Are Aliens Smarter Than Us? With Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Grinspoon 

What's the first question you would ask a visiting alien?

Thank you to everyone that brings StarTalk to us. I just love this show. Can't get enough of you guys. 💗

David needs his own show. He’s a wealth of knowledge and so pleasant to listen to.

Thank you Neil for bringing love for science back

I so love love love StarTalk!!! Thank you for always educating and enlightening us. Dr. Tyson and Lord Chuck Nice are such a great duo! - Fan and follower for life!🥰🌠

Always a pleasure to listen to this show. Keep it up, guys. You rock! 👍👍

I love StarTalk and all the hosts and guests always presented in an easy digestable format :)

The top like 5% of bears are smarter than our bottom percentile. Algae makes better choices than some people. I'm giving it a preliminary yes.

Neil and Chuck could discuss burnt toast and I'd still be enthralled. Its so cathartic to see how these two finesse science. NEVER stop!!!!!!

Love these talks, where can one submit questions for the show

I’m new to Startalk, but it’s my favorite “channel” (I turfed out the telly years ago). Intriguing subject matter, an intelligent presenter and guests; served with humour and good cheer.

Always a great privilege of learning new knowledge from you guys 🙏🏽

Wow.... Chuck had the best questions...he was on the same level as the other 2... Loved the silicon and conditions question... It blew my mind that someone had the boldness to think outside of our own understanding.... Good on ya Chuck!

When discussing the limitations of variation between silicon bonds and carbon bonds, I wonder if there are places in the universe where some of our specialized and sophisticated materials occur naturally. Does plastic exist beyond our influence, occurring naturally? Are there mountain-sized semiconductors of silicon/germanium that could operate as giant, functional transistors, just as they are?

The episodes with Chuck are always 🔥

Thanks for the wonderful videos on discussions guys. They mean a lot to me

Thanks everybody, for the fun and interesting conversation!

I'd LOVE TO SEE a probe STUDY and photograph TRITON. I LOVE moons that have geological activity.

Great video. Verry interesting 4 me. Pls do more like this. We want more!!

Great episode. Dr. Funkyspoon is always great.

On the question in science fiction about encountering intelligent but less advanced civilizations, this theme comes up repeatedly in the Star Trek canon, where humans (and other advanced species) decided on a policy of non-intervention and non-contact with any civilization not capable of interstellar travel, aka The Prime Directive. Humans themselves were left to themselves until the the moment they developed faster-than-light travel, at which point the Vulcans initiated First Contact. There’s also the famous quote from Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I love this show I have only found it here on RU-vid thoe.does this come on tv?can I get this on firestick?

around minute 07:00 to 07:40... life signature, very well spoken!

Wonderful episode!

I use these videos for sleeping. So I am always happy when I see a new vudeo notification from this channel during the day.

Great show guys! The issue of finding less intelligent life is often addressed in Star Trek - hence the "prime directive" which says humans must not interfere with the development of species less advanced than ourselves

A Great episode! Thank you to Neil, Chuck, and Funky spoon 💗 Respect.

25:00 awesome! !So, it's the black holes that form galaxies ?

please keep posting in general and please keep posting about aliens as long as you feel it's important, because we deff wanna hear you talk about aliens more please

My question would be to Ask what types of bonds scientists have tried on earth with silicon. Knowing it's bonds are more rigid is fine, but considering how little we know about universe now - wouldn't there be some possible combinations we havn't tried yet that could be possible for alternate forms of life?

Love the show guys. Always informative and provocative. The question of having a contact protocol, or protocols, for alien life brings up some serious moral questions that we must ask and answer first, IMO. I think that the whole issue may turn out to be much more complex than the cliché of a superior space faring civilization dropping by and asking us to take them to our leader. In that situation we certainly need some advance and agreed upon principles, but realistically, we would almost certainly have very little control over that situation. It is all the other possible subsets that may require some serious soul searching from humanity et al. If carbon/water based life is the only, or the most common, form in the universe, I suspect that we will encounter complex, possibly even intelligent, alien carbon based life in our own solar system long before contact with any extra solar civilization. Who is to say that moons with tidally heated sub surface oceans are not a more stable and more common location for carbon based life than, habitable zone, rocky, water/atmosphere planets, with long lasting magnetic fields, and stable suns, are. If that is the case, and we encounter a totally alien eco system, we will be on the other side of such contact protocols, and we will be judged by those choices. The question that I ask myself is in such a situation what would we do? Will we be cautious, respectful and altruistic towards this alien life or will we build some nice big habitats, and pillage local resources to support it, while we plan the full colonization, and possibly contaminate a fragile ecosystem with some new opportunistic organisms. What I hope we would do, and what I believe we would do, are two very different things, unfortunately. Another protocol question is if we do find even alien microbial life on a planet or moon in the solar system, do we have the right to interfere with even that simple life? Just because life on a body is simple at the moment does not mean that as conditions change over hundreds of millions of years or longer that the simple life may not evolve into a complex or even a sentient technological species. Who are we to make such decisions? Posit a hypothetical, compatible, space faring species landing here 3.4 billion years ago, looking around and saying, sweet, nothing here but these oxygen producing bacteria and we want that, lets move in. None of us would be reading this now. Personally I think the default position for contact with any less complex alien life discovered by us should be the LITFA protocol (Leave It The Fu** Alone).

