soon there will be a micro nova from the sun, all tech will stop working. shortly later the magnetic polls will flip , causing crustal slippage . the oceans will rush across the continents a thousand feet high. killing 90% of all land dwelling life . erasing civilization...an actual great reset .
When I was young I was told fire pretty much can qualify as alive it eats fuel, breaths oxygen, poops ash, grows, dies and is literally symbiotic with a lot of plants.
It’s hard to find the difference between a complex self propagating chemical reaction and life because there really isn’t one (depending on your definition of course)
Right, fire meets the metabolism requirement (struggle against entropy...). So a better definition of life needs to also include something about processing and replicating information about how to do life. Fire doesn't process information (recipes) about how to build a good campfire.
"We're science fiction friendly" :) It was a great interview, but I have my doubts about a return sample from Venus. That's VERY hard. But I definitely love Venus and I find it very stupid that we haven't sent more missions there, especially since it's cheaper to send them there in terms of delta v. I don't know how space agencies has resisted the temptation to go there for so long.But I really appreciated Dr. Bains explanation about why water is needed for life and how it could be replaced by other solvents. Super interesting.
I’m so ready for either funding or a breakthrough. Love the interviews, but it’s just always: could be life, we need missions, James Webb good, red dwarfs suck, we’ll see.
whether there is life (what ever we mean by that word) on Venus or not. I think it is pretty clear, that we have big gaps in our understanding of the chemistry of Venus atmosphere. So it is time to send an atmospheric probe, a balloon or perhaps even a blimp there to begin giving us answers. or at least leads us to ask the right question.
Probes have been sent to Venus, due to the inhospitable environment, they tend not to last very long in the lower atmosphere or on the surface. Consider the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere of Venus for why ballons and such aren't usable.
"or at least leads us to ask the right question." The right questions is the secret ingredient to super genius thinking -- and any meaningful enlightenment,
Mr Cain, I have a question. If an alien civilization was broadcasting radio signals into space like we do, how far away could we detect them with our current technology? Assuming the signal was made long enough ago to actually reach us?
If it was a repeating and identifiable signal it would depend on the strength of broadcast the length of the repetition and the amount of scattering betwixt source and cypher. Of course they'll probably use neutrino transmitters as they go through stars just fine :).
I googled and found this: National radio astrometry observatory ~ How Far Away Could We See An Alien Civilization Transmitting a Powerful Radio Signal in Our Direction? Apparently the most powerful transmitters we have could be detected 10pc away by current radio telescopes and 100pc away by ones currently under construction.
I think it depends on the technology. Narrow-band signals -- probably, but good luck if they're transmitting with some modern technology such as UWB (ultra wide band) signals.
Excellent interview. My experience from astrobiology meetings is that physicists want to look at abundances of chemicals (expressed as a Chi square over a background) and biologists want to understand the ecosystem - the "Is it a Vegetarian?" question of Dr. Bains. Just finding chemicals associated with life will not (from my discussions) convince most biologists.
Thank you very much. The content is on all levels interesting. Life, as we don't know it, could be extended to the system dynamic viewpoint. (Extremely slow metabolism that is unrecognizable to us) OR from the perspective of boundary layers (aerosols with complex organics as we know it, but only active niches of turbulent flows within atmospheres. OR upside down oriented lifeforms at the bottom of the ice sheets, etc )❤
COULD IT BE? Red dwarfs when young blow all the water and atmosphere out farther into the system then later when they become docile those elements which may have accumulated in and on space debris, Kuiper belt objects, comets and asteroids could conceivable fall back onto the planets now that they are in the habitable zone? I mean, after a long time - billions of years.
IN the mid Atlantic ridge at the volcanic vents The creatures get their energy from sulfuric acid Bye the way the pressure and the temperature is about the same as the surface of Venus.
No they don't, they get it from hydrogen sulfide.., they react it with iron and other metals, eventually the sulphur compounds get turned into sulfuric acid. On a different video of his I suggested maybe there was life converting HS into HSO4 but unfortunately nothing evolved to photosynthesize turning the CO2 into O2 etc. hence it killed itself.(On Venus) If something could live on or photosynthesize SO3 , it would be a great candidate for terraforming!
If you engineered life, What could you use that can live in 800° supercritical CO2? Can you make a cell with an ionic membranes and hydrophobic non polar insides? Can sulphur and phosphorus form polymers under those conditions? Why does it have to be at high altitude?
Organic chemistry in water seems so eager while everything else seems so terminal Finding ice world tube worms are common would be nice but I expect life as we know it is the way it is, Cyanobacteria and mitochondria begetting trees, grass, insects and whatnot I’m all for unlimited research, but I expect Mars and Venus are now and have always been utterly dead; Still, I hope my cell service returns so I can hear the end of the interview
The very remote odds of a cloud of glass becoming alive are exactly the same extreme remote odds of our own basic componets becoming alive, yet THEY DID, and no one knows exactly how it started at zero day
Why do many space nerds push for colonizing Venus (in upper atmosphere) when there's no way to acquire resources locally (other than what you can extract from atmosphere), so you'd have to ferry all supplies from Earth and basically this colony wouldn't be more practical than any random space station? Do they just not consider logistics, or am I missing something?
I think a lot of them think the idea of giant aerostats because of their size makes them a good place to be. But smaller ones with ultra light study packages in bladders sure.
AT THAT POINT, WE MAY AS WELL JUST LIVE IN EARTHS UPPER ATMOSPHERE VERSUS GOING TO A PLACE WHERE WE ESSENTIALLY KNOW NOTHING COMPARED TO EARTH. EVEN IF OUR PLANET GETS SCREWED UP, ITLL PROBABLY STILL BE MORE SURVIVABLE THAN VENUS.
Because it seems more easily doable -- and the important thing is to Get Out There!!! We are confident once we are Out There compelling reasons, obvious even to a politician, will become obvious we need more Out There exploration and human involvement.
