Why is not being alone terrifying, thats what everyone expects. We wouldn't have to figure out all of the rest of science by ourselves once we find anybody who has been around for longer. That would be awsome, not terrifying.
@@CUXOB2 Presumably, it's because he suspected that other races existed, but subsequently went extinct, meaning if we are alone, we might be headed for a similar extinction event, one that no one so far has managed to dodge.
Cheburushka He meant that if our small insignificant dot in the universe is the only place where complicated life has evolved it means there is nowhere else to go... this is it, our planet, the one we’re currently destroying is the only place capable of life. Scary thought huh?
Or maybe the 95% of the Universe that we explain as Dark Matter/Energy is life in the Universe, just so advanced it is beyond our technology to detect.
Beautifully done. I don't think "there's no life out there" is the simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox. "The universe is too effing big for us to expect evidence of life to have reached us" is the simplest answer.
@Butt Cube Thats definitely what I think too. Like maybe we're underestimating just how unlikely it is for a planet to evolve life like we have today. I think it's almost certain *some* form of living thing exists somewhere else, like microscopic bacteria-like forms. But the chances of life like us being able to exist, evolving properly, not being rendered extinct due to many reasons (climate, resources, catsstrophic space event etc) isn't like a 1 in 3 chance. It's incredibly low. Every planet is unique and so throws up its own obstacles, what if Earth is the only one that allowed this kind of life to happen? Like if Earth was just slightly different, we'd not survive. If it was just a little too close to the sun or if there was no water or gravity etc.
@@SaintPhoenixx Yeah but what we know about life doesn't have to be the only option. Us not surviving a condition is just a result of the conditions we evolved to.
And the universe is hostile. I haven't watched this video yet but most planets can't sustain life because most planets live in cosmic dust clouds. When you look at the milky way, everywhere you can see light inhabitable. That light is literally radiation. We live in a dark spot
@@dear-madame-artist1561, don't be shy Artist. Come on out and say it, because I'm dying to know what the "L" stands for! (Logical? Likable? Luxurious? The suspense is killing me!)
You can go to a library lend books on Geo Physics, astro physics and bio chemistry , thats what Joe has done. All adds up to a creator who is maintaining his handiwork.
agreed. I feel like I neeed to learn how to communicate science to others from Joe. His skeptical-sounding second-takes at his statements feels like the perfect way to get typically non-critical minds to actually question the substance of a claim.
Sebastian ioan, Yeah, and he always likes comments that praise him, he seems to be addicted to approval, and that's the main reason for his work here. He craves that surrogate of love.
@@azatmingalimov Ugh...I was joking earlier. I love this channel. Joe works hard and he deseves the praise. Honestly I think he might one day land a job in PBS or something.
*Out of the 4.5 billion years the planets been around we have only been detectable for 0.00000000000001% in a radius of 100 light years, so we are going to have to look at A LOT of planets to catch that small percentage*
Exactly. We've been around for less than a heartbeat in the life span of a galaxy. In the next heartbeat we will probably be extinct. If a civilization from another world ever did or ever will reach earth, it could be a billion years too early, or a billion years too late to encounter mankind. The same holds true for us encountering intelligent life somewhere else.
It’s a lot like taking a thimble of ocean water, not seeing an life in it, and deciding that the ocean must be lifeless. I heard an analogy; if the universe is all the water in our earth’s oceans, we have searched barely a cup of that seawater. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth many times over. “We haven’t found anything and we are never going to,” is a ridiculous statement. Hell, in order to see the American flag on the moon, you would need a lens AS BIG AS PLANET EARTH to see it FROM earth! People just have no clue how huge the universe truly is… A lot like was stated in melodysheep’s video Timelapse of the Future, even after all the stars in the universe have died out and have been swallowed up by black holes, in terms of a human lifetime, the universe still hasn’t even left the womb!
Stable rocky planets haven't been around that long. Gamma rays and supernovas every few millennia, most stars being unstable, idk it's rather unlikely that if there ever was such a thing that early, a planet life sustaining, it would've lasted long enough for it to even matter.
