You can watch the video of the Fermi Paradox debate on location on Skylias's youtube: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fMd8a5t629DcY5s.html As well as follow or subscribe to Skylias's Twitch here: www.twitch.tv/skylias Fraser will be posting this as a podcast later this month which you will be able to find here. www.universetoday.com/ And you can watch and subscribe to Fraser’s channel here: kzfaq.info

I could listen to conversations like this all day long. So interesting and fun to think about.

40 min vid, 30 mins before I leave for work. Something to look forward to today. Happy Independence Day to all your American viewers from across The Pond!

I cast my vote for the rare-Earth hypothesis. - Our planet has so many very-very unique properties... I could list the 'tilt' of our axis, or any number of aspects that our moon adds to us. - I could call attention to the magnetic field or that we are orbiting in a single-star system, far from such life-killers as neutron stars or black holes. I could make a list that goes on and on... Many people could add to that list... - And we humans would never be able list everything that life needs to get started... - I propose an 'Ultra-Rare Earth Hypothesis'... - The total possibility of any single planet in the entire universe, to have all the necessities for life, is one, and we barely made it.

thanks for mentioning the time issue. I feel this is the most obvious and most simple solution for the paradox. Life could already look at other life at interstellar distances but since it is always looking into the past never see anything. The fact that the universe is expanding also doesn't help that issue.

Why does everyone assume that continued growth like you've had in the last 300 years is normal rather than an extremely strange temporary aberration that has caused us to have unrealistic expectations for the capability of intelligent life to continue getting more grandiose?

Drinking and having an awesome discussion! 1% of the Milky Way is 100 stars? Don't drink and math ;-)

The gripe I have with the Fermi paradox is that the assumption that intelligent life will minecraft the galaxy is a lot like when Percival Lowell saw canals on Mars at a time when building railroads and canals was what humans did. Even the assumption that WE will industrialize the galaxy is an absurd assumption.

You guys had one of the most satisfying & objective "debate" I've ever heard on the Fermi Paradox!! Good job!! Great content!!

I thought it said Frasier Crane 😂

I lean more towards the idea that we might overestimate the possibilities of technology and underestimate the limitations of distance and time. Civilizations may never become interstellar and may be limited in their interplanetary capabilities. There could be dozens of technological civilizations in the Milky Way and we might not have reached the point of detecting them yet. We are just now getting to the point of detecting planets around other stars and haven’t been able to do detailed analyses of Earth-like planets. Once we are able to do a better job of that, we should gain a better understanding of whether technological civilizations exist or have existed all around us but have all been limited in how far they can reach.

I wish I could join this debate. There are two major points that I would like to contest. First, with the development of Eukaryotes it's a very similar situation to life getting started on Earth - they appeared pretty much as soon as they could. Banded iron formations absorbed oxygen until there wasn't iron anymore - it was a huge oxygen sink - but when that ended we got mitochondria. It's easy to imagine situations where this process happens more slowly or even faster. Second, you guys make all the point when it comes to a galactic civilization but don't actually work it out like it may have happened - there logically had to have been a first. The earliest technological interstellar civilization is going to have the galaxy to themselves until the second comes along. How long is that? Monte Carlo simulations have been done, look for the paper "Temporal dispersion of the emergence of intelligence: an inter-arrival time analysis" by Thomas Hair. John you nail it when you talk about the von Neumann probe in the solar system - we would not see it. You guys bring up the reapers, and talk about blowing up stars, but what reason is there for that? If they're 10 billion years old, then they were around for every other civilization to develop, and had a huge technological head start. This is the answer to exclusivity. Frasier talks about "Maybe they, They must all" - well the first civilization having a technological advantage of 50 million years means that ALL subsequent civilizations will all develop under the umbrella of the first. Assuming that there is no possible FTL communications, which is my preferred way to think about this issue, then there becomes a reason to not leave the home system - lag time. If you let a neighbor build up a Dyson civilization at a nearby star that could become a threat to the home system. There may be very strong reasons to not allow gathering that much energy that could threaten entire planets. This might put a strong limit on the amount of K2 civs (and definitely limits the K3 civs). This brings me up to the last brief point, please having Frasier read Jason T Wrights actual papers on the surveys that have been done regarding K3 civs (GHat). When it comes to K2 Dyson'd stars, Frasier Cain is just wrong. We can only see a limited amount of stars in the infrared. He keeps saying "we should see it" but this is an unsupported point. Skylias makes an extremely salient point, "Do we have the technology to see this?" To which Mr. Godier correctly explains the general limits on K3s from GHat, but this does NOT extend to K2s.