One major advantage of living in the upper atmosphere of Venus, versus a space station, would be gravity. A vessel supported by balloons and sitting above the thick atmosphere would have gravity, which is difficult to make artificially. Gravity is important for humans and any life they might bring along. Venus being about the same size as Earth should be even better than Mars or our moon.
It's the relative density of the Venetian atmosphere that makes it good. Airships don't get the requisite buoyancy in earths puny atmosphere to do us any favours. @@beaches2mountains230
Could harbor life? It’s my belief, based on scientific observation that life exists on all planets, moons and in the vacuum of space itself. The information to make this claim is out there. All one has to do is keep an open mind and look. Long fan of you Fraser. Keep up the great work.
Life that we would not recognise when we see it ..... life on a massively smaller or larger scale, life on a very dofferent perception of time, life that manifests within a frequency of vibration outside of what our senses and technology can perceive.
It has been 3 minutes watching this video and already have this ear worm of Shocking Blue „I‘am your Venus, I‘m your fire…“. That would be one of the major reasons, that I am no scientist working on celestial bodies… I am happy to be an artist, working on celestial bodies… sometimes… 😅
I was gettin "star trekn" "It's life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it Jim Klingons on the starboard side starboard side, Wipe them off Jim "
For me, life is a very long chemical reaction that withstood the injuries of time. Complexity has nothing to do with life, complexity can rise in non-living things. That said, life became more and more complex over time.
Water is necessary for life. The geometry of the water molecule is the only euclidean geometry that forms self similar fractal formation. This is why life is capable of forming endless shapes & function & Its the only thing that joins spirit & matter together. All life will use water
Remember those videos of blimps going around in Venus’ clouds? I was trying to imagine how you could deploy those. Could a blimp fill up and deploy as it’s falling into Venus’ atmosphere?
Based on how hard it is for us to replicate the life thing, I could jus imagine all the failed attempts that took off and never reproduced. These failures must outnumber success and be in record
Life is a self-replicating process of keeping low entropy compared to its surrounding. In this sense even viruses are alive in the sense, that they temporary acquire ability to replicate using host cell's genetic machinery to create copies that keep entropy of the virus low. Every process that has those characteristics of keeping its own entropy low and being able to replicate in time is an actual living thing.
When would life on Earth first have been detectable to hypothetical extraterrestrials? And how big is the sphere representing the places extraterrestrial visitors could have traveled here from if they left as soon as they detected life?
Hi Fraser! Question: we can measure our velocity relative to earth, the moon, the Sun the Milky Way etc. What is the biggest 'thing' we can measure our velocity relative to and do we know what velocity we are at if sitting in a chair on Earth?
before i watch this. i cant imagine where it is going. water to me seems so 'goldilocks' the way it so handily has it's triple point near temps we like, the bonkers way its volume changes with temp, it's polarity; so all the chemical process we take for granted happen, the way it loves to stick to itself, 'till it doesn't. maybe, on account of me living in a water based world i think overly of water. but i kinda doubt it.
48:55 ... sounds like a great candidate for a distributed computing network project using citizen scientists' computers. See also Prof. Venkata Mandala at MIT: Tiny Molecules, Big Impacts working with Folding@home. Also see A DISCUSSION OF RECENT FOLDING@HOME WORK ON AB INITIO NANOREACTOR where they used simulations to run Urey Miller experiments.
Of course life could exist in wildly different conditions but I think scientists have come to the conclusion that, most likely, it will look similar. Due to the physics that control the development as ALL LIFE.
I just love it when old science fiction turns into science fact. I mean aliens have had acid blood in movies since the 80´s. And now after 40 years of exobiologists laughing and shaking their head at the idea, suddenly they are like "you know what that could actually work." Its amazing, my father grew up watching star trek, and today we have just about everything on the enterprise safe for the warp drive and food synthesizer. I think we should be very careful before saying something is impossible at this point.
Great interview. I love the image of life going shopping for aminoacids. Would silicon-based life be more stable at high temperatures? Energy might not be such a problem if there's plenty of it around. Is life present everywhere where we find water? I think I've read that water is found 100s of km below the earth's surface, & life only 10s of km.
Let's say we are on another planet out of the solar system looking back at earth, when would we be able to detect life? My guess would be after the industrial revolution
2 eyes should be expected. When you are talking about evolution metabolism is one of the most important factors. What is the minimum needed to get the job done? For stereoscopic vision that is 2 photoreceptor organs separated by a distance. It is physics. 2 eyes is almost certainly common in the universe.
It is the most reasonable reason why our brains have been shrinking since the advent of cities. You simply don't need to spend that much energy on thinking in order to reproduce.
If Earth was around a red dwarf star, it might have had it's atmosphere blown off early on, but Earth still has volcanoes emitting various gases that would accumulate once the red dwarf star has settled down. So why would an earth-sized planet around an older red dwarf not form a new atmosphere at some point?
@@rayparent1 Also the Earth's mantle may be recycling water, so if the atmosphere was lost early, there wouldn't be as much water being released by volcanoes today.
Statistics. There are so many different ways to carbon could be put together and so hard to control, silicone puts itself together in much more limited number of ways so it's predictable and easier to engineer. But there are fantasies of using carbon to make things like Moray patterns between layers of graphene , just changing the angles between the sheets slightly, make everything from an insulator to a superconductor with all kinds of metamaterial photonic crystals inbetween, and that's just from sheets of graphene, Think of organic light-emitting diodes and transistors that operate on the molecular scale like the molecule for the dye perylene green! Carbon does have so much more potential but because it could be put together in so many different ways but it's not like we can just use our hands to put the carbon atoms where we want , it's so much harder to engineer.
@@douglaswilkinson5700 no it's fine it's really, it's one that's too commonly made to not be noticed at this point... But you know if you keep hearing it, and you can correct 100 people and you keep hearing it, eventually you start saying it yourself.. you get so used to it you don't even notice...
I would define "life" as anything that is animated (capable of moving, growing, stretching out it leaves, etc. over time): in other words, it "utilizes energy" for grown or motion. And 2.) it's capable of reproducing (transferring information to a new generation), even if it fails to adapt, evolve, and subsequently becomes extinct when the conditions of it's environment change.
