Maybe it is just a very specific human trait to feel the need to shout out our existence to the universe. The majority of other species might just favor silence and hiding. Camouflage is very common among various species on our planet.

It’s a haunting hypothesis to wonder whether millions of other civilisations might be thinking exactly the same thing - all locked in 🔒 by the laws of relativity and the speed of light.

I REALLY don't want to leave this life before we find the answer

It's funny how we want to find alien civilizations in the universe when at the same time we can't even get along with each other in our own civilization.

“Intelligence is just the right thing to have to render yourself extinct” this hit hard

Intelligence is the right thing to have to render yourself extinct. A complete new insight. Never thought it this way.

I always liked the quote, "Somewhere, out there, there is probably a race of aliens that don't seriously believe in us"

Honestly the proof we have for extraterrestrial life is our existence

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." --Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

“With Neil tyson” proceeds to steal audio of Neil and not actually have him on the show

I often think about if we did find extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with them. What if we have no possible way of translating our thoughts to them. Their way of life would probably be so unimaginably different compared to ours that we wouldn’t even be able to comprehend it.

The fact that we haven’t yet discovered life speaks to how small and isolated we are and how big our universe and space is. Surely other life exists but the sheer size of the “playing field “ is incomprehensible.

What we consider intelligence can be equivalent to what an alien species would consider to be a sensory characteristic like sight. Their intelligence could be unfathomable to us.

Just mathematically there has to be a lot of intelligent life in the Universe. The problem is that where ever they are, they are stuck where they are at just like us. The tremendous challenges of long duration space travel are too prohibitive to overcome. Biological life forms are too fragile for long duration space travel.

Like Brian Cox said. Both outcomes are deeply fascinating. There is intelligent life out there somewhere or we are extremely remarkable in the sense that we are the only ones.

I always like to imagine that there is a civilization that is looking into the vast space just counting the amount of stars, planets, galaxies, exoplanets and so on, just wondering "Where is everybody", just like us and that one of the exoplanets, Earth, could have life on them. Even if they would be "just" a few light years away from us, colonizing their solar system and still not encountering anyone else just deepens the thought that they might be alone in the universe and just as special as we think we are.

Either concept is terrifying and amazing in its own right. If the universe is infinite and we are alone then we would never have to worry about hostile alien species as well had have endless room for expansion. If we are not alone then statistically there would be both hostile and non hostile as well as inconceivably advanced and primitive species. The learning and advancement would be incredible.

I’m off to see Tyson in person tonight. It’s a lecture about the possibility of life in our universe. So pumped!!!

I always thought that If other life forms was looking for us they would be looking at earth from over 1000s of years ago when nothing was around

"Just because we find it hard to do in a laboratory, doesn't mean nature has found it hard to do as well. AND the idea that it is hard for nature to do because we haven't figured out how to do it yet is itself an inexcusable expression of human ego"

I think we're surrounded by intelligent life who are having the same conversation. They know we're out there but realize they might not ever get to make contact much less visit.

I think the answer is that evolution of intelligent self-awareness is highly circumstantial. Prokaryotic life may exist everywhere you find liquid water. But here on Earth, three key random instances caused it to evolve further. First: The Great Oxidation event likely changed the chemical composition of Earths oceans, causing a microbial mass extinction allowing for the evolution of Eukaryotes. Second: The Cryogenian glaciation may have initiated the evolution of multicellularity. And thirdly and most notablly, the asteroid impact which wiped out the dumb Dinosaurs allowing for the proliferation of mammals that ultimately allowed us to evolve. Now consider that this random succession of important occurrences never happened on other goldilocks worlds and you have your explanation of the Fermi paradox. Earth may be an example of a relatively unique and rare phenomenon where the evolutionary dominos fell in just the right order to allow for the emergence of technological intelligence.

The fact that we may not even recognize what life in another part of the Universe would be is mind blowing.

The other thing to consider is that there may be concepts we haven't even come up with to do with issues of being an even more advanced species, limits we can't even conceptualise at this stage of our development. Thankfully there may also be solutions we cannot consider at this stage as well and therin lies the optimism. We got this far, lets see how far we can get together.

