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Q&A – The Aliens Are Coming! with Ben Miller



The Royal Institution

What form might life take if it isn’t carbon-based? Are we on the brink of receiving a signal from Alien life? Ben Miller and Jim Al-Khalili take questions from the audience following their discussion.
Watch their conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FfNrO6vGTs
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For millennia, we have looked up at the stars and wondered whether we are alone in the Universe. In the last few years, scientists have made huge strides towards answering that question. Comedian and bestselling science writer Ben Miller is in conversation with Jim Al-Khalili, taking us on a fantastic voyage of discovery, from the beginnings of life on earth to the very latest search for alien intelligence.

Ben Miller is a science writer and comedian. After studying physics at Cambridge and beginning a PhD, he left to pursue a career in comedy. He is now half of one of Britain’s most popular TV comedy duo, Armstrong & Miller, and a successful actor, but has always maintained a passionate interest in science. He maintains this interest through science writing.

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28 thoughts on “Q&A – The Aliens Are Coming! with Ben Miller
  1. 18:07 Ben missed the golden opportunity to to turn to Jim Al-Khalili and reference Star Trek by saying "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it".

    (Pedant alert: before you get on my case, the quote is actually not from the series but from the comedy song "Star Trekkin" that parodied Star Trek)

  2. If there is technological alien life, but based on a super-earth planet, how would they get away from its gravity? Would such a civilisation even try to develop space travel? Would they think about the concept of alien (to them) life?

  3. Ben Miller, hy Gerard Miller hear. Yea if this is your blog, I would like to text with some information about the aliens. Yea they are many diverse physical beings from another world. The bible tells us about the angels, from the beginning of creation. All we hafto do is recognize that the beings that are written about in the bible are physical beings same as man. So . Just remember that the devils are physical beings from another world as well. They extremely advanced in technology and technology. As they created Adam and Eve. The rest is history.

  4. 13:26 I completely disagree! It's the speed of light that is keeping us apart. Years at the speed of light just to reach the nearest star. And matter cannot travel that fast anyway. Bummer, I know.

  5. I've been saying for years, an interstellar civilization is not going to depend on radio where it might take years or decades for a conversation to take place would be ludicrous. 150 years ago there was no radio, 150-200 years from now I don't see us still using radio.

  6. After the attack with Covid-19 and the lock-downs, the globalists are setting up theaters and co-opting scientists to put fears in the population with small talk of Aliens, etc.

  7. 13:10 maybe it's because intelligent life forms don't plan ahead for millions of years. Actually in modern human society there is nothing planned ahead more than a few decades, big investments are usually not made if there is no profit within 10 years. But just making a mision to the next system (Alpha Centauri) would probably take over 100 years and be quite expensive.

  8. No mention of manipulating dimensions to overcome time/ distance limitations? Why would advanced life forms want to have anything to do with our dysfunctionally inhabited planet?

  9. How many times do I have to say it – we are the aliens – we will develop AI beyond our physical limitations which will enable interstellar travel followed by seeding and colonising other worlds where we'll reverse engineer and diversify depending on planetary conditions and ultimately fight and destroy each other until the basic building block remnants will start the circle of life enabling the Stones to tour forever and hopefully write some new songs with Brian, Mick T Charlie and Ronnie and Bill taking a load off the Glimmer Twins
    Could you imagine Mick and Keith in terminator bodies?

  10. What are you talking about Ben who ever you might be. The fallen angels/ ufo aliens are already here!! Just go to any high altitude mountains, isolated you’ll find ufo ships line up in a role and you’ll find lower level fallen angels protecting and watching out for their enemies, like the spirit divine angelic watching over humanity.

  11. I hate to break it to everyone but the universe is just repeating patterns. Evolution takes the same steps and processes on every livable planet out there. If there was an intelligent species, they would have to go through the same discoveries we did. Make very similar things we did. Use the same elements we use. Deal with the same laws if physics we do. And don't be surprised if the aliens have DNA and carbon based. Simply because it's the most efficient way for life. Doesn't make sense for it to do the hardest and inefficient ways.

  12. it's impossible to believe or predict anything regarding alien species because we only have one data point, earth.
    life just might be very, very unlikely to ever start, therefore we are extremely rare. If odds of life starting on a planet is 10^100 then we may be the only life in existence. It's just impossible to know.

  13. The thing that perplexes me is not so much the form or basis of life as the timing. I mean how LONG are these civilizations gonna be around? Compared to the total time available to evolve? We've had a decent amount of time to evolve to our present form but really how smart are we? I mean we've only been here for a total of around 8M years.. not very long at all compared to this system and even a lot less compared to THIS universe. Thus WE have an 8M window here out of how much time in comparison? And ARE we gonna be here for even another million? At our rate of killing one another its very possible even probable that we won't be around for even another thousand years.

    Sure as our brain advances we devise more efficient methods of killing one another, not the other way. How do other civilizations get beyond the killing of like kind stage? That in itself is gonna lesson our chances of arriving at a point in time whereby more than a few civilizations within the entire universe will coexist. Yeah we could very well have zillions of civilizations.. but unfortunately due to very, VERY short lifespans coexistence may not be that common.

    However somehow other civilizations definitely have appeared to have found us. I mean look at crop circle pictograms. No way those things were made by any entity based upon mankind as we know it (we are just plain too stupid). No way. It could be though that they've been here since day one. I believe though that they're transient. Note though that "they" could easily hide within our oceans. yep plenty of "hide room" there.

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