FAQs (keep ‘em coming!): 1. "We’re here, so that proves/implies intelligences are common", or "sets a lower bound on lambda_B (the birth rate)". Sadly not! We only observe ourselves because we exist, it couldn’t be any other way. This is a product of the weak anthropic principle. For example, you might naively conclude that 1/lambda_B ~ 4 billion years, since thats how long it took on Earth to get to us. But Brandon Carter’s paper (arxiv.org/abs/0711.1985) exemplifies why this thinking is wrong with an analogy of hard locks. If a lock takes 100 years to pick, on average, but only 10 minutes have passed by thus far, one might guess no-one could have possibly succeeded. But, in fact, given enough independent lock pickers, someone will luckily pick the lock very quickly. That person would then be in error to conclude their lock pick time was typical. The basic issue is you just can’t use “us” as a data point, because we *are* the observers and thus “us” is not a fair, representative sample from the distribution. I've also written about this extensively before, see arxiv.org/abs/2005.09008 and ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iLbbpRYRW5Y.html 2. "You said the flasks are all nearly similar, but planets could be very different from one another!" True, good point. I somewhat regret emphasizing the similarity between the flasks, I used that analogy to make things easy to follow but it adds a confusion with deeper thought. In fact, the flasks could be wildly different and the conclusion is the same. Let’s make some boiling, some acidic, some salty, etc. In doing so, we make some choices as to how to diversify them. The thing is, it’s very unlikely that the choices we make here will just so happen to split the sample <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3050">50:50</a> between dissolving and not dissolving. Because remember we made those choices in the absence of any information about compound X, so why should they happen to divide the sample evenly like this? Another way of thinking about it is that there is some logistic function which acts like a switch between dissolving and not dissolving, with the x-axis being the conditions of each flask. The neck of this logistic, the switch point, occurs at some unknown position, A. To get a <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3050">50:50</a> split, the conditions would have to saddle the neck of the logistic curve event on each side, but the logistic extends very far in both directions, so it’s pretty unlikely we’d happen to choose a set of flasks that land <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3050">50:50</a> either side of the unknown switch point A. Hopefully this extra analogy helps, but at the end of the day it might be helpful to look Jaynes’ paper (ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4082152)
I agree with the first point. The second is a very simplistic analysis. Solubility is not a binary function. Also the solubility in the mixture is not a single variable linear function. It is a multivariable nonlinear function. So while 50-50 is not likely, neither are 100-0 or 0-100. While has-life may seem binary, there is a huge range from barely supporting single cell life to comfortable supporting a space faring civilization. So, properly analyzed, the analogy is reasonable.
Isn't there a paradox wherein the more technologically advanced we become, the more easily we might extinct ourselves by accidents and the complications of such events? If that would hold true in a grander scale, then the universe being mostly empty would actually make sense - that life could be common enough, but that survival (or more to the point, civilizations surviving themselves) would be extremely rare.
It was meant to simply get the proverbial ball rolling on merely *thinking* about how many variables there are to consider in this search. The beginnings of life on our *own* planet are still veiled in mystery, though we've made some headway. If we can't even define how many miraculous coincindences needed to occur here on the world we are most familiar with, how likely are we to figure it out for a world on the other side of the galaxy!?🤯😵
I think it was only ment as a thought experiment A what if scenario if you will Now I have no idea what to say or think about this But to me that is what I would take from it Q fun way of thinking about the galaxy and the possibility of life elsewhere And as always a great video from a great Channel 👍 Just saying 🇳🇴
Not actually. Original big bang theory clearly indicates there is life put there certainly... statistically this theory assu,es anything os part of only one function therefore mathe,aghically its certain there is lofe put there tough todays researchers do not use math/statistics analysis prorocols by simplifying comples logics... so thats wjy they assume life is only on visible spectrum :P😂😢😮😅😊
Absolutely compelling and a fresh take on the Fermi Paradox that's going to give me pondering material for a good long while. For anyone interested in the possibilities of other life in the universe, this is a gem. And also, exomoons! We want exomoons!
I'd like to mention that it's really nice that you do not use background music. It helps me to concentrate on what you say and your voice is so soothing too.
He does use background music in some videos but subtly and it's very effective. Here it works best without it because it's a discussion of their latest paper.
I'm so tired of content creators who either don't have trust on their own material and have to fill with music- or consider their audience as infantiles who need constant noise. Thank you for not using empty filling music
It’s an excellent observation with which I agree. I also appreciate how the visuals actually have _some_ connection with what is being said on the screen, as opposed to just being random stock videos of stars, nebulae, galaxies, and anything else that might look “astronomical.”
RU-vid is either teeming with intelligent scientific channels or there are barely any. Cool Words is the shining beacon on an otherwise desolate video sharing platform!
There are some good ones, Dr. Becky, Anton Petrov and Fraser Cain are all great for astronomy stuff. Dr. Kipping had a great interview about Exomoons on Fraser Cain's channel: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-umiMtQU3bMU.html - BTW: one thing you can do is, if you see stuff that's obviously clickbait b.s. you can actually block the channel from your recommendations (just click the 3 vertical dots on the rec to get a menu and you should be able to block from there). Once you clear out a lot of the bogus channels you'll only get good stuff (problem is you need to already know a lot about science to know what's 'good' or not, so not helpful for people who are just getting into it)
@takanara7 I found all these people, including Prof. Kipping, as well before my whole UAP experience in 2022. These people, except for 1 person. I also got into carpet cleaning. I discovered that the guy I like to watch from Poland; his machines give off a very specific level, a soothing sound. It actually appears to be a very good sound for soothing the mind. Who knew I would like watching people clean dirty rugs? 😂 I also am not a conspiracy type of person. Never was. I still don't do that after February 2022. I don't do conspiracy as it's too much work & wasted time, to worry & think about things that way. Truth & facts are always easier to remember. I have always been that way. I am not creative enough to dream up my UAP. It's sound/waves.
E.T. Jaynes thought experiment is the perfect embodiment of the quote "Once is never, twice is always." Unfortunately, we are stuck on the once is never part of it, both for stars with life in the universe, and in regard to civilization developing on a world filled with life.
Ye, interestingly. Jaynes actually gives a slightly abbreviated version of that, that once is always, zero is never. The reason he said that though was because the observer, in his case of chemical flasks, is a separate entity. In contrast, in astrobiology, we have one known form of life, but it's us. So we can't really include it as a fair datum because we're only here because we're here! i.e. the weak anthropic principle. What you really need is at least one data point disconnected from our causal existence, such as life on Proxima or something.