There are plenty of perfectly reasonable answers to the Fermi Paradox. One is that interstellar travel may just not be possible, or at least tangible. Another is that, given the age of the the universe and even the Milkway, few if any intelligent species have co-existed at an advanced enough level of civilization that they could have ever crossed paths. Or maybe other intelligent life just couldn't be bothered to attempt interstellar travel. Just because we think it's a great idea doesn't mean everybody does. It is also possible that an intelligent species did develop interstellar travel, got close enough to earth to pick up our radio transmissions, and said, "Those people are crazy! I'm not going down there."

With our current technology, humans finding another intelligent life form would be the equivalent of me taking you to the beach where I have hid one special grain of sand and I ask you to find it.

As far as we can see in the observable universe, we see no street lights, so im smart enough to realize we are alone, and nobody can change my way of thinking, unless I see it myself,,, PERIOD

I know life as we know it needs water. But I'm 100% convinced there are all kinds of life we could never comprehend! Everything in the universe shares this extraordinary gift of being born. Growing old and dying. Even planets and the sun's do this. Planet's and Sun's are born, and they get old, and they die. Heck, even galaxies do this. We know so very little of what is really going on in the universe. Its just so big for us to ever comprehend. Will we learn more as we all die and pass on? All we can do is understand our planet and the creatures on Earth. Any scientist who tells you there's nothing living inside Jupiter is flat out lying to you. They have no idea what can be created outside of what is too far beyond their reach.

"Intelligence is just the thing you need to render yourself extinct". EXACTLY.

I saw this story of an alien who really wanted to visit earth so he traveled 3.7 billion light years just to get here. And when he finally arrived, he stepped out of his craft, and the earth was basically a dystopia with no life at all. The amount of time it would take to get here is genuinely that staggering that honestly if you think abt it, it’s pretty believable. I mean, it takes about 9.5 years to get to Pluto. And we’ve obviously been observing(somehow)planets even farther away so it’s not hard to believe that if there was anyone out there, by the time they get here, no one reading this comment would be alive to see it. Which means we’re basically alone. And if there is other life similar to us(not fantasy aliens with super high tech) they would feel the same, alone. Bc it’s seemingly impossible to get that contact before either one of us went extinct. Now it Kinda sounds like multiverses to me so I’m gonna stop

I think life as we know it is probably rare when compared to how many planets and star systems there are. If we’re looking for aliens “like us” we will probably be looking for a very long time. And then you have to think about how far apart we are, separated by not just space but time as well. We would have to literally stumble across aliens in a moment of sheer blind luck. The universe is an absolutely huge place.

Maybe this is a strange thing to think about but I love the idea that maybe one day we can make contact with an alien civilization and learn their language and be able to communicate with them and make some alien friends. And maybe they can in turn learn some of our Human languages. Maybe it's because already as it is, I have a huge fascination with learning other languages than my own, and the idea of communication and talking to people in general. I feel like it would be so cool to learn another life form's language. Who knows maybe there's an alien civilization out there that's like us humans here on Earth, where they have different languages and appearances and cultures depending on the region of their planet they were raised. I think it would also be cool to use slang in an alien language. It already can be difficult learning a new language, let alone learning the proper way of speaking it vs the more common slang used by native speakers especially the youth. It does make me a bit sad to know other life forms may be avoiding us if they are out there and know of us, but I don't blame them either. All though we have so many amazing people on our planet, the way our species tends to behave, we can pose a potential threat, and on the chance they've raised beyond that, they probably don't want to start some kind of unnecessary war. So maybe it's for the best we never make contact with other life forms. Our species tends to take anything foreign or unexplainable as a threat, and it would be very likely for us to attack, causing mass destruction and a shit ton of suffering, on our side and their side. I wish this wasn't the case, because imagine all the nice and wonderful people you could meet. You could hear stories from them about what their home planet is like and where they grew up. Maybe learn about the types of plants they have, animals, the weather. Maybe their days and nights are far different from hours. Like for example, maybe a day could be like 48 hours for them on their planet or maybe even a bit longer. I wonder what their homes would look like and if they have forms of education and places like schools to serve the education. Who knows maybe they'll be nothing like us in anyway. And maybe that's what truly keeps them far, far away from us. Because we're so different and unpredictable that they don't even want to risk trusting us. But again, I don't blame them. I would be afraid at first if aliens came into contact with us too, even though it is very cool in retrospect.

