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Why does it appear, that humanity is the lone intelligence in the universe? The answer might be that planet Earth is more unique than we’ve previously assumed. The rare earth hypothesis posits exactly this – that a range of factors made Earth exceptionally unusual and uniquely able to produce intelligent life.
In upcoming episodes we’ll be exploring the anthropic principle and its two main versions – the strong and the weak anthropic principles. The strong anthropic principle tells us that the observed universe must be able to produce observers – including the contentious idea that this predicts the existence of universes beyond our own. But in today’s episode we’re going to focus on the weak anthropic principle. It says that we must find ourselves in a part of the universe capable of supporting us. For example, in a planetary biosphere rather than floating in the void between the galaxies. This may seems tautological, but accounting for this observer selection bias is important to understanding why the universe looks the way it does from our perspective. And the weak anthropic principle is much more useful than that. When combined with the apparent absence of alien civilizations, it may tell us why intelligent life is incredibly rare in our universe.
Hosted by Matt O’Dowd
Written by Matt O’Dowd
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Hey Everyone! So this is our first episode released in 4K. Hope you enjoy the upgrade.
Great video; very informative, though I feel as if the foundation of the video – the weak anthropic princible – is very intuitive, and I would never need anyone to explain this to me.
What a load of rubbish…. Humans are just monkeys remember… We are not special……
With like 200 billion galaxies, each having billions of stars , planets and moons, I think it is statistically impossible to not have life elsewhere. Not just impossible , i think it is rude and small-minded to think that we are alone or special.
Resolution. It all comes down to distance and resolution. As in, we don't have the ability to conquer either to the degree that they'd help us find the conclusive answer presently.
You can see why religious people believe God did it!
Any calculations regarding the Rare Earth Hypothesis should take into account that the available space within which we can calculate is limited by the expansion of space and therefore within the cosmological horizon. It seems that many scenarios implicitly assume an infinite phase space. This is not the case. The observable universe is finite regardless of what happens beyond the horizon. A rare Earth in a finite space seems feasible, within infinite space? – no. I believe any rare Earth hypothesis should explicitly state within which scenario it is presented.
FUN FACT!!
The Milky Way galaxy is so big you could fit almost two football fields in it !
Considering all the fundamental constants and fine precision it takes for us to be here, unless we truly figure out how abiogenesis can take place, the statistical probability, remains theoretical.
We are not alone in the Universe, we just haven’t found the way advanced civilizations are communicating with others. They already found a different, faster and more reliable method than light or EMW. For example, imagine that they have figured out how to identify the original particles involved on what we call the “Big Bang”. Then, using entanglement they can instantaneously send messages around the universe to those able to detect such particles and understand the message ( ie. China has been working on entanglement communication for a while ). On the other hand, they might not be interested in communicating with civilizations that haven’t achieved certain level of knowledge and maturity, since they already consider technological extinction a mechanism of natural selection. Do you care if once we finally survived our current ”stupidity age”, we detect other civilizations on other stars, wasting their resources on throwing to each other lead bullets and uranium artefacts, in pursuit of personal wealth or to defend the honour of a God that probably doesn’t even exist. Would you care about communicating with those barbarics? ).
Half of YouTube comments even on intellectual thought-provoking videos are just mediocre attempts at humor rather than even attempting to address to topic of the video. Scroll down and look at the countless one liners of people trying to be silly because they can’t contribute to a conversation about the Fermi paradox. Not trying to be a buzz kill, but I know I can’t be the only person who notices it
Ya, and its not just the Earth and Moon, the Sun too has to be just right, the right location in the galaxy, the right size, age, composition, stability. The Milky way galaxy has to be just right also, it must be a spiral galaxy not too big, not too small, not too close to Andromeda galaxy, not too far from the smaller galaxies in our cluster of galaxies etc. etc. etc. This business of the universe is so huge with billions of galaxies that there must be other life out there is not that easy.
We have not been able to produce the evolution of life in a lab. How can we say with any certainty that it ever occurred?
You are incorrect we are not alone in the universe. Earth is a Prison Planet.
So, quantum loops are not actually loops, but math that defines space in ways that mathematically resemble loops? …and those "loops" are more like definitions which are describing the actions(?) or vibrations of the states of the quantum foam, which is how space is organized?
The Great Filter Is: One "great filter" after another.
If we were alone in the universe, we would feel it. Humanity, on it's own, cannot account for it's own evolution. There is definitely something else in place.
We aren't alone in the universe, it's just that no one ever visits a loony bin. I think we are under observation and when humans collectively grow up then they will start to make themselves known. Then again maybe there is no way to physically overcome the light speed limit and there are islands of life dotted here and there too distant from each other to ever meet. Isn't conjecture fun?? 🖖😚🖕
We need to be alone, do you see what humans do to the inhabitants of 🌎? We will end up re structured or annihilated if there is other intelligence out there.
There is intelligent life : trees
We're not rare there's other people on the planet so they'll be other planets
Your head is just too big for me to take you seriously
The initial statement is kinda silly (ontological error?). It's like saying "luckily lions live in Africa, if they lived in the Pacific Ocean they'd all drown".
