Where Are All The Aliens? We Ranked Every Explanation

the firmy Paradox you know the universe is big and old and alien civilizations should be everywhere and yet we see no evidence for them where is everybody now people have come up with responses to explain the fmy Paradox and there are many and in this video we're going to go through all of the major classifications of the firmy Paradox and rank them from s to D now I'm not going to do this alone I brought in two of my space Communicator friends Dr Moya mctier she is a podcaster astrophysicist and hosts several very successful podcasts her pale blue pod podcast is sort of vying for the top place in the astronomy category on on iTunes with Universe Today podcast so uh it's very good company and then my other co-host today is Dakota Tyler he is a PhD student at UCLA uh you probably saw him fairly recently he's a public speaker science communicator but also a researcher in in exoplanet so he thinks about this a lot now this is a light-hearted conversation we have a lot of fun a lot of hot takes I'm sure you're going to disagree about a bunch of them and so if and when you do go ahead stop the video put in your comment let us know why you think we have either under or over ranked one of these and you'll be the fourth part of this video joining this conversation to finally rank all of the firmy Paradox responses let's jump in to ranking the the fmy Paradox with Dr Moya mcer and Dakota Tyler all right Dakota Moya it's great to see you guys hi Fraser good to be here yeah great to see you so I have sort of drawn upon your strengths I believe and between the three of us we will be able to just fundamentally answer the question of why we're we appear appear to be alone in the universe that you know once this process has completed this will be settled science hundreds of years now people look back they will say right of course remember that conversation that the three had about the tears of the fmy Paradox answers why are we even talking about this anyone from this point forward who wants to have an argument about this on the internet could just refer to this video it's done everything is going to flow nicely in here no of course not and I I I welcome your spirited debate in the comments below so let's start with the zoo hypothesis and this is this is the idea that in fact our perception of the universe is not as it truly is that there is Advanced civilizations around us and yet they are manipulating our view to the cosmos possibly for some awful reason like actively manipulating our view of the sky so we can't see that other people are out there so that they can see what they want us to see that's exactly right and so of course we don't see anyone because they don't want us to see anyone that seems to me like it would require an awful amount of power and uh technological cunning and I uh I'm not very convinced Dakota I'd love to hear your thoughts yeah I didn't uh so when I've heard of the zoo hypothesis it was more so of a maybe alien researchers are are studying us but not interacting um but this this one where they are actually like concealing the universe from us is they that seems pretty inconceivable for me and also like why would they like what would be the point seems like you could do that on a much smaller scale uh like in a lab or something like that and we'll get to that there's a version of it that definitely incorporates that I mean I personally of like of all of the firmy Paradox ones I find this one actually marginally compelling only because if they are able to control it 100% then what the reasons are like if we don't understand what the universe truly is then then we're approaching this question of our place in the universe from a flawed understanding of the facts uh and so and so you know what are stars what are galaxies what are all of that none of that is real right or maybe it is and we're and yet they're able to hide other parts of the Universe from us yeah if you if you get to that if I I think that it is one of the more reasonable uh scenarios but I think that if point that they can actually control our entire perception of space 100% that to me seems beyond the point where I'm willing to suspend my disbelief and that like unless they're magic that there would be some crack in their technology and at some point we would come up with a a method to see through some part of this exactly right because we we look out now with the James web Space Telescope basically as far as you could possibly see and we don't see like physics breaking down anywhere it seems like everything is consistent there isn't like some flaw in their holographic projector it's like all working perfectly across the span of the entire universe that's uh i' I'm not aware of any programs that work that well right right well I that's just what the aliens want us to believe that is what they would want us to believe you're right yeah yeah all right I I figure you've you've had your C your chance uh on the have you guys formulated what you think is a is a tier on this system uh I'm giving it a c a c tier whoa yeah whoa I I respect that I'll give it a c tier I think there are some more ridiculous things on here all right I'm gonna I'm gonna allow it because you guys agreed and that way I I can't sort of come in and just decide for you but I think it's more compelling and than than almost of the any others that that we're about to go through uh I find oh you know yeah it's my personal favorite I'm sorry favorite no no no it's fine it's fine it's not my favorite give a C+ no no no no no a C+ sure fine it's indistinguishable it's a rounding ER all right all right let's move on so a version of this is the prime directive and so the the aliens are not hiding the universe from us they are aware of us and just like Star Trek they are attempting to interact or observe us in a way that doesn't harm our future growth but it does you know there is some overlap here because it is going to sort of flow into there's going to be times they're going to have to hide their existence their warp drive signatures as they're passing through the universe so it does overlap a bit with the zoo hypothesis Moya yeah I'm much more compelled by this one I I think that it is a lot more reasonable that there would be aliens out there and they are waiting to see how we will evolve technologically and culturally and biologically before they step in and those small signatures of any sort of faster than light travel capability those are easier to hide than our entire view of the night sky yeah I uh I'll I have to second that that makes sense to me from a scientist perspective you know I'm I'm really into biology and ecology and often times when you are studying or you know you're aware of something you do want to kind of see it from a distance you know you don't want to get in and start messing around and and causing destruction or anything so that's a little bit more reasonable to me at least like on the technological side but don't you feel like Star Trek already showed you how this theory is flawed that Captain Kirk never saw a prime director that he didn't want to violate that as soon as he could right he was wooing alien women he you know and and so that are you going to get some kind of Monolithic agreement by all the aliens to never interact in any way shape or form with the natives or are you going to get individuals breaking the rules trying to they're going to see they're going to see something awful happening to somebody and they're going to go I can't let this stand I've got to jump in I got to provide the Cure I've got to rescue these people from this erupting Island whatever it is oh yeah yeah there will be the Kirks out there um but I think either the actual Federation is really good at weeding them out so there aren't as many of them as we would expect or aliens just find humans ugly and the actual Kirks don't want to come and help us yeah I could uh I could see that you could I mean we also have to I think be careful especially when we talk about sci-fi with projecting our ideas our feelings how humans have evolved our tendency on other species or whatever right because there's so many things that has gone into the development of our emotions and how we feel about things you know tracking back millions of years to our ancestors surviving in the wild and maybe in advanced species doesn't have some of those problems that we still have maybe they're maybe they're better they're like different all together or maybe they're just much worse and and there is a respons answer that's coming shortly we're going to have both flavors of that but I guess for me it doesn't feel like you could you could be monolithic about this that that you could have one that is perfectly peaceful and Transcendent and only wants what's best you're going to have one that is mischievous and wants to get involved and one that wants to save lives and and that unless you can't expect them to all behave the same and yet it's those edge cases that will reveal themselves to us I think if there was some great threat or uh incentive that they could all align um but no I I think you're right I think that is one of the reasons that this is uh not the most compelling argument uh against the the firmy Paradox but it it does better than the zoo hypothesis for me because it doesn't rely on as much uh Tech advancement all right all right then then put it in a number a letter I guess I'm giving it a b I'm I'm gonna give it a c a Super C still all right well then I'm going to have to jump in here and I'm gonna I'm gonna push it up to a b because I I can't imagine them all doing the same thing all getting in line that that the diversity of the aliens is the thing that would show the cracks but but at the same time it's less difficult to control the entire perception of an entire universe but so so I I it's not the best for me all right let's move on and I know uh Dakota you've covered this quite a bit recently the simulation hypothesis and this is a flavor of the zoo hypothesis but essentially we're just living in a simulation and so we just see what the computer simulation is programmed to show us and so if the computer simulation doesn't include extra civilizations in the universe then we don't see them and and it's very easy you just like you know civilizations equals one done in the code so Dakota what is your argument I guess for for the for against the simulation hypothesis yeah so it's not one that's very exciting if it is true that's that's kind of a bummer in my opinion but I think that for the the simulation Theory the thing that we have to realize is that when you when you build a strong computer or whatever whatever the computer is doing it can't be doing more than like it has the ability to do that it can't be like producing more information than the computer itself has so when you talk about like simulating every atom in the universe for me you have to have a computer that's that's basically a universe which doesn't like that just I don't that doesn't make sense to me logically so I would say that you know if that did happen I do think that you could probably do a simulation that created uh beings with Consciousness I think that that may even be possible but it's a it's far-fetched to think that there's a computer that can simulate an entire universe and it's almost seems like a waste as well like you made this whole universe but only simulated species on on one planet that doesn't that doesn't as a scientist I wouldn't do that you know I'm trying to write a bunch of papers so I'm putting them in all maybe in different quadrants all over the Galaxy or the universe but group yeah exactly but how do we know that the reality that we experience has anything to do with base reality are you Plato I mean uh people have been discussing this for 2,000 years exactly yeah and I I get the urge but at the end of the day we have to recognize that we are humans with brains who experience the world through electrical impulses sent through those brains and if I can't trust those electrical impulses or at least the proxy of the universe that I have con constucted around them then everything else crumbles into not mattering so I would rather trust the electrical impulses through my brain to an extent um and I get freaked out about the like fractal implications of a simulation hypothesis of a potential simulated Universe full of other simulations that could eventually get good enough that they can simulate entire universes and that just makes my head hurt so I personally don't like this this hypothesis I mean I think it's really important to distinguish between just the simulation hypothesis and because it is you just can't falsify it it is effectively existence and reality and there's no way to know that if you you not only are you determining that there are no aliens in the universe you're also determining