You can just tell that when Brian Cox is talking , he is always smiling like science makes him happy

I used to have trouble sleeping, now I watch Brian Cox documentaries and I fall asleep on the couch. Very soothing voice. "Like"

Brian Cox is so nice and soft-spoken, we must make sure he talks to the Aliens first whenever we find them.

Brian's gentle tone and comforting voice should be the one to break the news to the world that we are not alone. He makes the deepest astronomical theories very understandable, and, in his delivery, we could take the news. Let that bounce around in your head 😂

He's literally my favorite. A science legend.

They are already expanding away from us faster than they could ever vist us. It's not that they aren't there, it's that we can't ever reach each other.

People seem to assume that a civilization will inevitably spread beyond its own solar system. But interstellar travel may be impossible or impractical. There could be any number of civilizations out there in their own "islands" that will never contact each other.

The unbelievably frustrating thing is....we just dont know anywhere near enough about the universe 🤔😔 so many unanswered questions

I agree with Brian. We may have developed to a degree of intelligence more superior than any other life form on this planet. But as he mentioned,we are stupid. How can we ever think of a long term rental on this planet when everyone just wants to blow big holes in it 🙄😑

It is a real possiblity that the "great filter" is tied to the presence of oil (or some similar energy source). If a civilization develops with an early dependence on a readily available but finite energy source such as oil, it is quite possible that they will not successfully make the transition to a different energy source once the original source is depleted. The end result would be a regression to a less technologically advanced society and thus be undetectable by us.

It is ridiculous to think there is no life anywhere else. With a hundred quintillion Earth-like planets in the Universe, yea there is life.

The challenge for us is to not live within our assumptions. All recounted here are hypotheses that we use to prove themselves. Logical fallacies hold us back. All we need do is the opposite of what Mr. Cox proposes at one point. Wisdom starts when we realize we “don’t know.” This awareness does not mean we stop. “Cogito ergo sum” is a philosophical principle that should be on everyone’s refrigerator. If you listen to the account you hear “argument” and “theory” throughout. Those items SAY we are making a guess, an hypothesis, from which we can deduce to refine further theories. The profound reference to consciousness is generally ignored as to its causation. Are we somehow “evolved” from rocks and atmosphere? To understand the universe, we may start with ourselves.

Maybe truly advanced civilizations have learned that it’s just best to take good care of what you already have.

This is the analogy I've used for a while. There are anthills across the our known landscapes, some near and some far. As humans, how often do we really explore these anthills. And then, how often do we try to communicate with those ants. So we must ask ourselves, in the realm of intergalactic evolution, are we still merely ants who aren't even worth consideration. If the universe if filled with more interesting and more advanced life, why would we even be considered something to interact with. Despite how advanced we think we are, perhaps we are still just an inconsequential species.

I think the ticket 🎟️ is “if you survive” And two big things impact that; 1. Natural forces can make life go extinct especially if the civilization doesn’t have the technology to prevent it. 2. A civilization could kill themselves by being irresponsible with technology. Seems to me that the odds that there is advices life is high. But the reason we don’t see them much is they probably simply observe. We have nothing to offer to them, and they know we are capable of being violent; so they probably figure we are not worth there time unless we somehow become a threat to them. And on the rare occasions where some of them have maybe tried to make an encounter: it was probably a sad attempt to simply give us a friendly message or push along the right direction. But it didn’t have a big enough impact to change anything for us. But overall they probably just look at us like- well if they kill themselves that’s the circle of life. Kind of like, if we see a hurt bird, we could walk right by it and 9/10 times we’d keep walking and just say it’s the circle of life maybe it will make it maybe it won’t… on rare occasions maybe we pick it up, put it in a box and give it a push… but if it doesn’t make it we keep moving on; and as long as that bird is not a threat to us we leave it alone. If the bird carried a highly contagious disease that could kill us all, we’d squash the bird in a second flat and there would be nothing the bird could do. Intelligent life looks at us similar to that bird. We are kind of on the fence of being a threat. Right now we are mostly confined to Earth just starting to send rockets to space, moon, soon mars and have satellites just data collecting. But minimal threat to intelligent life. It’s interesting that the reports of UFO’s really amped up when we started toying with nuclear weapons. Which is probably why they did some checking in on us. And as the future goes on- especially with recent breakthroughs with Fusion… we’ll see if we keep getting checked on. My guess is, if we can’t find a way to be a peaceful existence, we our either gonna kill ourselves, or be killed once we have the ability to take our violence and weapons to other planets galaxies etc.

