Are We Alone?

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some of them very likely have planets and therefore I can imagine civilizations immensely beyond the capabilities of our own NASA just announced the discovery of 500 new planets they're all orbiting other stars our place in the universe is relatively quiet we have an average star orbited by eight planets one of which contains us for every grain of sand on earth there's 10,000 stars up in the sky to be exact sorta there's between 10 to the 22 in 10 to the 24 total stars let's say that 5% of those stars are like our own Sun that leaves 500 billion billion sun-like stars all right cool so let's say that one in every five of those stars of a planet in the Goldilocks zone a region around a star that can allow for look at water and life as we know it to exist that leaves 100 billion billion earth-like planets out there okay good out of these planets let's say that one person of them actually have life show up then every single grain of sand on earth would then represent an earthlike exoplanet with potential life using this math there's about a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way meaning that there's over 1 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy alone if 1% of those planets have life show up then there's possibly between 100,000 and 1 million civilizations somewhere in our galaxy SETI the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been searching for these signals for decades but out of all of these possible civilizations we've heard back from exactly zero so where is everybody the Fermi paradox addresses this exact question if there's so many stars out there if there's so many planets that are like earth why haven't we found them yet or why haven't they found us planets are actually really common in the universe in just the past couple of years our knowledge of habitable exoplanets planets like Earth that exists outside of our solar system have shot up drastically we're now aware of around 3,800 exoplanets some of which could possibly Harbor life the Trappist one system is thought to have seven habitable planets orbiting a star about the size of Jupiter the worlds are rocky they have water earth is just like them okay so if there's all these planets like Earth that could have life why isn't at least one other civilization other than our own been detected even though we continue to search for life every day we've been acting like it already exists for decades for example when we first went to the moon the returning astronauts weren't able just to walk around and go to press conferences like they do today but instead they were locked in quarantine for weeks why well it was assumed that if there was life on the moon not developed life but bacteria and microbes then that could pose a serious threat to life back home and potentially wipe us off the face of the earth seriously it was a series enough issue and concern that the practice was continued throughout the Apollo program up until Apollo 15 when we realized we were okay but that doesn't account for humans contaminating other moons or planets there's quite literally thousands of pounds of junk just lying around on the moon although it's unlikely it is possible that there could be bacteria on those objects that may be able to live under those circumstances and we may have provided the moon its first life forms the reason why we send satellites into the atmospheres of planets to burn up after we're done with them is for this exact reason to prevent those from spreading ourselves places we shouldn't be as bad as it sounds every prediction we've ever made about the universe in the past has ended up being wrong in some way or another there's been about a hundred billion people throughout the entirety of humanity's existence almost all of them died without knowing what the planets actually were what the universe is or was 99% of all species on earth have died already are we gonna be the next one hundreds of years ago we believed in a geocentric theory and thought that everything in the universe revolved around us we believed the earth was flat but today we obviously know these things are the furthest from the truth so based on our track record it would be dumb to assume that we're the only life in the universe Frank Drake thought the same thing he thought there's absolutely no way we're alone in the universe there must be a way to calculate where everyone is right and from that simple question we now have what is known as the Drake Equation the Drake Equation breaks down all the necessary steps and requirements for a civilization to exist in thrive on a galactic level allowing for us to detect them it breaks down the search step by step and at the end we're left with the number of civilizations out there waiting to be found this is the Drake Equation in a single line seven variables when multiplied together give us a way of measuring how many possible civilizations could exist in our galaxy at this very instant it's an actual way of calculating what we did at the start of the video and there's terms for each step it's a little daunting but I'll break it down n is the number of civilizations in our galaxy that we have a chance of talking to this is what we're trying to figure out our star is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy now we don't know the exact number of stars that form every year but we do though the amount of solar masses that form every year it's about three so every year about three average-sized stars form luckily our sound is a pretty average star so it's a good way to view it it could be one huge star or ten smaller stars we don't know for sure but this term in the equation is the one that were the most certain of F sub P is the fraction of those stars that have planets this number isn't certain but some people have estimated that somewhere between 10 and 50 percent now super accurate what is the start n sub e is the average number of planets that could potentially support life so first we find the stars second we find the planets third we find the planets out of those that could support life as I said at the start of the video about 1 in every 5 stars have a planet in the habitable zone so this is pretty certain as well f sub-l is where things start to get a little bit messy f sub-l is the fraction of planets that actually develop life at some point our data on life is really really small and by really small I mean us we have one planet worth of information on life out of the billions of billions of planets out there in the sky we're just going off the data that we have what if extraterrestrial life doesn't function even close to the way that we do it's possible and I think quite likely that life beyond Earth doesn't always need water or oxygen or sunlight at all they don't have to function the way humans do there's trillions of planets in the universe with trillions of different living conditions so it's only fair to assume that there's possibly trillions of circumstances