I think the fact that many creatures on earth past and present gave enough time could possibly evolve to the intelligence level of man speaks volumes to the possibility of intelligent life out there. I think we will find out that we are one of the first intelligent species in our galaxy or that space travel is only possible the slow route "sub-light speed colony ship style".

My dad said something to me once that always stuck with me. If/when humans come into contact with intelligent alien lifeforms the timeline of human history will reflect it. Probably we won't use the terms BC and AD anymore. Maybe instead we'll use BC and AC where BC = before contact and AC = after contact.

Enrico Fermi was not an Italian-american physicist, he was just an Italian person who worked in USA for a while.

I sent this to SETI: I realize that folks in the science community don't like suggestions but I feel like this one is super pertinent to SETI's plight. So please hear me out, it's short. Sure communication through space is seemingly unobstructed when you think about objects near/within our solar system, but I'd argue the effects from orbiting bodies, scintillation, and the inverse square law will not allow signal acquisition from entities light years away. And thus Fermi's Paradox is flawed because it assumes specifically the acquisition of signals from distant orbiting bodies. Any where past light days, the signal is spread out through the cosmos instead of being tightly packed which all but ensures the data can never be decompiled/processed. At first I thought the issue for the broadcasting entity could be remedied by utilizing a spacecraft and performing a Homan transfer to align your velocity vector with the target planet. But I fear that alone won't be enough to mitigate the sun's gravitational effects (on the signal), even with the Delta-V. Instead I suggest that if you want to transmit a signal to a solar system light years away you need to have the spacecraft Homan transfer to the velocity vector of our sun targeted on a system in that direction. Then radiate our loudest/powerful signal. In addition I believe scintillation effects are too compounded if the transmitting entity is targeting a solar system that is edge on to us. So I believe you must target solar systems that are aligned with our celestial plane. Further, I believe that if you want to listen, you'd point your antennas to star systems in the neg in-track of the sun. And once again those systems should be aligned with our orbital plane. Talking to Voyager is not easy and that signal and our ground systems that acquire it are dealing with very low signal strengths and super high signal to noise ratios. And that's just 5 ish hours of light speed away. Instead of asking why isn't anyone broadcasting, we should ask why can't we hear them? I think this is why. I believe I've laid out a good angle for a revitalized concept of operations for you all. I hope you all pass this along to the proper folks. I believe it's imperative. Ty ty for all y'all's hard work! The work you all do is extremely important to humanity.

I'd just like to say the visuals in your video are immensely satisfying to the eye. I'm curious, do you have your own graphics department, do you outsource the visuals, do you use royalty-free graphics?

I feel like the definition of life is too old, because we know that creatures can adapt to their surroundings due to natural selection, they evolve in so many different ways depending on the surroundings and these creatures may not even survive in our planets condition and have their own necessities to live, like maybe they are in areas with constant snow. Look at viruses, some people don't consider them as living, and I understand why they would think that but they do things to keep them alive. What I am saying is life could just mean things could reproduce in any way, I know this is the most general thing but could you really expect to go to a different planet see creatures exactly like humans, pretty unlikely.

8:31 "Inteligence is just the right thing to have to render yourself extinct." ..... I have never thought of it like this and it amazes me how true it actually is.

We might be the last intelligence that we've been looking for, that's why its taking like forever for us to find new life somewhere in the cosmic. And in my opinion the signals that we received, just arrive in our direction after a thousand of years that passed.

Imagine wanting to have an answer to the question "where are all the aliens", a decade before the first human being put in low earth orbit and half a century before the first exoplanet being confirmed to exist. And this becoming a "gospel" for mainstream science, while we still can't answer the question of "if there's alien life in our solar system". When we interpret our complete ignorance as a universal "paradox"...

Damn who does The graphics? They're incredible, excellent visuals, very impressive.

Are we alone in the universe? Yes. So there’s no other intelligent civilizations in the universe? No there is but they are alone too.

3.5billion years is still about 1/4 of our universe age. It feels like our universe is actually pretty young because that must include the time it takes for planets to cool down and be ready to have life.. I think it is very legitimate to think that we are some of the first apparition of intelligent life in our universe.