Unfortunately, or fortunately? I like this result a lot more than the inverse. Let's take over the galaxy ourselves, then.¹ ✊ The dread *_Imperium of Humankind_* shall be the terror of the cosmos! _(¹: ...and let's _*_not_*_ get paved over by a star-empire that has no concept of empathy or mercy because they evolved in entirely different circumstances with entirely different biology)_
@@CoolWorldsLabremember, there may be another exception here. For all it's sins, the Drake Equation does ask what percentage of stars / planets provide the conditions for intelligent life to evolve. If that's only 1 star in 1 billion or 1 planet in X (X being the number of planets in the Milky Way), we may still have a galaxy at population capacity. Even if that was 5 or 10 per X, we could still be at capacity without knowing. Your assumption we may be early on the curve or even the first on the curve could indeed be incorrect quite easily with incorrect assumptions. Just a thought. Love your work by the way, can't wait to see the results from your JWST time! ❤
@@pikotech1 That's true, though one can kind of argue the same fine tuning argument against it again. Namely that if it is very unlikely, why would it only be so unlikely that you still get some civilizations then none at all. Of course obviously there is a chance we are in that range, and that would be some what interesting. But there is probably a pretty good chance that it is all or nothing as such. Even more so as even one civ could as they noted colonize the entire galaxy and fix the low habitability issue while doing so.
Been waiting for this update from Cool Worlds for several years. Probes the limits of academic literature relevant to the Fermi paradox and the question of aliens all the while steeping in the ever deeper wonders and mysteries of the universe - Cool Worlds doing what Cool Worlds does best.
The growing evidence for some sort of semi derelict biological drones from a civilisation possibly preceding us on this planet does make the position of many scientists be questioned. How many of them were "in the loop" and denied us the knowledge. I find the kardashev scale to be extremely inadequate. Who says that a very evolved civilisation is high in numbers. Quite the opposite is proven by our dropping birth numbers
I do think there is one major problem with this though is that while you have a 'death' term a more accurate term would be 'invisible' - in other words when we would no longer be able to detect a civilization with our existing telescope technology. One reason for that could be death, another reason would just be a switch to wideband radio communication, as well as more use of cables, etc. Like, even though we use way more communication tech today then in the 1960s the amount of 'radio light' we give off from more modern technology is probably a lot lower. And TBH I don't really think that if there was another planet with earth-like technology, we wouldn't see it. All the techno signature stuff is based on the idea of civilizations way more advanced then ours (i.e. dyson spheres, etc) But we don't actually know if there will ever be a dyson sphere around the sun, for example. Honestly at this point, it doesn't seem like we would be able to detect a planet with earth level technology with our current "observation power" (other then, ironically, chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere - which we are phasing out anyway!)
Instead we've pushed increasing amounts of energy over the entire light spectrum instead. Think all those mobile phones, the starlink network, wifi and so on and so forth. Total wireless communication tech usage has been increasing. And for the obvious reason really that it is convenient to exchange information. So Earth in some ways is actually only shifting the issue around by becoming brighter in more areas. The only obvious resolution to me for this issue would probably have to be more in the signals becoming increasingly narrowband, so one no longer wastes energy emitting in every direction. Which I suppose is something that might happen eventually, though you'd need to have a really tight system to really go dark like that. Still another problem will occur soon enough to then settle the matter in another way. Which is that some time this century if all goes well, we will be able to detect life on other worlds across increasingly large distances of this galaxy via telescopes instead. We'd be able to detect any unusual alterations in planet atmospheres at that point as well. Which I'm sure you realize will make an argument based on non-visible communication kind of irrelevant. You'd be able to just see them after all. Admittedly we don't 'quite' have those telescopes yet. But any one more advanced then us surely would, so they could already see us. Which leads to the Fermi Paradox problem, where are they? Why aren't they already here to view this system in more detail up close? Yes, one could create some explanations for it. But galactic colonization or even partial colonization would certainly cause... substantial tension with the idea of only being able to find other civilizations via communication as well. Still despite that reasoning... Well the most certain way is just to observe how things really are. So till we get those future mega telescopes, we won't know for sure.
If I remember correctly, we can't even detect earth like planets (same size, same distance to star) usually. We can detect an earth in mercury's orbit or a jupiter in earth's orbit on an alien system, but that's it. So that we don't see them, really so far doesn't have a huge Baysian meaning. So far, we can only really analyze one system, where we know that one planet created life as early as possible (and can't yet completely disclose that it might have happened at two other planets in the system, too, and maybe even on some moons, as well), but took a long time to develop an advanced civilisation and only for a short time so far. So, if any, that would support the probability closer to 1 than closer to 0. Once we have more observational power and we've seen maybe 3 or 4 star systems without any life (and can be sure about it), then it's time to shift to 0.
@@janekschleicher9661 What Beyesian info we have on life developing Earth supports more the idea that life on Earth developed quickly. This is due to Earth habitability period starting to come to an end. With in the next half a billion years or so complex life and thus us, should no longer be possible to develop/exist on this planet. At least not with out technology. (The reason for this is due to the Sun getting hotter over time, and I think water loss effects) In any case this means that we reached an advanced civ on this planet just before this world became uninhabitable. Which is a some what unlikely event. In timed events making it just in time always feels a bit unusual. This also brings some what in question life starting early here. As apparently life needed the entire period of habitability to achieve us. A point one could turn around and say, if life hadn't started as soon as possible, we wouldn't be possible. As for why 1 isn't really supported, it's because we don't find the remains one would expect from 1. Starting with the question by Fermi, where are they? Not as in, out there in space, but as in, why haven't they already crossed the gulf between stars and arrived here then? Why aren't we an advanced civ under the supervision of older alien civs? But also one could ask, why don't we see colossal mega engineering around other stars then? Swarms of large space facilities that influence the light output we see from a star. Given time we would after all build up our own star system as much as possible. Just as we would cross the gulf between stars and start doing that in other star systems as well. Of course one can create potential explanations. But they tend to be a bit adhoc, as it is hard to explain why it would apply to all civilizations with out exception. And so the galaxy with no obvious signal of alien civilization is more an indicator of 0. No major build ups, no expansions in to our Solar System, everything just looks lifeless and natural to the scales we can observe. Still, I do agree we lack data. This is far from an absolute statement, and more one that perhaps we've been a bit to optimistic on running in to alien civilizations quickly.