that reality itself is isn't real and that's a deeper problem right like you know be like Oh I'm concerned about aliens but actually I'm really concerned that reality is real I'm no longer concerned about it it almost seems like it might be falsifiable though because if you you know let's say that we are in a simulation and there's only life on Earth that means that the physics around Earth is literally different than the physics in other places and so you we you would think that you could look out into the universe and maybe you would see um maybe there's no carbon in other places right like something that is required for life isn't there or uh the chem chemistry is behaving differently somewhere else that's preventing whatever happened here to happen there so it does seem like there should be evidence I don't know if we like have the sensitivity to detect something like that but if life happened here through like some physical program it should be different in other places I would think yeah so that's really interesting I really like where you're going with this because essentially that if we don't see the conditions for life in other places in the universe it almost feels like the simulator's got their thumb on the algorithm and is driving life Earth to be the only place that life can form but if we do find the condition for life and we do find eventually life everywhere then then it feels a lot more like it's just some infinitely randomly generated Universe which sounds like a computer term again but anyway yeah once you get stuck in it it's hard it's hard to leave like once you agree to those base tenants but uh no I I like Dakota's original point that it it just required way more power than is feasible all right I'm calling it give me your give me your Trot you get to start this time uh I'm gonna go ahead with d for this one I'm gonna I'm gonna stick it way down yeah I was gonna give it a c yeah I concur with d and and actually it's not Dakota's original take I think it's the the point that he made second which is that is that you would see a Universe a universe that was being simulated to not have any other alien civilizations in it would look very different from a universe that was more randomly seated to just or or that just is is real right and actually I find that a really compelling argument so while we may never know if we live in a simulation we can use the simulation hypothesis to sort of figure out why there aren't aliens in the universe I think that's great all right let's move on to a science fiction concept this is the Dark Forest hypothesis is and this is the this comes from the three body problem which is now a n a Netflix show but is also a very famous piece of Chinese science fiction and the gist is that the universe is a horrible and dangerous place that that there are threats everywhere and the absolute best strategy is to just stay quiet and listen lest a more advanced civilization is going to find you and wipe you out of the universe yeah so you know when if if we really are just thinking about the nature of of animals and intelligent animals as we know them um I I see why we go there it still feels kind of like a human projection but easily you know if we came into contact with any species that was uh fairing through space for sure they're more advanced than us already and that's uh you know what pose a serious thre threat and any sort of conflict so you know it's it's I think more realistic than some of the other ones but it's still not super compelling because we should see at least evidence for that big bully species that's out there that part that part yeah I mean I uh the universe is kind of a dangerous place and there are a lot of places in galaxies where there are astrophysical things things that can hurt you but the fact that they would be trying to uh keep themselves a secret implies that it's active agents that they are hiding from these bullies that Dakota was talking about and yeah we would see evidence of them because if if all of these different species around the universe are hiding from something they have to know that there's something to hide from it's not a a base Instinct that I think we can assume every living creature in the universe will have so then where is that visible bully that everyone saw and reacted to yeah and we are at the point now with James web we're about to be able to image the atmospheres of exoplanets maybe detect potential bio signatures we could detect techos techno signatures like chlorofluorocarbons the the square kilometer array is coming online in another decade that's going to allow us to Eaves drop on Air Traffic Control Systems within hundreds of Lighty years of us so you can imagine some Advanced civilization building a telescope that is 10,000 kilometers across positioned at the solar gravitational lens and is watching us sit outside drinking coffee from a 100 light years away but it feels like like the technology although we're right at the the cusp of developing that technology imagine a hundred years a thousand years a million years of development what could we perceive in the universe how do you hide from that level of of Technology yeah that that's that's a really good Point obviously I'm talking about you know the evidence that we see but I'm looking at best with like 10 meter telescopes for planet sizes and masses not not even really a detailed analysis of the atmosphere so yeah maybe in a thousand years it is we you know it is easy to detect these sorts of things that's a good point because we like don't know what we don't know and we can't see what we haven't built a camera to image yet so I I yeah so it's so like if if we can see if we're about to be able to see them they're about to be a they can already see us so we can't hide they knew they knew about us the moment bacteria started pumping the atmosphere full of oxygen but also not everyone would react by hiding like there would definitely be some who would react by learning how to fight back in this scenario so I I think one of the major faults here is assuming everyone would like play dead essentially well I mean I think from a game theory standpoint because there are there are giant delays in communication there there are tens if not hundreds of years of of delay in communication that game theory predicts that things tend to push towards aggressive and not peaceful interactions and and there's some interesting papers that I've read that sort of go into this um I we recovered on on Universe today but that's the G they had some large Lang models simulate interactions between Advanced civilizations of different personality types through kind of game theory interactions and found that they tended towards uh negative interactions that even fairly positive personalities because of the of Game Theory implications and the the potential downsides of of being open and honest to a completely unknown civilization causes risks you tend towards being closed down and that tends the the interaction to go negative like with Humanity here on Earth we have these really quick feedbacks back and forth we can talk with someone and get a sense if they're on the level they can do things that we can see if their actions match their words and so on but with longer and longer delays with less in common it's really hard to build that common ground in a way to build a an interaction that that lasts a test of time that makes sense because you would tend in that uncertainty you would tend towards maybe defensiveness right I disagree I I disagree hard I mean I I think that we're all agreeing on the same major point I just think that more people would fight back than hide H right right they' be like we're not going to live yeah in quiet it's there's there's too much to be lose and so much we could gain if we get out there and maybe we have to face the threats yeah and I think there will be given the diversity of planets an amazing diversity of species that face this same problem and some species will be inclined to hide uh maybe they evolutionarily adapted to be more Cooperative or to be more skittish to flee instead of fight but there will be some species that evolve to fight first there will be some species eventually who actually are are like bigger and stronger or have other uh advantages over the bully species um so I I think it won't all just Trend towards P um like towards playing dead well what if what if those fights are almost like instantly completely destructive like if the bully species can just destroy entire planets at once or even if we yeah or or send them a bad idea that's that's the the method that I love the the most the creepiest one is that you just you transmit a bad idea that then a civilization uses to wipe themselves out because they can't help themselves you know here's a machine that will cure all disease on your planet here's the schematics for a machine that'll cure all disease on your planet and they're like should we build it shouldn't we build it I don't know they build it everybody dies done done that was easy right it's I find that scary like there was you know you think about the the levels that you would have to go to to take out another civilization and the easiest one is just a piece of information then you're G to have to send kinetic impactors and you know gets worse and more energy intensive and if you're going to try to cover all your bases yeah you just send bad ideas meme bad memes to everybody all right vote choose but Choose Wisely all right Mo I'm gonna let you start on this one giving it a d d yeah Dakota yeah I think uh I think I'm gonna go ahead and have to give it a d as well 100% agree yeah yeah this I'm so sorry for the Sci-Fi fans who find this scary and compelling I just don't find it compelling yeah it is scary great science fiction book yeah when they cover it in the in the three body problem and the Dark Forest the book that has its name it's terrifying I would and not just how awful it is but how easy it is to just enact this on the people that you find yeah I would feel better about it if it were actually due to astronomical dangers if it actually was just about Galactic habitable zones we're about to get to that then so let's move on so the next one is the great filter and this is the theory provided by Robert Hansen the gist is that there is some event or combination of events that are filters that life must go through to be able to move on to the next step and you can imagine like just life first forming and then multicellular life and then intelligence and if you know each time you have 10,000 life forms but only 500 reach multicellular life and then only 30 reach intelligent you reach technological civilization and that there are then future filters ahead of us that we have yet to reach and that though it's those future it's that combination of the past filter and the future filters that winnow all civilizations down to zero and where we stand in the timeline of History we've passed however many of the of the filters we already got through but more stand in front of us and if the population of of civilizations in the universe is anything to go by our chances aren't great so Moya what do you think about the great filter I like it um more than anything we've discussed so far because there are like I said astronomical events there are supern noi uh explosions that you want to be far away from there are big gamma burst uh gamma ray burst events that you want to be away from you don't want to be near uh a place in the Galaxy where there are a lot of stars around that could have gravitational interactions and we all know that individual stars have their lifespans too so I think um looking back there are a lot of filters that are uh common to get through you know like it seems the ingredients the building blocks are common uh having some sort of radiation um that can spur genetic variation is common um but so is Stellar expansion and death so I think yeah eventually there's a there's a time limit on everything yeah yeah I agree there's um the great filter I mean even just thinking about life on on Earth for us to get to where we are to be online doing you know speaking through radio waves we needed certain animals to develop and uh you know expand and then we needed them to go extinct at these sort of periodic intervals and each each one of those events was like devastating for life and pushed life to the edge but it allowed for a new species to come or allowed for mammals to come and it's like there's so many variables in there I can see tons and tons of bottlenecks and I don't there's no reason that those bottlenecks are going to stop you know now that we've we've gotten right here I mean getting through the Cold War may have been a great uh filter bottom NE that usually if a species develops nuclear weapons they quickly use them on themselves and I mean that could still happen that could