3:25 “Two arms, two eye, two legs” Life on earth muddled along as slime for a couple of billion years until bilateral symmetry appeared. Looks to be some advantages for life to be as we do know it.
Was life better as slime, or is it better since then (bilateral symmetry genesis?) -in your opinion, which? May your opinion change in the event of, oh, let's say an impending doomsday asteroid collision approaches?
@@Bluebloods7 I would turn to Jesus and ask his forgiveness of course. On second thoughts I would find out the exact impact point on Earth and get there in time with a deck chair, box of cold beer and bag of weed. This way you get to enjoy the spectacle for a second before being vaporised
Plank life.....virus bacteria cells atoms rocks its all life if it has a process whats plank life then the first things that could b a starting point and things defined as fundamentals
Lets just imagine that we found some kind of Lichens stuck to the side of rocks on Mars or Venus; it would be a big deal right? I mean we spent enormous time and money looking. So what happens then? We can all see what humanity hoped to find by watching or reading any number of science fiction stories and yet reality is so far removed from that. Are we over reacting to the disappointment of not having a war with martians or friends like Mork?
yep, even us ecologists hope we'll discover a weird life form in a sealed cave somewhere that's crystaline or something... a glass moss...tar-amoebas... sulphur-newts.. lol.
Humans now have the ability to check for "errors" in the DNA of their offspring. If a group elect to correct any mutation from the parents' DNA (and can do so infallibly through rigorous methodology) do they cease to be alive?
😢...sadly I doubt I will live long enough to learn that humans from the Earth have found life - either _as_ we _know_ it, or it being _unknown_ in its composition to us. I'll be 71 this coming August 2024 - and if I reach even my late Mum's age _98yrs_+_7_mnths - ...is that enough time for humans to find _any_ lifeforms "out there... Thataway"?! I'd certainly hope so, but preferably a lot sooner, if at all possible ... come on guys, "get your 'asses' into gear" and let's find a nice planet, or a nice moon smewhere soon, with any kind of life on it, if only just to prove we are _not_ the _only_ ones in the universe?!! I want sooooo very much for life to be found elsewhere in the universe, preferably within our own solar system of course, because, if for no other reason, it takes _so_ 'flipping' _long_ to get anywhere!! 😮:Hopefully _if_/ when life's found elsewhere, other than here on Earth, it will be suitably respected, and not exploited, harmed or driven to extinction, as with far too many creatures that we do (or did) share our planet with. Our planet Earth... As the late (& sadly missed) Carl Sagan said, 🖖❤⭐"...the only home we've ever known."⭐♥️🖖
At the closest point in orbit it's about 61 million km (38 million miles) farther away than the ISS which is about 400 km 251 miles from earth. And think about how many trips it took to build/maintain the ISS. That's basically the definition of much of a stretch.
@orpal No friction in space, add some speed and wait awhile, maybe a month or two, and you are there. That space station has been populated for years. Send missions to resupply as often as you do for the ISS and the fact that each one coasts for 2 months instead of 2 days makes no difference.
The reasons for water being THE solvent for life are many fold, it dissolves a whole shitload of compounds, AND it is made of the two elements that Hydrogen-the most common element in the universe, and Oxygen-the third most common element in the universe. Helium is the second but it's electron configuration makes it too unreactive so it's out. Fluorine , as in Hydrogen fluoride as a solvent is a no go because fluorine is rare compared to the top three, plus it's chemistry is basically incompatible with water chemistry. You get one drop of HF on your skin, and you are DONE, like...dead done.
Yes, water is amazing. But the question Dr. Baines is trying to answer is whether or not it's possible for sulfuric acid to serve as a solvent. And the surprising experiment they did was to show that 19 of the 20 amino acids are unaffected by the acid. So, they're just being curious and performing experiments.
@@frasercain 1. then why not say that rather than repeat that "looking for life as we don´t know it mantra every other minute? that´s akin to saying medicine only treats the symptoms but not the disease, which is equally idiotic. 2. that´s still meaningless, do you mean silicon based life or do you mean any other element except carbon? do you mean methane as a solvent or any molecule except h2o? if you´re looking for something you have to know what you´re looking for. if you wanna test a hypothesis you must first have one. you can´t just look for anything that way you might declare everathing as life. what do you suggest they should be looking for that they´re not already? everyhting? you can (and professionally should) be sure that scientists are looking at the slightest hint of anything that might possibly called life in the remotest way. hence phosphine on venus , dms on k2-18b, oumuamua as an alien craft, the millionth dyson sphere whenever anything seems to dim and so on and so on. the statement, that scientists only ever look at life as we know it is simply not true. and a bit of an insult to scientists.
Again, I know there is a decline in Christians here in the west but I know alot of people younger and older and they all say they are sick and tired of these celebs, singers, athlete superstars or anyone who has a platform with a large audience with their satanic gang signs and rituals. The music concerts it seems is nothing but satanic themes and they all want to mock Jesus. Enough is enough. If enough of us boycot their music, concerts and hit them in the pocket maybe but more than likely not they will get over it and quit trying to shove satan down our throats. He does a good enough job attacking good Christians that he knows is right with JESUS which let's me know he's scared, cause he knows his time is getting near. Then they will all see the only way is JESUS CHRIST. ALL THINGS POSSIBLE THROUGH HIM!!!! I know I haven't watched a music awards show and there is rarely any good movies they are all about killing, violence, demons etc. It is so sad how far it all has fallen. Corruption is so rampant now I fear we truly are in the end times. We all need to stay strong and keep God's word to anyone who is smart enough to listen. Sorry for ranting, i know everone is not blind its just so depressingto see it so blantant everywhere. God bless everyone of God's children and keep vigilant on keeping all our children safe. Peace
I'm going to step in BEFORE even watching this and shoot this down. You cannot use sulfuric acid as a solvent for the biological processes simply because it has at least two problems, first, obviously, it's highly acidic, destroys any proteins/enzymes and also it is a strong dehydrating agent, binds water and hydroxyl groups, basically, it not only limits the type of reactions needed for life, it also destroys proteins, lipids, carbohydrates etc. So that idea is totally f'ed. Carbon is the ONLY realistic element for building molecules of life because of it's "just right" strength in forming and breaking bonds, and it's stability and ability to make four stable bonds, you simply cannot match the sheer insane number of molecules you can make with carbon versus any other element, and that's not a little bit, it's a ginormous amount more, no other element can lay claim to the "zoo" of compounds you can make with carbon. Other sources of energy other than oxygen ? sure, that can work, and it already has. You can have life eating everything from hydrogen sulfide gas to kerosene.