Very very funny as well as mind expanding.

Not 100% Sure, but at higher temperatures and in the presence of certain other elements, Doesn't silicon loosen up a bit and start forming more flexible variations of molecules?

I love the Star Trek talk in between the Star Talk. :D LLAP

Fantastic episode,Greetings from India...Happy stargazing...Keep looking up!

CHUCK NICE IN THE HOUSE!!!! I LOVE YOU CHUCK!!!! NEIL YOU ARE GREAT ALSO!!!!

thank you chuck for always asking what i'm thinking

A great show. You guys are really informative and funny. Did I say smart? Go Boston I grew up there.

I've wondered this very question for ... probably at least 4 decades, since I ran across the concept in a science fiction story (thank you, Asimov!). I'm going to be interested in what you all have to say!

Unless we find aliens who are in their cavemen period of existence, then there is no way humans are smarter than aliens lolz ❤️👍

Very good, thank you!... 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 Or, as they say in French: "Très bien, merci"!! The #CosmicQueriesEpisodes are UNDERRATED, we need more, more, more...

No one is smarter than Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not even aliens.

chuck always makes me happy

I would think one of the biggest proponents of assuming they are more advanced than us is because we accept that when we view these far away places is that we are peering through the lens of time. We arent seeing the object as it is but as it was. So, to "see" a civilization on a far out planet in another galaxy, or even our own, it would have to have been there long enough to affect the light we are currently viewing. This adds to the complexity of the window with which we can visably detect. We may view a planet that appears devoid of life that is teaming with it because its fairly recent; or we may see an active civilisation.... which could actually be long gone.

Dr. Tyson, does the black hole at the center of the galaxy the engine that drives the galaxy? Meaning the spin.

The last question saved the world thank you Chuck 🙏

Hey Neil plz do a video on Dr paradox . He is a character in the famous animated series Ben 10. In short he is a time traveller who forgot his name and hence got the name paradox. Thank you Love from India 👍

When we think of the evolutionary development of advanced alien species we assume that they went through the phase we are at now. Thinking outside the box let’s consider that they may have skipped that stage and went on to super-intelligence instantly. Let’s also assume that they are a benevolent species. We can start there and then bring other evolutionary traits in to consideration to explain their development. Evolutionary development like ours probably is not the only way. But it is fun to consider all the different possibilities. I love how Neil, David and Chuck get me to think outside the box. Thanks guys.

Love this one thank you for being honest and smart ❤️

A bit of trivia. There is an Australian band called "Grinspoon" named after David's father Prof Lester Grinspoon who (from the bands point of view) is best known for his groundbreaking works on the science and social policy of cannabis.

Really enjoyed listening to your conversations. It seems that when the question is asked what kind of life there might be out there, that is something that we are really blind to. We really only know of one form of life, that being the cellular based life that we have here on this planet. If we did not have ourselves to observe, we would never be able to imagine our own form of life, the cell based variety. It seems really far beyond what our imaginations are capable of thinking of when we ask what types of life are possible other than our own cell based life. We could really be in for some big surprises someday when we run into life elsewhere.

I have a question, maybe someone here knows the answer to. How far off are those 12 earth- like planets? Did our radio get to them? How long till we hear back?

I loved "Venus Revealed." I wish it was available on Audible.

44:10 Perhaps one of the most interesting possibilities in a hypothetical multiverse is that there’s one wherein Chuck is known for pronouncing each name correctly.

And yes they would be far older than we can understand. Anybody who understands the concept of "Deep time" should be able to "See" the concept.

Problem with finding NTIs is that until we can go there (or they come here), all we can do is listen. Imagine they are 500 light years away. They would have to been at a radio frequency capable tech level 500 years ago, and they will have had to send out a powerful enough signal that it doesn't blend into the background before it gets here. Even we are moving towarf low power and directional. Now add in the expansion of space. Gets geometrically harder as you think of and add new requirements. Hope they find one, but I doubt we are definitively detect except by from very close, so I would think NTIs would be the same.