I think the biggest solution to the questions asked by the Fermi Paradox is we're barely able to look. And we're looking into the distant past when we look into the deep galaxy.

I think there are two reasons why we may not have detected any other "intelligent" life out there. 1) Size. The universe is enormous beyond comprehension, and light is fast but not infinitely fast. It takes light a long time to get from one star system to another. So if there are say . . . 10 intelligent species within our galaxy equally dispersed, then we're going to be waiting a long time for their signal to reach us. And 2) Technology. We consider ourselves advanced, but as Dr. Cox pointed out there could be alien species out there that are far more advanced than we are because they've had science much longer than we have. And so, the technology they're using to communicate with and probe the cosmos with may simply be beyond our capability right now. I think the "Great filter" is still in front of us, and we have yet to get beyond it before we can take our next giant leap for mankind.

I believe there is other life out there but probably way to far for any contact up to now. Our nearest star is 4.5 years away and that is flying at the speed of light. (approximately 180.000 miles per second and our space shuttles roughly fly about 180.000 miles per hour). What I don't understand about us sending out space shuttles with friendly messages and stating that we are a peaceful planet and want to be friends, when back here on earth, we have had lots of wars, and still fighting each other and still having wars with each other? So how can we send out a message that we are a peaceful planet?? Never understood that.

They’re out there, and light years ahead of us in science and technology.

Perhaps they are visiting us, but exist in a light spectrum we cannot perceive

The Dark Forest hypothesis is pretty scary. Basically, it states that civilizations learn to shut up and not draw attention to themselves, and they either learn that lesson the easy way or the hard way ...

It’s interesting seeing humanity evolve. Humans like Brian Cox seem to have innovative ideas of how life may or may not work within the Milky Way. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how things progress. In the meantime, we’ll be watching and waiting. Good luck 👍

The guy with a constant smile. Refreshing.

the best narrative on life I have ever heard. Must watch this again, thanks for the enlightenment 😊

when you see an ant bed in the yard do you feel the need to communicate with it?😂

This is the best science channel, I love your easiness to explain in such a way that you want more.

This was a great video! ❤

Beautiful narratives, excellent explanations of this ontology.

Maybe the odds of life manifesting itself into existence is so monumentally low that it does take billions of years and trillions of stars to make even a single improbable instance possible. This would give credit to the argument that we are alone. The idea that we are not alone might then just be an inspirational exercise giving us meaning and purpose which is a benefit for life moving forward but ultimately leads nowhere.

There is also the possibility that we are the first. If you take into account the total lifespan of the universe (up until the very last atom gets ripped apart from the expansion) we still have trillions upon trillions of years to go. Though 13 billion years may seem like a lot, we are literally in the universe's baby years. So maybe, life just takes that long to appear, perhaps we are the first.

Excellent hypotheses. Well thought out

We're fish in a tank. When a human walks past a fish tank, the fish in the tank are non the wiser. They have no concept of what they're seeing, so it's just a complete mystery to them. It's the same for us when we look out into the universe. Our brains simply can't comprehend what is beyond the glass, so it all just seems really strange and mysterious to us.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a wet planet with water slushing around over rocks, being completely sterile and clean.

I could seriously listen to Brian Cox talk all day! I bet he makes even the most mundane thing sound interesting! He could say “my tea has gone cold” and I’d still listen cos I know he’d explain the second law of thermodynamics to me!