We literally have no idea what the statistics are on a planet developing spacefaring civilizations. It could be common or it could be incredibly rare, we just don't have any reliable evidence of how likely we are.

Here are my speculations. I think most likely, I agree with John that the vast majority of life in the universe is likely to be microbial. We even see this on our own planet--there are more forms of microbial life than any other, microbes arose very early in the Earth's history, and for the majority of Earth's life, that's the only form of life there was, and we also see microbes adapted to many different environments on Earth where multicellular life does not exist, or is very rare. Indeed, microbes might exist in the ocean of Europa and Enceladus or other planets or moons in our own solar system. So my speculation is that microbes are fairly common--with maybe an average of one planet or moon per system. Biospheres with lots of multicellular organisms are much more rare. Of those, biospheres with intelligent sentient beings are more rare still--though not necessarily at our level. Of those, a very tiny fraction are at our level or more advanced. So "where are they" is answered by "very, very, very far away". It would not surprise me if we are the most advanced species in this galaxy, and there might be only 1, or 2 species capable of our level or higher in any given galaxy--maybe a few galaxies might have more, and some galaxies none. As John notes--that still makes this an interesting universe worth exploring, but we should not expect to encounter Star Trek-style interstellar civilizations full of humanoid aliens who we can talk to and even mate with. And furthermore, I doubt if we will ever find a way to travel faster-than-light. The only way to the stars will be through very large space habitats with populations of people on a one-way journey, taking many generations to get to one star, dropping off a percentage of their population to live in a colony, and then the starship would refuel and move on after a few decades to the next star--also allowing their population to expand again before arriving at the next destination. The colonists who stay behind at each stop would grow their population, and slowly terraform a likely planet (which will take thousands of years). They will eventually develop into a different species. Will we ever do this? It's possible and I have hopes, but we are definitely not on track, and as a species we may lack the long-term vision as a species. Maybe no other species does either--maybe that's the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Can you talk more about the super Computer concept cause that honestly fascinated the hell out of me. I listen to you regularly but this video was really really really good

Arguments against the Prokaryote to Eukaryote problem: Firstly. the absorption event occurred at least twice - Mitochondria and Chloroplasts, and possibly four times as the Nucleus and Flagella (from a Spirochyte-like organism) may be absorption events too. Secondly Eukaryotes themselves have been around at least 2 billion years (compared to 4 billion for Prokarotes) but complex multi-cellular life required an oxygen atmosphere, which necessarily required the cyanobacteria several billion years to produce, so the 'delay' over the leap to complex life is no means as long as as pessimists may suggest. And even that may have occurred more than once as it's not clearthe Ediacaran biota is ancestral to us.

Why are all of Frazier's rebuttals basically just "No that's not possible because humans are going to definitely do this one thing in the far future and therefore we should see another civilization doing that now." wtf?

Hey Fraser, I asked a question on a similar subject on your channel, will humans ever become an interstellar species before they get wiped out? But I got a detailed explanation of my question on this debate video. Thanks, Michael Godier, Fraser Cain and Skylias for having this debate.

I don' t think we have enough knowledge to establish wether or not there is a fermi paradox. Aliens might even have passed through the solar system in the past and we likely would have no way to know it with the current means. I think more decades of research are needed to take such theories seriously.

Multicellularity evolved not just once, but at least 25 times. However, of all the metabolisms found in single-celled life on Earth, one -- oxidative respiration -- is head-and-shoulders above the others in energy yield. Complex life took off in the Ediacaran period because that was the first time oxygen levels were high enough to support it. (There may have been a brief flirtation with macroscopic life earlier in the Proterozoic, when oxygen briefly spiked). The reason it took so long for oxygen levels to rise is that the Earth had a lot of reduced material which bound the oxygen. First, reduced iron in the oceans had to be oxidized, creating banded iron formations and then redbeds. Then, when that was finished and O2 could enter the atmosphere, reduced iron continental crusts had to be oxidized. That long biogeochemical process brings us up to the Ediacaran, when O2 levels took off and a worldwide macrofauna developed. So much of that long wait was just due to geochemistry, which perhaps varies among habitable planets. *** Updated 3 years later *** There is reason to think that geological processes -- specifically plate tectonics -- played a crucial role in setting up the deep ocean oxygenation that animal life depends on. Complex animal life arose about 600 million years ago, more than a billion years after the Great Oxygenation Event and the first eukaryotes, and well after the appearance of biological innovations like sexual reproduction and multicellularity. The nice thing about this idea, as opposed to the simple "rare Earth" hypothesis, is that it raises the specific question of whether plate tectonics occurs on Earth-like exoplanets. There doesn't seem to be any consensus about this in geoscience -- it all depends on what detailed geophysics you assume applies to an exoplanet. There seems to be agreement that mantle convection is probably common on super Earths, but in order for oceanic plates to subduct -- a requirement of plate tectonics -- the oceanic lithosphere must be cold and brittle. If there is too much heat it will just float on top of the mantle. So a super Earth having plenty of heat means it has mantle convection but it might mean it does not have plate tectonics. However, this Fermi paradox solution -- rare plate tectonics -- focuses on a specific problem in exoplanet geology, which we might be able to solve in time.