@@3PercentNeanderhal I think it IS a dog eats dog kind of universe, but that they might still decide against it. If they are intelligent enough to get here by space travel, it is probable they have some euiqvalent of our scientific method, and then they might understand that for evey, say, million solar systems there might be only a few planets that actually harbor life, and that earth life is probably an interesting object of study. And if we developed on this planet only, as in, things like the pan-spermia hypothesis are false, theres a FAT chance that we (earth life) are very unique. and since numbers and logic are absolute, I think that they would see this too, simply because they would be able to count, and count planets and such. also, such xenophobia does not really seem 'intelligent' to me personally, say, destroying things because * aaah * they are different. if they were so xenophobic, they would miss a lot of data, and if data is not important to them, they might not ever have developed complex tech in the first place. so all intelligent life might really be peering out in the cosmos and conclude that, yes, life is really pretty rare (probably) but that is what i think. I might be very wrong, and get eaten by an alien tomorrow haha.
@@3PercentNeanderhal also, i dont really see how earth could be harvested for rare minerals and such if there are so many planets that are full of recourses, yet uninhabited. the one thing that makes earth unique is life. this might be a blessing, for they (dem aliens) might preserve the oddities of nature.... but it could be a curse indeed. they might get recrouses from human flesh, it just seems so unlikely to me. i dont really know any chemicals in the human body so rare that it would be proifitable to destroy the whole species for it, especially with such an abundance of lifeless matter in the universe that can be exploited.also, it is very unlkely that they would literally 'eat' us. if they feed, it is unlikely that they can 'digest' us, or even get any useful nutrition from us, as we are from a completely different planet. so yeah long comment, haha, but these are my reasons to believe that aliens will likely not destroy us at all
I think it'd be neat (if not slightly depressing) if we actually were the only intelligent life to exist so far. That means that if we somehow manage to live long enough for other species to finally exist, we could very well get to be one of those super mysterious/powerful/ancient "elder" species that they always have in Science Fiction. Ha, the thought of aliens thinking of us as wise is kinda hilarious. Maybe someday! Edit: aww cute lol, pluto was lonely but she found a friend! I like the way you put that!
In the sixties and fifties aliens were wise. Because a lot of wishful thinking was going around. "They have to be wise and benevolent because if they were warmongers they would have eradicated themselves", something like that. Nowadays we see that the only reason to go to space is to make sure the enemy isn't beating us to it. Therefor, nowadays, writers are a bit more realistic about aliens. Nowadays they are depicted as locusts that swarm from civilisation to civilisation to gobble them up. Since competition is the driving force of evolution, why would that be any different for aliens.
Wow! I have thought of that idea for a book where time travelling ET's reveal that humans are the elder species of the universe. The travellers also reveal that they are from billions of years ahead in time and their technologies have 'never' detected life anywhere else within this dimension of the universe and that we are alone as a sentient beings and we expanded as far out as other galaxies.
I’ve watched this video many times and Each time, the ‘last sigh’ kind of sums it up for me. We are so so lucky to be here. Can we just take care of the earth and each other please?
I was feeling so small throughout this video but then Joe was like "okay what is that" made me laugh so hard. I wish I had you as a teacher in school, I would've probably focused more. I'm so interested in any topic you talk about. Thank you for providing an A1 learning atmosphere for people of all backgrounds. I really appreciate it.
It could just be us. And god could be real. Maybe this simulation is just that. A sims built works and then some. We go back to the source at death. Why why else would we be here. What would be the point! Is there a point ? Whatever is going on we are apart of the universe and not just a small part but a big part. Bigger than we can understand the now because off disinformation etc
It could just be us. And god could be real. Maybe this simulation is just that. A sims built works and then some. We go back to the source at death. Why why else would we be here. What would be the point! Is there a point ? Whatever is going on we are apart of the universe and not just a small part but a big part. Bigger than we can understand the now because off disinformation etc
The fact that you used punctuation and obeyed the rules of grammar, fetched you more likes & comments than Lukas Vasionis even though your comment was 6 months late? Life is fair, OR is it?
"The human brain is a very big place, in a very small space" - Also Carl Sagan, from the "persistence of memory" episode of Cosmos. All 13 episodes are on RU-vid still, at least they were not to long ago last time i went through and watched the series again.
We always bemoan the distances in space because we want to travel. But then you learn about near earth orbit objects and nemesis stars and gamma pulse bursts, etc.