The two questions I always go back to regarding this is 1) is technology capable of allowing humans or a human-like species to colonize interstellar space even possible? Lightspeed in the real world isn't as "fast' as it is in Star Wars. 2) Is that level of technological advancement before or after the 'Great Filter'?

Thank you for that lecture walkthrough. I’ve been wondering this question myself and I’ve never been able to figure it out. Nonetheless, I found this video interesting and hope to learn more.

Dr. Tyson, like so many contemporary scientists, tremendously confident in knowing what is unknowable presently. This is the intersection of philosophy, science and Logic. I’ve never heard, seen or read any scientist explain to me, a reasonably intelligent person with a graduate law degree [not an appeal to authority folks], how Life in general began for any organism, how the Universe began, how something can come from nothing and on and on. These questions have been pondered from time immemorial, but I’ve never heard a good answer, mostly because we humans are limited in our ability to know, but sometimes affect the contrary, if only to beg more questions. Basically, I’m content to know that I don’t know and that perhaps things may be revealed to me at some point, or not at all. But, can we just agree that as humans we cannot possibly know the presently unknowable? Any scientist who is comfortable in their knowledge of the cosmos is not a true scientist.

We are like a stranded crew marooned on an island, hoping for rescue and doing everything we can to get the attention of passer-by's. If we don't destroy ourselves, we will achieve amazing things. Until then, we need to keep it together.

I’ve always wanted to hear tysons view on this

we are too far away. and the more "time" passes, the harder it becomes to see them. until it becomes impossible.

I thought he was going to say, ', as soon as you start talking about Fermi paradox, everyone who doesn't want to hear about it disappears'.

Maybe intelligence is “the great filter”. Think of all the species that survived longest here on earth.Cockroaches, crocodiles, sharks,insects…..”maybe intelligence is just the thing you need to render a species extinct”. Makes you think .

Maybe the question isnt where is the all the life...maybe the question is when? We could be the first, or we could be millions of years late. They could be so many light years away that we wont even see them for several thousand or million years

To get technological intelligence your animal must have 3 characteristics: 1) A need for fire and the ability to make and control it, for without fire you cannot manipulate materials. 2) Be a social creature, not solitary, since no individual can develop technology on their own. 3) A sufficiently long life span to develop skills and pass them on Take the octopus. A good candidate for intelligence. It demonstrates complex thinking and has the dexterity to make tools. However, they live in water so will never need nor make fire. They are solitary, so do not share and pass on knowledge. They live for only a few years so only have time to reproduce and die, no time to tinker. I suspect that getting life that has those three characteristics, and then develops them to high levels without destroying their selves, is extremely rare in the universe.

Aliens watching this video from the 5th dimension thinking "what dumbasses"

In cosmic scale, we have been here for 1 second. To "find" other intelligent life forms by observing the sky with our current technology, they would need to be in the exact correct location within that second. And we can only see our galaxy, and only small parts of it. The Universe is too big for us right now to observe. Let's see a thousand years from now how far we are then.

The universe is like an ocean, it’s teaming with life, just because we’re so primitive with our technology doesn’t mean we’re alone

When Fermi made that statement, he was told by the best Cosmologists that there were two or three parameters of the nature of planets that made them candidates for life. Now the best Cosmologists admit there are hundreds of parameters that are necessary for planets to be candidates for life, and creatures similar to humanoids. As the probabilities approach the infinitely small, our curiosity and enthusiasm gets blunted.

Are we only considering carbon-based life forms as "life?" If so, could that be a failure on our (humans) parts? What if we've already discovered life in other places but lack the understanding of life or ocular ability to recognize it?

If aliens are well above us theyd know better than to interact with our species while we're young and undeveloped, they're also be smart to jam any sort of communication efforts coming from us to insure we don't reach out before we are ready, they could be literally watching over us like babysitters

The excellent visuals really compliment the narration. Really good work! Subbed!

Assuming we are not alone, we have two insurmountable obstacles to overcome before we can make contact: 1) the sheer, unimaginable distance and 2) time, because we are but a blip in history. Give or take a million years makes a big difference as to whether we observe life on another planet, even if it's next door - we could either be early or late in our observations and the chances of us coexisting with alien life that we can actually reach is really zero (this is often confused with the concept that there is/was/will be a high probably of alien life out there, which I'm not disputing). We may one day have to accept that we are, for practical purposes at least, alone.

