhaps the best temp range could also be determined by atmospheric pressure too?
Thank you David for another thought provoking video.
I must say straight off the bat that I am a simple man. I don't have any qualifications except as an electrician but I do think about thinks a lot.
My views on life beyond earth as expressed before are from what I've read in books that have reported military witness accounts of UAP around the global spanning many decades.
I like the way as a scientist you can agree there must be other life in the Milky Way other than on Earth. I appreciate that, because scientific peers have laughed loud at the notion for years because as a primitive species they haven't detected it yet. How utterly arrogant of them is my view.
I saw a talk July 2020 on TH-cam by Michio Kaku, he had a peculiar stance. He uncomfortable mumbled "We are know they exist, but we don't talk about it!". Why? Fear of ridicule from main stream science or the public? (Who are completely asleep on the subject.)
I did not know there was around 400 billion stars in the Milk Way, I only thought it was a 100. Now that we agree there is life beyond earth right now in the Milky Way is a a good start.
If you can listen or read the reports in many books spanning decades from the UK, US and other military around there world and the UAP they have witness by sea or plane or the radar operators in many countries witnessing a blip leave their air space with seconds at thousands of miles an hour without a sonic boom detected.
If you can think of a country capable of this when NASA is still spending millions on rockets and the US spends $142 million per unit on each Raptor fighter plane. Link:www.airforce-technology.com/features/most-expensive-military-aircraft/
Then someone with a technology that:
- is not using any visible propulsion is able to travel many times the speed of sound without a sonic boom.
- Move in ways not possible for winged craft.
- Craft is circular. If you could harness gravity as a propulsion and could travel in any direction, then the most efficient shape would be circular because turning is not required.
If you can imagine that is one of Earths many neighbours and they have been witnessed by military for years and they have ever once approached nor harmed anyone, then it is plausible to believe they are a benevolent species not interested in violence just observation and understanding.
If you can believe we have neighbours visiting us then, they must know how to travel faster than light as Proxima centauri is at least 7 light years away. They understand what Gravity actually is and can harness it as a propulsion around the perimeter of the circular craft because there's no visible propulsion.
I happened to notice on The Guardian website that the US government are going to publish a lot more on the subject of UAP in June 2021 by listening to John Ratcliffe of the previous Trump Administration discussing it on Fox News. He makes some interesting comments that I commend him for doing so. His views are exactly what I have read in books at least ten years ago.
"We see and detect them across the entire globe".
The Guardian news article which has an embedded link to the news bulletin dated 23/3/2021 from John Ratcliffe www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/22/us-government-ufo-report-sightings
I also feel the American CIA are a worthy mention too as they have released their documents on the topic.
Link to CIA article: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/13/cia-thousands-documents-ufos-cache
It would appear the US is doing it's bit to try and educate it's population while the topic as become public news again. That is commendable knowning just how serious biosphere change is going to effect all in the coming decades as the CO2 keeps rising into the atmosphere.
Now the you agree we have neighbours, Michio Kanu reluctantly agrees we have neighbours, the US military and secret service are disclosing to the public evidence that appears to be our neighbours.
Maybe humanUNkind can take it's head out the sand and grow its perspective of existence within the cosmos and be a species that collaborates together, each of us self polices instead of being a slave to our emotions and hurting each other and quickly change they way we live as a species so future wiser generations aren't left to clean up our mess of biosphere change that's going to change a lot of peoples lives before things improve.
Links:
NASA Climate Charts - www.climatelevels.org/?pid=2degreesinstitute&theme=grid-light
51 Billion Tons of CO2 to ZERO - www.breakthroughenergy.org/our-challenge/getting-to-zero
World Population Live Counter - www.worldometers.info/world-population/#
Ice Sheets Melt - climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/
Climate Models - climatereanalyzer.org/clim/ecm/
Deforestation Data - glad.umd.edu/gladmaps/globalmap.php#
Divided Species indicator - flagsworld.org
What if these UFO/UAP’s arent manned or alien mission to observe but are there version of probes or telescopes they launched into the galaxy just like we do . Because the questions arises if the are so intelligient then why do they crash so often because there is no way to maintain the crafts once they launch
Love your assistant ❣️🙂
Amazing, as usual. Thank you
you have some realy interresting topics
This guy can teach science.
