Brian Cox Debates If Aliens Have Visited Earth?

if a big UFO came now we walk outside and over Westminster there's a spaceship hovering I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised I mean there are deep questions you know are we alone in the universe I mean probably not you'd guess there are two two trillion galaxies in the observable universe right so you would expect not what have you what have you made of all the recent headlines about you know someone in the state saying he's seen evidence of alien life forms on Earth something that was collected from the Bottom of the Sea those tiny ball bearings and they so this is this has been formed by life form outside our I mean our galaxy like it's a theory that isn't it I mean so there's a theory there and so you can get the little things and we will'll analyze them and have a look I mean I wouldn't it's funny because on you mentioned social media I think you occasionally on social media I I'll quite often I'll sweet something and and there'll be quite a few people who disagree reasonably strongly with what I said and one of them is is the the UFO thing you know that I mean there are people who really believe that there are UFOs visiting the Earth and I always say you know I haven't seen any evidence of that that I think is strong evidence it's a huge claim that there are other civilizations out there that are visiting us but I wouldn't be surprised in a in in a sense in a strict sense that if I said to someone the other day if a big UFO came now we walk outside and over Westminster there's a spaceship in I wouldn't be the least bit surprised because I know that there are trillions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone and hundreds billions of stars and there's been a lot of time and one of the great Mysteries actually in physics is why we don't seem to see much out there anything we haven't you know there's strong there's strong evidence of nothing out there at all at the moment we have we have no strong evidence of any life beyond Earth and that's a puzzle and a paradox so it's a it's about with with those claims you don't rule them out if someone says well I've got this I found this thing at the bottom of the sea and I think it's really weird um then the correct thing to do is go okay we'll put it in a lab and get an electron microscope and prod it around and find out just how weird it is and nature fan again said the thing to remember is nature does not care at all what you think nature just doesn't it doesn't matter who you are or how famous you are any letters you've got before or after your name whatever it doesn't matter nature just is so if indeed an alien spacecraft crashed into wherever it was that they found these things a billion years ago and left all the fragments there and we've dug them up then that's interesting isn't it but but that's very you know but but if it didn't then that's also interesting because then we get a profound Pro puzzle about why why they don't seem to be many civilizations around if we don't find a way of not compromising but but understanding that the world is very complicated so then it's not only a single country it's all the different countries with different cultures and different political histories and different views if we don't find a way of um sort of stopping arguing and trying to find the way to make that work I've just given everyone the means to destroy themselves so I personally have delivered the atom bomb which is now has kind of raised the stakes on these arguments you this is the 50s it's the middle of now we're talking about AI being the kind of modern version of that Aton bomb every time I open a newspaper or reading on on the Internet it's like AI is going to end civilization isn't it we're having the same conversation again all these years later yeah so there will be I mean whether that's the threat or you know there's obviously there are threats from all over the place I still think the threat is probably human stupidity I think it s what we've just been talking about well just that that the the possibility that someone will just press the button still you know we grew up with that so it's it's interesting actually if you grew up in the 70s and 80s you grew up with that the world's going to get destroyed by nuclear bombs it they're all there they're still there and you still have the same kinds of problems and obviously International tensions and they so so I think you know for all all the existential threats we talk about and we've talked about I remember I just as in as side I remember my radio show the infinite monkey cage just before the pandemic we did a show on pandemics it before the pandemic and one of the experts uh said right at the end he said I tell you it's it's the bats are going to get us it's the bats I there's something going to come out of bats I bet I bet you that's what it is and you know I mean even that is controversial there's all sorts of theories about what happened with that virus but ultimately his point was that that pandemics are really a big threat and of course we basically ignored it and thought that's funny is it yeah pandemic you know and then about three months later there's a p but but of all those threats I still think that the the most the big problem at the moment is how to get along as a global Society in a world where we have the means to destroy ourselves so it's not just a fight in a pub it's exchanging nuclear weapons if we're not careful where are you regarding our future are you optimistic um yes uh I we we we seem to have avoided the we obviously we've avoided destroying ourselves so far um so I think yeah I'm I'm worried about it because I'm worried that um it seems to me that our I don't know political debate has become extremely polarized in a way that really matters particularly in the United States actually yeah um where it's very important that that country stays stable and uh so I'm worried about that and I and and you see it here to an extent and so although actually I you know we seem to be handling it quite well in this country I mean we don't usually give credit to our political system but it seems to be dealing with quite an upheaval particularly starting with with with the brexit referendum and those things it seems to be dealing with it um so yeah so I'm worried um and one of the reasons I'm worried actually I was asked I was asked to give a talk at the the cop climate Summit in Glasgow just by video one minute and they just it was a little project and they said if if you could say anything to the world leaders there what would you say and I said just very simply that given what I know and given a lot of people I've spoken to it's possible that we're the only civilization in the Milky Way galaxy at the moment right it's worth considering that might be the case and there are reasons we can go into about why that may be the case but it's possible so if it's true imagine it's true I think that if we're talking about the meaning meaning of it all as as we talked about earlier was it mean to to be a human in this universe well meaning is a property of intelligence I think so clearly the universe means something to us so meaning exists here but if there's no other intelligence out there in our galaxy and we destroy ourselves then we might eliminate meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion stars forever that's what we might do so consider that world leaders that's the you you have potentially a galactic size responsibility wow to maintain meaning in a galaxy and so that's I that's why it bothers me because I think that's true so I think I think what we do here will have ramifications in that sense Way Beyond the the shores of our own Planet because the you know you look at to me a a a lifeless World a lifeless Galaxy is a meaningless Galaxy totally right really P there's something really powerful on that like we like we were looky enough to interview Tim Peak who spoke about the overview effect of that a lot of astronauts talk about being able to see the world from outside the atmosphere gives you a sense of both how small we are but also how magnificent life here is yeah on the planet you see with the I said i' I've been lucky to meet a lot of astronauts Apollo Astronauts as well who tended to be test pilots you know so they tended to be and th those guys from the 60s and 7 and they tended to be guys at the time the Apollo Astronauts were really um focused on flying those things as aircraft but yet you're right all of them every single one that I've been luy enough to meet said the same thing the moment you're off the Earth and look at it against the Blackness of space you start to get a Feeling there's something really important here Way Beyond everything else so I think that's powerful that's why I think I did say once that um I thought it was when I don't know which prime minister I think it was B it was Boris Johnson I said I said I think he should be sent into space and I actually meant I didn't me I meant he should bring him back as well but I think he I would as a taxpayer I would I would pay I gladly a bit of my tax is went to as soon as you became prime minister you went up on one of those even the little suborbital hop go up and have a look and I think it would be a very good use of money yeah and then come back and it' be you know you could get a ticket for it could be a million dollars it'd be a brilliant use of a a million quid be fantastic because they come back with that in their mind it's not going to it's not going to fly that's not going to be a very popular suggestion that we pay prime minister to go on a jolly into space but I think they should Ive for the world leaders would do us no harm at all

Channel: High Performance

Views: 1,187,652

Keywords: Podcast, The High Performance Podcast, Jake Humphrey, Damian Hughes, Liquid thinker, professor brian cox, brian cox, brian cox podcast, brian cox physicist, brian cox on aliens, brian cox on ai, brian cox on biggest threat to mankind

Id: GVkF49dbd_w

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023