happen tomorrow yeah and you can imagine the few that we face right now like we have probably three separate ones that we're looking at right now in terms of uh artificial intelligence we're looking at potential for for biological weapons and then whatever is like the future of big SI there could be some science experiment that you turn on the super duper large hron collider and it just collapses the universe into Strang lits or whatever um you know we don't know the part that I find hopeful is that maybe we did it maybe we passed them all right and we're we're out here on the other side of all the filters were done and because it feels like like the rest of the universe is now in our grasp we are sending humans into space we are building robots we're learning to live on other world once we've expanded into the cosmos A little bit it'll feel like we're probably through that filter but right but on the other side there is this understanding that you have to think about that that it affects 100% of civilizations that because we don't see any civilizations out in the universe whatever the great filter is it's coming for us all and you can't predict it you can't prevent it you can't avoid void it because if you did if you could then we would see the examples we would see the ones that pass the filter I mean can't like 3% get through I I feel like it doesn't have to be all or nothing well if the right but if the three% get through and then they build their self-replicating robot probes and explore the universe for a billion years then we would see their results those who got through okay the example that I would sort of like to give is is like spiders like we're not we'll get to this later on but but you're not looking for spiders the the spiders that surv survived all of the ecological sort of you know Evolution darwinian adaptation and so on they found their way to you I just watched one crawl across my desk just a second ago right he's here he he did it I didn't have to go looking for the spider the spider was successful and showed me evidence of its existence so so so any version that could be a potential filter for me whenever you say them then I think that can't be the filter then because you're literally predicting it that gives us a chance to avoid it therefore and so the kind of the cosmic horror of this of the great filter in my position is that you whatever it is it affects 100% of people and nobody sees it coming or they see it coming but they can't stop it that to me stop yeah yeah um to I'm glad you feel a lot of optimism I feel like we are Icarus you know near near the top of when did I say I had optimism um I I sensed a hint of it maybe I just misunderstood my pdom is pretty high but yeah um you're it sounds like you're optimistic that if it is true we just don't know what it is which is like I guess like a blissful optimism either it's not either we're done either we already hit the finish line and now we're on to the next level you know too bad so sad for all the other suckers that didn't make it this far or the the the the ones coming next are the ones that even we can't avoid I I so I think that's obviously that's possible but I think that one thing that will remain a a filter forever is US overcoming our like evolutionary past the all of the negative tendencies that we have that we're like struggling through society today that seems like something that you can always be aware of but you can never like avoid like we can't strip ourselves of the way that we've evolved to be for for millions of years and even in a thousand years you know genetically those humans are going to be basically the exact same as us so they're gonna have like all the same problems so I see that as being like a um predictable but Unstoppable yep filter yeah it's a combination like you just you just roll the dice enough times and they and they add up to not making it out into the Universe yeah all right let's hear your let's hear your votes I'll go ahead and give this an S tier whoa this is this is this to me is at least in part true I am strategically saving my S tier for one that is very similar to this so I'm giving this an a I'm going to concur um mostly because I don't want to imagine that we can't find way through this like I don't like that answer I don't like that answer that we are doomed like all of the other civilizations that came before us but I think that's exactly what they said too yeah as they face down the whatever is the existential crisis so so I I agree but I but it is high a tier it's a wishful thinking a tier yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah all right let's move on so the next one is self-destruction and this is a version of the great filter but specifically focuses not on the past of the great filter but on the future that we are about to do something that will wipe ourselves out of existence but more importantly that every intelligent civilization wipes itself out of existence that's the scary part and that and so too will we and so uh Moya how do you feel about that one I think honestly this is this is the most likely because uh I see ourselves headed for Destruction and unless we really do a lot to curb that to curb our overc uh to curb our over consumption and our uh Wars with each other and like all of the stuff that Dakota talked about you know our base human instincts uh I think we're in danger and I think that that could easily get a lot of other species and there's something appealing to me about it being on the species level instead of on the World level like I was thinking of the great filter as something that destroys an entire planet and self-destruction is like a a mass extinction event that leaves the planet and maybe other life forms there that can rise up but then you're starting back at like zero so it's hard to get to the uh the intelligent communicating Point again yeah yeah I I agree with that there's um this is definitely like the direction that we're headed in I'm more optimistic than than boy it sounds like I don't think that we're like doomed to that but I could see that being a possibility um the self-destruction thing yeah I mean even look at species on on Earth who we assume maybe are not as bad or greedy or whatever is humans if you if you release a species into the wild and they're in environment they didn't evolve for they're going to decimate that environment they're going to eat them they'll like uh reproduce too much they'll eat themselves out of existence or hunt themselves out of existence and it's just a a very common thing to do and we do it in a way that it's like we're doing we're using technology and we're changing ecosystems way more than we're aware that we even have the power to do and we only can try to like catch up in after the fact and it yeah I mean there's only a matter of time it doesn't need to be like nuclear war or even climate change like there's no telling what things we're doing that are gonna you know cause Untold consequences or unfor like what if you gave octopus is fighter jets right would that work for us yeah it would it would great they yeah they could control a lot of the cockpit all at the same time like two parts to this one is though I think for it to qualify as a great filter it needs to wipe out it needs to keep the civilization down until the time runs out until the Sun dies pretty much and so even though we may mess this up then we've got the octopuses then we've got the whales then we've got the who knows slugs Maybe crows crows are the crows yeah the crows too the crabs yeah and everything's got a crab right CRA they're not smart but they they always survive yeah they're the end game though evolutionarily and so I like to sort of take your depressing attitude about the future of humanity and to square it like exponential style it happen no civilization ever doesn't like there's something baked into life that it ex that it that it moves up a technological chain and then wipes itself out and then another civilization comes along and it wipes itself out and it happens 100% of the time because nobody slipped through I would propose that there's a there's an off-ramp that when you're on the highway to uh species destruction there's an off-ramp to learning how to live with the environment without uh taking advantage of it you know I know that there are some humans that indigenous groups were very able to live with the land and Steward it and take care of it um and I think there are some species that can make that happen with their worlds but then they can't be like advancing technology and always needing more and more power a species like that what you just described Moya wouldn't wouldn't be looking to go out and like seed the Galaxy or or the universe or anything like that so they almost weed themselves out from being found right but they're also potentially victims for the ones that do yes which you know that's like we see that in like unfortunately how well does that turn out for people and that's the problem is is that we're going to see the expanders the ones going for it all we're not going to see the ones who are who got through the self-destructive phase and it could very well be that then it's just a matter of time before the Super expanders find them and you know how this works Humanity has its history so vote this is getting an s from me I'm I have to put it on the the same level as the great great filter so a I give it an a yeah yeah I I agree on again I think it's back from the same reason for the great filter which is that I just I can't believe that everybody falls to this so um but I'm going to respect the S on this one I think because it's it's a it's and this is Carl Sean's argument like this was the thing that Carl Sean was deeply worried about and used as a as a way of looking at the rise of humanity and his answer for the for the firmy Paradox was that we don't see other civilizations out there because probably they're having nuclear Wars so got to go with my old buddy Carl well your your podcast is inspired yeah right exactly yeah 100% so I gotta go with Carl yeah exactly yeah yeah and that's I think PS over the edge for me all right uh we're first so intelligent life is common in the universe but it just hasn't gotten to the point where it has expanded out and made its presence known and we are if not the most advanced civilization in the universe we're right in that line right now and when you think about just how long it took for heavier elements and and and molecules to be able to form into the cosmos there's only been a certain amount of time that the Universe has actually been viable for Life the Milky Way has only been viable for a certain amount of time and we just happen to be first something to this you know for the the first round of stars there were no heavier elements so they couldn't even have planets and then over time you sort of like build up the elements that can go into planets and and life and you need like second or third generation stars to get that so you know it is possible that I I wouldn't say that we're first you know maybe there's like a lot of PE a lot of civilizations that are at the same point but I do think that it could be possible that we're like around that that range but then again even if you like slide this the the scale by 100,000 years or something you're talking about a civilization that's so much more advanced in really the the blink of an eye and again we don't see evidence for that so it's hard to say that like everybody's in their 2024 is period but it could be it could be seems unlikely I mean it's it's the future or like that's what science fiction generally shows us because science fiction is is essentially retelling existing stories but the Vulcans the Klingons the romulans they're all roughly equivalent they all reach the same level of technological capability at roughly the same time as opposed to one being Godlike and the rest falling in line and I think that's the kind that's science fiction just that's how they typically tackle this stuff so Mo what do you think yeah I think that well I think they do that because it's easier for narrative uh but for the Weir first argument life on Earth formed very early like very soon after the conditions were present and those conditions on the Universe Scale were present a lot earlier than just three billion years ago so I don't think it's very likely that we're uh the first I think even even before our our sun formed there were still plenty of other stars that had enough heavy element around them to form planets and and make organic creatures or not I I feel like like it's either like it is a perfect explanation like it isn't like if you think about it like could we be first yes we could be first there's no weird convoluted complicated machinations someone had to be first it could be it could have been us and yet the likelihood that we're the ones that