The last part destroyed my mind. Awesome work please keep it up!

I’m a huge fan of your show John and I’m always excited for new episodes (especially on Event Horizon) and I was also able to discover Isaac Arthur through your channel, whom I’m also a big fan of. I know you’re in the business of entertainment to an extent and the Fermi Paradox is a hot item, which is why it makes sense for you to continue to touch on the idea. I think in some ways, many people tend to consider the concepts associated with the Fermi Paradox a little too intensely. It’s important to consider the reasons we have pondered as a solution so that we can alter our own roadmap and avoid potential species threatening disasters but I think we assume a little too much about potential alien neighbors. There could be other intelligent species out there who may even have things like spaceflight but perhaps not in the ways we ourselves would consider or invest in. Alien “psychology” (if you can even relate them to humans and how we think and act) is something that may be dramatically different than our own with entirely new concepts on religion, technology, life and existence, warfare, technology, culture, etc. It seems unlikely that they would have similar goals and progress to our own and if they did, that would perhaps suggest that advanced life tends to share much in common with humanity. They may have taken different paths to technology and mathematics, they may live for much shorter or longer time spans, and may have much different abilities and philosophies related to breeding/reproduction. If I had to choose a concept suggested as a solution to the Fermi Paradox, I’d probably fall into the rare Earth/intelligence area. When you consider the amount of things that had to happen and the environment to be fashioned in such a way for us to get here, it’s not hard to imagine countless planets teaming with advanced non-intelligent or limited intelligent species and the catalyst for pushing them over the barrier may just not be a very likely thing to happen at all. What if the asteroid that likely killed the dinosaurs hit elsewhere (it’s been suggested in scientific papers that if it had hit 30 seconds sooner or 30 seconds later, the effects would’ve been much less devastating)? What if it hit a million years before or a million after? This asteroid impact is probably the primary (or one of the primary) reason that mammalian life was able to thrive and eventually evolve into primates and later modern humans. Even in something as large as the galaxy, what’re the odds that an asteroid impact or other ecological disaster would occur at just the right time? What’re the odds that the climate follows a pattern necessary for this or that more severe disasters could occur and make the planet inhospitable for extremely long (or even permanent) time frames. I constantly hear people talk about how stupid mankind is, how flawed, and so on. I find it kind of ironic that a human being would be using their absurdly advanced brain to think about how stupid the species as a whole is when all other life that we’re aware of couldn’t even understand the concept of what “stupidity is and apply it to their race. Human beings are amazing creatures with amazing capabilities. Sure, we have flaws and we fight wars and the like, but it’s hard to imagine an ape thinking about fighting another group of apes thousands of miles away. With our abilities certainly comes problems but the very fact we even have such problems is amazing. When you consider all of this and you think about how refined and focused our cognitive abilities are and it’s not hard to imagine an intelligent alien species that is even only SLIGHTLY different in terms of their brains and intellect and it could result in a dramatically different roadmap for expansion and progression. We need to stay open to the idea that all life shares a common ancestor on this planet and have been cut from the same cloth. Can you imagine how vastly different another intelligent species could be when you consider they came from a completely different biological line in a completely different environment. Maybe the reason we have such a hard time finding other species (if they’re even out there which we really can’t say) is because we spend too much time considering their possible actions and use our own conceptualization of psychology to predict what they may be like. Anyways, I’m sorry for the long post but I figured it was an interesting thing to discuss and we’re all nerds and lovers of science anyway. Thanks for another great episode John!