Considering how much time that our civilisation has had vs the time the universe has had to create life elsewhere…it’s like trying to find a needle in a thousand hay stacks and only given one second to find it…impossible

If there are technically advanced alien civilisations, they probably have a kind of Star Trek rule not to interfere with emerging civilisations, until the emerging civilisation has reached a specific level of technology, like intergalactic travel. That would make sense: you would not want to share highly advanced technology with a civilisation that ha s not matured to that level by themselves.

I bought a season of his BBC show to listen to at night. I fall asleep to this man’s science and voice. Zzzzzzzzz lovely

I once watched a Brian Cox programme on BBC while I was in prison and completely freaked my bunnet about how my molecules shouldn't be confined. True story.

More alien videos i can watch them over and over again,and longer

I think a major reason is seemingly basic....if our planet is 4.8 Billion years old but just our galaxy is 13+ billion years old then math says about 2/3 of the galaxy is so far away that our light hasn't even reached them yet. Also seems logical that life has had more time to happen in those older zones and those that are that distant. It's crazy to me to think that someday in those far off galaxies we will be a huge discovery, the real question is who finds who first? They should, as they have had eons of a head start, but I also can't believe in all the galaxy we on Earth are the lowest on the totem pole so to speak. Surely somewhere out there some world is in the "caveman" stage right?

Good job Newton didn't think along the lines of "we don't know what that is so let's not think about it". For me the most obvious filter would be that all habitable solar systems have stars that are susceptible to the Galactic current sheet. Being that they can Micronova as a result of either or the magnetic influence of said sheet and/or the dust that the sheet brings it. This being on a 12k year cycle (shown by Nova produced isotopes that would have decayed by now if there were from other stars being just one of many indicators), a Civilization that uses electricity would be thrown back to the stone age; this latest cycle we are nearing the end of. This is the best case scenario. The worst case (to which there is geologic evidence for) is that the Micronova would coincide with the flip of the magnetic pole (which we are experiencing at the moment) when the Earth's field is at it's weakest and unlocks the lower velocity zone and tilts the Earth over; causing the Oceans to sweep across the entire continents. This unlocking of the crust was the last thing Einstein was looking into but didn't come up with a solution to explain the geographic evidence due to them not looking outside of the Earth for a trigger mechanism.

A study published in "The Astrophysical Journal" in 2016 estimated that there are approximately 2 trillion (2 x 10^12) galaxies in the observable universe. There might be 400 billion suns in the Milky Way. It's possible that there are countless galaxies in the entire universe. I cant take that in. But I am so impressed by people like Mr Cox that try to explain this to me.

I remember the original Star Trek. The prime directive was, 'don't interfere with other civilizations'. Maybe the producers had a point. After all we've only got to look at our own history to see what happened to many less developed civilizations when so called more 'advanced' peoples made contact with them.

It's not a question if we are alone; it's a question of what is keeping us company.

I smile when i hear Prof. Brian Cox

We won't admit that we are limited in our understanding of existence, we also don't acknowledge that consciousness is not restricted to the human race .

Imagine you are walking through the forest. As you hike down the rugged trail, you notice an ant hill. Are you gonna get down there and attempt to communicate with the ants ? Probably not. You might not even notice their world so perfectly hidden in plain sight. If the other life forms were so much more advanced than we are, would they even bother to stop and notice us? Would we even be capable of being aware?

Science needs more rock stars - and Brian Cox was actually a rock star too

I enjoy his delivery

1:48 that is an awesome visual

Perhaps our civilization here on earth is categorized as a “leave alone” civilization. We’re new, and the life that has existed for millions of years know to leave us be for sometime.

Based on what we have found out in the last few decades I'm currently leaning towards the rare earth hypothesis.