A waste of space? I know of a 5 bedroom house with one occupant. It seems like a waste of space because the house could have at least 4 more occupants. But then, it would only "seem" to be a waste of space since the house was designed for more occupants. But since there is no design, there is no waste.
I kind of like this theory. It's simple. I find it kind of relaxing to think there's a whole universe to explore with very small chance of encountering more than rocks and radiation that want to destroy us. In some ways, I gotta wonder if life is sort of an accidental thing, like an infection. Once we leave this star of ours, universe beware!
Sorry, but that's pure human centric arrogance. With 10s to 100s of trillions of galaxies the odds are against a human first Intelligence being humans. We're most likely created from "panspermia" or amino acids brought by an asteroid.
@@angelinarobert622 Incorrect and your line of thinking is why we always assumed there would be alien life. It seemed to make sense given the odds. However, what the Fermi Paradox failed to take into account was a great many "filters" that are extremely rare in and of themselves. When you add up all the extremely rare circumstances that all come together in combination here on "Rare Earth", you begin to understand why we are not finding life elsewhere, and we can see quite far now.
But in our galaxy? It's unlikely we'd ever get out of the Milky Way or Andromeda ever in the history of the universe, so we only have iirc 100 billion planets to go through.
Actually no, that depends on the probability of having earth like conditions. Let's do some quick maths. Assuming there are 1/2 of the chance of each conditions that led to life. So let assume as simple as 5 factors, like rocky planet, glodilock zone etc.. The probability is about 0.03%. Which is alot considering the vastness of universe right? However, life is more complicated than this. Let's say there are 80 conditions you have to meet, having an iron Core, large moon, geological movements, stable enviroment. The probability is too small that the probability is lower than the number of planets there are in the universe. And I'm just being positive and assume each condition has a 50% chance of happening.
@@edwardso8903 who the fick takes the time to well actually a 3 year old comment that just says there are probably many earth like planets in the vastness of the universe?
I was just watching some of your videos, letting autoplay do its thing, and when you started talking about a galactic Goldilocks Zone and planets forming in the core of the galaxy, my ears pricked up. It's pretty much a brief summary of my PhD research!
precisely... we even have billions of years to go forth and multiply and who knows what wierd methods of transport may be invented in that amount of huge time considering we have gone from the horse to rockets in just a couple of hundred years
@@blancaroca8786 amazing, imagine how wars will be when we will have colonized the whole galaxy. Trillions of dead, planetary eradications, genocides... the galaxy should try and kill us while it still can before we become unstoppable LOL
How I wish my science teachers as I was growing up we're more like you u make science learning so much fun and love ur joke's it makes it more interesting and fun learning thank u so much.
I agree. I had a science teacher. Fun dude, a bit of crank (would insult his students if we stepped out of line), but made science interesting and, most importantly, relevant.
Scrolling quickly through the comments, I thought you wrote, "Ma'am, I love your channel." I thought, "Wow, that's a really perplexing mistake to make."
@@joescott I got one here in Africa it has eyes for feet some weird shit or I'm high on malaria and overstayed cheap imported Indian medicine idk anymore😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@MTerrance now the good news about Trump.... his administration is heavily funding NASA. Which NASA had already reported the planet is rapidly is warming up sustainability.
@@oldrrocryou mention life elsewhere as if it’s are some type of mythological creature, like a vampire or boogeyman. If life exists on earth, then life exists elsewhere. Calling alien life “fake” or “unrealistic” would be calling yourself “fake.” Alien life is *still* life, and we are *life,* aren’t we?
@@growbydoing7290 It's not that we can harm a planet. It's that we can alter our living situation enough that we can no longer get along on that planet very well... An older gentleman in my family claims that he has lived his life and is not responsible for anything in the future, that he does not have to care. It's attitudes like this man in my family has,, that make it so. The fact is, we can alter the environment. Not enough to kill the planet, but certainly enough to kill ourselves.
So glad to hear you say "other life that doesnt fit our definition, isnt composed of DNA or Carbon ". It drives me nuts to watch How the Universe Works and hear these scientists say how life would be impossible on [some exoplanet or moon] because of the absence of water. We evolved needing water because its present on earth. Life on other planets would evolve utilising elements and compounds found there. That's what evolution is. This moment of existential dread brought to you by..... Joe.