@@Quickshot0 Well if we were to assume that galactic colonization could prevent new life and civilizations from forming; that would infer that any civilization coming into existence would occur before anyone finished galactic colonization. If odds are you only on average get 10 space faring civilizations produced before the galaxy gets colonized. Then if you exist, and the galaxy isn't colonized, then you are among the 10. If the number happens to be 20, you are among the 20. If the number is five, you are among the five. If the number is one, you are it. I think an interesting set of questions is if we were first, second, or third, how long would it takes us to see someone else? Keep in mind, light lag is quite the thing. We are 26,000 lightyears away from the center of the milky way. How far head is first place from second place technologically?
"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination." - Douglas Noel Adams
Given an infinite number of planets, If only one of two planets is inhabited, there is still a infinite number of inhabited planets. The same if one in a hundred, thousand, million, trillion, etc
Having been a sceptic and having seen jack shit for 30 years of unhealthy obsession in Astronomy and being slapped by two experiences that defy all logic, I find your comment showing you being behind the curve my friend. We are not supposed to say that UAP are nothing to worry about.
@@Roguescienceguy There's no curve when it comes to aliens unless you're talking scientifically, which you clearly aren't. Maybe you should stick to actual science instead of questionable experiences.
@@justbaqirr personally I am still on the fence whether they are extraterrestrial or not, but these things are here and they indeed show signs of intelligent manipulation. I mean, stopping mid flight, doing some zigzag-motion and then flying on is definitely weird. Might be some skunkworks though. Btw, quite a number of European scientists are seriously investigating the phenomenon now.
Here is the deal... UAP ARE 100% REAL! ANYONE who believes otherwise is the one NOT living in reality. All mainstream scientists saying "there is no evidence" are either A) Liars or B) Willfully ignoring the tons of evidence, radar, video, and people's personal accounts of such things. The deal is mainstream academia is has been TOTALLY CO-OPTED by the CIA(current master)/OSS/US GOV since the Manhatten project. Those guys (who infact went on to teach a majority of high level scientists afterwards) had security clearances, knew they were real, and were told to deny the reality of them, and to ostrascize ANYONE in their fields who stepped outside that narrative. So these people... who most looked up to in their field, and respected... did their masters bidding, and attacked anyone in science who dared even question the truth of them. Then because we are social creatures others joined and out of fear never looked into it themselves out of fear of being labeled an "other". THIS is the reality of how mainstream academia/science has helped perpetuate the psyop, and cover up. They have self policed themselves willingly into a falsehood. THAT IS THE ACTUAL TRUTH! The other truth is shown in the language of those who actually know some truths about these things. They DO NOT say "ET", bit they say NHI.... because they do not believe they are from another planet out there... maybe some are. the technology is absolutely way beyond our own. The beings in them control them in way that is almost biological... but reality is much stranger than fiction... there is a very "woo" element to these things... that you HAVE to come to grips with to try and understand. Like the reality of remote viewing... which is 100% real.. I have done it myself. Anyone who is open enough to the reality of them... can see one... but I would absolutely not advise calling one in.. because there is no telling with what you are messing with.
You are a boon to humanity. Thank you for seeking to ground a conversation widely polluted by people who are happy to say anything that gets them attention.
CIVILIZATION BLINK RATE Q: Hypothetically, if Moore's Law continues indefinitely, then how many years before a silicon computer must become an optical computer, then subatomic computer, and then for superintelligence to operate most efficiently the computer must be made of neutron star or quark star material? How many years for the shrinking CPU to become so miniaturized that it becomes identical to a primordial black hole? How many years does the math dictate when that would be necessary? Just as a mathematical exercise. Now, if all superintelligent alien civilizations followed Moore's Law in this way, and entire planets and solar systems were converted into pure CPU's, would that 500?-year progression be detectable from Earth, merely a quick blink at galactic time scales? Exponential growth has a way of growing exponentially. Until the limits of the physical substrates of intelligence, the Planck-scale circuitry. Would trillions of such quark-plasma CPU's all over the galaxy behave like dark matter?
High energy condensed matter physics would have to structure the sun's material into logic gates, and then AI could run there. Maybe that's where all the ET's went to live, or at least their AI avatars did.
Moore's Law isn't holding up though even here. It is still relevant but the timeframe for doubling of processors isn't what was stated. Many think we have already reached the physical limitations for silicon-based processors. If the limit hasn't been reached or there is no limit, then eventually any civilization wishing to increase or maintain the rate would have to spend more and more of its resources to the point that everything they have would be required.
@@gishjalmr5628 That's why better substrates than silicon are being developed, even down to the spintronics or optical computing level, and why several trillion dollars are to be spent just on manufacturing the AI chips. They are so incredibly valuable that every possible unit of computing is being maximized, everything humanly possible for civilization to create greater AI, with whatever materials and energy sources are available. Jensen Huang (CEO of NVidia) and Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) have basically said so, repeatedly. We are literally ... giving it our all.
The problem is that people think of the Drake equation as an actual attempt at prediction when it was just meant to organize a meeting agenda to discuss SETI.
Thank you for such great content. I love that you go beyond the typical pop-sci slop and actually get into the math/statistics behind your and others’ work-which I really love learning about. Also, as this video shows, I appreciate your realistic view of the universe-such as the true difficulties of interstellar travel and the likely rareness of other Earths and intelligent life. I can’t wait to become a member of the Cool Worlds Lab when I start my new job after graduating later this summer. Keep up the awesome work.
The Drake equation was a conversation starter. We owe a lot to Frank Drake for getting us started down the path of thinking about this problem in a more cleared-headed way.
Hmm, I disagree. I think it was a huge diversion. At the end, it had no predictive value. It sounds like math. It sounds like science. But it's actually not.
@@christopherdaffron8115 He split the atom by accident and didn’t even know it for 5 years until someone else told him. He was just experimenting. That’s what scientists do. Others started the conversation. Should we not have conversations because something bad might happen? I can’t see any purpose to what you wrote.
@@ScentlessSun Here is the point. Read Carefully! Drake's equation has taken on more purpose than Drake had intended. The Fermi Paradox (I'm sure you have heard of it) has taken on more purpose than Fermi had intended. You see the purpose of what I wrote now?
Amazing research and great video as always. A couple thoughts; If Galileo could glimpse the International Space Station with his telescope-a revolutionary technology in his own time-he wouldn’t have the resolution to even guess at what he saw. He would only see a bright moving point in the sky. The difference in our level of technology from Galileo’s time is impressive, but it might pale in comparison to the difference in technology between a Kardashev 0.7 civilization and a Level 3 civilization. An alien civilization capable of colonizing the galaxy would possess exotic technology that we may not have even dreamed of yet. I’ve always thought it presumptive to assume that we would be able to identify their presence at this point in our development. If we assume there’s some merit to this argument, this makes it difficult to dismiss the high-occupation scenario. We still wouldn’t have a clue where we were on the curve unless we improbably spot another sub 1 civilization. And then we would have an n of 2.