Wait but the Cambrian Explosion didn't happened…
too many co incidents means no coincident ..it means GOD
Life is a miracle isn't it? Why would it happen again?
Honestly thinking about it, I think if anything is rare it’s probably “intelligent” life (human-like).. we could potentially be one of the only if not the only creatures like us and with our abilities. I think it’s probably common for planets to have complex unintelligent life similar to what our planet would have likely been had the asteroid not taken out the dinosaurs and all the other life it took our to create that opportunity for us to advance to what we are today. Likely extremely rare circumstances. It’s possible there’s nothing else like us
If I were an alien, I wouldn’t want to get too close to humans. They don’t even know how to be nice to each other.
life the way we know it yes nontheless…..
Does the "Rare Earth Hypothesis" basically turn religion into a debate over "statistics and probability means we're here and no other intelligent life exists that we have found yet" against "we're here because God made the entire universe then put life here?"
I taught this man everything he knows.
Anyone that thinks we’re alone in this universe aren’t very intelligent!!
If no intelligent life anywhere is able to travel faster than the speed of life, then very likely no intelligent life will be able to colonize beyond its original solar system. Under that scenario intelligent life can be established in many worlds throughout the universe and yet might not be able to discern the existence of other intelligent life across the vast reaches of space.
Haven't I seen him before. Some sci-fi show.
Well, science is in the eye of the beholder.
In a forest, only a few animals advertise their presence. Those that do have run-ins with predators.
Whales can't do spacefaring or interplanetary communication no matter how intelligent they evolve because they evolved fins instead of hands.
Given how little of the universe we have explored, I think it premature to conclude we are alone
Saying we can't find alien civilizations using our current level of technology is like a European landing in North America in the 15th century, and after looking behind one tree, decides the entire continent is uninhabited. In short, the Fermi Paradox is absurd.
I wonder if complex life behaves in the same way atoms do, this is after all where we originate from.
Ok, we see no alien nearby. Got that. Rather than asking ourselves if life is already on other planets, wouldn't it be more meaningful to know wether we could export our own terrestrial life elsewhere, or not? Let's realize panspermia ourselves. If green men are out there we'd eventually reach them in the distant future, save we choose to stay at home to overthink about stuff.
Of course we are alone, it's a simulation, we are alone until the system decides to populate the universe program with millions of civilizations, then suddenly and without explanation we will see them all and wonder how we could've missed them.
Low estimate: 100 billion galaxies. Not buying your arguments.
We are low on the totem pole of galactic intelligence…monkeys really!
Can we rip the Fabric of space. And what would happen. What would we see ?
Here's a possible solution to the Fermi paradox. We think we're smart but what we are does not constitute intelligent life. We destroy our planet and all the life on it, thinking we're doing the right thing for ourselves. Actual intelligent life in this universe would want to keep an eye on us in case we make it past our 'filter" to protect itself from becoming our next masterpiece of annihilation. And now that we're at it anyway, isn't that what's being observed ever since we started testing our nuclear weapons? So, problem solved. We will destroy ourselves. Intelligent life is either relieved by that and moves on, or considers another generation of their experiment lost and moves on. Either way, we're utterly insignificant as a species.
We can all agree on one thing kruzagnut explained it better
I just can’t take the rare earth hypothesis seriously, numbers don’t lie and the odds among the numbers are so great that we just cannot be alone in this galaxy never mind the universe. We’ve had a period of roughly 5 decades of scanning the stars with telescopes and radio telescopes, the greatest advancements have only come recently with the Kepler space telescope and while the number of planets detected by this should make you think we’d see results I don’t agree. The planets we discover are analysed by their light spectrums only and while we can learn a great deal from this we simply cannot see them accurately or properly,. Take Mars for example, we have probes on the ground there, we have satellites in orbit and we are only just now suspecting bacterial life may exist beneath the surface. If we can’t even say for sure with several probes and satellites in orbit then I highly doubt the likes of the Kepler telescope is enough to detect life light years in distance from us. So we simply don’t have the technology yet to determine what’s out there. It may be a great many of the planets observed by Kepler have life on them but we simply can’t see it yet.
Ultimately I favour the zoo hypothesis, it’s makes a great deal more sense from a scientific perspective and it’s no less than we would do if we found intelligent life on a near by planet. It’s therefore highly likely that when or if we develop the means of true space travel we will start to see a lot more activity beyond the solar system
Why not.. they're alone in dune..
Both scenarios are equally exciting imo. If there are other civilizations around us, then great. Humans may be able to one day experience the joy of interacting with alien species. However, if no one else exists, then that's great too. That means the universe is ours for the taking. The raw materials and forces may one day bend to our will and we may be able to terraform planets and grow the seeds of life all throughout the cosmos. We may be alone now, but why keep it that way? Miraculous accidents may have led to our creation, but future species and civilizations will have us to thank for their creation. We may never be able to find out if God exists or not, but to the Future species we may help create, we would quite literally be their God. To be known as the creators of life in the future would be pretty neat, as opposed to what we are now.
or maybe intelligent life is destined to kill it self, like with a war or a virus