I find this so interesting and love Seth's intelligence and humour and open mindedness, people may think we are alone but to me that's egotistcal, there are too many stars, planets and galaxies out there and we are part of the universe, a star seed. I myself have joined an astronomers group and will be buying a telescope, i just love this topic.
That would have been nice that the Aliens made an appearance through some sort of portal and interrupted Seth to speak for themselves. Instant Nobel Prise for Seth cause he deserve it!
If intelligent life is anything like what's evolved here, its period of survival is shorter in relative terms--a million or so years out of three billion--than the blink of an eye. The chance that two such creatures should live at the same time would be minuscule.
That's a possibility, of course, but it ignores that the unit of cultural transmission is not necessarily the species. Humanity, for example, could well become biologically extinct but nonetheless bequeath its cultural heritage to successor species, whether biological or cybernetic. You can't realistically just ignore that contingency, which seems to me more likely than not. Civilization could well become a permanent feature of life as part of evolution on the longest time scales, just as multicelluarity, photosynthesis, genetic inheritance, and other important features of life that evolved once and then were transmitted to future life, not limited to a particular species.
I somewhat get the impression that technological alien societies do not generally use electromagnetic waves to communicate or they are so efficient that they use only feeble signals that we cannot detect.
Yeah, there always seems to be a lot of "This is how we do things, so it must be how any other advanced species would do things too" when discussing detecting alien life.
EM is super useful. It's not obvious what a replacement could be. But even if lots of ETs use lots of radio, we probably couldn't detect it. Stars are far away. We could only detect somebody very very close by, or somebody pointing a powerful transmitter deliberately straight at us. So we shouldn't expect to detect any radio messages either way.
In 2015 we confirmed the existence of another spectrum. In just 8 years, we aleady have gravity telescopes operating. .. How many more speectums are there ?? We don't know.
Exactly! In a hundred years we will very probably have something better than EM. Some sub dimensional quantum mumbo jumbo. We make up things like Dyson spheres and whine when we don't see them. The hubris of saying "where is everyone?" When we have barely got the tech and resources to detect a civilization just like ours within 6-7 light years
Being a guy who has spent the last 11 years teaching a university research writing group called "the paranormal," which is usually 75% UFOs, I've never agreed with Seth Shostak. Like most serious Ufo/Uap researchers, I just thought he needed to go do some homework. Nonetheless, I see he's developed an actual sense of humor, which makes him seem more imaginative than I'd thought. If all the skeptics were more like him, we'd be doing much better. I think he has at least removed himself from the list of "debunkers" and possibly has an open mind. I learned something here, so thank you Linda Hall Library for posting this! 👽
Seth Shostack has been SETI’s stand up comedian for decades. Unfortunately the whole of SETI has been built on a bank of sand and now the tide’s coming in. Think Dr. Gary Nolan and Avi Leob. They are the new kids on the block who are going to blow SETI’s minds.
Keep up with what is happening in Congress. They have just been briefed that there have been back engineering projects on recovered material. There is reasonable speculation that this might be ‘Roswell’ being given up at last. See recent vids of Dr.Gary Nolan who outlines all this.
I think it would be for the best if we never find them and they never find us. The Red Indians (the original Americans) feel that about these new folk that arrived about 500 years ago. The new folk did quite well out of it though.
The real question is not whether somewhere in the observable universe (or beyond) there are intelligent aliens. That's unanswerable at the moment, but certainly more than plausible. Set aside less complex life, which could well exist and even be quite common, and we would not (yet) be able to detect it. The real question is whether there are intelligent aliens still extant who are close enough to us that we can detect them, or ever communicate with them. No one knows. If they say they do, they'e ahead of their skis. My gut instinct is that they are common on the largest scales, but not on a scale where we could ever communicate. I think under the Fermi reasoning it's unlikely there is an advanced civilization within a few million light years. As the universe ages, the number should increase, but with the expansion of the universe we need to accept that it's likely, or at least not UNlikely, that we will NEVER be able to communicate with another civilization. Some people alive today may live to find out whether that's right or not.
Fun talk but I think he has a lot of poorly thought out premises presented in this video. For example you don't care what the ants are doing in your backyard but you would if they had the capability of blowing up your house. Also he assumes that the only way aliens would be able to detect us is through radio signals, but if they are significantly more advanced than us they may have ways of detecting life on planets that doesn't include radio waves or technological signals
we point our telescope in any direction and find an endless number exoplanets and systems but not a single one of those exoplanets give the conditions for a perfect eclipse? how about we find one of those first before we even begin to think of extraterrestrial beings
He is brilliant, takes jabs at NASA engineers, and all sorts of people. His jab about Michael Jackson was mean, yet he’s incredibly interesting & very knowledgeable.