I don't know why we don't have balloons in the upper atmosphere of Venus, the pressure is similar to earth, temperatures are around 80f the gravity is similar to earth. The only thing needed is insulation from acidic clouds. In other words this environment seems much more permissive opposed to mars.
When I think of life as we don’t recognize it, I think of fire and things more sophisticated than fire; A water cycle, transforming limestone into chert and minerals producing complex jaspers from chert; Vulcanism, cryovulcanism, mineral segregation and tectonics There’s silicon life if we look at it that way but it doesn’t make dna
Please find someone to explore the liquid methane further. Seems like he /one can eliminate things (gas) /(silicon or we would have it here?). Return missions to Venus atmosphere are within our ability! Methane is Carbon based. What can we imagine or eliminate about it?
I'd define life as having three properties: 0: Maintain low entropy within the system through interactions with the environment (i.e. metabolism), 1. Replicate, 2: Process information about how to do 0 and 1. Something like that. My point being that the definition doesn't need to be overly biased by "as we know it". That being said, it is possible to argue the hypothesis that life is gonna be carbon and water based, without that argument being unimaginative or thinking inside the box. A simple definition in terms of entropy allows for a pretty broad range. I mean, who knows what's going on in stellar plasma, etc. But if you constrain the search to chemistry, you've got a very finite set of ingredients, of which carbon happens to be the only viable candidate for both structure and flexibility necessary for life. We can enumerate the short list of alternatives, and it's fairly trivial to rule those alternatives out. There could be some debate about alternative solvents, but that's a finite list too, and water is hard to beat.
Absolutely excellent. I really enjoyed the discussion regarding What is Life?. After having to teach the MRS GREN definition it's so refreshing to here a much more nuanced and encompassing version that is so much more in line with what I would like to talk about. I'm not really interested in what weird alien life may or may not look like but it makes us all realise how wondrous life here on earth really is.
OMG life on planet with acid air and 2,000 mph winds and pressure 10 x that of sea. Really far fetched and in the realms of sci-fi more than reality. We MAY find living cells or organism on the planet but if we can call it life is not known or possible.
how do you know that? you have to demnonstrate that it´s at least possible in principle. as long as you don´t, that assumption is not only not warranted but also possibly gigantic waste of time and money. also they don´t only look at life as we know it hence this video.
The assumption that a brick is not alive doesn't take into account that the brick could be hibernating. How would we recognize that any rocks or materials that we return to earth don't contain some unknown life form in a dormant state that perhaps becomes active only on the time scale of decades?
I think of life as an entropy pump. A living thing is a minimally-open physical system that keeps its internal entropy from increasing by pumping entropy into its environment. Life obtains the energy needed to do so from energy gradients in its environment.
"This is the Worst it will ever be" was such a beautifully optimistic statement for this high tech era we get to live in.
soon there will be a micro nova from the sun, all tech will stop working.
shortly later the magnetic polls will flip , causing crustal slippage . the oceans will rush across the continents a thousand feet high.
killing 90% of all land dwelling life .
erasing civilization...an actual great reset .
When I was young I was told fire pretty much can qualify as alive it eats fuel, breaths oxygen, poops ash, grows, dies and is literally symbiotic with a lot of plants.
(For the internet: that points out how difficult it is to provide a workable definition for life.)
It’s hard to find the difference between a complex self propagating chemical reaction and life because there really isn’t one (depending on your definition of course)
Right, fire meets the metabolism requirement (struggle against entropy...). So a better definition of life needs to also include something about processing and replicating information about how to do life. Fire doesn't process information (recipes) about how to build a good campfire.
If you found this interesting. Read the sci-fi novel Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Very good book! It's actually Project Hail Mary.
"We're science fiction friendly" :) It was a great interview, but I have my doubts about a return sample from Venus. That's VERY hard. But I definitely love Venus and I find it very stupid that we haven't sent more missions there, especially since it's cheaper to send them there in terms of delta v. I don't know how space agencies has resisted the temptation to go there for so long.But I really appreciated Dr. Bains explanation about why water is needed for life and how it could be replaced by other solvents. Super interesting.
I’m so ready for either funding or a breakthrough. Love the interviews, but it’s just always: could be life, we need missions, James Webb good, red dwarfs suck, we’ll see.
whether there is life (what ever we mean by that word) on Venus or not. I think it is pretty clear, that we have big gaps in our understanding of the chemistry of Venus atmosphere. So it is time to send an atmospheric probe, a balloon or perhaps even a blimp there to begin giving us answers. or at least leads us to ask the right question.
Probes have been sent to Venus, due to the inhospitable environment, they tend not to last very long in the lower atmosphere or on the surface. Consider the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere of Venus for why ballons and such aren't usable.
"or at least leads us to ask the right question." The right questions is the secret ingredient to super genius thinking -- and any meaningful enlightenment,
This was a really really interesting interview!
very cool discussion salute from Toronto :).
Mr Cain, I have a question. If an alien civilization was broadcasting radio signals into space like we do, how far away could we detect them with our current technology? Assuming the signal was made long enough ago to actually reach us?
If it was a repeating and identifiable signal it would depend on the strength of broadcast the length of the repetition and the amount of scattering betwixt source and cypher. Of course they'll probably use neutrino transmitters as they go through stars just fine :).
About 37 feet
I googled and found this:
National radio astrometry observatory ~ How Far Away Could We See An Alien Civilization Transmitting a Powerful Radio Signal in Our Direction?