were first seems remote but even in sci-fi we often don't imagine that humans were the the first civilization I think what they do this often to explain a way that all the aliens look humanoid but in so many different franchises there's that OG species that evolved and then seated their DNA around the Galaxy or whatever and so even in our wildest stories we weren't first yep all right then give me a vote Moya um C it's a high sea but it's a c yeah Dakota I I I'm comfortable with that I think it's about a c yeah yeah I I feel like I agree with you because it just seems unlikely that we're first but it does feel like someone had to be first so for someone out there that answer is 100% it's super s here but but I uh so rare intelligence so this is the idea that that life is commment the rare earth hypothesis that that basic biological life bacteria ARA things like that it's everywhere but there's something really difficult about getting to multicellular life that makes it incredibly rare and Technology even rarer than that and so we may find life is everywhere but there's actually just no intelligence I really like this one um you know a per the perfect example is is here on Earth life started basically as soon as it could but was more or less single cell for three billion years [Music] other aliens uh there's no reason that intelligence should be a default necessity on a planet you don't necessarily need to uh have a a huge nervous system and cerebellum to survive on a world so I think this is this has real staying power for me it is kind of fascinating that that Evolution went down this pathway and is has carried this concept as far as it could but it really is the planet belongs to the bacteria to the microscop organisms that that they're the true life forms what is it we're more bacteria than we are people right yeah like our individual bodies a space suit it drives me crazy bacteria uhuh um my my only sort of problem with this is I think that given enough time and enough chances that even fairly simple life will get up to some really interesting emerging behaviors at various scales look at ants making ant nests termites making termite Mounds it could very well be the that there isn't anything special about being multicellular it's just that's how Evolution figured it out here on Earth and I wouldn't be surprised if we find another civilization and there are uh they're just the sum of bacteria and yet are seem intelligent that emergence argument is super interesting you ever seen the the slime mold that that fungus the slime mold that finds like the most efficient route from where it is to the nutrients it's like more efficient than people civil engineers building cities yeah and that's a this like idea of emergence how um over large scales these things can kind of like compound in ways that we don't really understand I honestly I feel like that's what Consciousness is it's just emergence of whatever is happening in our brains and yeah like intelligence could be something completely different than we're thinking of and it could arise from these from something simp as simple as fungus or or mold uh or bacteria so that that's really interesting too I haven't I haven't really thought about that all right well now you're gonna have to boil down your thoughts into a number a letter yeah uh I'm gonna go ahead and give this one a B I think this is a a solid middle- of the road answer yeah yeah I I like a bee um I do love picturing those aliens dumb aliens just chilling on their Planet peaceful but yeah OB be sounds nice yeah I agree I think I think uh that that timeline to go from from single s for as you said three billion years to like if that just shifted a few hundred million years in either way that would change everything and so it's it's it's kind of surprising that it finally figured a way out of single cellular life so it's it feels like we almost locked out on Earth all right we're alone and the reason we don't see anybody out there is because there is nobody I have a clarifying question is this that there is nobody right now or that there is nobody and there never has been anybody there is nobody there's never but life has only formed on one planet in the entire observable universe see I'd give it to you if it was just where we're missing each other timing wise but I um that's coming later we'll get there okay okay cool I I don't think this is very likely that out of the 14 billion plus years in the universe and all of the planets that we would be the only one with life yeah this uh it doesn't M like it doesn't work out in any in any way for me if the if the universe is infinite who knows if it is or not then the fraction of planets that have life is one over infinity it doesn't if it if it's happening once it has to have happened it's only observable universe so it's only one over two trillion galaxies times 100 billion stars okay so at least it's not over infinity but still right yeah still no yeah so the problem with this and in fact you know your advisor Dr David Kipping made a really fantastic argument about this that is that just the numbers on the small end of things happening we have no way to know if it's one over one to the 100 or it's one out of two we just don't know and so us being alone is the perfect argument in that if it was true it would completely explain what we see it would it would line up exactly even better than the we're first it would line up exactly with what we see in the universe and it would be the same for all civilizations because it's only us so and at the same time our gut says but the chances and it's that it's that unfortunately we just don't know we only have a sample size of one we and I and I I don't think personally I don't think the gut is a good way to to judge your your sample size to judge your your your your statistical possibility of this happening and yet I get the Instinct and and as I said David King's uh presentation on this is just great because he just goes like your gut is not ready to make these kinds of statistical judgments so yeah but we're not just using our gut I know I know David I know how much he loves basian statistics he loves a good prior and uh we have studied enough exoplanets by now to have some priers on what those planets are made out of and what they have what resources they have available we know the building blocks for life are common so now we just have to figure out how common is that initializing process and that's not just gut um that's that's actual statistics going into it and and if anything we're getting pretty close to setting up those conditions in the lab here on Earth yeah exactly y I agree all right Frankenstein does not like this does not like this hypothesis give me a give me a number um I'm giving it a c think okay I'll uh I'll give it a c I'll give it a c as well all right I would give it an s but I'm going to I'm going to seed the ground to you guys yeah I think it's seed huh I'm going to c c d I'm gonna um I'm gonna I'm gonna give it to you as as my resident experts uh but I find the We're Alone to be like it just answers everything I hate it but it answers everything it would be a good answer so a little a a little push back what you know say there's a civilization that's exactly where we are in the Andromeda galaxy what would they see with our technology looking at us they would see that they were alone and I feel like you can actually use this argument for probably anywhere in our galaxy that's not direct you know really nearby but anywhere in any Galaxy so that seems like a sort of a flimsy well an example is that some Advanced the theory goes that some Advanced civilization will have made an impact on its Galaxy or its star in a way that is noticeable that you know that in the future they're going to build Dyson spheres they're going to rearrange the stars in their Galaxy they're going to turn their Galaxy into something that is more useful for their needs as a civilization in the way that Humanity turns the resources of planet Earth into something that is more useful from our perception of our you know our utility and so you see rainforests burn down you see cities you see uh shipping lanes filled with boats you see all of that stuff and so in theory a hyper Advanced civilization that is able to work at a cosmic scale would actually be starting to manipulate their Galaxy in a way that was that was observable from afar is is the thinking and so what we see is Wilderness we look out into the universe and we don't see that we see galaxies you know stupid disorganized randomly rotating filled with stars of varying sizes Dangerous Ones that exploded Supernova that is not what an advanced civilization would want to do they would want to they would want to sort that out right so then it's okay so this is We're alone in the sense that there aren't hyper Advanced technological civilizations but not that we're alone but not that right we're that that we can't perceive because you know yeah that that if there was an advanced civilization that was causing some kind of impact on their environment we would see it that that a billion years of technological development people can get up to some Shenanigans no yeah I got you but so but if there are other humans at our level and other places that doesn't you're like not that doesn't count right exactly that's back to the we're first they're effectively at the same technological level and we're going to meet up with them and and give them the you know the Vulcan sign shortly so uh and that's that's why for me like I feel like we look out we we see Wilderness we don't see civilizations at the largest scales and yet they've had a billion years to to get to this so that's for me it's s tier but again I want to I want to give the ground to my to my guests here I'm GNA be a gracious host um so communication barriers so aliens do exist but they are not communicating at a level that we can have of course they're not sending out radio signals they're using gravitational waves and neutrino beams to talk to one another why bother using our they they wouldn't bother to use this stupid technology that we do so Moya what do you think yes I'm very into this I complain often that as a species humans are too sight oriented I think we Factor vision and the electromagnetic spectrum into too many of our uh hypotheses and thinkings about outer space so uh yeah if there's a species that didn't evolve to see why would electromagnetic radiation be the the first thing they start to communicate with um so I'm I'm big into this yeah that I mean that makes sense that's a good way to think about it but yeah this like language barrier especially when we start talking about technology I mean you go back a coup couple hundred years and you couldn't speak with uh a radio to somebody else on Earth so I definitely think that there's this this possibility for a communication barrier where they're just using they're doing something better or more effective or something that like lasts longer in space I do think that electromagnetic radiation is a good way to go even if they even if you didn't evolve to see it because it's you would come across it in physics uh presumably maybe not but and it does seem like that would be something that you would utilize for the other you be you could be aware of it though without making it your primary thing like there are so many examples of this in the history of science on Earth of um people in the desert not using Wheels because they had camels and other pack animals that could do the job just as well like it's based it's really based on your context in your environment how you will adapt your technology yeah I I think if you know we agree that we live in a universe with energy and matter then alien civilizations will have those same constraints as us they're going to have electromagnetic radiation they have to know what it is and they're going to be using the raw materials that they find on their planet to begin their their process and that even if they've maybe they're technologically they've moved to neutrinos because obviously it's the best way they may still downgrade to attempt to communicate with other civilizations if they're powerful enough then it's no big deal to leave a transponder going in radio waves just to help some future civil other civilization learn that they're there so it seems almost rude to not that's like if they could even identify that that's what we're using to communicate like they might see a bunch of light waves coming off of us and be like oh what what party are they throwing like it I think it's not immediately obvious that it would be a form of communication but would 100% do that because fine if half of them if half of them do it but what about the other half that we can see it also seems you know Starlight seems like such a a useful thing to be able to see on any Planet you know given you know