I think Cox is right. There are indeed an unimaginable number of Earth-like planets, but an equally unimaginable number of conditions must be fulfilled for complex life to emerge. The stability of atmosphere, temperature and so on over billions of years is just one factor of many. The probability of intelligent life developing on a planet is therefore very low. Which explains the Fermi paradox.
@@Bluebloods7 you don’t need proof. It’s a numbers game and the numbers are just too large. What we can observe is 13.8 billion light years. The actual size is like 92 billion.
"Earth like" is being stretched here. Lots of rocky planets in the "habitable zone" of their star. Doesn't mean they have an atmosphere, magnetosphere, moon/tides, tectonic action, gas giants that help protect from astroids... Etc. etc. there are more and more "great filters" we're finding, probably a few orders of magnitude, that make earth and it's life so incredibly rare.
Of which three quarters are immediately excluded because they are too close to the galactic center. Of the ones remaining you can exclude another 80 percent because they are orbiting red dwarfs. Of those you can exclude about 75 percent because they are orbiting a star with low phosphoruslevels. Etc... Frankly, when we go through the first ten prerequisites for life to have emerged on our planet and developed to any form of complexity. The number has gone down significantly. Then we take into account that our star has been travelling through a void for almost three billion years which allowed for life to develop pretty much undisturbed. Our planet won the lottery. I am inclined to say that we are unique or a member of a group of, maybe, three in the entire galaxy.
@@Roguescienceguy I still think that 3 planets hosting life in the galaxy is a phenomenal thought. But I genuinely do thank you for taking time to explain that logic so well.
@@sa4540 I glanced over quite a lot and going over everything would require close to an hour, but this medium does not lend itself to that. Kind regards from the country of Belgium. Keep learning and stay curious
@@sa4540 btw. I am an astronomer and reluctant experiencer because I have seen things I cannot compute. There's something. What that something is, is open to debate
Maybe life exists in planets that are nothing like Earth. Just because we need water and oxygen doesn't mean other lifeforms need it, in fact we already have lifeforms on Earth that don't need either, such as the henneguya salminicol. The idea that in trillions of planets, only Earth can sustain life is actually quite absurd.
Yes and if you are not aware you should read about the great Oxygenation event here in Earth. When Oxygen creating organisms appeared they nearly wiped out all the other forms of life that breathed hydrogen cyanide.
Its not the construction, hes suggesting stability and time would be a real problem. Hes well aware of silicon based lifeform possibilities, hes also aware of the conditions needed to form the complex metals required in many theoretical cases. Given the time he theorised its not absurd, its just likely that at least a few have got something complex. Personally I like the discussion but I dont value it particularly, due to the communication between us and whatever taking longer than our existence without some major breakthroughs.
Wildly unreasonable, illogical? I'll give you two dice and allow you to roll endlessly. Let me know when you roll doubles a hundred times in a row. It's entirely possible. Let me know when you succeed? I'll be waiting in Hades for your call?
I read a paper a few decades ago where one mathematician estimated that there are at any point in time, at least 5 planets with life. Not just capable of, but has Life on it. And that number changes up and down a few. The likely hood of being able to contact them, or them being alive when we get there. The numbers are crazy, not in our favor, but we won that first prize called Life to be able to be here to talk about this. They compared it to an Island on an ocean planet, where only 5 or so tribes exist, but each island around there is filled with horrors/instant death/destruction and Storms.
I know the odds could be literally astronomical, but I think we might be on our own. The number of exactitudes and flukes, just to do with distance, time, temperature etc. that had to happen exactly to make human life are unbelievable. What are the actual odds there could be intelligent life elsewhere? We may never know.