that allow alien beings to survive so f sub-l is hard to determine f sub i is the fraction of planets with life that can actually form civilizations like we have again our data is limited to us and only us something I really think about a lot is if we live on such an average planet in an average galaxy around an average star how did we get so lucky to be the only life to exist if everything else around us is average why did the anomaly known as life hop up here or maybe life in general isn't an anomaly but just intelligent life is life that is able to ask the kind of questions like are we alone out of all the species on earth as humans are the only ones who have developed the language alien methods of communication might not even be imaginable by us they might not even have language or gather information visually or through the senses that we have or even have any way of conveying thanks to species other than its own it's like humans trying to understand and speak whale I don't know how to when I don't know anyone else that does the same logic may apply to extraterrestrial beings and how they communicate how many other life-forms on earth actually have verbal means of communication other than us when we discover ancient languages we have ways to decipher them we have ways to make connections to other languages we know how sentences are structured in various ways with alien languages there's nothing to refer to we can refer to our own languages sure but cross-referencing entire civilizations on opposite and the galaxy with our own human language seems counterintuitive F sub C is the fraction of civilizations that develop technology that can be detected we again are the only examples of this let's say the earth was created one year ago humans would then only be about 10 minutes old the Industrial Revolution would have happened only two seconds ago the majority of human history we have had literally zero ways to even consider contacting alien life it's a very very recent thing we've been broadcasting radio waves into space for the past 100 years but Humanity has been around for as long as 1 million years out of our entire existence only point zero zero zero one percent of that time have we even been able to conceivably contact aliens also keep in mind radio waves are the only way that we've tried so far in 100 or 200 years we may find another way of contacting extraterrestrial life that could work millions of times better than radio waves this could also be a reason why we haven't heard anything back it would be like trying to talk to someone across the world via carrier pigeon while everyone else is using the internet you would just look stupid see we expect all civilizations to be using the same kind of technology that we do the only problem is were either a the first to get technology of our scale or be we've fallen behind and everyone else ahead of us is only getting more and more advanced however if they are able to detect our radio waves they may have already found them every four computers now have primary control of critical vehicle functions see the last term in the Drake Equation is L it tells us how long a civilization lasts it represents how long we had to be found before it's too late extraterrestrial civilizations may send out signals for a long time until they stop or destroy themselves or find a better way to live a life and a simulation perhaps the longer L is the more advanced the civilization becomes the Kardashev scale comes in handy here I made an entire video on this topic it's really bad but I'll explain the important parts here first a civilization needs to find a way to take over its planet this is called a type one civilization we are on our way there we're at about 0.72 at the moment a type two civilization is capable of harnessing the power of its entire host star see the further away you are from the star less energy you get from it earth only gets maybe one billionth of a percent of the sun's energy at any moment many structures have been proposed to somehow harness the sun's energy but we won't be there for a very very long time the third stage for civilization is you guessed it a type 3 civilization this civilization has conquered the galaxy and has access to any and every planet but from our knowledge there isn't even one of those civilizations out there that are detectable and that doesn't make sense see the universe is 13.8 billion years old Earth has only been around for maybe a third of them there's been at least five billion years prior to Earth coming to existence that could allow for civilizations to have risen and also fallen but yet we see nothing if you could build a device a huge ship that could travel at ten percent the speed of light you could cross the galaxy in six hundred thousand years I know it sounds like a long time but in comparison to the Milky Way's at least 10 billion year old age six hundred thousand years is literally nothing all it takes is for one species to do this and they can cover the entire galaxy so if it's that easy why haven't we seen it yet well it might be a good thing because that would mean that the great filter is in front of us there may be other life in the universe but there's barriers that we all have to overcome the great filter theory helps explain this very well imagine that there's 1 million civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy but not all of them can v to the point that they take over the galaxy there's barriers in the way these barriers are things that new life-forms and civilizations must overcome the first barrier might be multicellular life and maybe that's an easy barrier to cross ok next barrier the ability have thoughts and a consciousness next maybe we have to understand basic technology ok that's fine we're good at that next discovered time travel okay not so easy or kind of stuck see there's things that prevent us from progressing moving forward and becoming a galactic civilization but we don't know what those things are there's hundreds of billions of planets in the Milky Way but when we look for other life there's nothing where's it all at well the great filter theory shows that there's certain steps that the species must get past in order to take over their planet solar system galaxy and so on just like the cartouche of scales are just one or perhaps multiple of these filters are extremely hard or maybe impossible to get past the question is have we already gotten past that barrier or does it lie in front of us if it's behind us then good we've passed a nearly impossible step in building a civilization and we may be one of or even the first advanced civilization in the universe if it's ahead of us then we have our work cut out for us for the majority of human history the planets fate was up to events that humans could in control for example large asteroids that wiped the planet of its inhabitants but today actually only in the past 80 years we've developed technology capable of ending human civilization at a moment's notice we're working on