Life requires biochemistry, and the only element that is capable of the rich variety of chain and ring compounds needed for life is carbon. As Lawrence Henderson pointed out as long ago as 1913, water too is uniquely friendly to biochemistry. Supernovas pump out the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus that terrestrial life requires. We humans have observed 3 supernovas in the Milky Way over the past one thousand years. This translates to 3M Milky Way supernovas per billion years on our side of the galactic nucleus.
@@lylecosmopolite with so much that we dont know about the universe, its disappointing to hear anyone with a truly scientific mind use the words "only", "always" or "never" The ONLY time that word is correct is when saying "Only sentences that use absolutes are consistently wrong ". We evolved using the building blocks available on our planet. Another world having entirely different composition and available resources would evolve life using what is available there. Hasn't anyone considered that the Fermi Paradox appears to be true because we are looking right at life and dont even know it because it doesnt fit our narrow and conceited definition? Recent Pentagon declassification revealed not only objects that defy our known physical limits (of both body and technology) but metals in their posession that do not carry our local groups quantum signature and are not on our periodic table. Again, it's just my humble opinion that there is more that we do not know than what we do and every single day, that list grows. I'm just pointing out that it took our fastest spacecraft ever (JUNO) 5 years to get to Jupiter, less than 1/11 the radius of our solar system (sun to Ort Cloud) and we think we know the only kind of life that can exist in the universe? If a celestial body has organic compounds but no water, life is impossible? No wonder we cant find anything with such a narrow view.
Also, we once thought that life required water and Oxygen, then the Tardigrade happened along. We used to think that life couldnt withstand freezing and being reanimated, then Rana sylvatica came along. Life will find a way with whatever it has to work with.
It's because he is high. That's what got him thinking originally about all of this but he is smart than most people and can explain and remember/listen very well. Power of intelligence can almost explain everything but everyone just has to know how to function there own brains better.
I watched this when you first released this video, after learning more about science and how life evolved it just clicked......... galaxies most likely have a goldilocks zone which may be between the spiral arms, the way you explain things is great love you Joe, you make me want to learn more more 🙂
For some reason you remember when it clicks, even decades later. I still remember exactly when the concept of natural selection clicked for me in high school, during a lesson about those moths during the industrial revolution. Same thing with the concept of gravity, when I realized that everything with mass has a gravitational effect. I still remember asking my teacher if that meant that even our own bodies have by gravitational fields, and when he said yeah, it was a great feeling. I remember a bunch of times like that. Not sure why. It must be just the feeling of satisfaction.
I discovered your channel only today. I've been watching for 4 hours straight now, and I absolutely LOVE your content and your wry delivery on so many different subjects. This particular video totally pushed all my buttons. Thank you for FINALLY allowing me to find an intelligent You Tuber with wonderous content!
I think proving there isn't life out there is impossible but that proving there is life is possible but will never happen in our lifetime. In a few million years, whatever we evolve into will maybe figure it out, but it's arrogant of us to assume we would know by now. In the future, they'll look back at us and laugh at the dumb shit we did and believed and didn't know. Personally I think it's possible but not as likely as people say it is. But also its crazy to think we know or should know at this point in time. Like why now? Maybe we will in the future, but not now.
Theres no such thing as "simulation theory." Its the simulation hypothesis. Nothing more. Theres little to no evidence that we're living inside a simulation, and even if we were, there's no way to prove we are. There's no way to prove we arent, to be fair, but luckily, that's not how science works. If that were the case, I could say unicorns exist, and since you cant prove they dont, we slap the title of "unicorn theory" to it and call it a day.
@@joshuatraffanstedt2695 Schrödinger's cat, need I remind you is a valid argument here. So is Occam's Razor. Quantum Indeterminancy is also extremely popular. There's many valid arguments for simulated reality. The Rare Earth hypothesis is one of them, but String Theory presents another. The fact that we can tie everything about our world and quantum physics into a nice presentable package until it all falls apart with zero evidence. We can't find gravitons yet all the math and science points to it. That could be human error in the idea that we've just yet to discover it, but the tests we've done are *supposed* to find these answers. They should be where we look for them, yet they aren't. Inconsistencies Inconsistencies - they're everywhere. The simulation hypothesis explains all of this. Do I believe it per se? Meh. Is it extremely valid? For sure.