I lean towards us not being alone, BUT I think people lean towards that in part because it's easier to grasp the enormous size of the universe than it is to grasp the odds of those flukes etc occurring. It's funny because people will say "the universe is just too big" - too big for what? You don't even know what the other number is! 100 million powerball tickets is a lot until you learn the odds 😂
Brian and Joe are discussing the probability of "complex life" - complex life as we know it. Even accounting for the "stability" question, the possible number of planets in our galaxy alone that have been stable over 4 billion years must still be colossal. If we estimate the probability that there is NO complex life on other planets using known criteria, the resulting number must be vanishingly small. IMO, to believe we are so "special" that we are the only "complex life" that has developed out of so many possible worlds - potentially millions - seems little less geocentric than the long held belief that earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around it. Plus, we have only our earthly notions of what defines "complex life".
@ Perhaps the way I phrased it was far too simplified, I didn't want to say educated guess. How about, if the top professors all put their hypothesis' and theories on the table (based on current calculations) it would probably be narrowed down to at least 2 or 3 more likely ones. Until one is determined, it would be personal opinion on which one you believed the most. So I just said, we are all guessing 🤷🏻♂️
Ok, so here's a question that has perplexed me for a long time...If the earth is a 1/3rd of the age of the universe...But all of our matter comes from dead stars, how long does it take to assemble that? And those dead stars, how many billions of years would they have been around. Just seems like the universe would have to have been around longer than that for all of that to occur.
Brian, you are the present day Einstein-we never really knew him-no internet-but we have you every day-thanks-just your thoughts are a revelation to us non scientists
He said it with such confidence. We don't know exactly what exists under the oceans on this planet. But there are 20 billion planets like Earth. Let me reiterate. He said 20 billion. Scientists sometimes are such a joke.
Or none? Our solar system evolved in a very pecular way, gas giants outside of the rocky planets, earth being stable for billions of years, our sun being the right size for stability, our moon being the right size (large in comparison to the earth) formed from masses of lighter materials from earth itself, massive amounts of liquid water on the surface, massive quantities of heavy metals on the surface ECT. Billions of other planets but none we know with the very specific ingredients for life that we have discovered? I am surprised and appreciative of the scientific scepticism expressed by other commentors!
There are millions and millions of planets that are in the right zone to be able to sustain life and that also have liquid water the problem is we are to far away to be able to explore those planets and search for life that’s the real problem, all the planets that could presumably have life on them are unfortunately to far for our current technology to explore
I like to think that complex life on other planets may not need the same components our species need to thrive. They may also not blow each other up in the name of religion etc.
The key phrase he says here is “we don’t know “ any guess at all is just a guess, there could be a few or many, there’s probably another world saying the same thing right now about us
Life is resilient and adapts at the required rate based on environmental conditions. Bacteria lives in volcanos. Less stability on a planet doesn't mean no intelligent life. I think you'd get very aggressive life forms on an unstable planet.
I just want to know if the aliens have cool TV shows. I'd gratefully reduce my lifespan to a year if it meant encountering aliens and being able to learn about them
However, there are still trillions of galaxies, so we must never stop listening. If a curious alien sent details covering their version of DNA, imagine the implications if it wasn't DNA that this life form was based upon!
Listen to what he's saying. All these stars, we are the only ones that exist? We're the only ones that have a stable planet? We do not have the technology to hear see or recognize to find them.
We have no idea how many, we haven't even found one, the thing about theoretical is it's just a guess, a well thought out guess but a guess none the less.
It can. We just know for complex life to exist it takes ABOUT 4 billion years (roughly). That could be the shortest, longest, or anywhere in the middle range.
A short time ago, it was found that the Milky Way is positioned in a huge universal void. I believe that absence makes it less exposed to the normal "chaos" of the rest of the Universe. The stability of our galaxy is emblematic of life developing here to the degree it has.
As big as the universe and many,many galaxies that stars may have planets that may have life that exists. Life that maybe different than our own planet. But we just don't know and we may never reach these stars to explore. The closest star to earth is 4 light years away and the technology that we have today will take us thousands, and thousands of years to get there. Unless we can achieve light speed but as of right now light speed is impossible.
It's inacurate to say that we whent to complex civilization in 4 billion years. There were several mass extinctions so our planet was not exactly stable. We should talk about time period with "free places" in food chain that provoked evolution to fill these free space. And for us it would be 60 to 70 million years.