without giving any like super weird Niche circumstances so um you mean like the millions of rogue planets in our galaxy alone that don't orbit Stars so they wouldn't have access to light like yeah you think that those are like viable homes for for life I think they can be yeah if they have internal volcanism and other processes they can hold on to an atmosphere apparently even these heyen worlds now it's theorized that they can hold on to an atmosphere like they can have liquid water on their surface with a thick hydrogen atmosphere that that those are surprisingly habitable even in really extreme environments rogue rogue planets surprisingly inhabitable yeah you take a you take you put Jupiter you put it out in the middle of the interstellar space and now you've got volcanism on ganim and IO and you've got the conditions for Life deep under the ocean on on Rogue Europa oh I'm not sure about I'm not sure how I feel about that we just sent Dakota spinning he's going to have to really think you know Europa right I know Europa liquid water liquid water you take Jupiter kick it out of the solar system does Europa steal Europa um I don't know when you so when you get out of the solar system you're losing like tons of protection first of all right from the heliosphere from from the Sun itself you're losing um like a lot of stability I I mean I don't know to me it seems like a very inhospitable place you're now being bombarded constantly with Cosmic radiation that you really don't have to deal with uh in any like major way with J's magnetic field can sheld I mean because when you took well when when you talk about uh Jupiter and what it's doing to the outgassing from IO it has like radiation belts that I don't even think we could go visit Europa if we wanted to like we can't you go a meter under the ice and you're safe and there's an intelligent species in there underwater I mean I I don't believe that you can have an a technical technologically advanced species underwater on earth like dolphins without the use of electricity without the ability to build fires um without like opposable thumbs you could put Einstein's brain inside a dolphin and I don't think that they a civilization occurs in the way that we're talking about in this like Advanced technological because they're you're like limited by your environment you know you can't you can't figure out uh Benjamin Franklin can't fly a key in the thunderstorm or whatever and no instead you you come across an electric eel on your way to lunch like there are other ways to Discover Energy so these underwater civilizations are now run by farming electric eels and like industrial Farms where they're they're zapping them maybe you got work how many electric eels to fuel Earth civilization Earth's civilization is the thing it's Europa civilization they would figure it out yeah okay and once you get to space then then all bets are off uh I I love thinking about yeah what if you were on a rogue Planet orbiting through the cosmos and all you had to work with was chemical energy could you bootstrap a civilization an advanced civilization purely from chemical energy but you've got billions of years of time to to process I mean you can imagine a pathway forward and yet so much of life is is life figuring out crazy Pathways forward so fire makes it easy we're on we get easy mode but you can imagine a civilization that gets hard mode maybe they're on they've got twice the surface gravity and then in and rocketry looks completely different from their perspective or that they're on a water world and there's no access to nutrients from the bottom of the of the ocean and they have they can only retrieve nutrients from from cosmic dust that is falling on the ocean there's a lot of really interesting ideas and yet it's not it's never nothing so it's always something to work with if you're creative enough I'll send you some water World episodes of exore I've done Dakota I'll send you some papers on Rogue planet habitability please please please send me send me all this all send me all this goodness that sounds great all right so then then Dakota why don't you give us your uh your your grade uh I'm going to have to say a c okay Mo I was about to give it an a oh well then I will balance it out to a b because I just I just I forgot what the I forgot what the uh the category was judging y made me so upset about saying that that rogue planets had life I just got I got all forgot what we were saying you know what I'll give it a I'm able with a with a b or an A you know I feel like it's unlikely that we're gonna all right sure I am a kind and benevolent moderator okay post biological life so Advanced civilizations do exist but not in a way that we comprehend that this physical manifestation as we live in these meat bodies in this in the universe as we understand it is just a phase man and you move transcend to a higher level that really has no way of detecting from our current meat space and yet they do share this universe with us they have just non-overlapping I'm a big fan of Stargate I hated when Daniel left the show but I love that he ascended to that higher plane of being um so I I love this idea but I don't think that it would happen to everyone um and if if they one of the examples that you gave in the in the text was that maybe they become roboticized or they become AI or something and that still requires energy like they would still produce some sort of no no they don't yeah we' still yeah I mean the point is we would still see them so that that doesn't count okay right like they have like they have to be that we can't we have no way to perceive them okay yeah I just think quickly pass through this phase and move on to the next phase and then they are inaccessible to our are feeble comprehension they would have to be like in incorporeal ethereal beings that don't require any fuel or interaction with anything and the idea that every single species in the universe gets to that point it'd be nice it's the natural it's the obvious choice so in the culture series I don't know if you guys have read Ian Banks there is this idea that they're constantly they grow the AI the AI is born they grow them they interact with them until and then the AI chooses their name and then they to decide what they want to be but every now and then they they just make them and every time they do they instantaneously ascend to the next to the next Dimension that they don't want to stick around in the universe at all that it is the natural outcome and so in the culture series entire civilizations are aware of this higher plane of existence and nobody ever comes back from it and they as an entire civilization have to decide if they want to move on to this next phase and a lot of the stories in the culture series are about civilizations wrestling with with do we want to shed this Mortal coil and become that next phase it's a it's a great concept I like it and it would nicely explain it so Dakota yeah I mean when you talk about another layer of Consciousness I don't have it because I'm a I'm a human unfortunately I haven't I haven't reached that yet but it's like what do they care about then what do they want to do do would they want to even do something that left a huge mark would they value um you know thriving in a way that minimized the the mark that they left would they ever you know would they care about traveling to other stars or or even other planets I don't know I don't I mean probably not that seems this all seems kind of like stuff that's driven from some Instinct that we have from from the past so I mean I could see I could see this we right now we have ai uh obviously it's not anywhere near where where we are as humans but in a hundred years who knows so I I think that this is this is reasonable like if we can get to the point where we're we can like upload our Consciousness into some some sort of cloud or something into the metaverse I won't be doing that but but you're still gonna need a physical imprint I think that's what Moya was getting at at the beginning which is that you're going to need still some physical tether you're absorbing the power coming from the Star you're using you dramatic I don't think it has to be that dramatic like yeah you could you could like be siphoning off the energy from a star in a way that's detectable but I don't think it has to be that dramatic I think there's a lot of energy here on Earth that we don't use geothermal energy wind energy solar energy and I think that you could we could be like so efficient without um you know waving flags to onlookers that were here um you know using all of the all the energy around so if I if I'm understanding correctly in this scenario the natural consequence for all species in the universe is that they get Advanced enough artificial intelligence uh so they can all upload their their minds their consciousnesses to the cloud and they're using the most efficient type of geothermal energy possible so that they don't Reit any heat that we can detect well when you put it like that but no they shift to neutrinos okay okay right that neutrinos are actually a much better substrate to run civilization on and you no longer need regular old electromagnetic energy or matter now you're living in the neutrino Subspace and neutrinos are already hard enough to detect how could we find them okay okay I just heard that you say they become nutrino people that's how I'm thinking of it in my head they become nutrino people yeah and they exist on other plane we cannot detect a different dimension okay yeah that we that wasn't my answer and that it was the well you I mean your answer and this is sort of one of the ones that we cover later on so so I want you to wrestle with this one first because we'll get to the one you're talking about Dakota um that that and I see this in the YouTube comments all the time people say like well of course you don't see the aliens the aliens are so Advanced that they just they transcend it it sounds very spiritual I think is why it feels very uh intriguing so it is just like as we are to the spirit world the the future but instead it's technology yeah this is when Tech Bros go Buddhist yeah okay yeah I think it just clicked for me what you the points that you that you were both making when you uh when you said it like that I got you it's like this yeah okay I got you it's very wooy well and I think you would like still why not also use electromagnetic radiation why not also use matter like why use your nutrio but also use the other stuff too and then that's the heat that's detectable which is what Mo getting it so but now judge it Moya um I'm giving it a c I would have given it a d but I really like when Daniel becomes that floating ball of light yeah or or her where where where his girlfriend decides she doesn't want anything to do with Humanity anymore and join the rest of the AI in the in the Great Awakening yeah yeah yeah it was a it was a she don't groan him I loved it Dakota so so I'm gonna give it a a b with the caveat that there's no like Transcendence into another plane or Dimension or something like that but I I'll give it a b but well Arthur C clarky and you know any any sufficiently advanced technology is IND indistinguishable from Magic so they do it it looks like it's spiritual and magical but it's physical okay then I'll give it a b b it is all right all right I'm gonna I'm gonna split the difference here and I think I'll go with the B as well it would oh look at this nice distribution we're getting yeah yeah this is good all right um the hibernation hypothesis so Advanced civilizations do exist but they are in a state of hibernation and that is because the future of the universe when things are very cold are actually a lot better for civilizations to operate that when your temperatures get cold you can run your supercomputers you can run your quantum computers you can run them backwards that they've realized that what's best is to wait for the universe to cool down to be closer to the heat death but actually then you can just run out your clock cycles and everything is vastly more efficient and that okay well then there you go that's that's interesting that's what this is that's what this is this is them saying that the the current state there and maybe there's something we don't understand that there's something about the universe that is better in the future and everyone immediately realizes that when they reach a certain level of technology and then they go to sleep because why bother right now the future is going to be better Dakota yeah I did I with the way that you described about being aware and being able to stop and get out when you want that okay maybe like that's that's appealing but um if you're like going so far that you're getting to the heat death of the universe we're talking about hundreds of trillions of Years or or trillions at least that's like