If you think that’s been misused, remember Claude Shannon himself even came out and said “come on everyone stop using my theories to say things they don’t say”. While I firmly believe there is other intelligent life in the universe, I feel the insane distances involved, along with the universe still expanding, means we’ll never meet each other.
@@AndrewBlucher I think ever sadly. I think by the time a civilization might get close to some kind of FTL technology, they’ll probably end up offing themselves or their society will decline long before they get there.
@@AndrewBlucher No, never meaning its actual meaning of never. We handwave the ability to travel between the stars far too easily. It is insanely difficult, assuming anyone even tries in the first place. We have done it only twice and our first attempt isnt even out of the Solar System by some metrics. If we want to live in a fantasy, than sure, lets talk about all the alien civilizations that may or may not exist out there, but if we want to live in reality, we need to be honest about the actual physical limitations the universe imposes on us. They are numerous and oppressive and - as far as we have observed - without exception (a consequence of a sample of 1).
One thing that has always struck me is, we are looking, but we have only been looking for maybe a few hundred years in the optical, maybe 100 years using radio telescopes. This is out of 13. Billion years. Aliens would have to be relatively close, technologically advanced and be existing at roughly the same time to have overlap with ours. It’s that overlap I think will be the most important factor.
Do we not definitionally live in the expansion phase of a civilisation, our own? It may be a very brief window but here we are. The issue I have with the ‘statistically unlikely’ approach is that everything at play here is statistically unlikely. The idea that something which is demonstrably possible has happened exactly once is… a little silly to me.
I forget the name of the fallacy, but you've fallen victim to it. Just because something can happen once, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to happen again in a limited scenario. In this case, the limits are our galaxy and the current age of the universe. (There are actually many more limits, but let's go with this for the sake of simplicity.) For example, let's say that the odds of any independent life form evolving to radio-transmission levels, within our galaxy, within our epoch, are 1 in 1 quintillion. If that's true, and we are that happy 1 in 1 quintillion, it would be entirely unreasonable to expect to see any signs of other life at all. i.e. just because we are here, doesn't change the odds, except to say "it's possible".
@@simontmnRome did not decline it just morphed into a different kind of power. All 'civilisations' as we know them did not cease - they became the stepping stones to the so called civilisation we have now.
What corresponds to what we see? A universe in which tech civilizations are so rare as to be invisible to us. This could change tomorrow with a verifiable alien transmission but like Sagan I have to go with withholding belief until there is evidence.
Personally I find this formulation of the problem far more compelling for the existance of "life", than for the prevalence of "technological civilizations". The mere existance of life must indeed be either everywhere or almost nowhere as it is fundamentally a question of the likelihood of chemistry turning into a system of self-replication (similar to the water in the glass flasks analogy and I lean heavily towards "everywhere") However, when it comes to technological civilizations I have always thought the brief "phase transition" to a state where the entire galaxy is covered is flawed. I can imagine several factors that could either slow the expansion or halt it at a value substantially lower than 100%, challenging that assumption and create large regions with minimally visible tech civilizatiions including: Ideology, the usefulness of planets with life for science, Internal and external conflict and disagreements between civilizations, a reasonably high probability of death or decline for civs etc. Additionally, even if the curve does apply, the relative youth of the universe compared to its lifespan increases the liklihood we are in the ascending part of the curve, especially if the rate of civilizational expansion is somewhat slower than some currently beleive.
I think the "almost nowhere" for the technological level of intelligent life, because it almost didn't happen on earth. Earth has had life for like 4 billion years, but we only have about 800 million years before the oceans boil off. In fact the earth was much more hospitable to life 100 million years ago with much higher oxygen concentrations, so huge animals could live then that couldn't live today. We also know that longer-lived stars like red dwarfs would likely blow the atmospheres off planets close enough to have life, and huge bright stars don't last very long - so really even with a sunlike star the odds of developing intelligent life would be low. (but, maybe in the future you could have planets around white dwarfs that would last for a very, very long time)
In your thinking how much the factors you mentioned (ideology, usefulness, etc.*) would affect the phase transition speed? 10x? 100x? Still not enough I think**. Also, part of your rationale is covered by the birth/death ratio. My intuition is that to make a dent in the fine tuning argument by "widening" the "phase transition" time, we should show that the suggested reasons have a non-linear impact, i.e. they don't just put a coefficient in front of the equation. For example, the larger the perimeter of the empire, the more potentially useful planets are in your reach, so this actually works against your argument. Assume empire radius r. Number of cool planets to explore grows with ~r^2. Even if on average, cool planets are only 10%, this is a constant coefficient in front of a quadratic equation. Internal conflicts would indeed grow with the volume of your empire ~r^3, which might be useful to focus on. Meeting other civs would probably be related to the perimeter of your empire r^2, not its volume. Etc. etc.*** I agree we're in the ascending part of the curve, but that doesn't tell us much. We might be the first, or to be more precise the only one currently spacefaring/doing the expanding. I think this is what the fine tuning argument tells us. * "disagreements with other civs" works against your argument ** remember the simulations were done with current technology in mind, I think we can improve our engines considerably up to a fraction of c. *** another cool idea: I read "Accelerando" lately and there, the constraint on civilization growth was network bandwidth/latency, which caused members of a civilization to prefer being near each other, resulting in matrioshka-brain civilizations. Bandwidth would be subject to inverse square law, so dampens with 1/r^2
@@kosairox Wouldn't phase transition be slowed depending on the percentage of stars with habitable planets? (Or a planet useable for a self-replicating probe to visit and create more of itself) This is basically an exponential growth curve, right? The closer the useful systems are, the quicker the probe gets there, and the quicker more probes are made, etc, etc. Would this not be able to slow the transition to a more believable level? Like, say the phase transition takes 1 billion years instead of less than 10 million years, and with the universe being 13.6 billion years old, then it wouldnt be too improbable to currently be in that transition - right?
