-
There are probably 10,000 stars for every grain of sand on Earth, in the observable universe.
-
We know that there are maybe trillions of planets.
-
So where are all the aliens?
-
This is the Fermi Paradox
-
If you want to know more about it, watch part one.
-
Here we look to the possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
-
So will we be destroyed or does a glorious future await us?
-
Space travel is hard. Although possible, it's an enormous challenge to travel to other stars.
-
Massive amounts of materials have to be put into orbit and assembled.
-
A journey of maybe thousands of years needs to be survived by population big enough to start from a scratch.
-
And the planet might be not as hospitable as it seems from afar.
-
It was already extremely hard to set up a spaceship that could survive the trip.
-
And interstellar invasion might be impossible to pull off.
-
Also consider time, the universe is very old.
-
On Earth there's been life for at least 3.6 billion years.
-
Intelligent human life for about 250,000 years.
-
But only for about a century have we had the technology to communicate over great distances.
-
There might have been grand alien empires that stretched across thousands of systems and existed for millions of years,
-
and we might just have missed them.
-
There might be grandiose ruins washing away on distant worlds.
-
99% of all species on Earth have died out.
-
It's easy to argue that this will be our fate sooner or later.
-
Intelligent life may develop, spread over a few systems and die off over and over again.
-
But galactic civilizations might never meet.
-
So maybe it's a unifying experience for life in the universe to look at the stars and wonder "Where is everyone?"
-
But there is no reason to assume aliens are like us
-
or that our logic applies to them
-
It might just be that our means of communications are extremely primitive and outdated.
-
Imagine sitting in a house with a Morse code transmitter, you keep sending messages but no people answer
-
and you would feel pretty lonely, maybe we're still undetectable for intelligent species
-
and we'll remain so until we learn to communicate properly.
-
And even if we met aliens we might be too different to be able to communicate with them in a meaningful way.
-
Imagine the smartest squirrel you can,
-
no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to explain our society to it
-
After all from the squirrel's perspective a tree is all that sophisticated intelligence like itself needs to survive.
-
So she learns cutting down whole forest is madness but we don't destroy forest because we hate squirrels.
-
We just want the resources
-
The squirrel's wishes and the squirrel's survival are no concern to us.
-
A type three civilization in need of resources might threat us in a similar way.
-
They might just evaporate our oceans to make collecting whatever they need easier.
-
One of the aliens might think for second "Ughh tiny little aches, they built really cute concrete structures, oh well now they're dead."
-
before activating warp speed.
-
But if there is a civilization out there that wants to eliminate other species,
-
it far more likely that it will be motivated by culture rather than by economics.
-
And anyway it will be more effective to automate the process by constructing the perfect weapon,
-
a self replicating space probes made from nano-machines.
-
They operate on molecular level incredibly fast and deadly,
-
with the power to attack and dismantle anything in an instant.
-
You only need to give them four instructions.
-
One, find planet with life.
-
Two, disassemble everything on this planet into its component parts.
-
Three, use the resources to build new space probes.
-
Four, repeat.
-
A doomsday machine like this could render a galaxy sterile in a few million years,
-
but why would you flight light years to get the resources or commit genocide.
-
The speed of light is actually not very fast.
-
If someone could travel at the speed of light, it will still take 100,000 years to cross the milky way once
-
and you'll probably travel way slower.
-
There might be way more enjoyable things than destroying civilizations and building empires.
-
An interesting concept is the Matrioshka Brain.
-
A mega-structure surrounding a star,
-
a computer of such computing power that an entire species could upload their consciousness and exist in a simulated universe.
-
Potentially, one could experience an eternity of pure ecstasies without ever being bored or sad, a perfect life.
-
If built around the red dwarfs, this computer could be powered for about ten trillions years.
-
Who would want to conquer the galaxy or make contact with other life forms if this were an option.
-
All these solutions to the Fermi Paradox have one problem.
-
We don't know where the borders of technology are.
-
We could be close to the limit or nowhere near it.
-
And super technology awaits us,
-
granting us immortality, transporting us to other galaxies, elevating us to the level of gods.
-
One thing we do have to acknowledge is that we really don't know anything.
-
Humans have spent more than ninety percent of their existence as hunters-gatherers.
-
500 years ago we thought we were the center of the universe.
-
200 years ago we stopped using human labors as the main source of the energy.
-
30 years ago we had apocalyptic weapons pointed at each other because of political disagreement.
-
In the galactic time scale we are embryos,
-
we've come far but still have a long way to go.
-
The mindset that we really are the center of the universe is still strong in humans,
-
so it's easy to make arrogant assumptions about life in the universe.
-
But in the end, there's only one way to find out right?
-
Hey everybody, we finally have our own subreddit.
-
Come by for surveys, discussions about future videos, FAQs and stuff like that.
-
This video was made possible by your support on Patreon.
-
If you want us to make more videos, and maybe get your own bird avatar in return, check it out.