I'm I'm more optimistic than Moya but not optimistic out until like a 100 trillion years I'm not that optimistic so I don't um that seems like farfetch like how are you sustaining yourself for a trillion for trillions of years or even billions of years you know that seems like a technological feat like a a major hurdle but um you know like waiting to go to the future I don't know that's not it doesn't it doesn't really feel it doesn't seem right I think that a lot of civilizations might prioritize the present more yeah it would it would explain it I guess is the point is that it does explain the firmy Paradox but it doesn't explain it very compellingly because why wouldn't you also use this time now and then also use the future time yeah if you're smart enough to predict that it's coming and figure out how to freeze your Society in the meantime then you should also be smart enough to make the most of what you have now I'm yeah I'm sort of like picturing picturing uh a society that that froze everybody but they accidentally froze the last person and forgot to leave somebody unthawed to unfreeze everybody so like now they're just frozen forever yeah it's probably a science fiction story yeah yeah all right all right Dakota let's give it a judgment uh I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to put this one a d for me this is H one of the weaker okay yeah I'm inclined to agree yeah I agree I I think there's no reason why a civilization wouldn't if there's some perfect situation then they can they can create that now and live in that and UL use that additional energy and matter to make more of that that the future only gives you less our technology isn't good enough so this is the classic we've only just started to explore the universe we've got rudimentary space telescopes rudimentary radio astronomy and the analogy that people always use is you wouldn't go and and put a teacup into the Pacific Ocean and then wonder why you don't see any whales that's we just we do not have the techn techology to yet to be able to conduct a thorough search for the aliens out there Moya uh yes I think that this is just a a fact actually I mean we didn't find planets until the 90s we didn't have gravitational waves until the last decade the teens um I I'm very convinced by this argument that we eventually will have technology good enough but right now we're we're still fairly early on as a technological species yeah I think we're that's I think that's definitely right we're we're very early on we're still we're still debating whether or not you could even have life on a on a rogue exop planets so we're we're in like the baby stages here and um I think that the one thing that it seems like uh gets caught up maybe in this in this uh answer or or perhaps it's something a little bit different is when people want to invoke that uh aliens and I guess this is more so for like civilizations that have been here that have like been on Earth or something that they have some like physics bending technology that like breaks the laws of physics as we know it or something and I'm always super skeptical for that sort of that sort of answer but you know if it's just explicitly that we are technologically aren't really there to do a proper sweep of the Galaxy you know I that may always that might be something that's always true true I I think that analogy of the looking in the ocean falls apart because if you take that teacup you take it back to the lab and you look in it you're gonna find all kinds of stuff find whale DNA in it probably find whale DNA if you have the lab equipment and maybe we just don't have the lab equipment Fraser maybe we have dipped the cup in and we just don't have a scanning electron microscope and and I think though we also go back to this idea that a big enough civilization should should make a big enough impact on the universe that the the complexity of the lab equipment that we need goes down that we look with our eyes and we see we look with our telescopes and we see rearranged galaxies so I think in theory the like how far I don't know like ants detect us and they don't have great technology they know where they bite us they don't understand us but they bite us they eat our houses so I think um you know we don't have to be the same level of Technology as the advanced civilizations to be able to to detect them so I think but the scale is so different yeah the this ratio of like our difference in sizes between ant and human and like this the distance between us then it's totally off from right the distance between us and any potential aliens but but I guess the point being that that an advanced enough civilization will have spread comprehensively through the UN universe that you don't have to go very far to look for them they should bewhere will never ever be convinced by that argument it is too imperialist for me we're gonna get to that shortly so yeah yeah all right all right then give me a give me a judgment Dakota yeah I would say that um you know this is this is okay we don't have the technology I think B for me it's like yeah we don't I want to give it an S yeah yeah I do all right well I want to split the difference with you then and I'm going to put it into an a because I I feel like they would be and we'll definitely have this argument shortly but I do I feel like like they would if they were successful they would they would make themselves more obvious so wouldn't require advanced technology we're searching in the wrong places so aliens are everywhere we think we should be looking at them around listening to various Stars looking for planets orbiting other stars but in fact that's ridiculous everyone immediately moves out to the cosmic equivalent of the suburbs and so we should be looking for the rogue planets not the terrestrial planets orbiting around sunlike Stars our search has been uh fairly extensive like as extensive as it could be we've done Big Sky surveys we've looked in uh at different types of stars we've looked in some different parts of the Galaxy so uh we have this idea that space should be kind of isotropic that the things we find here in this galaxy or in this neighborhood should be similar to what we find in any other neighborhood and uh We've looked at enough places so I don't think that that's the problem yeah I I I don't think it's that we're looking in the wrong places we did just to explain a little bit on what what Moya was saying we kind of like stared in into the galactic disc towards the center where we we saw like a really deep field with Kepler we've done these more uh local searches that are sort of more comprehensive around the sky with uh surveys like test we've seen we've we've looked we've looked quite a bit um now it's possible that we haven't looked in enough places but I wouldn't say that it was that we were looking in the wrong places all together like we're just missing something and it would have to be 100% wrong like we would have to that that it's ridiculous to think that other civilizations are going to be living at planets around other stars that stars are the places to look on the surface in the corona well no no but like the planets like if you're going to have some Advanced civilization that's sending out a transmission from and they're in orbit around a star you point your radio telescope at the star as the beacon but in fact you're trying to pick up the signal from the the civilization that's living on the planet that that in fact the the the universe is buzzing with radio Transmissions from civilizations they're just never coming from the Star they're always coming from the gaps in between the stars but our it's not like our radio sensing is that fine tuned we're not tuning it in on an individual star and ignoring the system around it we would we would also detect those signals from the gaps between Stars yep yeah so cool did we Mo do you have a judgment on this one I'm giving this a d I can't think of a place that we have just like completely neglected to search that we could search yeah Dakota yeah I'm gonna go with with d too we're we're not looking in the wrong places we look everywhere I mean people people have looked on planets we've looked on moons people know about rogue planets people are like we've we have been at Gnostic enough in our search in terms of location that I don't think this is our problem 100% agree with you yep yeah I think if there scientists are willing to throw every idea against the wall and try them all because you never know all right aliens are among us so of the aliens not only are the aliens present they are here and this is like a version of I guess of the Zoo hypothesis or the prime directive but they are just right here on on planet Earth and you know some people already know about their existence and they are just keeping this quiet from the rest of us so I guess the the the truth about the fmy Paradox has already been figured out it just hasn't been equally distributed yet there are those who know and those who don't know Moya uh you heard both of us laughing earlier I I think that this is an extraordinary claim and it would require extraordinary evidence and I have not seen any such evidence um any sort of cloaking technology okay maybe sure if they're like up in our atmosphere but if they've come down to the surface if we're interacting with them that uh is where it breaks down for me it also breaks down in the idea that individual people who do know would actually be able to keep it a secret have you met a human have you met an astronomer we are such gossip girlies they don't shut up no no so I um I have a hard time believing in this yeah same thing for it's it's for me it's all about the evidence like is it possible sure you know sure it's possible um but there's nothing that I see that's put forth as evidence is convincing in any way and then I think uh for the for the most part A lot of times when you know people who study space seem are almost always the people who don't believe that the aliens are here and for me I think it always just has to do with sort of this distance problem there is no conceivable way to travel these these great distances that we that we know of and when you combine that you know the fact that it would take 40,000 years to get to the closest star with the fact that we're not seen any evidence I mean we have evidence for all different types of things we have evidence for how old the universe is we have evidence for how many years ago the first life on Earth was around um it's just and there's no evidence at all that's convincing that like holds up in a court of scientific law I just can't I can't uh I can't get on board without seeing more I'm gonna put this in the D category unless somebody wants to wants to veto that go for it Fraser all right 100% agree with you guys I have no I have no comments in the above and beyond what you said so Interstellar is impossible and and so back when you think about ferm's original proposal he sort of did this back of the envelope calculation and said well the universe is Big the universe is old and then let me just do some quick numbers here it would take a couple of million years for an advanced civilization to explore the entire Milky Way galaxy you go to a start star system you make copies yourself you go to other star systems it doesn't take you long till you've reached every node in the entire every Star in the entire galaxy but that requires the ability to move from star to star maybe there is something fundamentally just impossible of going from star to star that we'll never be able to get to the speed of light we're never going to build warp drives but maybe even we're never going to be able to go faster than 1% the speed of light or 1,000th the speed of light and so it's just not feasible to try to go out to any other star yeah I that's kind of how I think about it um you know is it is it really impossible if you could you know you hear ideas about something for a warp drive where if you had enough energy maybe you could uh you could like play with space using gravity and kind of cheat your way going to to traveling faster or maybe if you could uh contain a wormhole but these are things that require amounts of energy that are really inconceivable to uh you know us as humans or in my opinion any sort of animal species so I would say that this is probably the the big separator between species um on different planets and I would I would rank this one pretty highly this makes a lot of sense yeah I I agree we don't have a good physically realistic way to get that fast um so I think it would be really hard for other civilizations to do on a mass scale but now you're going to have to wrestle with the other side of this which is that what you're saying is that we will never go to another star I'm okay with that you're you're okay with the like if someone some child comes up to you holds your hand