Why am I waiting for the sound of a Door being kicked in followed by Isaac Arthur's Voice ?

Yay! Just saw the new episode and after a tiring day it made me smile and now I am listening to it. Thank you! 😊

That was fun, in a terrifying way. I was about to ask if you ever had discussions with Isaac Arthur but I see in your uploads, you have! (Off to watch now). Thank you!

I just listened to this on Fraser's podcast while i was working in the workshop so had stop by my favourite youtube channel to give you a view, like and comment great content as always

20:47 I think it's important to remember; 96% of the matter/energy content of the universe is invisible to us. That may be where all the action is. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least one way this might explain both the Fermi-paradox and Great Filter ideas. Great filter: Only civ's that discover how to access the 'dark' universe make it thru periods such as the one we find ourselves in. Fermi-paradox: Once they do, they leave this part of the universe behind, like a bird leaving the nest. A caterpiller has no options.. It builds a chrysalis and transforms into a butterfly, or it dies.. Intelligence may be similar in some way. The 4% we interact with may simply be the universes antechamber. A pre-school of sorts. You either graduate and gain access to the rooms beyond, or die. This doesn't explain WHAT kills every species before making a noticable impact (i.e. dyson spheres, galaxy colonization, etc), but I don't think we should overlook the majority of the universe in our search for answers. I always think of an analogy I heard years ago. The entire universe we see before us.. every galaxy, star, planet, gas cloud, grain of dust.. every particle and force of the standard model, every molecule on the periodic table, is like the foam on a wave. Everything we know exists in that foam. The sea it floats on is the real universe.. Maybe the challenge is to access it before our foam bubble pops. Sorry. Went a 'lil further than I planned with that one. :P

Love you ALL! This discussion is one of the best ever recorded. Fraser, could you start featuring Event Horizon in your channel list? John features yours (in his list), and that's actually how I first found you. Would be so cool if you featured EV in your list, to support the community. ♥️

MAN this was awesome

A very underated youtube channel with great content John! Thanks for the video :)

Combine Rare Earth, rare intelligent life with the distances and minimum time to reach a certain point in technological development. Also apply the idea that virtualization of society is the most likely evolution of an intelligent species.

the best part of intellectual debates, is that it’s mostly just sharing information and talking about it respectfully. i’m glad humans like this exist

My issue with Mars virus idea is that one of the many ejected rocks from Mars that land on Earth would have already wiped out everything. The second issue is that viruses that have to generalize will almost certainly trade-off their effectiveness for generalization.

People posing the Paradox assume many things, however I believe the worst is to assert that hypothetical Alien cultures must attempt something no matter how unwise simply because statistically someone must have. Case in point; exponential cultural expansion. Because of the time-spans and distances involved founding an extra-solar colony isn't like having children that may end up competing with you, nor is it like founding a national colony on another land of the same planet, it's like seeding an entirely new species. Whenever you (as a species) found an extra-solar colony you are effectively engaging in a deliberate act of creating a competitor species, and one that is highly likely to be both equally expansionist and have the same planetary needs as yourself. The likeliest scenario is that this new species and yourself will end up coming into conflict at some point in the future, a conflict which potentially poses a greater existential threat to the species than would encountering a truly alien species because an alien wouldn't have your home address right from the get go and may at least value the novelty of the information and perspective your species represents. For this reason the more gluttonous and expansionist a culture is the more danger an extra-solar colonisation attempt poses, which results in a catch 22.. A culture that wants to expand logically shouldn't allow it'self to do so, while one that doesn't won't want to anyway. Conversely a more advanced civilisation that detected an expansionist or gluttonous civilisation would likely see it as an indicator that this species would pose them a danger.. Imagine if we saw that happening, a wavefront of stars blinking out.. that would seem pretty threatening yes? Sure some people would think it was a great thing and would happily anticipate their uplift, but a likelier possibility is that this species wants what your system has and doesn't give a damn about your species' needs. For an alien it's probably like seeing a dog with rabies in your neighbourhood, the only sensible thing to do is to get your gun and put it down. I believe that in the long run both colonisation or profligate Kardashev style energy harvesting is less desirable for a species than cohesion and unit scale efficiency and that what intelligent aliens are out there are likely to be nomadic, moving stars only when needed and doing so en-mass, with post biological species likely favouring long lived stars like Red Dwarves. But I also think that intelligence is extremely rare.