@@extragoogleaccount6061 One can come up with many reasons why the phase transition would be slower. If we reduce the number of habitable planets by a factor of 100, would that increase the galactic conquest time from 10 million years 100-fold to 1 billion yeras? I don't think so. For the sake of argument, if you're a self-replacting probe you have less habitable planets to choose as your next "destination", but they're just homogenuously as distant from you. Say, instead of 1000 planets which are 10 ly from you in random directions, you have 10 planets which are 10 ly from you in random directions. I think volume-wise, it doesn't make much difference then. In fact, less planets means less paths to choose from means the expansion (volume-wise) would be faster. It also means you need to produce less probes, though I think the time required to produce probes doesn't matter anyways because it's much shorter (years?) compared to travel time. The "benefit" of having less habitable planets is that a civ is harder to detect, but if we assume that, say, within 10 ly it's practically guaranteed that a detection is successful, it doesn't make much difference. I think we need to consider average distance between habitable planets and distance of detecting a civilization. If distance between habitable planets is smaller than distance of detection, then it is as I said. Otherwise, if distance between habitalbe planets is greater than distance of detection, your argument could work. Though this argument could be applied to bolster the "aliens are everywhere we're just not listening hard enough" scenario just as well, not only to attack the phase transition fine tuning argument. To explore this further one could come up with a maths model, maybe a python simulation, and test for what parameter values would the number of habitable planets benefit or harm the hypothesis? Then compare with real-life detection range estimates and real-life habitability estimates.
While our observations can clearly rule out every planet having a technological civilization, it's still entirely possible that every suitable planet has life. The Earth could very well be representative of this; it has had life for almost its entire history, while only having a civilization for a very brief moment. In other words, maybe life is extremely common, and civilizations do try to emerge very frequently, but they are so short-lived that no one ever lives long enough on astronomical timescales.
While that's possible we just have no idea what the likelihood of any life forming on a planet is. It can't be "that high" because we've seen a ton of planets that are very definitely not suitable for life and one (maybe a few if you count the moons with water oceans) that could possibly support life.
There's a fallacy in this assumption. At least if we're talking about higher life forms. It's not enough for Earth to just be in the goldielocks zone of our solar system. There are factors like our Sun being the perfect size (there is no goldielocks zone around a red dwarf, for example, despite how much sci-fi bros would like it to be. Tidal locking is no joke), us having a ginormous moon and Jupiter to act as a cosmic vacuum cleaner for the inner solar system. There are many more factors which would take too long to list them all here, but let's just say we hit a Royal Flush. Are there going to be other planets out there in the Universe that also hit a Royal Flush? Most certainly. But it's not very common and the chances that it happened in our cosmic neighborhood are slim, to say the least. So in that sense we're very much alone out there and we won't be communicating with other intelligent life in the Universe as in Star Trek. That's a pipe dream.
@@veganbutcherhackepeter Well, people hit Royal Flushes every day of the week in Vegas, and elsewhere. Not me, at least not yet, but somebody has and will.
I have just discovered your channel via a comment on another video, one of Carl Sagan’s talks and have subscribed and look forward to watching your previous and future content. I have been fascinated by all things to do with space like many people since an early age and it’s great that there are many pushing the boundaries to help others understand more and more. Thank you for sharing this excellent video with everyone. Best wishes to you and your team and your families from England
This is one of the few channels, if not the only one, where the presenter has not been afraid to disagree with the optimistic search for life. He's expressed his skepticism in other videos and I think it's refreshing. I think some anti science logic has become so ingrained that people cannot fathom the opposite being true. We've all heard that "Is arrogant and self centered to think we are the only ones in the galaxy" but like... Even scientist think there's a strong, rational, chance that's the case.
Taking the beaker analogy, what if a random, unknown number of the beakers are empty. Then, no, compound x won't dissolve. If you don't know how many beakers are empty, then instead of close to 0 or 100%, we should expect either close to 0 or 50%. Anything that would make a planet permanently uninhabitable would be like an empty beaker. And that brings some of the vagaries and problems with the Drake equation back into the mix.
Exactly. The Kipping formulation is useful but assumes homogeneity of the population. The answer could be that we are at the “near 100 percent” end of the set of X-type stars with Y-type planets in the Z-band of their lifetimes…a number as mysterious as it ever was.
@@HonorableBoor I still think their model assumes homogeneity *at every scale* of unit choice or size (LY^3 or planets or whatever). At smaller scales homogeneity shrinks and the model’s power decreases. The beakers are not comparable. At larger scales homogeneity among cells increases, which does make this model interesting but begins to limit its application to a galaxy rife with regional features. This homogeneity/scalability problem is not unique to what they’re trying to do - it’s inherent in any survey sample estimate and I suspect trying to apply this model to a heterogeneous galaxy (uninhabitable center, spiral arms, interstellar dense cloud regions) would be informative but challenged as you run out of degrees of freedom…in other words, there would so many 0-100 spectra to multiple against each other you’d be drifting back to Fermi. [I say all this having not read the paper. Mea culpa.]
It's not a fine tuning problem, it goes much deeper than that. It's that loads of humans, earn loads of money, building equipment that only humans understand to search for how humans on other planets would behave. When we cannot see them out there using TV's, cell phones etc. then we default to either - we are alone or we are the only intelligent one's. The fundamental question is how would a species far ahead of us communicate. Even we know that the frequency spectrum has its disadvantages, maybe they have over come this and are thus unseen by us.
You touched on a very important point. People have a natural bias when investigating alien life, we tend to think they are like us. They could be very different. Have you ever considered that one alien might have an IQ of 1000, but still be in a society that uses stones and bows? Simply because for some odd reason they didn't evolve the tech, even though they have an IQ of 1000.
We tend to overthink things because we can only see things from our own perspective. Also we only see things that are in our own dimension and viewpoint, and that we are able to comprehend, classical monkey through a keyhole. Our brains might not be able to process all the information that is coming our way. We are like eagerly awaiting puppies waiting for alien communications, but seriously though when we can’t even understand or comprehend other earth animals communication that are highly intelligent such as dolphins or whales, what chance do we have of being able to understand aliens?
Need to face facts- it's just us and a few scraps of lichens out there in the observable universe. Cool Worlds has the intellectual courage to take on the Eerie Silence and provide a solid statistical answer for it but one no one will like. We need to keep searching, but don't expect to find Dyson-sphere-builders or angelic alien super-minds- it's just not in the cards.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="12">0:12</a> I see Michio in the thumbnail, I click away. This goes back. Way back. About 35 years. A steady drip, drip, drip.