looks into your eyes tells you that they want to be a yeah Moya I want to be aerospace engineer and I want to build the first probe that goes to Alpha centuri tough luck kid you down tough luck kid tough luck kid what pick a different job have you considered or just pick pick a smarter goal you know pick pick a more achievable goal you are overreaching you will fail dream smaller get her out of here dream smaller yes look no it's it's not that I think it's I think it's really hard and I just don't think we need to really hard and impossible are two different things you're going to need to give that you're going to cut that line right there because if it's really hard then if 10,000 civilizations go for it and only one and one is able to pull it off you still get the entire galaxy explored can I tell you my little my little conspiracy theory my little hypothesis I think it would be easier for civilization to figure out how to like uh digitally transport copies like digital copies of themselves across great distances than to physically transport themselves through faster light travel great now you just now you're arguing against yourself keep it up okay fine well if that's the case then sure yeah if they if it's like a a teleporter machine across great distances yes but I don't think moving is possible doesn't matter however you make the journey the point is that is that if if Interstellar travel is possible then you should end up with civilization being able being capable of exploring every place in the entire we should we should see their giant robotic voman probe factories here in the solar system when they reached us I like the idea that their digital projections can't actually influence space around them they just observe they're just scientists going to different places digitally like big Zoom meetings Across the Universe yeah Dakota uh yeah I I think that this is a this is a really good when when you know if you're going to make that distinction and like force a stance on Impossible vers not impossible or versus possible then I still feel inclined to say that yeah it's it's impossible but I'm open you know as a scientist I feel uncomfortable saying that but I'm definitely open as a scientist because one you know like if there is some way I would be I would be totally open to that but right now do feel comfortable saying that it it's might be impossible it probably is impossible like 52% chance that it's impossible so what if think about omua mua it's a rock that made the journey from a star from another star system and then borisov did it true it did and it was oh sorry go ahead I was gonna say if a rock can make the journey if a dumb Rock can make the journey do you think is why can't a smart rock yeah so like right that you know where where where did a mu mua originate was it um five billion years ago somewhere am I gonna say that yeah sure um you know there could be a spaceship that's been traveling for five billion years I I don't feel comfortable like I wouldn't say that that doesn't sound right that's not believable to me all right I'm gonna blow your minds so in about a million years a star called Gaza I forget one of the Gaza 714 or whatever is going to pass than 70,000 astronomical units of the Sun so it's going to get within it's going to get within a lightyear of the Sun and that if you take that that number and you extrapolate you actually find that stars make vastly closer flybys of the sun they come within 0.1 Lightyear 02 Lightyear and that people have done calculations that if you just wait for those close flybys for all the stars that come within Striking Distance of your star it only only adds a few extra million years to the amount of time it takes to fully explore your Galaxy you just wait for the ferry boats to come by and then you jump star to star and it only expands your your exploration Time by a few million years um yeah just a few million years which is not that long in a universe that's been around for billion if it was going to take you 10 million years to do it before at 10% of the speed of light now it takes you 12 million years right but we're talking but we're talking about a civilization though so that time scale does matter we're not just talking about that the Universe has been around for a long time we're talking about like a coherent civilization that's sort of carrying out this methodical thing and that timeline seems uh pretty extreme to me but there are places in the galaxy and certainly in the universe where those types of Stellar interactions are a lot more common uh that was the the motivation for one of my grad projects looking at uh the Bulge the center of the Milky Way versus the disc and here the sun is in like several million years like tens of millions of years that we expect this uh kind of close encounter but you get closer encounters way more often in denser parts of the Galaxy you do but those areas are also very different environments for sustainability and uh like stability for life so when you're having more and more encounters with stars you're having probably less stability within the systems there's more um sort of arant radiation coming from other places so I life may be much less likely in those regions as well all right so so just to sort of formulate this correctly uh Dakota I'm going to need you to give a letter grade for the interstellar being impossible as an explanation for the fmy Paradox uh I'm going to give it an a yeah okay I yeah I was going to say like be a remember that little girl girl the little space engineer okay I'm giving it a beat and she said she looks you she goes yeah but stars are going to come really close and you go yeah I know I'm gonna say please leave me alone I don't know how to talk to you a rock made the journey from one star to another that's got to mean possible right okay okay fine okay fine solid b a solid B all right I'm g i I've gotta downgrade it to a B I gotta agree with Moy on this one yeah yeah I just I can't and I la la la I'm not listening I want my warp drive I I want my Stargate it's it's got to be possible yes so there's some science fiction video games and books the idea have you have you guys played the Mass Effect series you probably are familiar with them I did play that that was a cool Trilogy yeah yeah probably my favorite video game series and there is a race of intelligent artificial intelligence that uh a man of like if you haven't played the Mass Effect series you've had 20 years so I've got to be able to spoil this yeah anyway they come through and they reap the intelligence civil on a regular basis because letting an an letting any civilization go too long they are too self-destructive too dangerous to the stability of the Galaxy that they're going to try to take it all they're going to cause force their will on everybody they're going to colonize and oppress and so instead you reap you call them back down to the bare minimum so that nobody ever gets to too out of control and at this sort of specific timing and the Berserkers are sort of a version of that and this is a science fiction series by Frederick Paul and the gist is that an advanced civilization wants to remove any potential threats to the Future and so they send spacecraft to various star systems look for any budding civilization and then you reap them so that they aren't a a threat to you in the future so the gist is that some malevolent or you know well-intentioned group comes along and reaps intelligent civilizations and sets them back to the beginning again on whatever is the basis required to have the universe appear as we see it today Moya um I I feel like this brings up something that we've talked about a lot here which is if they were truly that widespread and capable then they would leave a signal that we could detect the these this Berserker species um I also feel like maybe some like you know the same problems that Rome had when it really tried to extend its reach I feel like that might apply here where they would uh get so far uh like extended that the central power of this Berserker species would lose Authority there's a so Alistar Reynolds has a great series The Revelation space series and in that that's that's what's happened so essentially the Reapers have come by but now they're old and they're getting dumb and they're getting scile and they're not able to be as comprehensive as they once were and this is allowing cracks in the universe that people can try to spread out and and try to escape this yeah yeah all right Dakota yeah so this one is uh I certainly hope it's not true that some Advanced species is coming along and doing a galactic haircut every time our bangs get too long but I think that where I go is the sort of question to like why would this start because presumably this is now the first Advanced species and then they they saw other species come up and do things and decided over time that they needed to just wipe everybody out and so I have like questions about why is that what the like is this the first species ever like the first technologically advanced species and what types of things hap could what could we do to upset the balance in the universe right sure we could we could destroy planets uh we could use up resources we could even maybe even destroy Stars uh but you know what could what could we possibly do to the universe that um sort of overseen technologically advanced species needs to wipe us out seems a seems kind of far- faced and and mo you you think it would be obvious like like if they're doing this then we would see them I think so yeah if they had that mass operation yeah yep I I agree I think if if this was out there waiting for us then then they we would see their civilization as the thing to fear because they're they're using the resources for whatever purpose and so the fact that they're both hiding but also reaping seems really weird like pick a side exactly you know you're either a dark forest or you're a Reaper you can't you can't be nervous about you're reaping be consistent please yeah yeah all right all right sooya can you give us a a letter grade um I'll I'll give it a a d um but I'm willing to hear other people's arguments to bump it up yeah I don't uh I don't think so I think D is a good place for it to be I love the Mass Effect series I love the concept I love reading the science fiction I don't buy it yeah yeah I love The Wraith again Stargate they're great but yeah y yeah same same you know this concept is and again I think this is sort of our stories incorporate this that we think about a lot of Mythology that we are not ready we are not prepared to to be present in this whatever is the the right way to live and so we have to constantly have the Judgment from the gods to to knock us back down to our place and I don't think that's holds water because where are the gods right where are the gods they're sending they're smiting us we should at least see the smiting expansion is inefficient and so this is an idea that is on more of a technological base but I you know it's fine to expand it a little further but the idea is that if you have say a technological civilization the lag is a killer that the more that you are attempting to have to communicate from node to node you're you're affected by the speed of light and at a certain point your parts of your civilization are so far away from yourselves that it's essentially another civilization that if it's going to if you're going to try and communicate to a civilization that's at Al centuri there's no direct path to go back and forth and so they are effectively a completely other civilization and so civilizations just don't care and you can sort of expand this that there's no reason to expand but but but and and I want to get to this not that there's a there is a physical reason that you don't want to expand as opposed to a a philosophical reason which I want to get to next so more on the physical side yeah I think that's a great argument it would weaken a civilization to not have uh as immediate as possible communication between uh groups especially once you're used to a certain level of immediacy like in our history we've gone from pigeons to snail mail to like texting but if you have texting you don't want to go back to snail mail communicating with your your buddy across the Galaxy that that's really interesting and that immediately made me think of because I just watched I never read the book three body problem but I have watched the series on uh Netflix and they employ this sort of quantum entanglement argument for instant communication which like who knows if that's something that that we could actually do but it does kind of lay a framework for this uh immediate communication um maybe even maybe it's not possible but it's it it's like maybe conceivable but you know regardless I surely it's super inefficient to be trying to go out uh you still have this this distance