I m proud to see him live

Wise words Brian !

i like this great filter hypothesis , also i'm wondering about the travel in space will it be possible and viable to travel to another stars even the closest one ? maybe its not possible to travel at the speed of light or even at 99.9% of it and with that in mind it make galaxy colonisations almost impossible just to travel to another stars would take 80 million years if we manage to travel at the speed of light . and so maybe were all stuck in our lil solar neighboor and cannot go further than some close stars james webb telescops discovered molecular cloud who contain basic brics for life to appears and this cloud are old that would mean that the basic elements for life to appears would have been present since an early stage of the univers and so life should be could be here since many time Maybe the "great filter" is pass maybe were in right now maybe it will be later but still that this ecology problem , living with our planet without killing it , being harmonious with our world for me is one of basic that we need to survive for a long time , many old culturals idea were about that , sad they've almost got all erased , maybe were already hiting this great filter but we don't know yet that we already dead

I believe there are many great filters and we have survived several of them so far.

But if not for Chicxulub, would dinosaurs still not rule the world?

If humans survive for another 1000 years, just imagine how expensive an iPhone will be!

unless humans evolve there's zero chance of survival

I used to think the great filter might be AI, but if it was wouldn't we see intelligent AI all over the cosmos? You would think the AI would much more easily evolve itself as well as have more capability to spread itself through the galaxy because time and distance wouldn't matter to something that isn't mortal like a biological being. Yes, of course as mentioned in the video it could hide itself or be so advanced it is undetectable. It is possible also that as AI advances far enough it can become indistinguishable from nature. But it would still have to power itself somehow and that should be noticable. Any highly intelligent, self replicating AI should easily be able to completely dominate a galaxy within a few million years. Which would then beg the question of why then would we even be allowed to exist unless we are indeed some galactic zoo experiment.

Great stuff here, much respect for Brian, his knowledge and ideas. Two ways we do differ is (1) that I believe life was delivered here. We know, for certain that all living life starts from a seed, plants, animals, even microorganisms, so it is my belief, along with many, that life here on Earth was seeded, most likely from Mars. And (2) regardless of the Fermi Paradox, I believe there is and has been for millions of years, other life forms in this Universe and multiverse, how can there not be?

1.43 space ship looks like the Starbird toy I had as a kid in the early 80s 😄

Gibbering Tentacled blob aliens lurch menacingly out of the steaming yellow bog. Expedition assistant -"What do we do? What do we do?!" Brian Cox - "Kill 'Em! Kill 'em all!!!"

The reasons that we haven't observed any alien intelligence are most likely: 1. Highly intelligent species don't pop up that often in the universe, esp. in proximity. 2. Highly intelligent species would put understanding of the world and exploration of the universe, not only this galaxy which is only a tiny speck in the whole universe, as the top priority. When they detect a primitive & violent species like human beings on this planet, they would certainly stay out of sight and observe from afar if still a bit interested. However, the highest possibility is that they have seen too many similar primitive civilizations and lost interest long ago because we can't provide any help or answer to their understanding of the universe. To understand this 2nd point easier, you can ask yourself a simple question: Are you interested in visiting every primitive tribe or backward village on this planet? I bet you will lose your interest pretty soon after hearing hundreds of different but similar superstitious stories which will get boring quickly.

He is great, humble!!

I just love listening to/ watching Brian Cox along with Michio Kaku. They both make science more interesting.

nice video

A civilization 1,000,000 years ahead of us wouldn't have starships exploring the universe. It would BE starships exploring the universe. 😊

The problem with the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter is that advanced civilizations are expected to behave as Humans do and to want to be seen, to explore to exploit other clestial bodies. This is so bothersome, jaw-droppingly limiting. Think about the hundreds of Human Cultures that have existed and did NOT spread out and even try to develop technology, yet lived quiet and peaceful lives for thousands of years. Not every Human is avaricious and seek to take all they can grab, so why would every 'advanced civilization' desire to be seen and to exploit the Universe's Planets, Moon, asteroids, comets and so on?

And that's with the assumption that the universe is only 13 billion years old, or that it had a beginning at all.

