Why Haven't We Found Aliens Yet?

hey 42 here are we alone in the universe it's a question mankind has been asking ever since we first realized that those twinkling points of lights in the night sky are over stars some of which might just be very similar to our own you'd be forgiven for thinking this is simply one of life's great unanswerable who could possibly know whether or not we're alone in the endless reaches of space perhaps the US government they're definitely hiding something in area 51 and it's either aliens or the top-secret KFC recipe for now we aren't able to say for sure one way or the other whether there are over advanced civilizations out there just waiting for us to point our telescopes at just the right spot in the sky but science has long been trying to figure out what are the chances that we will ever run into our galactic neighbors and whether they exist at all it all started in 1961 of an American astronomer called Frank Drake he'd organized a meeting to discuss humanity's pudding search for extraterrestrial intelligence and he'd invited everyone he knew of in the world who was interested in the subject all 12 of them now despite the small size of the meeting it was attended by some seriously important people including future Nobel Prize winner Melvin Kelvin and a man who will go on to become one of the most famous ever figures in the search for extraterrestrial life Carl Sagan but there was a problem Drake was so busy focusing on bringing together all these brilliant minds that he totally forgot to come up with an agenda for the meeting with just a few days to spare the stressed astronomers sat down to thrash out something so that his illustrious friends would have something to talk about now when faced with this kind of situation you or I might spend a couple of hours coming up with fun icebreakers or putting together pointless what's impressive looking PowerPoint presentations not Frank Drake he sat down and scratched his head for a moment then jotted down a truly unique starter a short calculation that could be used for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy today almost 60 years later some would argue that the Drake Equation as it has become known is the second most famous formula in the world of science after Einstein's iconic equals mc-squared unfortunately it never garnered the same level of popularity because well it doesn't fit nicely on a t-shirt the aim of the equation 2 calculates the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy is almost comically ambitious but the equation itself is actually very simple consisting of seven variables multiplied together these are the average rate of star formation in our galaxy the fraction of those styles that have orbiting planets the average number of planets per star that might be habitable the fraction of these habitable planets that actually go on to develop life the fraction of planets on which life develops that go on to develop intelligent life the fraction of these intelligent life forms that produce detectable signs of their existence and finally the length of time one of these detectable civilizations might stick around for releasing signals into space some of the variables in Drake's equation we understand well things like the average rate of star formation in our galaxy and the fraction of those stars that have planets some like the likelihood of life arising on a habitable planet or the chances of that life developing intelligence not so much but here's the thing our galaxy is big let me rephrase that our galaxy is mind-bogglingly punt wittingly Nebo kingly astonishingly gigantic there are four to be as many as four hundred billion stars in our galaxy the Milky Way that sounds like a big number right well try this one on for size recent studies suggest that there may be two trillion galaxies out there possibly more in the observable universe that means the number of star systems out there containing potentially habitable planets is too larger number to fit on this screen but why am I telling you all this well when the numbers you're dealing with are this ridiculously huge doesn't really matter which values we choose for the Drake Equation a recent Kepler space mission concluded that there might be as many as 40 billion earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like stars unthreatened wars in the Milky Way alone 40 billion chances for life to catch hold just in our galaxy and yes that's 40 billion planets within their systems habitable zone or Goldilocks zone planets whose orbits maintain a precisely sufficient proximity from the host star to contain liquid water on the surface and where there's water there's life according to Drake himself having played around with his brand-spanking-new equation in that meeting back in 1961 he and his illustrious friends concluded that they were probably between 1,000 and 100 million detectable civilizations in our galaxy in our galaxy which is just one of over two trillion our universe is simply so huge that even if the probability of life arising is miniscule even if the chances of that life developing intelligence are vanishing there should still be hundreds of thousands hundreds of millions of civilizations knocking around out there probably far more and yet we've looked the SETI Institute has been asset for decades and we found nothing diddly squat not a single peep from are insecure magnetic neighbors now all of this takes a rather obvious question if probability suggests there are so many intelligent civilizations out there busy colonizing universe where the hell are they or perhaps the first person to ponder on this canonical was Italian American physicist and Nobel Prize winner and Rico Fermi some 10 years before Drake jotted down his now famous equation Fermi was in his late forties at the time and already a world-renowned scientist a prominent member of the Manhattan Project he is perhaps most famous today for being the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor which is why he's sometimes known as the architect of the atomic bomb back in 1950 Fermi was eating