I'd love to know what cocktail John was drinking...

fascinating discussion ..do it again do it again...!!!

You know, there's a flaw in the logic of the argument that Kardashev type 3 civilizations don't exist because when we look out at the universe all we see is untouched wilderness. In fact the argument is actually circular, although not necessarily wrong. We create our models of astrophysics by taking our observations of the universe, assuming that they are the result of natural processes, and then asking what must be true in order to make that work. For example, the neutrino was first hypothesized because it was the only way to make modeled supernovae look like real observed ones. Obviously this is the only sensible way to proceed since natural explanations are more or less by definition the most likely for any observed phenomenon. But it does make the argument about type 3 civilizations circular: you assert that what we observe is natural because it matches the predictions of our models when our models are created on the assumption that what we observe is natural. While the blind spot this creates may be unavoidable, I think it should make us more cautious about broad statements such as that type 3 civilizations can't exist because we'd see evidence of them written all across the sky. It's entirely possible that the evidence of such civilizations actually *is* written all across the sky and we're simply dramatically misinterpreting what we're seeing. For example, my (admittedly limited) understanding is that the idea of dark energy is based on supernovae surveys that have found that very distant (and therefore ancient) supernovae are not occurring in the way we expected. Suppose that a super civilization is actually managing modern supernovae in some fashion, and that the reason distant supernovae look different is because they're the only "wild" supernovae that we see?

Fair warning this comment is a bit of a doozie so your gonna wanna strap in for this one. Perhaps the solution to the Fermi Paradox is much simpler than it appears. Perhaps the reason we don't see intelligent life in the cosmos is that there isn't any yet. Perhaps we are the first after all someone has to be the first. Consider the fact that on earth "a seemingly perfect place for life to emerge and persist" it has taken a 3rd of the amount of time the universe has existed to progress from a point of no life to a point in which not only does life exist but it can ask why it exists and whether similar creatures exist elsewhere. Then consider the countless forks in the road in the evolution of life, the earth, and the solar system that had to occur both as they did and when they did to get to this point. Then consider the uniqueness of our species perception of the universe and our place within it that is also required on some level to even ask the questions why are we here and if similar creatures exist elsewhere. And it's little wonder we don't see intelligences amongst the stars. In short, it could be argued that the basic logic behind the Fermi Paradox might actually be better evidence as to why we shouldn't expect to see technologically advanced life yet rather than why we don't. And this is all assuming we would even recognize extraterrestrial life "intelligent or otherwise" if we saw it, which we might not.

Thank you Michael, I appreciate all of your hard work. These videos you make always get my mind going.

Great one..thanks..

I have an argument against... the notion that looking out into a space full of advanced species, we would have to see Dyson spheres, re-arranged stars and whatnot. We are slowly realising right here and now, while we live on this one planet and are already quite confined and limited... that we shouldn't exploit the world around us too much. Only to a certain degree. We realise that our interfering into the natural order harms other species, and that the original... you know, how nature made it.. is quite beautiful. It shouldn't be tampered with too much. Those advanced species in the universe have realised this a long time ago. They might be living in a harmony with their environment that we can't even imagine.

I think there are multiple filters. Not only the filter from single cell life to complex life forms, but the complex life forms still have to develop into 'intelligent' life forms. Look at all the kinds of life that developed and ended up extinct before we got to homo sapiens. And then that intelligent life form still has to develop technology advances enough to be able to observe and explore space.

I usually do not watch Fermi paradox episodes, because Im kinda fed up with them. But a colab with Fraiser? I thought I would give it a go. And I was not disappointed.

The main problem with the solutions to the Fermi paradox is we only have one frame of reference, our species. The different scales are making assumptions of what we think a civilization would do and also doesn't factor in other possibilities. In example a 150 years ago nuclear energy wasn't even thought as a possibility and we were using steam for energy production. Well what if a species perfected a fusion generator or some other source of energy. That would make a civilization much harder to detect because of the simple fact there would be no super structures like a Dyson sphere because it wouldn't be needed. Also with when we are looking at the stars in the galaxy we are seeing into the past. let's say a star is 20,000 light years away .. and a structure was build 10,000 years ago .. we wouldn't detect it for another 10,000 years by observation. That's the problem we are observing the past not the present. 200 years ago there would of been no technological presence to detect from our own planet. In the end we don't know .. our current understanding of physics is only a 100 years old and for all we know there are other forms of physics we haven't discovered yet. So saying we are alone in the galaxy let alone the universe is way to premature.