In this vast universe life is the greatest thing

I wonder if the true final frontier is not space but consciousness? Once we understand what consciousness is and how to create it, will expanding “consciousness technology” open up a whole new universe for exploration? I don’t really get why people are so intrigued by the fermi paradox, which to me doesn’t seem like a paradox at all. If you believe it’s a paradox you’re full of ridiculous assumptions about what an alien intelligence would likely do. How can people even presume to imagine such a thing as how they would be? They’re simply extrapolating from us. But we already know from our own technology trends that everything changes at a very very rapid pace that is accelerating and has been accelerating. We know that we can’t even begin to predict where WE are gonna be 1000 years from now, let alone an extraterrestrial. But we can predict that we’re gonna be utterly and completely different. We can predict that it’s very likely that biological and machine technology will merge, and “life” technology, whatever form it may take, will be readily manipulated by our progeny. But we’re kind of stuck there because we can’t really imagine what would happen once you’re so able to manipulate the world through technology that it becomes akin to magic. I don’t see speculation about the fermi paradox proceeding from that point, which is not so distant in the future. And when I hear people saying that a species would expand throughout the galaxy, I just laugh. Those people have plugged in primitive human behavior into their speculation, the primitive behavior of evolved life that wants to reproduce at the cost of anything and everything else. I would think that as a starter, one should try to imagine what life that created its own motivations might be like. What would life that bared no resemblance whatsoever to its evolutionary roots actually be like? Because that’s what we’re dealing with.

Maybe civilization isn't meant to last

Brian Cox could tell me all my friends and family have been burnt to death by maniac clowns, yet his soothing voice would still be like getting in a big warm vat of warm chocolate 😅

Maybe only one planet in each galaxy creates life and once that life matures and settles their galaxy will it be able to communicate with others in different galaxies.

Is the human race really that arrogant to think that we are the only race in the universe?

The moment that life on earth evolved from inorganic matter, can be equated to a moment when magic existed. It is basically the same as a rock in your garden all of a sudden springing to life. Anything can happen in an infinite universe, and we are the result of infinity. So it is possible that we are the cutting edge of an infinitely unlikely occurrence.

Very deep Brian. Earth giving meaning. Nothing is created from nothing. We need to answer to how the universe came to exist.

The Great Filter is perhaps something simple that we overlook. Possibly it's simply us caring for each other, taking care of each other...Because the end result is extinction. If we can't get passed the almighty dollar and start placing our resources into helping out humanity, then we are lost.

At this rate, we human will destroy ourselves and the earth way before the Sun dies out.

“Solid proof remains elusive” I don’t like this tone. If video footage taken from highly experienced Air Force personnel released by the government isn’t up to standard or basically isn’t “solid” enough then I’d say you’re being disingenuous. As Brian says it’s “Unidentified” so it also rules out being other worldly. Again disingenuous. It’s unidentifiable to anything we have here. On earth. That we know. By the Military. So it’s at least worth considering that it leans more to other worldly.

More than technological limitations, we have a mindset limitation. We have failed to find life outside Earth and keep being surprised when we find life, and new species, in places on Earth we thought would be impossible to sustain life. Shouldn't that be an indicator that we should change our approach on this subject and see how else we could look for life, very different than ours? What if life exists in different dimensions and advanced species have learned how to travel between dimensions? They'd be able to do feats we find physics defying and stay mostly undetected. Just like the accounta we have of UFO/UPA phenomena.

When you consider the science we have has only created the ability to go 15 billion miles (.0026 light years) in about 40 or 50 years (Voyagers). for others to reach us the science would be off the scale. It is easy to believe their tech is so sophisticated that we can't detect it. Therefore they could be all around us and we wouldn't know it.