lunch with a couple of his physicist buddies they were discussing the feasibility of faster-than-light travel as you do when you're a physicist when Fermi suddenly blurted out but where is everybody despite the apparent randomness of the comment Fermi's lunch buddies knew exactly what he was talking about aliens Fermi had realized that the sheer scale of our universe ought to suggest that life even intelligent life should be commonplace he even carried out his own series of calculations soon after that were similar to the Drake Equation and he came to that very same conclusion aliens should be everywhere although interstellar travel is a slow process Fermi reasoned within 10 million years or so as if the advanced civilization should be able to make a pretty good go of populating a galaxy that may sound like a long time to was humans who have been here for more like two hundred thousand years but remember right here on earth we've had species live much much longer than that modern crocodiles have been around for about eighty five million years and certain species of shark are thought to have existed for a hundred and seventy-five million years or more relatively unchanged advanced species with that kind of longevity Fermi reasoned short have had the time to do some serious intergalactic exploring hence his utterance of the immortal line but where is everybody which forms the basis of what is today known as the Fermi paradox the apparent contradiction between the perceived likelihood of other intelligent civilizations existing in the universe and our complete lack of evidence for them so today 70 years on do we have an answer to Fermi's famous question the short answer is no no we don't the long answer well that's much more interesting unless governments around the world have already detected or even made contact with alien races and are covering and discovery up for some reason there can only be two possible explanations for Fermi's paradox Eva we aren't seeing evidence of alien civilizations because there are non or there are just as many intelligent species out there as we think there should be but for one reason or another we aren't able to detect them let's take a look at the first option that we haven't bumped into our neighbors yet because we don't have any that we are alone in the neverending expanse of space this idea is probably either very reassuring or extremely depressing depending on your appetite for living out your Star Trek fantasies but since our current understanding suggests that there should be many advanced civilizations out there there must be something wrong with that understanding in the first place some variable were Eva dramatically misjudging or are unaware of entirely suggestions for what this variable might be are collectively known as the great filter and for vyas reason whatever this fingers it seems to be preventing aliens from becoming advanced enough to be detectable by us humans here on earth or from detecting and visiting laws there are many suggestions for what the great filter might be any one of which might hold the key to explaining the Fermi paradox it may simply be the case that the creation of life from nonliving matter a process known as abiogenesis is the great filter it took around 1 billion years to happen here on earth after all or maybe it's the evolutionary leap from cells of the simple prokaryotic variety to the complex eukaryotic cells that make up all higher forms of life today that took almost 2 billion years on earth if one of these steps is indeed the great filter we should probably all be feeling a little relieved right now why because all these things have already happened to life on Earth meaning the great filter is already behind humanity if this is the case we've beaten ridiculous odds to become perhaps the only intelligent species in the whole universe the alternative is rather scarier because if a biogenesis isn't close to but not quite impossible the great filter whatever it may be might well be waiting for just around the corner and we're screwed take a quick look back through our own human history and you'll quickly realize that one particular topic seems to crop up after a lot war yes we humans have been trying extremely hard to kill one another since time immemorial our ability to use tools sets us apart from almost every other animal here on earth but what also sets us apart is our willingness to use those tools to murder each other violently and often it may be the case that intelligent civilizations like ours are inherently self-destructive and more likely to tear themselves to pieces than they are to ever colonize the Stars there is after all a natural tension between advancing technology and an increased ability to self-destruct one that we see right here on earth the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima is thought to have killed 135,000 people that bomb produced an explosion of 15 kilotons just 16 years later the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested the Tsar Bomba which was detonated by the Russians in a remote area between the Barents and caris seas produced a 50,000 kiloton exploded 3,300 times more powerful than Hiroshima reports suggest an alternative design for the Tsar Bomba was theoretically twice as powerful to put it simply at our present level of Technology we're much more capable of wiping ourselves out of existence than we are of populating the galaxy and that seems unlikely to change in the immediate future if other intelligent species are similarly warlike it could be that self-destruction is the great filter this would not be great news for us the trouble is for inevitable self-destruction to be the great filter all intelligent civilizations amongst potentially billions would have to share this trait merrily wiping themselves out just before they have a chance to spread out a little bit it seems reasonable to believe that if natural selection is the primary evolutionary driver for all species the vast majority may be inherently warlike but all of them every single one amongst billions that's a little harder to