The simulation hypothesis is completely retarded. If we’re living inside a simulation, then what are our creators living inside? A real universe? That would even more unlikely than the earth and consequently us humans having formed naturally, since a simulation to that scale would warrant unimaginable computing power.
Is the Rare Earth Hypotheses really just an updated version of the Drake Equation? We just learned there are sooo many more factors that really narrowed the odds down and point out how we might be one of one?
As Joe said, there are millions of "Fermi Paradox/Are We Alone?" videos on RU-vid. That said, _this_ is the clearest, most concise, most informative and enjoyable episodes you'll see on the subject. This richly illustrates why Joe is one of the best science/ content creators on this platform. He doesn't go down any rabbit holes nor does he delve so deeply into science that you need an astronomy/physics/math degree to understand him. Here, he hits every major facet of the subject to fully flesh out the most important points. Just listen to how perfectly he describes the action and important of Earth's tectonic plate activity. Good Show, Old Chap!
I'm not sure planet detection has developed to the point where we can conclusively say that we live in an oddball solar system. Certainly there are vastly different solar systems, but I think we would have trouble detecting a solar system like ours with our present instruments, so we are biased towards the kinds of solar systems that are currently easiest for us to detect. The big waiting period between the two main events in the history of life on Earth - single celled and multicelluar organisms - is very suggestive though of multicellularity being rare.
I think this is the truth of it. We can't observe the solar systems that are most likely to harbor life outside of our immediate neighborhood. The fact is those systems could be similar and we may not even know it. So until we have better technology for confirming planets we will not have an accurate answer.
I agree, but I also think the idea of the "galactic habitable zone" is compelling. Maybe the probability of "intelligent" life emerging is exponentially higher in a ring at roughly our radius from the center of the galaxy.
I came here looking for this comment! So far we can only detect wobbles and transits, which means we mostly only find planets orbiting red dwarfs, we can't detect planets like earth orbiting a non dinky star so we can't conclude anything about how weird our solar system is. Is our solar system different than that of a red dwarf? Sure! but that's a red dwarf which is a low mass low energy star so it formed under completely different set of parameters.
There are probably planets that have all the conditions for life but were just unlucky . The first cell here may have been stewing in a rock pool with all the chemicals being in the right place in a trillion to one coincidence but if a wave had washed over that pool at the wrong time or a gust of wind disrupted it then life may never have formed at all. However I agree that the fact that singular cellular life developed relatively quickly shows it may not be that difficult but again it could have just been an incredible coincidence.
I don't think that "life" itself is rare. but intelligence, that's a whole different ballgame. I mean, just look how long it took to emerge here on earth. and then it only manifests in one species. there are probably billions of planets with sponges and stuff, but very few with libraries
@@fcgHenden I don't count Neanderthals as a different species. for one we were both members of the hominids and secondly, we could (and did) interbreed. I'm talking intelligent fish or squid or bears, birds, reptiles etc. not just one or two species of ape-decendents. and I mean proper intelligence, not just sticks and stone tools. I mean like writing.
@@mystuff8602 I was supporting your argument that HSS and HSN are essentially the same population as regards evolutionary pressure, using, you know, science.
Joe, you really do an amazing job at bringing the existential dread in all of us. Something that I think allot more people should experience every once in a while.
Isaac Asimov said in one of the Galactic Empire novels that every galaxy has one dominant life form to expand and inhabit it. It was an interesting theory. 😊
Daneel Olivaw also arranged for humanity to be moved to a "parallel universe" that had no alien intelligent life, in order to keep humanity safe. The zeroth law. “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
The chance of intelligent life being “detectable” by us in OUR timeframe has got be be REALLY small - and rare enough that no systems within 100 light years or so have transmitted any radio signals. If we take time out of the equation perhaps we would detect other life - both in our distant past AND in our distant futures.
@@kethmarhkfy7luf.263 neither do you, so how can you call it pure nonsense when it's entirely possible this is 100% correct. Your comment is nonsense. Good day
@@ctdieselnut There is a 'Join" button that is basically Patreon for RU-vid. $5 a month to basically get the icon, discord access, and other percs. I don't really pay attention to any of them, and just wanted to support Joe. ANY channel on RU-vid that has a 'Join' button next to their 'Subscribe' button, will give you a channel icon next to your username if you "join"/"become a member". Did that make *ANY*sense..???