Dr. Kipping, I absolutely agree with you here. But there are a few issues you also need to consider when analyzing where we are. (I'm going to try to keep it short.) First, there are limitations on radio signals. I remember a paper that calculated that most of our radio transmissions would be indistinguishable from noise after 2 or 4 light-years. So, let's select a bigger distance, 10 light-years. The only human-made radio communications that would survive are the powerful directional transmissions, which are really rare. So, radio SETI is an interesting search that, sure, should be attempted, but you can't hope for much there. Second, we have 2 biases that need to be considered: the same way that there's the "aliens of the gaps", there's also the "nature of the gaps". Because doesn't matter what we detect, someone is always going to create a natural explanation for it. The worse part is that even I agree with the second bias, exactly to avoid the first one. A natural explanation is always going to be more probable. So... In the end, all we know is that we know nothing... Because even if we've already detect alien civilizations out there we'd probably not know that and explain as something natural... But there's a way to solve this issue, but it's never going to be a complete solution: we need to start to think about what we could detect that would be evidence of an alien technology. And, fun enough, we did it about dyson spheres and now we have a few candidates. You know? Anyway, we may even be the first. I don't know, no-one knows. So we need to investigate it. Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
100% This. Assuming humans actually are a technological advanced species, and as-such, all intelligent species would be using radio or super-bright signals ("HERE I AM!" for decades and centuries) to communicate across space, that incorrect (but best-we-have) assumption on the communicative and civilization-growth-oriented "nature" of other "intelligent" species.. THAT has funded telescopes of the 20th and early 21st century, but it can't fund the 21st century searches... Assuming other intelligent species would have human priorities of social interaction, communication, energy consumption, and growth-at-all-costs - studying those assumptions puts holes in the post-colonization or filled galaxy conclusion.
Radio signals are limited and so is what we can currently "see" with telescopes. Considering the size of the galaxy, let alone the universe, we are pretty much just looking at a single point of data. And we all know that you cannot really know much at all from a single point (except that at least a single point does exist).
3 observations: 1. Compared to its lifespan, the universe is young as is the galaxy. 2. Cognitive science suggest that life and self-awareness are not too uncommon in the galaxy, but that intelligence and the evolutionary means to implement it may be very rare. 3. The speed of light is very slow and there are many puzzles about the nature of the universe and galaxy that we have yet to understand. I am in the camp of those who believe that intelligent life on earth may be a one off in the galaxy, if not the universe, and that we should do everything we can to preserve it and propagate it through the universe
In terms of adding new perspective to the 'where is everybody' issue, this seems like a real breakthrough in logic that feels like very solid ground to make an informed conclusion that the universe is indeed probably empty at this point in time. In terms of inspiration I don't find this nearly as depressing as it's presented though. To me, this seems like a grand opportunity to be the spark at the beginning of that upward curve. It's interesting to me that humans want to see themselves as so unremarkable that we need to find some other civilazation to confirm we're just random lifeforms on a rock. Perhaps so we can leave the burden of exploration to someone else...so we can be handed the knowledge about the nature of existence without us having to do the unfathomable work of having to figure it out ourselves over the next few eons. Maybe we're missing the cosmic joke that we are still so very special and our generation has the unique position of being at the very start of that civilization that will inevitably colonize every star in the universe. Maybe our desire to know everything is just so much bigger than the small fraction of time we're allotted to exist will allow. It's a bit like getting to the mountain peak to see another infinite number of mountains in front of you....but you're the only one there to climb them and that still means something. Pretty cool to me! Love this channel, thanks for doing what you do and doing the real work to help us all wonder.
If only more teacher has that next level fascination/dedication to the true pursuit of science. The calculations must describe the world/universe as closely as possible to the field data. BRAVO!
I've come to understand recently just how many events led up to us and how many more are necessary to become a spacefaring civilisation, which alone is quite the feat. No wonder we can't see anyone.
But what if we add +1 to the equation? We already know of one, supposedly, intelligent civilisation. The star system we know best brings us off the zero mark. Love your work!
The universe is unimaginable big, when we look at the sky we look mainly at a very old picture. When species need a long time to evolve and show tech signs we need to have more sensitive equipment and a lot more time to so we can see a newer picture.
As you were describing your process, I was thinking.. have you really tried to pull it apart... well.. of course you did.. lovely!.. excellent logic, loved the video! One thought.. I'm a Radio R&D Engineer, I've run the Friis equation for interstellar comms and it's seriously scary, my best guess for a link to transmit data from an interstellar probe is to use an ultra-collimated laser.. probably about a foot diameter collimator.. with a 1~0.3arc second wide data beam, and an ELT sized receiver at the L2 point, wavelength will be a balance between narrowness of the beam and the spacial selectivity of the receiving dish/scope.. to ensure the receiver can achieve a sufficiently low level of noise from the star adjacent to the probe. All that means all interstellar communications would be nearly impossible to intercept (see beam width). Thus I don't think any of the radio searches will ever find anything, no one will use radio for long range comms. I also recall a paper pointing out that the combined radiated energy from all earths FM transmitters combine to a signal level that's virtually undetectable from 4light years (a level measured in nano-Janskys). What I'm saying is, IMHO, civilisations are probably much more difficult to detect that we think.. but thank you for sharing a really interesting line of work.
Hey, I'm glad you said that. I'm an amateur radio operator and I was a radioman in the military, so I get what you mean. Some people seem to think that if a radio signal is transmitting that means everyone can see it. Which is not always the case. It's a lot more complicated than that. Perfect description of the issue! Thanks!
I think saying we don’t see anything out there is a bit like saying there’s no such thing as (rare thing) because we can’t see it in our relatively small percentage of data collected. Despite the exciting and laudable advances in these areas, we simply do not have enough observations to make an informed guess. Time is on our side, and you can’t leave time to observe other worlds that are 100,000 light years away that could have life. The big question would be could the few life bearing planets ever be synchronized.
ROFL. EXACTLY 42 civilizations! I wish I could give you a hundred upvotes for that one. That's a pretty genius way to do it. Because realistically the Drake equation should expand to include the probability of the number of civilizations that successfully transcend each Fermi paradox great filter. That could get a bit unwieldy.
That’s actually a good point, too. There always has to be first and we may very well be that. However, if that was the case then we would forever be confused and ever searching for an eternity.
Maybe we are, it's something I've wondered. Particularly considering that in the life-bearing period of the universe, we seem to have developed suspiciously close to the beginning of it (given it's trillions of years long).
It's almost certain that we're the only spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way and probably the Local Group, too. But in distant superclusters, Type II civilizations could be expanding and the news (i.e., light) hasn't hit us yet.
@@Jeff-wk4eo The information is in the video, starting around 11:11, and another key phrase is uttered at 12:30, "...which objectively is a far more likely outcome." Another key point in the video is when he talks about how fast a spacefaring civilization can spread. See 16:30.
@@ftapon You can't be almost certain when making assumptions. We have not observed an alien civilization. There is absolutely zero basis that we can assume they have the ability to colonize other systems(we do not or are remotely close to being able to) or even have the desire to. It's disappointing to hear Dr. Kipping make these assumptions that cannot be logically made.