Apparently the most powerful transmitters we have could be detected 10pc away by current radio telescopes and 100pc away by ones currently under construction.
I think it depends on the technology. Narrow-band signals -- probably, but good luck if they're transmitting with some modern technology such as UWB (ultra wide band) signals.
lol, and also recievers lol...in other words, you can't use them because you can't catch enough to get a discrimination between signal and noise...
Definition of life: fight against entropy.
Just like White Wolf's *Mage: the Ascension* back in the 90s! Don't forget to take a few pips of Prime, tho
Nothing could live in the gaseous clouds around Uranus
There are Klingons around Uranus
It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.
Super interesting interview!
Excellent interview.
My experience from astrobiology meetings is that physicists want to look at abundances of chemicals (expressed as a Chi square over a background) and biologists want to understand the ecosystem - the "Is it a Vegetarian?" question of Dr. Bains. Just finding chemicals associated with life will not (from my discussions) convince most biologists.
Great interview, thank you Fraser!
Thank you very much. The content is on all levels interesting. Life, as we don't know it, could be extended to the system dynamic viewpoint. (Extremely slow metabolism that is unrecognizable to us) OR from the perspective of boundary layers (aerosols with complex organics as we know it, but only active niches of turbulent flows within atmospheres. OR upside down oriented lifeforms at the bottom of the ice sheets, etc )❤
COULD IT BE?
Red dwarfs when young blow all the water and atmosphere out farther into the system then later when they become docile those elements which may have accumulated in and on space debris, Kuiper belt objects, comets and asteroids could conceivable fall back onto the planets now that they are in the habitable zone? I mean, after a long time - billions of years.
IN the mid Atlantic ridge at the volcanic vents
The creatures get their energy from sulfuric acid
Bye the way the pressure and the temperature is about the same as the surface of Venus.
No they don't, they get it from hydrogen sulfide.., they react it with iron and other metals, eventually the sulphur compounds get turned into sulfuric acid.
On a different video of his I suggested maybe there was life converting HS into HSO4 but unfortunately nothing evolved to photosynthesize turning the CO2 into O2 etc. hence it killed itself.(On Venus)
If something could live on or photosynthesize SO3 , it would be a great candidate for terraforming!
If you engineered life,
What could you use that can live in 800° supercritical CO2?
Can you make a cell with an ionic membranes and hydrophobic non polar insides?
Can sulphur and phosphorus form polymers under those conditions?
Why does it have to be at high altitude?
Organic chemistry in water seems so eager while everything else seems so terminal
Finding ice world tube worms are common would be nice but I expect life as we know it is the way it is, Cyanobacteria and mitochondria begetting trees, grass, insects and whatnot
I’m all for unlimited research, but I expect Mars and Venus are now and have always been utterly dead;
Still, I hope my cell service returns so I can hear the end of the interview
The very remote odds of a cloud of glass becoming alive are exactly the same extreme remote odds of our own basic componets becoming alive, yet THEY DID, and no one knows exactly how it started at zero day
I would say that glass is pretty inert, but a cloud of gas might get dispersed, but then a fart can hang around for a long time.
Why do many space nerds push for colonizing Venus (in upper atmosphere) when there's no way to acquire resources locally (other than what you can extract from atmosphere), so you'd have to ferry all supplies from Earth and basically this colony wouldn't be more practical than any random space station? Do they just not consider logistics, or am I missing something?
I think a lot of them think the idea of giant aerostats because of their size makes them a good place to be. But smaller ones with ultra light study packages in bladders sure.
AT THAT POINT, WE MAY AS WELL JUST LIVE IN EARTHS UPPER ATMOSPHERE VERSUS GOING TO A PLACE WHERE WE ESSENTIALLY KNOW NOTHING COMPARED TO EARTH. EVEN IF OUR PLANET GETS SCREWED UP, ITLL PROBABLY STILL BE MORE SURVIVABLE THAN VENUS.
Because it seems more easily doable -- and the important thing is to Get Out There!!! We are confident once we are Out There compelling reasons, obvious even to a politician, will become obvious we need more Out There exploration and human involvement.
One major advantage of living in the upper atmosphere of Venus, versus a space station, would be gravity. A vessel supported by balloons and sitting above the thick atmosphere would have gravity, which is difficult to make artificially. Gravity is important for humans and any life they might bring along. Venus being about the same size as Earth should be even better than Mars or our moon.
It's the relative density of the Venetian atmosphere that makes it good. Airships don't get the requisite buoyancy in earths puny atmosphere to do us any favours. @@beaches2mountains230
Could harbor life? It’s my belief, based on scientific observation that life exists on all planets, moons and in the vacuum of space itself. The information to make this claim is out there. All one has to do is keep an open mind and look. Long fan of you Fraser. Keep up the great work.
Darn. Please share the data from your private probes, sir 🙏
@@archmage_of_the_aether It's all a matter of interpretation of known DATA. Some of Carl Sagan's writings came to the same conclusion.
10:21. Every time I’m dropping a deuce I’ll remember that it’s proof that I am alive.
They're a magnificent example of life. Poop on, my friend, 💩
@@frasercain I promise that I will continue to do so!
Great interview thank you
The alien in Ridley Scott’s movie “Alien” had some sort of super acid as blood.
The dude's called xenomorph
@@JurisKankalis Sure was a mean SOB
Living creatures use free energy to reduce local entropy.
Life that we would not recognise when we see it ..... life on a massively smaller or larger scale, life on a very dofferent perception of time, life that manifests within a frequency of vibration outside of what our senses and technology can perceive.
i was surprised to learn how inconclusive the idea of living organisms in EARTH'S atmosphere is
The altitude anyway.
That’s where the formless 5D jellyfish people live 🪼👽
3D, sure. The 5D ones occasionally interact.
It has been 3 minutes watching this video and already have this ear worm of Shocking Blue „I‘am your Venus, I‘m your fire…“. That would be one of the major reasons, that I am no scientist working on celestial bodies… I am happy to be an artist, working on celestial bodies… sometimes… 😅
I was gettin "star trekn"
"It's life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it Jim
Klingons on the starboard side starboard side,
Wipe them off Jim "
For me, life is a very long chemical reaction that withstood the injuries of time.