problem you're eating up a bunch of resources um for sure physically you know from an energy persp perspective it's very inefficient and you if you are aren't able to align yourselves sort of philosophically with these other civilizations that you're setting up you're kind of seeding the universe with your competitors because you're no longer in instant communication you're no longer one shared hive mind there's you and there's them and their very existence is your fault you're like wouldn't it be great if we set up another computronium world at Alpha centuri and then the and then but now you're no longer aligned with them they move in a different direction and then they send their Reapers back to you and you have no one to blame but yourself because there are really only a few reasons to expand and all of them lead to kind of a snowball effect of getting radically different views you would expand because of conflict because of necessity like you don't have resources around you or because you are curious and you want to explore and for all of those three things things like whatever your initial motivation is you're going to get driven more and more towards that and the societies will diverge more and more um and I think groups social groups anyway would recognize that that's not a benefit for them and I think that that exploration is a very sort of low footprint in terms of your moving about the cosmos you can imagine an advanced civilization they've got their computronium world and and they've sent out their explorers to at least understand the lay of the rest of the Galaxy in case there are some potential threats you want to know about but apart from that you never want to leave the The Hive because everything else is inefficient and if you do then you're just going to potentially make competitors to yourself yeah yeah that's a it's you know that's what you see here when you split up a population they're not communicating as much they look they turn into new species eventually and and sometimes very very different so why wouldn't that um why wouldn't that also be true as you go out and expand throughout the Universe okay so let's give it a letter grade um very for it being inefficient for expansion being for for it being the explanation that that any advanced civilization realizes that there's just no efficiencies to be made moving beyond their home star no reason to that you just stay home yeah I'm GNA go ahead and give this an a why I would like to give it an S I think um it's I can see it being something that every or most like almost all individual societies come to yeah um so there's a great series of books or a great book by Guy Nam Charles Strauss called accelerando I don't know if you guys have read this book but he covers that and that's the gist is that an advanced civilization if it if it's goes down a certain level realizes that the lag is just not worth it and and instead stays home and I and I really love it so I can agree with you I'm G to put it up in the S tier I think this is similar to to the off-ramp society that I was thinking of earlier where they realize that if they keep going uh they will like use all of their resources and run out of power and so they decide not to exponentially expand all right this is the last one and so I've just called this there's a better way and it's very similar to what we just had and the gist is that there is a way to live in the universe that is the most optimized way you can imagine it sort of a cosmic version of of sustainability that you can remain in balance with the resources that are available to you from the star from the planet from the cosmos itself but it is also the most effective when you sort of reach your greatest level of enlightenment that you can see what the far future is you settle into this and it also happens to be not detectable by us so we don't see it and yet every civilization arrives at this obvious look Final Destination this is the pan Utopia scenario well it could be horrible right it could also be awful but it the point is that it's just that it is it is what is sustainable long lasting um it is the the F you know the the most balanced way to live in the universe that that if you go the mega expansionist route then you like Rome you must crumble from within but instead there's a way to to live forever and all civilizations work this outting what do you seems like a a level of convergence that is would be remarkable for so many different species that are evolving you know on completely different timelines and environments so it seems seems unlikely that everybody yeah that everybody's converging on that that'd be hard for me to believe I think and so then it would be that there's something fundamental to the constraints of the universe that encouraged this yeah some like obvious answer that when you get good enough you figure it out right and and and from our perspective what it gives you is we don't see them huh I just have a hard time imagining what it could be I think for most of these other scenarios I can imagine something that would make that the case but I like what what would this Al this like perfect ideal equilibrium State be that matches every single species in the universe I know we don't know but they all find it the it's the reverse of the Great filter right it's the it's the exact opposite the great filter is some horrible fate befalls 100% of civilizations this says some benevolent fate befalls 100% of civilizations N I don't buy it sorry you could see a scenario where there's uh like this this better way at the end of the Great filter like if you get through enough of these things you're eventually going to come to this to this realization but that see it just seems like so kind of uh it's just way too convergy for me that it's this one thing that everybody everybody comes to so so the little girl has returned she holds her hand looks into your eyes and she say I'd like to figure out a way that Humanity can just live in stability forever h can I work on this is it possible I would not say tough luuck kid to her I would be like that's a that's a great goal and I would recommend looking into really efficient renewable energies it's it's funny to me that that you guys are not as sangin on this as I am because I feel like this is what this is what Humanity has been attempting to move towards I mean Utopia is sort of one way to describe it but essentially that we are attempting to optimize over the long term towards some future that must be sustainable or otherwise we get the other s tier self-destruction outcome so I feel like it has I feel like it has to be the other side of it that either we self-destruct or we end up in a level of peace and stability that we can't live in in instability forever because then self destruction is always on the table self-destruction has to be off the table and the only way that happens is if we reach stability that's my that's my perspective so I feel like they are the two heads the two sides of the same of the coin you get one or you get the other and I would prefer the stability over self-destruction I too would prefer that but I just feel like self-destruction is always on the table it just seems like it's always an option right there are so many ways to self-destruct but so few ways to reach that perfect equilibrium and there absolutely yeah yeah and they you know they the analogy is always the you heard the you have a ball big jar filled with marbles and they're mostly you know say most of them are green no most of them are yeah most of them are green and then one of them is red and so you're digging through them you're P GRE oh you know we didn't have a nuclear war pull another oh we didn't we weren't killed by artificial intellig you pull the red oh w w biot terrorism yeah we're done we're done and we're constantly putting our hands in and we're pulling out the marble and eventually we'll pull out the the one that wipes us out I think there are some civilizations that find a better way Fraser but I I don't think it's all or even most sure yeah but as long as so again it's the reverse so as long as it's possible then it will happen an infinite number of times in an infinite universe but not when self-destruction is also possible sure yeah I'm very confused right now oh no so this is a like once you flip this switch you can never mess up you've basically like you're locked in Forever it's like passing an exam okay uh that yeah like what would that just what would that be where you cannot mess up like you cannot mess this up but I think that's them going to the next plane of existence I think that's post biology sounds the other things we talked about but isn't that what we're trying to go towards some people some people sure all right we are but awesome all right so so then give me your give me your grade I made my best case I could it's uh I mean it's it's it's really out there I'm I'm still not like sold on that being a real thing sounds kind of Fantastical for me so I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go B actually I'm gonna go C okay all right uh yeah I think I'm feeling a b okay I will I'm because I'm you know I propose it I'll come with a b as well I I agree it's vastly more less plausible than than self-destruction as a explanation for the firy Paradox but it is nice um also that you just wouldn't see the ones that were successful so they might be out there but they're just they're not the obvious ones the ones that you would see are the ones that are going for their whole galaxy so they're just not relevant to the larger conversation unless they figured out something that keeps them safe which is a great Trope in science fiction they you know they seem like some pre-industrial civilization but in fact they've got incredibly powerful technology that's able to prevent the Klingons from destroying their planet or whatever like the noxs they can turn invisible yeah exactly in Stargate uhhuh I've all I only watch Stargate that's the only Sci-Fi that I know people always ask me like if if you could which science fiction Future Would you like which form of interstellar transport would you like I'm like Stargate I put on my hiking shoes yes and I appear on another world yes please and that other world looks exactly like the Pacific Northwest that you live in which exactly feels like home remember where I go uh all right well guys that was super fun thank you so much for helping me finally rank all of the responses to the firmy Paradox I think at this point as I said we've done we've solved it and now no one needs to write papers anymore unless they want to reference this it's really settled science and people can focus on other on other things like not bad for two hours of work exactly great I feel good about this uh this list too yeah me too me too it passed three filters anyway um were they great uh Moya what are you working on what can people find out more uh you can find me on the interwebs at goast Mo on all the socials and moam mic.com if websites are your thing I host uh two podcasts one is called exol about fictional World building and one is pale blue pod about the universe and we will have Fraser on it very soon um and right now most of my time is spent writing uh my second book my second book to be published which is going to be a history of invention and a commentary on like what does it mean to be a genius and it's coming out probably in 2026 oh that sounds great thank you yeah so you can follow me on all the social platforms DT Starkid uh check out my website as well www.dot tyler.com I'm a PhD candidate still so I'm doing research right now I have this survey where we are looking at planets that are in these what we call disordered configurations where usually we find that small planets are closer to the star and they get larger as you expand out but in some some scenarios we find that there's actually a large planet interior to a small planet and I try to uh with these observations we're trying to tease out what's happening see if we can explain what the evolutionary track is for systems like these and um yeah so that's an that's an ongoing project that I have and just doing the doing the PHD thing um doing some public speaking and planetarium events as well so if you want to book me for something like that you can check out my website yeah but but follow you on the most important social network of all which is archive absolutely yeah up yeah yeah download my paper well it was it was great to see both of you guys super fun to do this and I hope uh we have some more projects in the future take care everybody thank you bye

Channel: Fraser Cain

Views: 130,134

Keywords: universe today, fraser cain, space, astronomy, exoplanets, James Webb, jwst, James Webb space telescope, tess, Ariel space telescope

Id: DFPfG413F58

Length: 118min 58sec (7138 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024