As always, it's all in the interpretation of the facts. Nothing's changed! 🐇
Love these videos so much!
beautiful analysis
Fascinating, as always. Thank you!
Excellent. Thanks.
Thank you man!
You and jmg are my favourite learning I wish ikud go back. And do physics and astronomy and astrophysics instead of chemistry and biochemistry
Hi David, this is not directly related to this video, but I am curious if you have a personal telescope at home and if so what type and size is it? Thanks as always for the awesome videos, I am learning a lot and they do make me think about concepts I have never thought of before. You are by far my favourite presenter on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Great stuff mate. How's the search for more computing power going...... Expensive I bet especially now silicon prices are ridiculous. Good luck and thank you
I think I would dispute the idea we are a communicative civilization. First we have scarcely ever intentionally transmitted anything toward another star system and to the extent we ever have they were very short one time transmissions. If an alien SETI following identical rules to our SETI somehow detected those transmissions they would have disregarded the signals because they were too short in duration and never repeated. As far as the rest of our radio noise goes i find it hard to believe a civilization identical to ours could detect our radio noise more than say a dozen or so light years away.
The truth is the Milky Way could be thick with civilizations identical to our own and neither we, nor they would know it.
I agree and that’s why I actually removed fc in my version altogether, it’s a better defined problem to talk about civilizations (although even that isn’t easy to pin down a strict definition for)
Well, hm. I sort of regard notions like “communicative” as idealized for the purposes of Drake’s argument, aren’t they? In fact, I think calling ourselves a “civilization” is achingly generous.
Dr. Kipping’s incredibly discursive knowledge makes everything more philosophically encompassing and also more specifically meaningful-a fabulous talent. Now, because of his discursions, my opinion of the “Fermi Paradox” is in the basement along with Drake’s!
I guess I avoid parsing the authenticity of the Drake factors and instead trek further upstream in the flow of logic-Why, in fact, are we taking Drake’s Equation, Fermi’s Paradox or the Copernican Principle so literally? Isn’t it plausible or probable that these musings of brilliant men about our importance, or our rareness, were not meant by them to solve great questions or even pose them? I think of them as landmarks of curiosity, tantalizing epigraphs dropped along the course of intellectual history-like some inscription on a marble column in Ephesus, recording that the Emperor Hadrian spent the Saturnalia here in 133, epigraphic evidence that reinforces his longing and his reputation to be the most ecumenical and cosmopolitan of Roman “Princeps.” Epigraphy says more about the periphery-about Hadrian, Drake or Fermi-than about Rome, astronomy or intelligent, extra-terrestrial life. It’s the road, not the journey; or the journey, not the destination.
A wonderful British biologist, Nick Lane, authored a related exposition of life’s plausibilities in his “Life Ascending.” But he writes from the perspective of organic molecules facing the preposterous requirements to become “us.” After melding his contingencies of our “arrival” with David Kipping’s three discussions and deductions about
* our sun and its “typicality,”
* the prevalence or incidence of primitive life beyond Earth,
* the emergence of complex, sentient, volitional, civilized and technologically advanced life,
have, for me, reduced the likelihood of life’s emergence elsewhere to nearly zero.
But that’s ok, because my regard for all this happening even once, in all of cosmic history, is luxuriantly high. To my mind, an evening reading John Donne, or paging through a great survey of art from Antiquity, with a glass of sea-dark wine, and Schubert’s late piano sonatas playing nearby, is remarkably like visiting another world-and without the relativistic flat tires.
If we want to use a modification of the Drake Equation for inputting values that we measure from current astronomy (i.e. exoplanet detection and star surveys) to try to predict N, I think your new equation is too reductionist, but the original equation’s inclusion of star formation and the like isn’t very useful. I say it should avoid the rate of creation of planets altogether, as that happens on a timescale that’s not intrinsically useful to think about when wondering if there’s live out there at the moment. Our galaxy is only 180,000 light years across, meaning if we assume light-speed comms are the normal way for species to contact one another, the number of planets will not be appreciably different across timescales that we communicate within. All you’d need to know is the number of stars currently in the galaxy, or the total number of worlds around them.