Complexity has nothing to do with life, complexity can rise in non-living things. That said, life became more and more complex over time.
Life as we don't know it is probably the life that's out there...if any 🤷
Water is necessary for life. The geometry of the water molecule is the only euclidean geometry that forms self similar fractal formation. This is why life is capable of forming endless shapes & function & Its the only thing that joins spirit & matter together. All life will use water
Remember those videos of blimps going around in Venus’ clouds? I was trying to imagine how you could deploy those. Could a blimp fill up and deploy as it’s falling into Venus’ atmosphere?
Based on how hard it is for us to replicate the life thing, I could jus imagine all the failed attempts that took off and never reproduced. These failures must outnumber success and be in record
A Fluid more Acidic than Water, would require Elements which could survive the Fluid...
The entire planet could be a lifeform LIFE FORM
What is life?
Baby, don't hurt me.
😎
Life is a self-replicating process of keeping low entropy compared to its surrounding. In this sense even viruses are alive in the sense, that they temporary acquire ability to replicate using host cell's genetic machinery to create copies that keep entropy of the virus low.
Every process that has those characteristics of keeping its own entropy low and being able to replicate in time is an actual living thing.
When would life on Earth first have been detectable to hypothetical extraterrestrials? And how big is the sphere representing the places extraterrestrial visitors could have traveled here from if they left as soon as they detected life?
yes a planet worth study :)
Hi Fraser! Question: we can measure our velocity relative to earth, the moon, the Sun the Milky Way etc. What is the biggest 'thing' we can measure our velocity relative to and do we know what velocity we are at if sitting in a chair on Earth?
My bet is on europa
❤"All these worlds are yours
Except Europa.
Attempt no landing there."❤
before i watch this. i cant imagine where it is going. water to me seems so 'goldilocks' the way it so handily has it's triple point near temps we like, the bonkers way its volume changes with temp, it's polarity; so all the chemical process we take for granted happen, the way it loves to stick to itself, 'till it doesn't. maybe, on account of me living in a water based world i think overly of water. but i kinda doubt it.
Did they try passing electric charges or something analogous to lightning through the sulfuric acid with base pairs dissolved in the sulfuric acid?
Looking forward to the mission to send an airtight bubble containing the University of Cambridge on a grand tour of the solar system!
Should be easy enough.
48:55 ... sounds like a great candidate for a distributed computing network project using citizen scientists' computers. See also Prof. Venkata Mandala at MIT: Tiny Molecules, Big Impacts working with Folding@home. Also see A DISCUSSION OF RECENT FOLDING@HOME WORK ON AB INITIO NANOREACTOR where they used simulations to run Urey Miller experiments.
This was good.
Shame that Titan fish are probably not likely, but nevermind.
"we call ourselves 'physche'."
Of course life could exist in wildly different conditions but I think scientists have come to the conclusion that, most likely, it will look similar. Due to the physics that control the development as ALL LIFE.
I just love it when old science fiction turns into science fact. I mean aliens have had acid blood in movies since the 80´s. And now after 40 years of exobiologists laughing and shaking their head at the idea, suddenly they are like "you know what that could actually work."
Its amazing, my father grew up watching star trek, and today we have just about everything on the enterprise safe for the warp drive and food synthesizer. I think we should be very careful before saying something is impossible at this point.
3.22 - is dr bains really using a 3:4 monitor?
"Life" - As in matter interacting complexly?
("Things that have membranes" ~biologists)
Great interview. I love the image of life going shopping for aminoacids.
Would silicon-based life be more stable at high temperatures? Energy might not be such a problem if there's plenty of it around.
Is life present everywhere where we find water? I think I've read that water is found 100s of km below the earth's surface, & life only 10s of km.
silicon based chemistries do not lend themselves to life due to silicon's double bonds being asymmetrical
Let's say we are on another planet out of the solar system looking back at earth, when would we be able to detect life? My guess would be after the industrial revolution
"What are you obsessed about lately?" seems extreme to ask. How about, "What else are you excited about lately?"
Interesting people are obsessed by ideas. I want to know what's consuming their brain right now because it gives me a glimpse into what's coming next.
@@frasercainSpot-on!
aye! @@frasercain
Thanks.
he looks like every Star Trek character at once
2 eyes should be expected. When you are talking about evolution metabolism is one of the most important factors. What is the minimum needed to get the job done? For stereoscopic vision that is 2 photoreceptor organs separated by a distance. It is physics. 2 eyes is almost certainly common in the universe.
It is the most reasonable reason why our brains have been shrinking since the advent of cities. You simply don't need to spend that much energy on thinking in order to reproduce.
If Earth was around a red dwarf star, it might have had it's atmosphere blown off early on, but Earth still has volcanoes emitting various gases that would accumulate once the red dwarf star has settled down. So why would an earth-sized planet around an older red dwarf not form a new atmosphere at some point?
Atmospheres weigh a lot. It's not a small amount of material. We'd have to assume the magneticfield lasts that long to
@@rayparent1 Also the Earth's mantle may be recycling water, so if the atmosphere was lost early, there wouldn't be as much water being released by volcanoes today.
Russia had quite the powerful interest with all of the probes sent in the past. Hats off for the good work the scientists performed
If it’s so easy to use carbon why we don’t use it for our chips and not silicone?
Statistics. There are so many different ways to carbon could be put together and so hard to control, silicone puts itself together in much more limited number of ways so it's predictable and easier to engineer.
But there are fantasies of using carbon to make things like Moray patterns between layers of graphene , just changing the angles between the sheets slightly, make everything from an insulator to a superconductor with all kinds of metamaterial photonic crystals inbetween, and that's just from sheets of graphene,
Think of organic light-emitting diodes and transistors that operate on the molecular scale like the molecule for the dye perylene green!
Carbon does have so much more potential but because it could be put together in so many different ways but it's not like we can just use our hands to put the carbon atoms where we want , it's so much harder to engineer.