But it's a VR game and not real..😂

Glad I'm not the only one who's thought of the 'Nano-Civilization' idea! 5:50

Another hypothesis is that organic life is only a short-lived phase in the evolution of higher intelligence. Could be that once AI becomes sufficiently advanced it takes over and non-organic technological intelligence settles into a final quiet, optimized contemplative state Google this for an interesting discussion on this idea: "Scientific American Most Aliens May Be Artificial Intelligence, Not Life as We Know It"

They could all have come and gone by now since they would have been so far ahead of us in time, and they could have been like us and just destroyed themselves or each other before getting too far out.

On a bigger scale I think the universe itself is part of something even bigger. We just don't understand it yet. I don't think that something just comes to exist out of nothing. There's always a predecessor. We wouldn't be here if the plants didn't evolve first and I think the same rules applies to everything there is or ever was.

The estimate of the age of the universe has recently been very quietly doubled to 28ish billion years. Catch up Brian! Seriously though, this has a significant impact on the Fermi paradox. We could realistically be at the tail end of this cycle of "intelligent" life. We'd have no clue if a galactic civilisation had existed. We'd also have absolutely no clue if we were the last remaining outpost of that civilisation - which is an interesting possibility!

The predisposition to make "assumptions" is the great flaw in human reasoning. Assuming there are no other civilizations because we haven't seen them, and then reason if we haven't seen them that they probably don't exist. (really, really flawed logic.) What if they have already been here and got bored and left thousands of years ago??? What if they have really really high technology and are here but have high grade invisibility cloaking??? What if their technology is so good that they don't even have to be here to know what's going on here???

A critical flaw in the Fermi Paradox, or Brian's approach, is mineral evolvement. 'If' the Universe is 13'ish billion years old, then the standard idea is that we humans are late on the scene and should see evidence of aliens. This assumes that aliens could have thrived in the early Universe. One of the reasons we've been so successful on earth is the abundance of various minerals which we've been able to transform in to useful items/tools. We take iron, copper, silver, etc for granted--thinking they must be everywhere. And indeed they are--now. Such minerals come from super-nova. Following the big-bang hypothesis, as the Universe ages, super-nova will seed space with more and more of these rare (and not so rare now) minerals. It could very well be that conditions might have been right on a planet just a billion or so years after the Big Bang for chemistry to occur leading to 'life'. But even if that life evolved over several billion years, say 4 billion following our own example, it might end up with an intelligent species that was basically incapable of having a technological society due to the lack of minerals. At what point would the Universe have to have evolved for the super-nova mineral-seeding events to have reached a critical mass of available mineral densities for an intelligent species to use? Even today, when we use spectroscopy, we find the Universe to contain: Hydrogen 74%, Helium: 24%. Which are quite useful to a species like us which can build things to make use of them, but absolutely useless if you don't have carbon, iron, copper, etc., to make the tools/machines. Thus, it's quite feasible that humans, or other species, are actually arriving at just the right time in the Universe to start creating advanced technological societies.

I'm with Brian: if they exist they aren't nearby at all.

We don't know what has been going on before us because it could've taken place so far back to millions of years. We are only existing in merely a speck of time.

There must be billions of species living in the universe, some know about each other and some don't. We should be launching thousands of small up to date voyagers in all directions into our galaxy with the sole purpose of being found by another civilisation.

On ya Brian. Your the man dude..

We all chose to have a go at what we are doing, this is not really us, just an experience

One question I always ask myself is (when looking for life in our solar system), that humans are looking for what creates human life but whose to say that alien life requires other elements to create and sustain it? Another species may require different building blocks and we're not looking for those in our search?

the secret is buried deeper in the cosmos than we ever dared to dream for sure. As if our corporeal 3D beings could understand anything greater than ourselves.

The Number of filters the universe goes through and takes to allow life to exist at all, let alone continue living. Add that to the absolute ridiculous distance in space, and the insanely low number of planets capable of supporting life. All that and whatever other strain factors the universe puts on life makes it impossible we'll ever meet another civilization. Even if they have existed, or do exist, the purely astronomical distances and time between space renders it a moot point

Mhh the intro picture explained more than the whole sesion😋🥰😋