You pick my favorite times to post. I need to comment more after I watch the episodes but I always get these around bedtime. I’m a daytime watcher myself though.

Just about anything anyone says could be a "solution" to the Fermi paradox. Truth is, space travel may just be impossible. Think Arthur C. Clark's "The Star". We may have to settle for a "time capsule" on Pluto and hope someone finds it. While we're at it, no matter how "likely" life is (intelligent life), there had to be a "first". Just like at one time, each of us was "the youngest" person on the planet. No matter how short a time that is, what if they had this same debate? What if "they" are "us"? Again, it seems that the "answer" to Fermi's paradox is still more philosophical that scientific.

Rare Earth's, to spread out in time of development, to far apart, contact is unlikely..

EXCELLENT!!! Two of the best! We so need much more like this....

I'm glad you ended this debate the way you did. Open ended with a positive perspective toward the unknown. I was truly starting to become concerned there for a bit. We have yet to see any 'markers' from across the universe of high technologically advance life, probably from the aspect that we have no way to detect those markers much less what to look for in the first place. After all, what size transmitter, of what type and at what power level would that transmitter have to operate at from an occupied planet in the Alpha Centauri system in order to reach earth and be detected by our 'compatible' receivers? When do we 'look'? All assumptions aside such as why would they attempt communicate to begin with, for what purpose, could we even understand what they were saying (or they us).... etc.? Then, as with space travel itself, there's the delay problem (that pesky 'light speed' barrier that really probably isn't) of roughly 4.37 years. And that's just our nearest star (if it's even inhabited and then by an 'intelligent' species or two). Talk about long distance relationships..... I know we regularly monitor radio frequencies, have looked for laser beams (which I found to be about as utterly ridiculous as wasting money on 'solar sail' research), on and on.... It's so utterly redundant as to attempt to cross the Atlantic in a steam locomotive. Personally, It'd be my guess that any intelligent species with the drive and capacity to manipulate its' environment and develop the technology to do so, would also need to find a solution to the same problem of communication over the vast distances of space as us. Some sort of system say, in some way related to quantum entanglement. By some means that would be a bit more 'instantaneous'. Either that, or perhaps those species are of far greater longevity and are blessed with infinitely more patience than us. Otherwise, what's the practical use? Just because we don't understand that level of technology (although we have a 'clue' with particle entanglement) doesn't necessarily mean that others don't. After all, there still isn't an African Bushman (San People) Space Program yet of any account. Ergo, we're looking for something from 'out there', something we can't even begin to describe much less imagine and tap into and doing that with a blind fold on after having first been born sightless. I'd have to say offhand that to even think so would be fairly narcissistic on our part. Or am I missing my guess?

If dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct we wouldn't be here. That's a good filter.

Since evolution is random, perhaps evolving intelligence is just another dead end, like size was for dinosaurs.

Damn it I just woke up and have to go to work I will watch when I come home and comment lots later cause this is my favourite topic by far I never get sick of search for ET,it’s more fun when you don’t believe we have been visited already

I love Fermi paradox discussions

They might be in the nearby exoplanet *Teegarden b*

"As of right now I know of 75" -and I bet you there is a person that has confidently stated that the Fermi Paradox is not actually a paradox for each of those 75 solutions.

Great conversation here. Where can I hear more about that "super computer appearing from nothing" idea? I find it extremely appealing and I have already seen some similar examples in the anime I like (Zambot 3, Votoms) and I would like to know more to include it in a fanfic I'm doing.

I LOVE your channel. I enjoy it very much Thank you for being awesome.

I think we also put very little thought into the barrier being advanced multicellular life that is exposed to the materials and has the knowledge to manipulate them and the psychological drive to expand themselves to other worlds. That that which is us is very unique. Tigers and Jaguars are brilliant hunters, but they don’t build rockets and go to the stars. Dolphins and squids are smart but they live in the water and are bound by that biological nature and environment. Octopi may have arrived here in comets, but still remain in the sea. We’re the only species of all the thousands of forms of highly complex life to ever build enough to eventually even make it to space. Human ancestors needed to be exposed to the right environmental factors and the right resources at the right time to even evolve into what we are today. Our own evolution and our own evolution of consciousness as a being amongst the stars with the will to go to the next might also be a wall. As of yet we’re the only known earth species to even think of space and think to put something up and out there.