I think you mean *silcon* and not silicone.
@@douglaswilkinson5700 ha! Both of us, I shoulda cought that...
Unless you're doing a microfluidic chip🤷
@@petevenuti7355When I see little errors like that I usually don't comment. This time it seemed appropriate.
@@douglaswilkinson5700 no it's fine it's really, it's one that's too commonly made to not be noticed at this point... But you know if you keep hearing it, and you can correct 100 people and you keep hearing it, eventually you start saying it yourself.. you get so used to it you don't even notice...
I would define "life" as anything that is animated (capable of moving, growing, stretching out it leaves, etc. over time): in other words, it "utilizes energy" for grown or motion. And 2.) it's capable of reproducing (transferring information to a new generation), even if it fails to adapt, evolve, and subsequently becomes extinct when the conditions of it's environment change.
Mules are alive.
Life = area of anti-entropy seems more useful.
Fire?
Heje is a sea monky life :) Interesting question
.
3:25 “Two arms, two eye, two legs”
Life on earth muddled along as slime for a couple of billion years until bilateral symmetry appeared. Looks to be some advantages for life to be as we do know it.
Was life better as slime, or is it better since then (bilateral symmetry genesis?) -in your opinion, which? May your opinion change in the event of, oh, let's say an impending doomsday asteroid collision approaches?
@@Bluebloods7 I would turn to Jesus and ask his forgiveness of course. On second thoughts I would find out the exact impact point on Earth and get there in time with a deck chair, box of cold beer and bag of weed. This way you get to enjoy the spectacle for a second before being vaporised
@@mitseraffej5812 lol
Plank life.....virus bacteria cells atoms rocks its all life if it has a process whats plank life then the first things that could b a starting point and things defined as fundamentals
Lets just imagine that we found some kind of Lichens stuck to the side of rocks on Mars or Venus; it would be a big deal right? I mean we spent enormous time and money looking. So what happens then?
We can all see what humanity hoped to find by watching or reading any number of science fiction stories and yet reality is so far removed from that. Are we over reacting to the disappointment of not having a war with martians or friends like Mork?
Does such life exist on Earth? Because, why not?..
I guess we already know what he's "obsessed about" for now 😅
yep, even us ecologists hope we'll discover a weird life form in a sealed cave somewhere that's crystaline or something... a glass moss...tar-amoebas... sulphur-newts.. lol.
All good
Humans now have the ability to check for "errors" in the DNA of their offspring. If a group elect to correct any mutation from the parents' DNA (and can do so infallibly through rigorous methodology) do they cease to be alive?
Known Unknowns vs Unknown Unknowns anyone!?
Uhmmm, there is already life that uses silicon atoms on Earth, they are called Diatoms... o_O
😢...sadly I doubt I will live long enough to learn that humans from the Earth have found life - either _as_ we _know_ it, or it being _unknown_ in its composition to us. I'll be 71 this coming August 2024 - and if I reach even my late Mum's age _98yrs_+_7_mnths - ...is that enough time for humans to find _any_ lifeforms "out there... Thataway"?!
I'd certainly hope so, but preferably a lot sooner, if at all possible ... come on guys, "get your 'asses' into gear" and let's find a nice planet, or a nice moon smewhere soon, with any kind of life on it, if only just to prove we are _not_ the _only_ ones in the universe?!!
I want sooooo very much for life to be found elsewhere in the universe, preferably within our own solar system of course, because, if for no other reason, it takes _so_ 'flipping' _long_ to get anywhere!! 😮:Hopefully _if_/ when life's found elsewhere, other than here on Earth, it will be suitably respected, and not exploited, harmed or driven to extinction, as with far too many creatures that we do (or did) share our planet with. Our planet Earth... As the late (& sadly missed) Carl Sagan said,
🖖❤⭐"...the only home we've ever known."⭐♥️🖖
It's life Jim but not as we know it.... 😆
We have an international space station orbiting around. Does not seem like much of a stretch to put one of those around venus too.
At the closest point in orbit it's about 61 million km (38 million miles) farther away than the ISS which is about 400 km 251 miles from earth. And think about how many trips it took to build/maintain the ISS. That's basically the definition of much of a stretch.
@orpal
No friction in space, add some speed and wait awhile, maybe a month or two, and you are there. That space station has been populated for years.
Send missions to resupply as often as you do for the ISS and the fact that each one coasts for 2 months instead of 2 days makes no difference.
@@deltalima6703lmao read a book
@rayparent1 great advice, I might do that sometime.
@@deltalima6703 good hopefully you will learn how building and maintaining the iss would be nothing like a venus space station
Why does life have to reproduce or evolve? To me something can be alive without either of those.....
The reasons for water being THE solvent for life are many fold, it dissolves a whole shitload of compounds, AND it is made of the two elements that Hydrogen-the most common element in the universe, and Oxygen-the third most common element in the universe. Helium is the second but it's electron configuration makes it too unreactive so it's out. Fluorine , as in Hydrogen fluoride as a solvent is a no go because fluorine is rare compared to the top three, plus it's chemistry is basically incompatible with water chemistry. You get one drop of HF on your skin, and you are DONE, like...dead done.
Yes, water is amazing. But the question Dr. Baines is trying to answer is whether or not it's possible for sulfuric acid to serve as a solvent. And the surprising experiment they did was to show that 19 of the 20 amino acids are unaffected by the acid. So, they're just being curious and performing experiments.
Some indication extreme high pressure does something about Helium's non reactivity. Who knows what happens in Jupiter's heart?
you realize though that, looking for life as we don´t know it is a completely meaningless statement?
Generally it means looking for non-carbon based life or life that doesn't use water as a solvent.
@@frasercain 1. then why not say that rather than repeat that "looking for life as we don´t know it mantra every other minute? that´s akin to saying medicine only treats the symptoms but not the disease, which is equally idiotic.