Hey Joe! Man, your channel is really growing! I remember when your sub amount was only a little feller.. its growing into a giant now! Congrats! *Cheers* here's to a million more!
would be a terrible waste of space if we were alone in the universe IMO, but then again one could argue that in that case it would be humanity's duty to populate it
Bighoov1 That is the Fermi Paradox. If life is common....where is it? Even if it just had a head start of a few thousand years, we should still see some evidence. A few hundred thousand and it would have colonised the galaxy. So...either all life in the galaxy is at roughly the same level of development, within a few thousand years of each other, or intelligent life is really rare. That it took 4 billion years to move from single cell to multi cells implies that this step is at least one of the Great Filters. Further...assume that this 4 billion years is "quick" and that it normally takes 5 or 6 billion years. That would put multi cellular life developing just as the sun reached a point on its life cycle where it couldn't support life. Life could be all over the place...but as Fermi said, if it is then where is it? As said...the simplest answer is that life is not all over the place, and that it isn't out there.
Well they claim the starlight we see is old (millions of years?) So if that is the case, perhaps we should just stay tuned? I find this theory hard to believe, because it would mean anything we saw would be in the past. For example, by the time we see a civilization rise it has already fallen. If aliens are coming we’ll see them coming just as they arrive. Etc etc
This is a very interesting video. It does a fine job of explaining the factors that are required for live to form on this planet. It does a fine job of explaining these factors in a way that can be understood.
Evariste Galois What if we are alone? What if we aren’t? Will we ever know? What if we disappear this evening, will the universe continue unscathed? Are we an attempt of the universe to understand itself?
if your brain was the size of a grain of sand, you could have been a cool parrot but it seems that your brain is the size of a abandoned germ and you reached just the level of a copy-paste featherless parrot.
your totally wrong, if the sun was scaled down to a grain of sand then our nearest star, alpha centauri (binary system) is 18.6 miles away on that scale, pls get your facts correct before posting
You gave us a lot of reasons why carbon based earth life would be so rare in the universe but we have to remember that things can adapt to live in different conditions, like more radiation
Life evolved HERE like that, but extremophiles only evolved here after life arose in the first place. There were billions of years of complex evolution that made that possible. And as far as life that isn't carbon-based, we just have no reason to believe it's even possible. We can speculate, but right now there's no reason to believe that.
@@joshshultz1250 yes its an assumption too, but it has some basis in it. We have evidence of carbon based life (here on Earth). We haven't seen non carbon based life anywhere yet.
I could be totally wrong here, but didn't the planet that hit Earth to form the Moon donate most of it's metal core to ours while forming the Moon out of its crust? If so, wouldn't that impact also be the root for both our extra strong magnetism and active plate tectonics (extra large metal core with relatively thin crust)?
@@frankmazzur5674 The idea that planets formed by explosions is not only false but ridiculous. NASA has all but scrapped the nebula hypothesis of how the solar system came to be and are actually without a peer reviewed "theory". Dont believe it because Utubers still espouse it. The S.SYSTEM was created but am not going to go into that here.
I honestly think it's a time problem. In the time that the light travels to meet our eyes intelligent life could have evolved, been wiped out and we would never have known it.
People often say to me that it’s impossible to say that we’re alone in the universe because of its size but I’ve always maintained that it’s entirely possible that this is the only one. The only planet capable of sustaining an ecosystem of our complexity and duration. So many factors go into making earth a habitable place that it rules out nearly all the stars and planets in the universe.
It's not about just being habitable. It's also about the chances of abiogenesis actually occuring and all the critical evolutionary steps on the way from simple RNA-like molecule to complex multicellular organisms with brains. There might be many places that are habitable _for us._ But that doesn't mean that life evolved there, or that even if by chance it did, that it is any more complex than a simple colony of bacteria. Like our Earth was for the majority of history.