I don't think we should assume a dyson sphere or dyson swarm would be a natural technological evolution for any alien race, it may not be necessary. If an alien race has the ability to build a large enough structure around a star that it can be seen from a distant galaxy that race most certainly has already mastered controlled fusion and would produce what they need artificially. If a race can master fusion it opens up the door to even far out ideas like the artificial production of antimatter on a large scale. And that is just with technology we know is possible but currently out of our reach. So in my opinion I don't think not seeing a cluster of dyson spheres are signs aliens don't exist.

Talking about the Mass Effect franchise with the Reaper invasion. 😂

How will an octopus or a slugmonster be able to hold tools or tighten a bolt etc? How will they be able to do welding or melting of metals without evaporate from the heat?

Skip the background sound effects for 40mins and for those of us listening with headphones, skip the ice in your drinks.

Yes JMG!! One of a kind channel very few this interesting

Good stuff

Why don't we put a heavy glass cup filled with ice near the mic? Great idea

Awesome chat, 2 of my favourite KZfaq creators.

Why look for just one explanation of the paradox? It's probably like a lot of other things it's a tapestry of different reasons. Life outside of the microbial state is probably rare getting from animals to an intelligence general enough to understand abstract concepts is probably rare, probably a lot of civilizations do destroy themselves, etc. Until we know how many get past each of those stages we have no idea if intelligent life should be common or not. we also don't know what a civilization more advanced than ourselves is going to behave like how well would people from the 1500s been able to predict today.

can someone explain why Dyson spheres are necessary.. if future tech could presumably make a synthetic star..also cold fussion could transform atom into another.. don't understand the need to "harness" power or materials..

Loved this. 👍🏾👍🏾

Not all possible versions of particle arrangements within a cubic meter would be realized even with infinite time and space. The more common and likely arrangements would be just appear infinite times while some arrangements would never come into being.

IF they did show up, wouldn't that make the Fermi Paradox a moot point?

Beautiful video Event Horizon. Will another Clarketech episode be made soon on this channel? Or a video about the future of mathematics (from googology to cryptography) I hope yes. :) Anyway, greetings from the Netherlands. :)

Awesome discussion, Guys,... I shall be listening to this again tonight along with Issac Arthurs new release. Thanks again, John. P.S I would still rather have them available via Podcasts, though, I guess I could download these and then add them to my Podcasts folder, it's just remembering to download.

None of these discussion points make any sense. Its like saying humans from the 1400's could predict that we communicate with invisible electromagnetic waves flying through the sky relayed by machines you can't see that orbit the earth (which btw is round). They wouldn't predict that, and they wouldn't have the technology or understanding of physics and engineering to build anything that could detect us. Ergo, the chances of SETI finding something meaningful are actually a lot slimmer than they lead on. Unless they are using that radio telescope array in manner they aren't disclosing. We can barely imagine what a civilization 1000 years more advanced than us would be capable of doing or how they can be detected. Our best minds in science fiction grossly underestimate the progression of technology. One thing is for sure though, if extraterrestrials are smart, they wouldn't want anything to do with us- unless they really have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.

John,..... I think Anna's broken again she just tried to sell me a timeshare.

Intergalactic travel is an energy problem no matter how you slice it. The distance between stars in enormous. Even if you could build a space craft that could travel faster than light (you can't) how would you get the energy to do it? How would you store it?

I rarely comment but I absolutely love this channel. Always had a keen interest in this area of science since I was a kid and this channel continues to inspire me! On another note, I suffer from consuming panic attacks from time to time. Listening to this really channel really puts yourself, worries and experiences onto the "cosmic scale" and has a very strange calming effect. Thank you for all your hard work! :)

I love the bits with John and Anna. Not the main point but a very welcome and amusing addition.

I'm disappointed that you are speaking as if the astronomical surveys that have been done are comprehensive. Like the infrared surveys your mentioned @ 24:33. I know for a fact that the existing astronomical data sets have not been comprehensively analysed yet. There just aren't enough astronomers for that job to be finished. That's why new discoveries are being made (edit) from 'old' data sets all the time. So it irks me when you conclude that no galaxies exist that are only visible in infrared. Don't do that, at least not without adding a caveat.

Is that photo at the end a real one or fake? If it's real it looks like a face in the center.

This is a fantastic forum!!! I love this idea of discussion!!!

We could be just the first to expand outward. Some civilization was the first. Could be a couple hundred years ahead of the pack.