@@liquidmagma Changing, yes. Developing, no. Or are you thinking they've all got the same ultimate state? Challenging curiosity works better than insults.
I love how theoretical astrophysicists lean away from academia and toward celebrity in the lay world. Applied physicists are too busy doing real research. The theoretical author books and to public speaking tours and podcasts and talk shows. 90 percent of what they say is assumption based with little to no scientifically valid methodology to back it up. But they make way more money than their applied counterparts. That, is for certain.
And yet you can’t find life can’t prove it can’t even catch a glimpse with your billion dollar telescopes Maybe they were placed at such a distance to you keep you looking into the impossibility of the universe all designed to keep you in awe - of God
I think Cox is right. There are indeed an unimaginable number of Earth-like planets, but an equally unimaginable number of conditions must be fulfilled for complex life to emerge. The stability of atmosphere, temperature and so on over billions of years is just one factor of many. The probability of intelligent life developing on a planet is therefore very low. Which explains the Fermi paradox.
and space is way too big
Yet another moron assuming life must be carbon based.
Space is so large that the number is definitely way more than 1. That is a guarantee.
@@WaxDat8800 cool proof and evidence, bro
@@Bluebloods7 you don’t need proof. It’s a numbers game and the numbers are just too large. What we can observe is 13.8 billion light years. The actual size is like 92 billion.
"alone in the universe or not alone both are equally terrifying"-Arthur C Clarke
Depending on how you feel that day.
"Earth like" is being stretched here. Lots of rocky planets in the "habitable zone" of their star. Doesn't mean they have an atmosphere, magnetosphere, moon/tides, tectonic action, gas giants that help protect from astroids... Etc. etc. there are more and more "great filters" we're finding, probably a few orders of magnitude, that make earth and it's life so incredibly rare.
by design
Any form of life proven to be found on another planet would be incredible. Plant, microbe or whatever, even slime, anything, would be a game changer
20 billion, just in our galaxy alone. Let that sink in 😱🤯
@@sa4540 exactly! It becomes a numbers game.
Of which three quarters are immediately excluded because they are too close to the galactic center. Of the ones remaining you can exclude another 80 percent because they are orbiting red dwarfs. Of those you can exclude about 75 percent because they are orbiting a star with low phosphoruslevels. Etc...
Frankly, when we go through the first ten prerequisites for life to have emerged on our planet and developed to any form of complexity. The number has gone down significantly. Then we take into account that our star has been travelling through a void for almost three billion years which allowed for life to develop pretty much undisturbed. Our planet won the lottery. I am inclined to say that we are unique or a member of a group of, maybe, three in the entire galaxy.
@@Roguescienceguy I still think that 3 planets hosting life in the galaxy is a phenomenal thought. But I genuinely do thank you for taking time to explain that logic so well.
@@sa4540 I glanced over quite a lot and going over everything would require close to an hour, but this medium does not lend itself to that. Kind regards from the country of Belgium. Keep learning and stay curious
@@sa4540 btw. I am an astronomer and reluctant experiencer because I have seen things I cannot compute. There's something. What that something is, is open to debate
But it is possible that there may be other types of lives that can survive in more extreme and different type of conditions than what the earth has.
"The conditions were right and they came into being." - Kevin Flynn
Maybe life exists in planets that are nothing like Earth. Just because we need water and oxygen doesn't mean other lifeforms need it, in fact we already have lifeforms on Earth that don't need either, such as the henneguya salminicol. The idea that in trillions of planets, only Earth can sustain life is actually quite absurd.
Yes and if you are not aware you should read about the great Oxygenation event here in Earth. When Oxygen creating organisms appeared they nearly wiped out all the other forms of life that breathed hydrogen cyanide.
Its not the construction, hes suggesting stability and time would be a real problem. Hes well aware of silicon based lifeform possibilities, hes also aware of the conditions needed to form the complex metals required in many theoretical cases. Given the time he theorised its not absurd, its just likely that at least a few have got something complex. Personally I like the discussion but I dont value it particularly, due to the communication between us and whatever taking longer than our existence without some major breakthroughs.