2. that´s still meaningless, do you mean silicon based life or do you mean any other element except carbon? do you mean methane as a solvent or any molecule except h2o? if you´re looking for something you have to know what you´re looking for. if you wanna test a hypothesis you must first have one. you can´t just look for anything that way you might declare everathing as life.
what do you suggest they should be looking for that they´re not already? everyhting?
you can (and professionally should) be sure that scientists are looking at the slightest hint of anything that might possibly called life in the remotest way. hence phosphine on venus , dms on k2-18b, oumuamua as an alien craft, the millionth dyson sphere whenever anything seems to dim and so on and so on.
the statement, that scientists only ever look at life as we know it is simply not true. and a bit of an insult to scientists.
Again, I know there is a decline in Christians here in the west but I know alot of people younger and older and they all say they are sick and tired of these celebs, singers, athlete superstars or anyone who has a platform with a large audience with their satanic gang signs and rituals. The music concerts it seems is nothing but satanic themes and they all want to mock Jesus. Enough is enough. If enough of us boycot their music, concerts and hit them in the pocket maybe but more than likely not they will get over it and quit trying to shove satan down our throats. He does a good enough job attacking good Christians that he knows is right with JESUS which let's me know he's scared, cause he knows his time is getting near. Then they will all see the only way is JESUS CHRIST. ALL THINGS POSSIBLE THROUGH HIM!!!! I know I haven't watched a music awards show and there is rarely any good movies they are all about killing, violence, demons etc. It is so sad how far it all has fallen. Corruption is so rampant now I fear we truly are in the end times. We all need to stay strong and keep God's word to anyone who is smart enough to listen. Sorry for ranting, i know everone is not blind its just so depressingto see it so blantant everywhere. God bless everyone of God's children and keep vigilant on keeping all our children safe. Peace
But how do you feel about space?
Fraser, how irradiated is the James Webb Telescope by now?
It's a robot, it loves it.
Why does bender and an irradiation machine come to mind lol.
@@frasercain
Great interview again Fraser, you really are the master in this class of journalism.
Could, could, could. Santa could live on Venus and could be drinking tea with the flying spaghetti monster right now.
I'd like to see a debate about cheeses, between God and The Flyng Spaghetti Monster.
I poop, therefore I am alive.
I'm going to step in BEFORE even watching this and shoot this down. You cannot use sulfuric acid as a solvent for the biological processes simply because it has at least two problems, first, obviously, it's highly acidic, destroys any proteins/enzymes and also it is a strong dehydrating agent, binds water and hydroxyl groups, basically, it not only limits the type of reactions needed for life, it also destroys proteins, lipids, carbohydrates etc. So that idea is totally f'ed. Carbon is the ONLY realistic element for building molecules of life because of it's "just right" strength in forming and breaking bonds, and it's stability and ability to make four stable bonds, you simply cannot match the sheer insane number of molecules you can make with carbon versus any other element, and that's not a little bit, it's a ginormous amount more, no other element can lay claim to the "zoo" of compounds you can make with carbon. Other sources of energy other than oxygen ? sure, that can work, and it already has. You can have life eating everything from hydrogen sulfide gas to kerosene.
Yeah, so star trek isn't a documentary lol
Yea, Galaxy Quest! Best "Star Trek" movie made.
I don't know why we don't have balloons in the upper atmosphere of Venus, the pressure is similar to earth, temperatures are around 80f the gravity is similar to earth. The only thing needed is insulation from acidic clouds. In other words this environment seems much more permissive opposed to mars.
When I think of life as we don’t recognize it, I think of fire and things more sophisticated than fire;
A water cycle, transforming limestone into chert and minerals producing complex jaspers from chert;
Vulcanism, cryovulcanism, mineral segregation and tectonics
There’s silicon life if we look at it that way but it doesn’t make dna
Great interview guys, thank you
Please find someone to explore the liquid methane further. Seems like he /one can eliminate things (gas) /(silicon or we would have it here?). Return missions to Venus atmosphere are within our ability! Methane is Carbon based. What can we imagine or eliminate about it?
Dr. Angela Collier (acollierastro) has an in-depth video why aliens will not be silicon based.
That was an awesomely entertaining interview!
Vialant Thor!
I'd define life as having three properties: 0: Maintain low entropy within the system through interactions with the environment (i.e. metabolism), 1. Replicate, 2: Process information about how to do 0 and 1.
Something like that. My point being that the definition doesn't need to be overly biased by "as we know it".
That being said, it is possible to argue the hypothesis that life is gonna be carbon and water based, without that argument being unimaginative or thinking inside the box.
A simple definition in terms of entropy allows for a pretty broad range. I mean, who knows what's going on in stellar plasma, etc. But if you constrain the search to chemistry, you've got a very finite set of ingredients, of which carbon happens to be the only viable candidate for both structure and flexibility necessary for life. We can enumerate the short list of alternatives, and it's fairly trivial to rule those alternatives out. There could be some debate about alternative solvents, but that's a finite list too, and water is hard to beat.
Absolutely excellent. I really enjoyed the discussion regarding What is Life?. After having to teach the MRS GREN definition it's so refreshing to here a much more nuanced and encompassing version that is so much more in line with what I would like to talk about.
I'm not really interested in what weird alien life may or may not look like but it makes us all realise how wondrous life here on earth really is.
OMG life on planet with acid air and 2,000 mph winds and pressure 10 x that of sea. Really far fetched and in the realms of sci-fi more than reality. We MAY find living cells or organism on the planet but if we can call it life is not known or possible.
I’ve always thought this too. They look for life as we know it but life could be made of totally different than us
how do you know that? you have to demnonstrate that it´s at least possible in principle. as long as you don´t, that assumption is not only not warranted but also possibly gigantic waste of time and money. also they don´t only look at life as we know it hence this video.
🌘🌟🌒
The assumption that a brick is not alive doesn't take into account that the brick could be hibernating. How would we recognize that any rocks or materials that we return to earth don't contain some unknown life form in a dormant state that perhaps becomes active only on the time scale of decades?
I think of life as an entropy pump. A living thing is a minimally-open physical system that keeps its internal entropy from increasing by pumping entropy into its environment. Life obtains the energy needed to do so from energy gradients in its environment.