@3:04 I love that chuck knows he does that in the book because it shows he actually read it and wasn't just doing a sponsor script

Does anyone know why an exoplanet being earth size is relevant? I get Goldilocks zone, but is size a significant factor in habitability?

It takes time. But if you think as deep as possible, over and over and over again, you start to notice how unfathomable our universe is. Also human beings and consciousness, we must being missing something. Something we just can’t understand.

What does one need to do to become an astrobiologist? Id love a job like that but I don't feel like there's alot of job opportunities for it

Thanks Much !

We might be getting pranked by aliens but it should be of some consolation that they probably had to go through this phase too at some point. And it may be that we as individuals aren't able to communicate with, say, a single relatively hyper-intelligent alien but perhaps as a species or when they look at our collective efforts we hold up better.

I nominate Chuck as President of StarTalk. And also he should get an honorary doctorate for his efforts to educate and relate the science of climate change for the rest of us.

If some form of life used ammonia instead of water, What forms of redox reactions are available to base their metabolism on?

When he mentioned his band has a Nasa employee . I immediately thought of Rajesh and Howard ( 🎶Thor and Doctor Jones ) 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣

Just because silicone could not be the base of life in experiments because it does not bond in different directions does not exclude that it could not become attached to carbon in a way that it can change shape. As you said about the Legos, do they not come with attachments that bend?

Evening from the UK

If all galaxies have SM black holes, should we (the galaxies) just be considered the accretion disk of a black hole?

They will be able to pour on a silicone/ carbon mix for heat shielding for retuning spacecraft. 12:24

Great topics, and as a side note; thanks to my poor screen I thought his hat was a bowl cut for a good portion.

Smarter than what sample of "us?" Some USA insurgents call themselves "patriots...."

I was under the impression that the population 3 stars were able to be much larger than the Eddington Limit and all created supermassive black holes and then the galaxies formed around them form the resulting remnants.

It's quite amazing that we've existed as a speices for 300 000 years (give or take) and never been able to see more than a couple of miles with any real accuracy, but the development in tech the last 100 years have enable us to read atmospheres a couple of hundred lightyears away. That's some serious exponential development we more or less take for granted.

Where do you come from &/or how far away are you from in relation to our sun ( Sol 3 ).

Always with pleasure!

21:30 Close Encounters of the 5th kind is how we will communicate.

please tell me your nasa band player is the space pope ?

We process oxygen and carbon to live so perhaps would be a matter of looking for life that process silicon with something else to live? Also I read this once a looong time ago: could quartz be considered a life form..?

Remember, the Silicon-based Horta lived within a mining colony inside an asteroid..

try to use the plasma generator as a transformer surround it with transforming wire loops and also try to absorb the light with solar panels and then use hot and also cold lasers to regulate the temperature. use permanent electromagnets cooled by cold lasers to -133 and increase the voltage that travels through the wire loops.

Fascinating🤓

There's other ppl in Baltimore pondering these big questions? I was really starting to wonder there for a hot min...

I think I've heard you say the sun's expanding. Could we just be getting closer? How do you calculate Pluto's orbit if we don't know its size? How many times can you see it in a given period from a single telescope? It's orbit is unaffected by other planetary bodies? Is the atmospheres peaks affected by other planetary bodies? To what degree is the oceans change to the moons position vs the atmosphere, does it change with its chemical composition? I was looking at how quartz watches work. With tesla's research lab at the base of pike's peak, and the pyramids, would that change change the voltage of piezoelectric crystal?

Can silica be found as a gas? If so what form? SiO2 is solid. So that would be another difference

Everyone forgot to mention that a major difference between Carbon and Silicon is that water is just a better solvent with Silicon, since the Silicon rather pair with it than itself. So if there were Silicon based life it would have to have another solvent than H²O.

Chuck was able to sneak a question about weed in space into the convo... Nice!

Funkn A. I love Star Talk!

"& musician, hum, . . .Is there a single note, that is a constantly humming, in the multi-verse/universe ? I`ve read in Jeff Bridges` The Dude & the Zen Master, that the universe is tuned to 440 MegaHertz, A major ? Is that a possibility, or feasible concept ?

Guys; Tks. much.

I'll try it

Could there be other elements out there that we don't know about yet?

Since there’s no up or down etc. in space, what determines the direction that an object like the sun’s mass warps space/time?

Why assume intelligent extraterrestrials would land in the US?

What about the collective intelligent life Asimov created in "Nemesis"?

try using a bose einstein condensate wall around the center of a plasma reactor

try using silver in the center of a plasma in a plasma fusion reactor

I would LOVE for DR GREER to be a guest on this platform.

Can you bring back the old format?.....

Use Nordic Runes for communication with Nan

How can we make questions for the next cosmic queries episode?