Wildly unreasonable, illogical? I'll give you two dice and allow you to roll endlessly. Let me know when you roll doubles a hundred times in a row. It's entirely possible. Let me know when you succeed? I'll be waiting in Hades for your call?
@@stevep5408 What does that have to do with the possibility of life that doesn't require the same things life on Earth needs?
we do not know how life started, so for all we know life could only exist on earth
Imagine if Dr. Brian Cox was really on the TV Series Called Bones.
On the balance of probabilities the conditions that led to complex life occurring on earth can also occur elsewhere.
Imagine if you had every possible combination of powerball numbers several times over. Would you worry about winning the powerball?
that doesn't answer anything
I read a paper a few decades ago where one mathematician estimated that there are at any point in time, at least 5 planets with life. Not just capable of, but has Life on it. And that number changes up and down a few. The likely hood of being able to contact them, or them being alive when we get there. The numbers are crazy, not in our favor, but we won that first prize called Life to be able to be here to talk about this. They compared it to an Island on an ocean planet, where only 5 or so tribes exist, but each island around there is filled with horrors/instant death/destruction and Storms.
I know the odds could be literally astronomical, but I think we might be on our own. The number of exactitudes and flukes, just to do with distance, time, temperature etc. that had to happen exactly to make human life are unbelievable. What are the actual odds there could be intelligent life elsewhere? We may never know.
I lean towards us not being alone, BUT I think people lean towards that in part because it's easier to grasp the enormous size of the universe than it is to grasp the odds of those flukes etc occurring. It's funny because people will say "the universe is just too big" - too big for what? You don't even know what the other number is! 100 million powerball tickets is a lot until you learn the odds 😂
Brian and Joe are discussing the probability of "complex life" - complex life as we know it. Even accounting for the "stability" question, the possible number of planets in our galaxy alone that have been stable over 4 billion years must still be colossal. If we estimate the probability that there is NO complex life on other planets using known criteria, the resulting number must be vanishingly small.
IMO, to believe we are so "special" that we are the only "complex life" that has developed out of so many possible worlds - potentially millions - seems little less geocentric than the long held belief that earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around it. Plus, we have only our earthly notions of what defines "complex life".
I think it's more likely people exist is parallels rather than all in one universe but truth is, we are all guessing 😅
No, you are guessing there’s people actually doing calculations on this stuff and making things called educated analysis and not just guessing
@ Perhaps the way I phrased it was far too simplified, I didn't want to say educated guess.
How about, if the top professors all put their hypothesis' and theories on the table (based on current calculations) it would probably be narrowed down to at least 2 or 3 more likely ones. Until one is determined, it would be personal opinion on which one you believed the most. So I just said, we are all guessing 🤷🏻♂️
my parents always said I was from somewhere else 😂😂😂😂😂
I like this guy more than neal.
People just understand that we are special. We are the winning lottery ticket.
Ok, so here's a question that has perplexed me for a long time...If the earth is a 1/3rd of the age of the universe...But all of our matter comes from dead stars, how long does it take to assemble that? And those dead stars, how many billions of years would they have been around. Just seems like the universe would have to have been around longer than that for all of that to occur.
I could make even weirder. We may be in a simulation. I think that’s even scarier.
The most obvious answer to the Fermi Paradox (to me anyway) is that we're just one of the first out there. Someone has to be after all.
I still think we have no evidence that having liquid water is all you need for life. 4 billion years on earth, and life only started one time
2024 as I type this…I’m amazed we are still here
If they only knew.. earth isn’t my first home..
But maybe there was life on another planet? Years ago 🤯
Brian, you are the present day Einstein-we never really knew him-no internet-but we have you every day-thanks-just your thoughts are a revelation to us non scientists
Statistically, there is lots of complex life on other planets .
He said it with such confidence. We don't know exactly what exists under the oceans on this planet.