I don't really subscribe to the Rare Earth hypothesis per se, but I do think that the jump from intelligent, sentient life, to technological societies is much harder than we think. I mean think about it. If we didn't have something as simple as opposable thumbs, yet had the same brains, we probably couldn't have advanced to where we are now or it would take waaaaay longer. Maybe other intelligent races aren't lucky enough to have a body suited for using that intelligence in a meaningful way to interact with the environment or create technology. Or maybe mass extinctions wipe them out. We almost were wiped out from the Toba Catastrophe. Maybe events like that or asteroid strikes are common enough that intelligent races evolving in relatively peaceful times and with a long enough time span of no natural disasters to fully develop a technological society, is a rare occurrence. Or maybe the physical environment on other planets isn't as suitable for technological progression. Like an intelligent species involving in water or in the clouds of a gas giant may never be able to get to space or study the universe in any meaningful way (especially if they evolve in an under-ice ocean like on a body like Europa) Or the organisms in our physical environment. The Americas never advanced as much as the Old World due to lack of easily domesticated animals, especially horses for faster travel. Imagine if the whole planet was like that? No animals to domesticate or maybe plants being harder to domesticate for crop growing. We would probably be stuck in medieval levels of technology and society or even lower. And maybe in a lot of ways we just got lucky. Certain people being born at the right time having the right ideas to advance us ever so slowly forward. I wonder just how much progress was luck or just us naturally advancing, since things like electric cars and reusable spacecraft had to be pushed for instead of coming naturally. We could have been like the Chinese, stopping exploration just short of finding the Americas, if it weren't for certain people pushing us to explore further and maybe technology is the same. It taking certain individuals or groups of individuals to push the envelope forward. Our luck could even be pushed further back, what if eyes didn't evolve? Or what if organisms had stayed unicellular? Was the evolution of certain things a natural occurrence, in that it would happen on any planet with life eventually, or random chance, some planets may not even make it this far as Earth life has come? There's just too many variable honestly. While life may be abundant in the universe and maybe intelligent life, I feel like its a harder gap to overcome to go from intelligence to technology.
Roman Empire ruled for 1000 years, never even got close to a space-program. Not only do you need the intelligence, but you need to develop the correct culture as well.
You are onto something with the hands thing. That’s actually a pretty popular idea, to believe that the only reason we have made it as far as we are is simply because we have the tools to allow us to do so, and that’s hands with fingers. I mean, that’s probably the only thing preventing crows from becoming more technological... of crows had hands, we would probably be in trouble...
Sterling Archer uh that’s not really how it happened. Humans didn’t really start getting smart until we started throwing rocks, creating tools, and cooking meat. It was definitely hands that allowed us to do all of these things. Without hands giving us the ability to manipulate our environment, we wouldn’t have made it this far at all.
@@spuknoggin5273 Im not denying that. I was saying there must have been something, before opposable thumbs developes, where the mind of the animal was anticipating and trying with their current, unopposable thumbed hands. Evolution doesnt change work the other way. Repeated attempts from successive generations would then form the opposable thumb, making the physical action more efficient abd eventually, dominant.
'So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cos there's bugger-all down here on Earth.' M. Python
Life as we know it, always involves enormous amount of suffering. Only the very recent decades (and only in the western world) created relatively comfortable living conditions for most of the inhabitants (and that's only true for humans and their pets). But we still have plenty of diseases, we still age and die. There is also more and more suicides due to rising cases of depression. Aging alone is such a dreadful process, one should wish to never have been born. I (figuratively) pray there is no life anywhere else. How can you wish all this suffering we went, and are going through, onto anyone else?