But even multiplying “number of stars” with “chance for a star to have a world” with “chance that a world is habitable to life” isn’t statistically ideal. Because you’re missing out on information from each star that effects habitability, like radiation released. If the majority of planets are around red dwarfs and are so close that they’re sterile from radiation, then we don’t particularly want to let that skew the habitability average for all other stars. Just like habitability should be broken down into ice shell worlds and liquid water worlds and temperate atmospheres and anything else we can think of, we should break down and sum all the different types of stars, all the different types of worlds, et cetera. A series of parallel equations, it would be. But without all that, I think a reasonable simple compromise would be: “number of worlds with life” x “rate of civilisation formation per living world” x “average lifespan”. Importantly, it allows for multiple civilisations to be born per world, but still ignores the possibility of life appearing more than once, since it’s a safe bet that life won’t completely go away until it can never appear again in the vast majority of all cases. Breaking down that first term can be left to the exoplanet surveyors, while the other two are in the domain of exobiology and “exoanthropology” respectively.
And perhaps, instead of ending at “communicable civilisations in the whole galaxy”, we should end at “communicable civilisations within 100ca”, or “intelligent civilisations that are close enough for us to profile their atmospheres” or “close enough to notice a Dyson swarm being built” or whatever.
The fact that we don’t have a good estimate of the frequency of smaller and longer period planets from transit surveys isn’t very helpful either. It’s rather hard to correct for selection bias while retaining some semblance of statistical significance, say, for earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of their host star. Protoplanetary disc simulations help I guess.
Very well explained thank you.
Hope to see lots more new fascinating videos from your lab :)
I think my issue with the Drake Eqn is that a large number of people significantly more intelligent than just us lay people were using it to calculate N. When like you say even a child can understand it and IMO a fair few will be able to simplify it to N = Guess.
Interesting the discussion about R* as even if you could calculate it it still doesn't help with calculating or modifying the range of N.
Overall I agree it's been pretty good as it's promoted science and it's how you sell spending money on looking (or self profit by way of a book for the masses).
Although not as romantic looking for bio signatures clearly has the largest chance of success... if we don't find any Bio Signatures... which have been detectable on earth for Billions of years.. then it brings into question the point of looking for intelligent signals. Maybe there is some fear of looking for Bio Signatures as we may not want to know because if we don't find any in a known habitable region of the Galaxy.... well that's probably that.
Loved it! Please keep up the awesome work, David!
Very good.
Brilliant, thank you!
I have heard lots of criticisms of the Drake equation. Many have been reasonable. But I think the best is the one I heard from Sean Carroll…
“We cannot confirm the likelihood of life until we have a good explanation of what “life” is “.
I was thinking about N equals 1 (or more) through this Part 2, and there you said it! For a moment I felt a good mathematician :)
Now here is my question: given the N number approximately average 1.. can we determine the other variables just playing with this value "certainly not less than 1", just to find the bottom value of every other variables of the equation? At least I guess we can get a bottom reference.
Thanks for treating this subject with such passion! Cheers!
In principle yes you could do that but we don’t know that N is at least 1 because it’s the average over all times, we could just live in a brief episode where there’s a success but the average is very close to 0
@@CoolWorldsLab My bad, I assumed that "over all times" was defined by L value . I'll revisit the episode :)
spot on. thanks.
Even if we never discover signs of external life, we have to look. It is in our nature.
Life looks for life
Yes it is in our nature; curiosity is a mighty motivator; what we have is never enough; we're an insatiable creature.
@@r2out I think it's more complex than that. Yes, we do have the capacity for always wanting more, but we also have the drive to ask 'why' for the sheer joy of learning to understand our universe. The majority of scholars are born out of their passion for a subject, rather than from greed.
I think the Drake equation is extremely important since in the past, many people have just focused on the first term, saying that since there are so many stars in the galaxy (or universe) that the chance of intelligent life must be relative large. But as the Drake equation indicates, and you have discussed in previous videos, if one or more of the other terms is very small (such as the fraction of planets with life where life develops intelligence), and arguments can be made that that could indeed be the case, then the final result could be very small and even equal to 1.