"Ancient" but fun talk. Reminded me of the sad fate of Arecibo, but that was bound to happen one way or another. Not sure the computer on my desk is as smart as I am post 2020, but if the question was about reliable logic/mathematical computational power I was superseded long ago by a Commodore 64, if not my HP calculator. ;-)
Please keep with what is happening in Congress. According to Dr.Gary Nolan of Stanford University some members of Congress have been briefed about legacy UFO back engineering projects.
RIP Arecibo... Now the Chinese have the biggest dish in the world. You should rebuild Arecibo and now make it 2000 feet across. Or maybe 1776 feet for sentimental value...
Seth hasn’t aged in the past 20 years. It doesn’t help that he always has the same hair colour, suit, ect. Is this from a few years ago or recent talk? Just as well, the topic is always the same as new discoveries are far and few but always entertaining.
With respect don’t waste your time here. See ‘Dr. Gary Nolan’ of Stanford University and what he has said in the last couple of weeks. SETI have built their castle on a bank of sand and now the tide’s coming in.
@@jaydinledford6990 he actually said a couple of dozen years but essentially you’re right. So in the thirteen or so years since this this lecture they’ve found nitto. And they’ll find sweet fuck all in the next 10 years.
Such a silly definition. I can build a receiver for radio out of a few components. I did it at 12. And all you need to transmit radio is to make a spark. So not really a good standard.
Thank heavens for Seth’s sensible take on all this, we’ve all had enough of all those pilots, military and civilian, plus air traffic controllers making up all these stupid stories about tracking silent flying discs. As for Obama saying that there are ‘unidentified craft in our airspace and we don’t know what they are’ PAH!!!
@@bozo5632 exactly and nor would the White House, this was all cleared up completely with the ‘Phil Larson declaration’ in 2011, everyone knows Barry and Joe wouldn’t lie to us….now please can we all get back to the football game now.
Never. The spaces are too great minus some completely unforseeable tech... However life in the universe is the rule rather than exception. I'm sure... We need remember these alien life forms also must evolve
His rationale about the differences between male and female mating strategies are true, but only at the distal level. At the ultimate level, the difference is in parental investment, especially in the huge size differential in the gamete.
The data from the navy pilots is credible...sensor data from multiple platforms plus observations...that's more than circumstantial...those objects were observed as to what they are...that's the million dollar question
As for the assumption that they should be 30 light years from here...that's assuming they use the same modes of propulsion as we do...this guy...I can have him for breakfast in any debate lol...I'm not saying UAP=alien...but it's definitely an interesting topic cause we don't know what or who created those objects...
What objects? We don't know there are objects. The reason for assuming they're 30 LY away is that's about the maximum time/distance for ET to hear our radio and for us to receive a reply. Chances are probably very low of a technological ET within 30 LY radius, or even 3000 LY.
Our universe now expands within a black hole that is part of a parent universe so we will never know if there is intelligent life other than us bunch of crackpots.
The advantage for us is that our planet is in a solar system that arose fairly early in the history of the universe. If the Earth is four billion years old, and the universe 13 billion, it's an enormous clue. We are among the earliest.
It’s more than probable that Lowell regularly observed Valles Marineress on Mars especially at times of most favorable opposition. The speakers obsessive “asides” and snark after virtually every other sentence is tedious and quickly became unfunny. A terrible speaking style.
If you're in the KC area, Professor is scheduled to give a lecture on September 21 (we'll also have a virtual option if you're not in the KC area) - interstellarthesearchforextrat.splashthat.com/
I think the question should be.. When are extraterrestrials going to reach out to you? We don't want to meet them because we can't stand the idea that we are not alone, that we have done nothing new, that they are waiting for us to accept that our fate has been repeated millions of times over, we are a version of ourselves, until we engage them as we engage our own mistakes, with honesty and an open mind. Millions of humans have already made physical contact with "them". Just, not you.
If you look at the (alleged) history of the formation of the Earth in relation to this solar system (collision with a large body to produce the moon, the movement of Jupiter into the asteroid belt which absorbed a lot of loose [planet killing?] material, and the fate's of Mars and Venus, amongst other things), and add to that the extinction events that have led to our (human's) rise to fame as it were, then it would appear to me that, even in a vast universe, the chances of replicating those events in that order, and so producing more intelligent species, are so slim that distances between said species would render the chances of meeting (even if both parties were actively searching) extremely slim (and that's being extremely generous). And we also apply human characteristics to any intelligent alien species which assume they would act exactly like we do on a philosiphical level (which is an absolutely preposterous assumption).
@@bozo5632 We have plenty of data. We have identified lots of ex-planets as well as sending various probes to the planets we can get to and to this day there is absolutely no evidence to suggest other life exists anywhere. You can theorise and hope but that doesn't change the current state of affairs 🤷♂️
@@bozo5632Yes there might be. There might be life of some kind on each planet in the solar system, but so far there's no evidence to support that theory. It's also very unlikely when you compare those planets to Earth. Jesus might also have been the son of God, but I sincerely doubt that theory too.