Fermi had the right idea!!! :-)

Please correct me, but if our night-time sky is already looking deeply into the past eons ago, isn't it quite possible if we were to see what the actual universe is today (were we to see light from these civilizations as they exist now, although theoretically impossible) maybe our starry nights might look as the earth does from space, just teaming with light from manmade technology?

Soa I was flipping through the channel trying to find somthing I haven't seen yet and boo yea upload... Thanks guys

How important is having a substantial moon (like our own) to develop complex live ?

There is ton of human bias in all these debates. I see two main problems with this: 1. Lack of observed hints on ET civilisations. The problem is that we don't know what to really look for, as we are searching for something which is basically extrapolation of our current technology abilities. But in terms of galactic civilisation, we are nothing but children who didn't even managed to leave their home sanbox yet. As such , we have literally no idea on what energy sources advanced civilisations use, as their science is above ours to the extent we fail to imagine. Why they should build Dyson spheres if they e.g. found way to extract energy directly from vacuum? The main point is, if they directly influence their neighbourghood, they will do so in a way we fail to imagine. And how we should find technosignatures of advanced civilisations if we have no idea how they look in the first place? 2. All talk on Great filter is result of reasonable concern we will destroy themselves somehow before really going into space. From tendency to exhaust all natural resources to pondering of advanced techcivilisation destroying every other which can be "dangerous". This is all too human. First of all, any cosmic civilisation inevitably needs to overcome own aggresivity (if having any in the first place) to reach stars before destroying themselves. Concerning AI civilisations, we are full of projections, too. Truly advanced AI would be capable of pondering everything on level we cannot imagine. To think it will be ego-driven and selfish is result of such individuals being preferred for raising to power by our own current social system, and has absolutely nothing to do with range of thinking advanced AI will possess. And those are only a few examples of how we project everything which belongs to humans to thinking on issues like Fermi paradox and Great filter. I literally laughed at mention of something destroying 100% of all civlisations. We, from our scanty perspective, cannot see how many different forms intelligent life can take, and I am pretty sure there are thousands of them. There is no way something which is able to wipe all of them could exist. That does not exclude e.g. possibility that all carbon based humanoids will turn aggresive and wipe themselves out. But we have no idea how limits of e.g. intelligent octopuses or alive crystals would look like, if they will have any. So no, I am completely convinced there is no such 100% eliminating thing, cause the idea itself is simply not plausible.

Wow, 12 years are passed since Mass Effect came out, and... someone still remember the Reapers! :-D

Why do so few consider the fact that aliens might not be so materialistic?

I'm just pausing this video to contemplate something. What if, for there to exist an exact copy of me in an infinite universe, it needs ALL variables in my reality to be the exact same, including the infinite universe I live in? That creates an infinite universe that contains the entirety of itself, not once, but an infinite number of times. Can a thing contain (a clone or copy of) itself? multiple times? I really think there is a flaw in our understanding of infinity somewhere...

My problem is that I am listening to entertainers discuss questions that are better answered by intelligent insight, than fame.

An advance civilization would place a much higher value on stealth which will obviously make it much more difficult to see with the naked eye.

What if the capability to become a type 2 or 3 civilization has its own complicated paradox in which we would need certain elements to progress,that we will never obtain.So Maybe it's possible on another star system with different elements?So we should still try in my opinion.

Happy Independence Day to all Americans from the UK. We are attempting to secure our own independence from the wretched authoritarian EU. Wish us luck.

I think their first hypothesis is correct. There might be microbial life in 1 in 10 star systems, but intelligent or even complex we are talking one a million of those.

Fraser, John Michael. I've been fascinated by some of the implications of the Infinite Universe you've touched on since JMG's interview with Paul Sutter. I've been trying to find more info, whether research or pop-sci but haven't been able to come up with much. Would either of you be interested on making a video diving deeper into this subject (and the possibility of nearly identical "earths" somewhere/sometime). Thanks!

I agree the mitochondria eve moment being the great filter but its combined with the conditions of our solar system being rare-Jupiters position,acting as a shield to the inner planets isn't the norm and its kept things stable enough that mass extinction events have been low enough.

what if the solution to the fermi paradoxon is the same reason why no grown ups attend kindergarden: species graduate from this universe, for what ever reason.

What I mostly got from this is -- we know absolutely nothing, and anything said on the subject is pure wild-eyed speculation.

Seems that as little as we know about the atomic level that once a civilization unlocks those mysteries it may not need to leave such obvious footprints in its environment.