But there are 20 billion planets like Earth. Let me reiterate. He said 20 billion. Scientists sometimes are such a joke.
He needs to meet Steven Green ASAP
20 billion possible planets with life and possible 10x-50x times older and more advanced than us in best possible scenario.... hm....
Calculate the odds of a solar system without an asteroid belt
Thank you Proffessor Brian Cox . Well this planet has been anything but stable for more than a one or two million years . How many Exoplanet ?¿
Or none? Our solar system evolved in a very pecular way, gas giants outside of the rocky planets, earth being stable for billions of years, our sun being the right size for stability, our moon being the right size (large in comparison to the earth) formed from masses of lighter materials from earth itself, massive amounts of liquid water on the surface, massive quantities of heavy metals on the surface ECT. Billions of other planets but none we know with the very specific ingredients for life that we have discovered? I am surprised and appreciative of the scientific scepticism expressed by other commentors!
There are millions and millions of planets that are in the right zone to be able to sustain life and that also have liquid water the problem is we are to far away to be able to explore those planets and search for life that’s the real problem, all the planets that could presumably have life on them are unfortunately to far for our current technology to explore
Doesn’t need to be earth like. Just be able to sustain “life” of some sort.
Odds are Zero in the Milky Way Galaxy..😂😂😂
Well this planet has been anything but stable for more than a million years
There's plenty of life and they know we are here. There's just a quarantine sign ☢️ on our solar system
I like to think that complex life on other planets may not need the same components our species need to thrive. They may also not blow each other up in the name of religion etc.
Stating the age of the Universe is wild...
We know the age of the observable universe. Give or take a few hundred million years.
A lady never tells
With what I've consumed in the past, Mr Cox is correct; I've visited all of the above 😂 love this mind-blowing insanity 😂 goodness gracious!
Where can I find this podcast?
We have been here for awhile. Cool
The key phrase he says here is “we don’t know “ any guess at all is just a guess, there could be a few or many, there’s probably another world saying the same thing right now about us
Us and the Slimos from planet Gooey. Beware of the Green Blob. It creeps and keeps and slides and glides across the floor for you and me!
Science hates to use the word " known" when referring to universe.
Life is resilient and adapts at the required rate based on environmental conditions. Bacteria lives in volcanos. Less stability on a planet doesn't mean no intelligent life. I think you'd get very aggressive life forms on an unstable planet.
God told Moses "worlds without number have i created and when one world is done away another is come to past".
We didn't have any basis to say anything.
We haven't looked far
Earth hasn't been stable for 3 or 4 billion years we've had many extinctions throughout that time 🤔
Why do we think for civilizations to exist they must have water oxygen..a lifeform that "may" come here will not need what we need to survive..
Modern human beings onely been around about 900 years not more
If you think we are the only one in this universe, you probably don’t know big the universe is…
Brian your talking to the chap who took ivermectin to battle covid , he is clearly lost
Earth hasn't been stable through the 4 billion years so that's not a prerequisite
I just want to know if the aliens have cool TV shows. I'd gratefully reduce my lifespan to a year if it meant encountering aliens and being able to learn about them
However, there are still trillions of galaxies, so we must never stop listening. If a curious alien sent details covering their version of DNA, imagine the implications if it wasn't DNA that this life form was based upon!
Can't find the MH370 on pur planet but can observe other planets. Love that.
Pointless talking to Rogan about this subject considering he thinks aliens built the pyramids 🙄
Listen to what he's saying. All these stars, we are the only ones that exist? We're the only ones that have a stable planet?
We do not have the technology to hear see or recognize to find them.
We have no idea how many, we haven't even found one, the thing about theoretical is it's just a guess, a well thought out guess but a guess none the less.
He said NOTHING JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER MICHU CAKOO
where did the singularity that expanded come from?
We are not alone
And we will never know.
I've had my own encounter and the answer is answered f for me 😊
So do you think there’ll “aliens “ out there that we don’t exist anymore? There’s some men copulation? 😂
Fortunate! Huhh... a very precise and scientific word choice.