Professor Brian Cox just explains things so much more clearly and calmly. Chill Neil chill....

The universe is so massive there’s got to be we cant just be the only ones in the whole universe just sit back in think how tiny 🌍 is to the universe that’s expanding as I type ✌🏾🙏🏾

One of the more likely answers is that we are one of the early first wave of advance species thus why we have yet to meet any other life as they are at a similar stage as us. The second is that advanced life likely does not wish to make it self known to us and let us advance naturally to a point. Think of it is like the prime directive from star trek.

Sometimes, you have to go beyond knowing everything and know nothing to find what you are looking for. There are riddles in your own backyard that are avoided (publicly) that will lead you to your answers. Somethings are stranger than fiction and the ones who continue with the strange will find life beyond what you "know". Be brave.

The fact that we can't see it, doesn't mean that alien intelligence isn't there. The universe is unbelievably huge and earth is a very very very small grain of sand. I personally believe that we are most definitely not alone.... I'm pretty certain the Aztecs might have asked themselves the same question at some stage in their civilisation.

I've actually watched another video that said our position in space is actually a pretty big void, which could be the reason we don't see colonies of other species, and why they don't see us.

Something I don’t understand is if it’s true that life got going relatively quickly and easily in the Earths life then shouldn’t we expect to see it happening more than once, with several separate trees of life with their own independent genetic lineage rather than the single one we have?

Making a title to a video title saying 'with' a person, then playing clips of them is quite dishonest.

Last night I had the strangest dream. No. Not the song. I dreamed of a solution to the Fermi paradox. You will need a basic understanding of what the following things are: “Ransom ware” “quantum computing” “computer hacking” You can skip the explanation of anything you already understand. Computer Hacking: Don't play by the rules: Over simplified theory: All sign-in software has rules. Like Window, Apple's OS, linux, etc. So the way to get in is use software that is not designed for the software that machine uses. So you don't have to play by the rules. Bypassing the sign in software like it was not even there. Ransomware: Hack into a computer system. Lock everyone but you out. Install a program that will erase all data, on your command, if the Ransom is not paid. Quantum Computers: Most people have heard of them and know the whole world is working to build a practical one but do not know just how powerful they will be. A 256 bit quantum computer would be as powerful as a present day computer, the size of the Universe and that is not an exaggeration. Governments around the world a particularly interested because it will be able to hack into any computer system. World wide network(s): In modern times, all computers are connected. That includes all phones. That includes everything. Hell everything in and outside of your house can be connected. Most people are lost if their phone(s) is/are not connected. So a quantum computer Ransomware attack gets out of control. Accidentally or on purpose and starts wiping out all computer data it has a connection to. This spreads to all connected devices around the world. All data is wiped out. All of civilization come crashing down. Billions die. Will we ever recover? There is a way to prevent this inevitability. Outlaw Quantum Computers and R&D on them. Do you think that will ever happen? The Fermi Paradox: With so many Planets in the Universe the potential for extraterrestrial life is infinitely high. So why do we not see any signs of intelligent life anywhere in the Universe and we have been looking for 60 years. Does this mean all civilizations, eventually wipe themselves out and we will too? Eventually?

"When are all the aliens" might be a better question, perhaps.

"Intelligence is just the right thing to have to render yourself extinct." Wow, that's a depressing notion, but seems likely true. It's probably not intelligence itself, but it's the transition between low intelligence to high intelligence. A civilization has to cross that precarious void of learning how to harness vast amounts of energy, AI, nanotechnology, etc. without destroying itself or overconsuming resources. It's a pretty good possible answer to the Fermi Paradox: it's just extremely hard to stay alive for very long in this universe.

Life is infinite. Imagine all those realities. It's endless. Enjoy the journey. We create all of this plus more. Imagination is everything. Truly. Love and Light

Those who say aliens aren't real based on our observations is the equivalent to a kid scooping some water out of the ocean into a plastic cup and stating that fish don't exist because there wasn't any fish in the cup.

“Life, uh finds a way.” Also this reminds me of the book All Tomorrow’s.