We're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour; That's orbiting it's reckoned at 19 miles a second, a sun that is the source of all our power. The sun & you & me & all the stars that we can see are moving at a million miles a day, in an outer spiral arm, at 40 thousand miles an hour, of the galaxy we call the Milky Way. ... and our galaxy is one of millions of billions. Etc. (Thank you Mr Eric Idle)
Two other things to consider. First, the rare Earth hypothesis, as I understand it, isn’t that life is rare, but that complex, and intelligent life is rare. Simple, single-cell organisms are possibly quite common. Indeed, one of the challenges of exploring deep under the Martian soil, and in the oceans of Europa (and a handful of other moons), is ensuring that our probes are sterile, and don’t contaminate the sample. We have learned that some microbial life can survive for relatively short periods of time in the vacuum of space, something we cannot do. So microbial life may be very common, but complex life may be rare. The second point is this. It’s extremely difficult to detect exoplanets, especially Earth sized exoplanets. The two methods being employed, observing the wobble of stars, and observing the cyclical changes of luminosity of stars which could indicate the passage of planets transiting the star, are going to favor the detection of large planets, in close orbits. Plus, the second method requires the star system to be in exactly the right alignment as we observe from Earth. The big problem is like trying to distinguish a candle from a nearby wildfire - the light from these stars dwarfs the reflective light of a much smaller planet, and as of this moment, we are using indirect means of observing these exoplanets, by observing the effects they have on their stars. When we manage to develop the technology, and can do spectral analysis of the atmosphere of these Earth-type planets, the key item to look for will be molecular oxygen. That is most likely caused by life, since oxygen is so reactive. Indeed it was early, anaerobic life which transformed our early, oxygen absent atmosphere, into one that was abundant with oxygen, which was bad news for many of these early life forms (for which oxygen was toxic) but fueled the formation of complex life. Finding an exoplanet with an atmosphere abundant with molecular oxygen would be a good sign that complex life existed there, if not life intelligent enough to create a technological civilization. Photosynthesis is critical. On the downside, while the vast majority of stars are small, red main-sequence stars, which have incredibly long lives, they have another property which may prevent large numbers of them developing life. They have a tendency to produce extremely violent flares, which would be harmful to life, and also harmful to technology. Our Solar System’s closest neighbor is Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star (not to be confused with a white dwarf - red dwarfs are on the main-sequence, still fusing hydrogen in their cores). Apparently such low mass stars are so small that they lack a convective zone, which thus makes them prone to far more frequent and violent flares.
The Fermi paradox and Drake equation are BS. We have no way of even remotely understanding the Drake equation's probability of a planet being able to support intelligent life or being able to support it long enough for a civilization to create detectable technology. And before you say what about all the detected planets in the habitable zones, so are Venus and Mars. Also show me a extrasolar planet where we have detected a magnetosphere or a stable rotation. We could argue the justification for knowing the Drake equation is crap is the fact we haven't heard anything.
@@trippyulyanov2012 I don't really have a problem with the variables I have a problem with people thinking they can ever be approximated to a sufficient accuracy to enable a prediction.
we realy dont have enough detailed information about any star to make usefull remarks about their planetary systems. we only have the ability to detect realy big planets close to their stars and even from them we only see the ones that happen to orbit infront of their star from our perspective. its like trying to make predictions about earths continents when you can only detect greenland.
If we look like living stick figures to a 5-dimensional being, what would a 5-dimensional being look like to us? Would it look a giant undulating space-time hydra?
Trying to find another intelligent life in the Universe is like trying to look for a needle in the haystack and the haystack is just as high as Mt. Everest.
@@const1988 hello Sir/Madam. So you think the universe, shaped like a disc, with multiple artisticly shaped galaxies, organized clusters of galaxies, super clusters of galaxies, our solar SYSTEM with its 70 something moons all with fudamental laws coupled with super razor sharped "fine tunings" =blind dumb luck. Its origin unknown, lifes origin unknown. 2 thousand planets discovered but none , so the exoplanets specialists tell us,; are not habitable. Joe didnt quite go into all of that . The truth is DESIGN screams at you wherever you look starting with the super complexity of cells. So your question is: Has a creator done this of which has always existed or everthing you see, uncluding yourself with 100 billion neurons in your grey matter just an accident.?
When I watch videos like this I genuinely question if all this did happen because of some god like being, maybe some ancient species who wanted to experiment
Imagine how funny it'd be if the only Intelligent life in the universe doomed themselves to extinction of all life on their planet by changing the delicate climate of the whole planet.
14:55 I manage a casino, and I say "OK, what is THAT" at least once a day. So, yes, it's very believable that an alien voyeur would think exactly that when seeing humans.
Help out Joe, great shirts, this is RU-vids’ purpose, a platform to share knowledge and educate. Pretty much the best Encyclopedia Brittanica I’ve had the privilege to flip through. I spent a lot of time in the library in 1984, I had to learn as much as I could, because I was driven. Love the content, Joe hits all the mental nails on the head, and the humor is digestible too.
@@joescott you just gave the intelligent design movement a 100 facts to back them up. Suggest you watch a few molecular biology dvds on utube if you are atheist or agnostic.