@@Jeff-wk4eo I'm almost certain that at least 80% of the people who go into a men's bathroom are men. I'm almost certain that you are a homo sapien. I'm almost certain the USA will have an election in November 2024. There. I just made 3 assumptions that I'm almost certain about. Therefore, yes, I can be "almost certain when making assumptions." If your point is WE DON'T KNOW if there are spacefaring aliens, of course, you're right. Yawn. The point of Kipping's video is to speculate, which normally requires making assumptions. If you dislike making assumptions, then this video is not for you.
@@Jeff-wk4eo Here are 3 assumptions that I am almost certain about: 1. You are a human and not a bot. 2. At least 80% of those who enter a men's bathroom are men. 3. There will be a USA election in Nov 2024. You claimed, "You can't be almost certain when making assumptions." I just proved you wrong. The point of this video is to speculate. To speculate, we must make assumptions. If you dislike speculating or making assumptions, don't watch the video.
Yes, based on all the available information and after crunching some numbers I conclude that our existence is statistically improbably, so much so that I tend to regard all the actual people I regularly encounter day to day as little more than a curious and highly eccentric artifact of floating point arithmetic imprecision; a continuously growing cumulative error.
You hit the nail on the head at the end, "Maybe were looking in the wrong place.". This is my conclusion as radio waves are not everything, we know they are too slow for communication across star systems and solar systems. The must be a something else, in Statrek they called it subspace, it could be anything we just dont know yet.
and perhaps nobody builds dyson spheres because they have some breakthrough in physics that allows them to have unimaginable power generation on a much smaller scale. need more data.
@@melangearrakis You don't need a Dyson sphere when you can tap into the potential electrical energy of the universe. Imagine the electrical energy that's created from the magnetic fields of stars and planets which all rotate. It's unimaginable but totally possible within the laws of physics.
The problem with this equation is thinking of humans as one single civilization inhabiting our planet. There are human civilizations that have come and gone and are now extinct. Many of them. All of human kind did not experience the industrial revolution, only certain civilizations made it to industrialization and computerization among the many inhabiting the planet. We still have hunter gatherer people inhabiting the planet with rocket launching people. Calling all of that one human civilization is too simple and can't represent a value of 1 in the equation. If there are aliens, it's safe to assume that not every alien has a space ship or the resources to travel the stars. They may have a shadow government controlling all the best technology too, who knows.
It is safe to say that if not for western/european civilization, most humans would still be living in medieval age (China, Japan, Middle East) and the rest would be living in bronze age or less, like Africans, Oceania and native americans.. So 1 out of 100 humans civilizations made it to the industrial revolution (and took others with them later) If europeans went extinc in 1200 somehow by plague, there would be no tech signals coming from earth
You are right, but is it relevant? The way I look at it the answer to the question whether there is a civilization on a planet is a binary one. There is a population that meets the criteria for civilization or there is not. Where you draw the line is of course rather subjective
@@silentwilly2983 Agreed. Throwing in some more discussion, sure there’s some societies more technologically advanced than others, but a neolithic civilisation is not relevant to the search for alien life via current technological means.
we also have many animals that arguably could be considered civilized, whales have incredibly complex language, but clearly are physically incapable of building tech and have no need for a home, Crows can use tools and communicate, even teach their young about individual humans
My opinion: We are still too early in our Universe to see multiple civilizations to exist at the same period of time and at locations where contact is possible.. This would be a VERY lucky event so early in the universe considering intelligent life here took 1/3 of the Universe's age to appear... If another civilzation is alive right now, chances are they are more than 1 million light years away.. Also, 4 billions years of stability must be a very rare occasion in our early universe... People underestimate the hostility of the universe, the distances involved and how intelligent life must be a glimpse in astronomic terms
I am glad he's finally starting to talk like this. My first message i received after February 2022, was we must come together. It has taken a few years to wonder what it meant. I always had the "thought it was to bring together experiencers & the scientists. To help everybody think outside the box to help discover & share potential information in that box, toss it all around to see if more can be uncovered & find missing links together to move better towards our journeys with the others out there.
Fantastic video. Aside from the mathematics, what I appreciate the most is the part where you say that we must continue our search. Dismissing an hypotesis (any hypotesis) just out of likelyhood criteria or out of sheer narrow mindedness is not only a bad scientific approach, but it would also kill our human curiosity
This increases even further the Copernicus Paradox. Why we are in a planet where technology can be develop when practically all habitable planets technology development is impossible?
@@filonin2 I think that you are missing the point. You should be able to ask the question If intelligent life can came into existence in planets where technology cannot develop (a ocean planet or in a planet with instabilities as in M-Star systems or many others).
"Only a Sith deals in Absolutes" - or more seriously - I am doubtful of that "all or nothing" idea. It would have to be expanded really - it would also imply that basically if you have life on a planet at all, it either almost never develops into multicellular life or it almost always does. It either almost always develops a civilization or it almost never does. And then you end up with a galaxy that either has civilizations and life on almost all planets or on almost none - and at the same time it means that it would be improbable to have life without civilization on any other planet. And I think that makes it more likely that we dont deal in absolutes but that basically something similar to the Drake equation makes sense - to describe each of the features of technological life separately because it could be something in between.
I've been a fan of this channel for a long time, and this is one of my favorites. While listening to the birth/death theory, I couldn't help thinking about the simulation hypothesis. The absence of detectable civilizations always takes me to the simulation hypothesis. My mind then immediately takes me to the double slit experiments where light wave functions suddenly collapse and change from a wave to a particle when being observed. I'm not a PHD experimental physicist, but this phenomenon scares the hell out of me.
I'm sorry I have to say this but mainstream science needs a reality check. When goverments all over the world are worried about what flying in the skies that no one can explain scientist should pay more attention. An alien civilization could be 100% different from all the scientific methods we apply to comunicate or discover them. The science may be absolete here and we need to change our way of understanding other worlds. We may exceeded in math but our theories are as best as our primitive thinking.
Love this convo! 🤩There's just one thing I can't get past when it comes to the math; I'm guessing that when the outcomes are calculated, we are assuming a certain value for the number of stars in the observable universe, but I feel that there are far far more galaxies (and therefore stars ) in the actual universe. What if the actual amount of space and stars and planets is actually far far larger than we could even imagine? It could simply be that indeed life has flourished elsewhere but it was so unimaginably far away that there'd never be any hope of even detecting any tech signatures let alone any biosignatures.
A few assumptions come to mind when exempting the possibility of a galaxy full of life: it could be the vast majority of civilizations that exist are in a state of development similar to our own (or nearly all of them, possibly); while on the other hand, the vast majority are being cloistered, fearful of venturing out, of showing themselves, of leaving a foot print, for fear of retaliation or some intractable encroachment. Not an exhaustive list of possibilities, by any stretch, though certainly some of the more prominent ones.