believe there is of course a second possibility here one that is probably more likely and definitely a lot scarier there might be a single super predator civilization out there that's much much more advanced in any of the rest of us possessing unrivaled intergalactic hige enemy and they are systematically wiping outs to competition before it gets a chance to ever fight back something to think about next time we fire out a great big hello anyone home into the Stars actively trying to communicate with other civilizations might indeed be a very very bad idea and this is another reason we may not be picking up signals from alien societies perhaps they're out there but that keeping quiet because they're far less naive than we are and they know it isn't safe to make their whereabouts known if so they're probably peeking out scissors right now from between whatever appendages they hide behind unable to tear their eye equivalents away from an internment disaster that we're idiotically calling out for a Stephen Hawking once said if aliens visit us the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans another theory is that over advanced civilizations know all about us but they're deliberately leaving us alone so as not to disturb our natural progression much like with Star Trek's prime directive this is known as the zoom hypothesis though it might more accurately be called the nature reserve hypothesis ever have the feeling you're being watched yeah it's probably just an impossibly advanced alien taking a nostalgic trip down an evolutional memory lane not exactly a candidate for the great filter but very close is the idea that we may be making like neo and living in one gigantic matrix like simulation this might sound crazy but some pretty smart people for mocs of University Professors two NASA scientists and even Elon Musk seem to believe there's a strong chance that it's true if it is the case of a civilization simply might not have been programmed into this particular iteration of the software although why you would want to waste so much computer power building a simulation of this magnitude only to dump one measly bunch of hell as Apes somewhere in the middle of it is somewhat of a mystery the other possibility perhaps more likely than any of these theories is that there isn't a great filter at all and we're simply looking at this the wrong way entirely we've made a lot of assumptions about what we're looking for and where we're likely to find it we're focusing on sun-like stars and earth-like planets because that's where we think we might find beings broadly similar to ourselves but what if aliens are well much more alien than that we're also specifically listening out for radio signals because they're a common form of communication we use here on earth but there's a very good chance of civilization far more advanced than ours would have left radio waves long behind them or perhaps their technology never resembled ours in the first place maybe radio technology isn't even close to being an inevitable byproduct of intelligence dolphins are one of the small number of species we humans class as intelligence here on earth but as Australian astrophysicists Charles lineweaver points out dolphins have had around 20 million years to build a radio telescope and have not done so yet nonetheless I'm confident those watery bastards are up to something or maybe the real reason we haven't found intelligent life out there amongst the stars is actually the very same reason we're pretty sure it exists in the first place because the universe is vast vast in a way that we humans can't even begin to comprehend the Milky Way is so large that it takes light to Ralph a snappy mover that can travel around the earth 7.5 times in a second 100,000 years to cross it the observable universe that is the part of the universe were able to detect from here on earth is thought to be a sphere with a diameter of 93 billion light years amongst the estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe the 100 quadrillion stars the well very large number of planets perhaps it isn't all that surprising we haven't been able to find any of a civilization just yet the she scale involves poses serious practical problems after all consider this if some curious alien from Andromeda the nearest major galaxy to ours printed his super-powerful radio receiver directly at earth this very second he would find nothing nothing was an utterly silent planet not because the radio signals were currently pumping out aren't strong enough to reach him although for the most part they aren't but because andromeda is 2.5 million light-years away and therefore alvin the alien wouldn't be seeing earth as it is today at all he would be seeing our planet as it was 2.5 million years ago back then our species wasn't just failing to fire off radio waves in all directions it didn't even exist the further out into space we go the older the civilization must be in order that we can detect it so unless we happen to have some pretty close neighbors we're only going to be able to actually find civilizations that are much much older than ours so as far as the question are we alone in the universe who knows it certainly seems unlikely but we might just have to wait a little while longer to prove it thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video then please consider supporting me on patreon because it really helps me to continue to make these videos you can find a link in a description also you can get your hands on a first edition signed copy of my new book stick a flag in it by heading on over to unbound publishing and pre-ordering your copy today thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 2,038,460

Rating: 4.922132 out of 5

Keywords: aliens, space, outer space, interstellar, ufo, aliens video, ufo videos, fermi paradox, enrico fermi, drake equation, science, ufo video, universe, where is everybody, the truth is out there, astronomy, planets, galaxy, solar system

Id: UsLydeeE_M0

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/EvergreenBoi]

We haven’t found aliens bc of joe...