a GI that will then lead to super intelligent AI these could be some of the barriers we must get past and maybe where many civilizations fail if we find an advanced civilization that has died in the process of advancing then the great filter is in front of us and this isn't good the great filter is a challenge that wipes out almost every species that encounters it it's not just one that kills off 99% of a population that would give them a chance to regrow and reconquer that barrier this would kill 100 percent of every civilization that has ever existed and leave no chance for repairs as with many other things that people believed to be stronger than them things like super intelligent AI or aliens many people tend to fear them historically whenever a stronger species or civilization or for the future sake technology arose it almost always resulted in the weaker party being wiped out for example humans and Neanderthals or more recently the discovery of North America perhaps this is only human nature but based off of what we know from the past first contact with aliens might be the most dangerous thing humanity has ever faced a really important question arises here if we do hear from or detect another civilization should we let them know that we heard it the Futurist half of me says yes of course but the other half of me says maybe not this could be exactly what alien civilizations are doing right now it's possible that they have detected us already but instead of responding they're observing and patiently waiting advanced alien species may just be observing us to see how we progress consider us a science experiment but on a potentially galactic scale I touched on this in my AI video but I'll bring it up again here when you're building or observing something or someone who could be multiple times more powerful than you are you need to be careful you want to observe and keep a close eye on how it progresses hey I could help us colonize the galaxy and meet other life-forms but it could also cause the extinction of our species what happens if super intelligent AI sees extraterrestrial life as a threat and makes attempts to take it out it'll probably fail and that is one of the worst scenarios for us one of our own creations perhaps our best creation is the calls for the extinction of our species but with the case of AI that we're developing on our own planet if it gets too powerful we just shut it off right take three civilizations maybe doing the same thing with us they may be observing us to see how other life in the universe becomes powerful and if we eventually get to that tipping point whatever it may be they may decide to put an end to their experiment it sounds insane but we do that here on earth there are parts of Earth that we couldn't habbit what we don't just because it isn't convenient for us prime example Antarctica it's an entire continent that we don't colonize because it isn't convenient it's frozen and just not super suitable for life this could be how alien civilizations view Earth they may have found us realized that we aren't special at all and moved on for all we know we may have already been visited by aliens just not recently with all the time before Earth's formation that may have allowed civilizations to form there's a chance that one or maybe multiple of those civilizations have stumbled upon earth during its infancy when there isn't of life to be found modern humans have only been around for maybe fifty thousand to a hundred thousand years a hundred thousand years out of four-and-a-half billion is practically nothing in an entire galaxy there's bound to be places that just aren't worth colonizing why waste time and resources on colonizing a planet that won't benefit you in any way aliens wouldn't come to earth without a reason whether it's good or bad Drake's equation is just that an equation the terms mostly the last for our educated guesses at best that's all you can really do when trying to answer a question of this magnitude there could be many many more civilizations than we think or maybe were the only one if any of the values in Drake's equation end up being zero that's it were alone there has been many calculations made with a Drake Equation and it all comes down to how pessimistic or optimistic you are about the future there had been calculations as high as a couple million civilizations in our galaxy and there have been calculations that say were alone and at the moment they both hold value Enrico Fermi did ask one of the most important questions humans have ever asked but at the same time Fermi was also a pioneer in the creation of nuclear weapons the species that couldn't inhabit the entire galaxy is also the same species that stands capable of almost completely wiping itself out at a moment's notice we search every day for signals from other civilizations we look for techno signatures signs of engineering of things that just don't commonly appear in nature like city lights from space we search for those in other corners of the galaxy we study bio signatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets to find elements that may show that life could exist we sent out radio waves hoping to find aliens in 1974 Frank Drake himself sent out the Arecibo message to the m13 star cluster it's a string of information describing humanity in hopes that someone or something would find it we send out satellites such as the Voyager crafts with specific instructions of who we are what we are and where we are we're doing all we can to find alien life while also giving them all the information they need to find us we want so badly not to be the only ones in the universe that we don't even consider the possible consequences of us not being alone are we done or are we just getting started I guess the better question is are we closer to the beginning or the end of human existence there's only a finite amount of space on earth for life and there's only one place we can go either way the clock is ticking down time is against us and I don't want to be around to see what happens from that clock hits zero [Music] you

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Keywords: aperture, Are We Alone?, the drake equation explained, the drake equation, are we alone in the universe, drake equation, fermi paradox, alien life, aliens, frank drake, enrico fermi, what is the fermi paradox, what is the drake equation, where are the aliens, alien civilizations, kardashev scale, aperture are we alone, universe, first contact, how to contact aliens, will we visit other stars, science, the most advanced civilization in the universe, aliens explained

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Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

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Reddit Comments

r/GreatFilter

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/badon_ 📅︎︎ Jun 02 2019 🗫︎ replies

TL;DW: No idea but most likely not.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/baal80 📅︎︎ Jun 02 2019 🗫︎ replies