“We don’t know”! So why the interview?!
Come on...We're the only intelligent life in the whole universe. I know because an 👽 alien told me so 😆
Frank Drake's Equation
I believe the universe is teeming with life. But plants and animals only..no human or other intelligent life.
one in ten stars, let that argument sink in
you're completely ignoring that there is an infinite number of stars in the universe
@@greasycheese8095 I know , was referring to this galaxy as which he was speaking of.
@@apoc5412 right but he said that life is rare. It is not. Nothing is rare in the universe
@@greasycheese8095 And I was speaking of earth like planets, what is your point smart pants? 😂
@@apoc5412 earth like planets are not rare
The answer:
👉WE👈 DONT KNOW
Go with that answer, cause the truth is better than lying because NO ONE REALLY KNOWS.
-well the pentagon definitely does
Fermi missed quite a few "great filters "
So everyone havent discovered light speed
One major (among many) fatal false assumptions:
Evolution!!
But what is time? And when did time begin? And why is time based upon our scale?
Why intelligent life CANNOT form faster elsewhere than here on earth ???? 🤔🤔
It can. We just know for complex life to exist it takes ABOUT 4 billion years (roughly). That could be the shortest, longest, or anywhere in the middle range.
A short time ago, it was found that the Milky Way is positioned in a huge universal void. I believe that absence makes it less exposed to the normal "chaos" of the rest of the Universe. The stability of our galaxy is emblematic of life developing here to the degree it has.
So you're telling me there is a creator
It very much could only be one. Look into the filters.
As big as the universe and many,many galaxies that stars may have planets that may have life that exists. Life that maybe different than our own planet. But we just don't know and we may never reach these stars to explore. The closest star to earth is 4 light years away and the technology that we have today will take us thousands, and thousands of years to get there. Unless we can achieve light speed but as of right now light speed is impossible.
Close to light speed would work as well. Of course we currently have no way of reaching that kind of speed either.
Big bang just one little deadstar.
And I’m stuck in this place
Enrico Fermi's Paradox
He's so young looking. great skin.
No doubt about it .....
Life will be found one day .
Or it will find us 🇦🇺👍
It's inacurate to say that we whent to complex civilization in 4 billion years. There were several mass extinctions so our planet was not exactly stable. We should talk about time period with "free places" in food chain that provoked evolution to fill these free space. And for us it would be 60 to 70 million years.
Lots
One in 10 stars? I think you are spinning a yarn
Earth was engineered for life by God so if he has other projects on the go then there will be more.
How did you figure that out? Have you seen a burning bush?
Define “earth like”.
Respectfully Mr Cox, the Earth and everything around it supporting life, cannot be just an accident
Why not?
If it was by design, why all the others, or are they just failed experiments?
If we have only been able to analyze radio signals for the past 50 years or so, that would represent 5% or 10% of the Milky Way.
@@HowardRamsey Perhaps they're currently developing. Logical thoughtfulness works better than childish sarcasm.
@@liquidmagma Changing, yes. Developing, no. Or are you thinking they've all got the same ultimate state? Challenging curiosity works better than insults.
What do you mean, you don't know?, we do know by mathematics. Even siri knows the universe was created,
..please remind me. Hoŵ old is the universe now? How do we know that?
We look at the distance between the galaxies and how fast they are moving, then rewind the tape.
I love how theoretical astrophysicists lean away from academia and toward celebrity in the lay world. Applied physicists are too busy doing real research. The theoretical author books and to public speaking tours and podcasts and talk shows. 90 percent of what they say is assumption based with little to no scientifically valid methodology to back it up. But they make way more money than their applied counterparts. That, is for certain.
And yet you can’t find life can’t prove it can’t even catch a glimpse with your billion dollar telescopes
Maybe they were placed at such a distance to you keep you looking into the impossibility of the universe all designed to keep you in awe - of God
Even if they where the closest star there is zero chance of going there for a very very very long time.
Trust me we are the only source of life. 😑
He thinks we’re stable 😂