The Dark Forest Hypothesis. OK, but every life form reaching the same conclusion about communication and covering its tracks? Ants don't seem to mind much if other life knows they are there or not, and they have anteaters to worry about. As for everyone else being at the same level of development that would be extraordinarily Iimprobable, given the uncountable unique events that added up to us. Even small differences in our story could have resulted in changes of millions of years. Best explanation so far for the Eerie Silence is what is presented in this video- hard statistics throwing cold water on the elaborate pantheon of aliens so many folks have erected in their minds thanks to popular entertainment.
The real problem with the Drake equation, is that it supposes civilizations belong on planets/star-systems. I believe all technological mature civilizations quickly (immediately) disintegrates into a myriad of small space/time-traveling nomadic tribes, with almost no detectable signature.
@@JeffNeelzebub Look up professor Kevin Knuth, and his idea of how time dilation (fast travel) determine every technological advanced civilization's development.
@@JeffNeelzebub Why not? It's an interesting idea, albeit a rather strange belief without an observable basis. Why nomadic spacetime traveling tribes? What's the incentive for every civ to become a Star Trek? What if the cards only play one or the other route, like the subject of this video? Instead of becoming traveling tribes all civs eventually die or master their domain. Terraformers content with their host system, producing at most the current signatures we do on Earth? The effect is either way we can't observe them and this explains why we don't see silly things like Dyson swarms, mega structures, and an alien probe visiting Earth every few years. I agree with Kipping, that civs are likely just incredibly rare but life could be rather prolific. The problem is we simply lack a reasonable means of searching. I suspect once we've developed a means of detecting the biosignatures we'll find a universe crawling with critters but intelligent life will forever elude us.
@@zachb8012 It’s a god of the gaps argument. “We can’t find the invisible unicorns because they hide themselves whenever we look for them”. There’s no reason for a civilization to hide themselves. We certainly don’t. As we progress, we require more and more energy. No reason to believe that civilizations don’t become type II or Type III with time, covering entire galaxies with Dyson spheres/swarms.
There is no alien life. We're it. Whether you believe in "simulation theory" or a tradition definition of God, there is some sort of creator external to our universe. The nature of that creator is beyond our comprehension and unknowable to us.
People grew up on Star Trek and Star Wars, most of them will never want to consider that we are alone. People are generally ignorant that we dont know the mechanism of abiogensis, and that if life was common then statistically speaking we should have been surrounded by older alien civilisations and we should have seen them already.
@@Moochaa the fact that every society on earth has some sort of story of the world and humanity being created? I'm not aware of any society that just believed that the world was just "there". That idea didn't emerge until the Renaissance, only to be disproven by the discovery of the Big Bang. Even if you believe that there was no external intervention since the big bang and things just played out according to the laws of physics, there was still some external force that defined those parameters and set everything in motion.
As usual, you make a tremendous amount of sense. My gut feeling is we are on the early side of things as far as life development in our galaxy. I mean, when we consider how much more volatile the galaxy would have been in its younger days, with constant supernovae, gamma ray bursts, fewer stable stars, and all of that, as you pointed out. Perhaps we are just fortunate to have gotten started at a time where conditions were relatively stable enough and heavy elements abundant enough here that we were able to develop and form technologies. For all we know, simple life might be very abundant in the galaxy, but civilizations very rare to almost nomexistent. That's why l think that our focus should be more on detecting biosignatures than technosignatures.
We are not going to detect biosignatures any time soon, because our tech is still shit, james webb is bad for detecting biosignatures, no matter what the media says and Mr Kipping knows this, we need a better telescope just to get started, like the Nautilus array which is not going to happen any time soon sadly. Seti is useless and not worth the time, assuming radio is the communication between long distances is like telling we are going to use smoke signals on earth to communicate with mars lol
Possible objection, curious what you think about it: If the anthropic principle explains finetuning (why the universe and laws of physics appear to be finetuned so they can support life) because we live in a multiverse, then you would expect the birth/death ratio to be solely determined by the distribution of universes that can support life (weighted by how common life is in that universe). This distribution wouldn't necessarily display Jaynes' effect. One might reason that as the birth/death ratio goes up, the probability of a universe being this finetuned might exponentially decay. With the B/D ratio scaling (less than!) linearly with the occupation fraction/amount of observers + higher B/D ratio worlds being exponentially more unlikely, one could argue most observers are expected to be in low B/D ratio worlds. Does this make sense, or am I missing something?
That was awesome. Very thought provoking. I see it like tuning in a radio station with a dial. Instead of silence, what if we fine tuned our search criteria to an actual area where reception is possible rather than a veritable endless white noise, hoping for the best? You never know but all of a sudden we could be flooded with new and exciting data.
Brilliant treatment of this subject. As you pointed out, the alone vs teaming gambit assumes that all simple life will eventually develop technology but what if that's not the case. We might have a galaxy teaming with squirrels and janitors sweeping floors, that leave no technological signatures.
This is a compelling paper - there are a couple of things I find problematic, you address some of these which can mitigate the 0% conclusion, and I am glad you addressed them: 1). As I understand, the formula supposes uniform galaxies across the universe, but we know they vary in both size and shape. Some may have a lot of life, some close to nothing 2). The theory supposes technologically advanced civilizations, but we might be the only ones who’ve gotten this far (though I find that hard to believe). There might be other forms of life we are unaware of, as you said. 3). The signatures we are looking for may be the wrong type. If aliens truly are out there, what are the chances they would be using radio waves? 4). We might be at the very beginning of the curve; earth is 4.5 billion years old. What if take-off on the curve is in another 500 million years?
Great work man. I always find myself oscillating between 2 positions when faced with the apparent lack of other technologically advanced life. 1. We are too early - 5Ba year old planet in a 14Ba universe. Basically just a kiddy-wink. 2. We are too late - There was a 0.5 billion year window when the universe background temperature was 0-100 degrees Celsius. Liquid water everywhere. The universe would have been teeming with life. Now we are in universe a few degrees above absolute zero. We are at the tail-end of things. Sigh.
This is actually a good example of why not to oversimplify things, and why some of the factors in the Drake Equation are important. Life, intelligent life, technological life, and detectable technological life are all different things, and not does not necessarily follow the previous one. Another important factor, is that, despite our best efforts so far, we are just barely scratching the barest surface of detection efforts, and at present even a nearby civilization at a technological level comparable to our own would be very difficult to detect. We simply lack the ability to conduct proper surveys so far, and as a result we lack the data to make predictions that fall much out of the philosophy side of things rather than actually standing firmly in the science side of things.