Very interesting, I would say that that due to the sheer size of space (endless) that we are simply hidden within the universe from other forms of intelligent life. (Toothpick in a haystack)

Essentially what I get from this is that another 200 years and shit is going to get crazy and I’m kinda happy and sad at the same time I won’t be here to see it

Life originated on earth immediately after it was formed,BUT it hasn't originated ever since. Isn't that a factor to be taken into account?

Vast, mind boggling cosmic distances between worlds is what keeps us from finding anything. Advanced alien civilizations may have technology to overcome these distances, but they would be so advanced that we could not yet comprehend their technology.

The thing is, we are making a lot of assumptions about aliens and their development. And currently the only example of a technological species we have is ourselves. A species on another planet may develop technology along a different path than we humans have. Depending on their own evolution, environmental factors, or perhaps even their position in the galaxy. An interesting example of an alien race is from the Andy Weir novel, Project Hail Mary, (Minor spoiler warning) there is an alien species that evolved on a world closer to their sun than ours. They have a higher gravity field, and a much denser atmosphere. So the surface of their world was pitch black and very hot. Their species did not evolve eyes, but used sound and a form of echo location. Their language was more like musical tones. Their bodies evolved on a world with a higher atmospheric pressure. So because of their planets condition, they had no concept of radiation. They had not even developed computers or radio. There had been no need to. The long and short of it is, its not that Aliens are not out there to hear our messages. We may just be sending the wrong messages. They may have no ability to hear our radio signals at all. They are not us, so assuming a similar developmental path is asinine at best.

I think it's just REALLY hard to travel to another star. For some reason this totally basic issue isn't mentioned a lot.

Genuine question. Weren't _most_ technological advances sparked by warfare? Is there a chance that we would have moved forwards as a species differently if we didn't try so hard to kill each other right from the beginning?

Imagine wondering why you haven't found life in the universe when the farthest you've been into space is only as far as your own moon.

NdGT said something brilliant years ago, it was something along the lines of intelligence is not a requirement for life. Even if life does have intelligence, like humans, look at how they squander it away.

Rather than looking for a job, This is my very important subject for me as a 3D designer “from symbolic to complex “ and I think I go the structure that’s connecting every mesh in models as “tree leaf logo”! Gravitationall wave function!

When you learn more about biology and psychology, something most astronomers never do, you begin to understand why the Drake Equation most likely equals less than one. It will be neat when we discover other life in the galaxy, but people who think evolution somehow races toward intelligent beings who build space ships are simply not understanding what evolution actually is.

If aliens would have come to earth during ice-age, "A ball of ice with no life in it" would've been their logical conclusion.

Given how we haven't really been able to get very detailed information outside of our own solar system, it's probably just a matter of we're too primitive to find intelligent life. And given how we're fast-tracking our own extinction, it looks like intelligence didn't really do too much for us.

"we call them snakes" thanks Neil, we would be lost without you

A paravox is a round hole that is narrow. Looking into it, it is shape. But in the inside is the solution. It is paravox. Can you hunter the situation? or is time fixed to use you in another way? These are the questions I had to ask, because a paravoy is on the way.

I loved Contact so much.

We are alone....

A paradox implies impossibility or improbability. It's neither impossible nor improbable that we haven't bumped into Aliens yet. It isn't a paradox, not even close.

From a mathematical standpoint, there many be thousands of civilizations out there. The question one should ask is, are they intentionally not responding? We see the race for survival yet believe that as soon as one leaves the atmosphere, everyone would be singing kumbaya. Scientists always brush under the rug the idea that making yourself known in the universe might be the last thing you want to do.

I honestly feel like there may be a couple other planets with life but also we may be the first , and it’s our great duty to inhabit other parts of the universe so we don’t become extinct. Because as long as we can outlast we will accomplish great things

The Fermi Paradox is so overexplained. We know what it is. We know what the problem is. The next time NDT or any other famous science announcer mentions the Fermi paradox is when it's solved.

I believe there are other civilizations out there. However, due to the size of the universe and the speed of its expansion, we will never find them.

I think I had a professor in college tell me the following: if the history of the universe was put on a 24 hour clock starting with the Big Bang, then the Earth would have formed around mid-afternoon, and humans would come about with two seconds left in the day. Anyone know if this is correct?

love Neil deGrasse Tyson