One of the best and smartest things about this show is how it acknowledges known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, or possible current misconceptions. This is a great sign of intelligence and critical thinking.
Indeed. .. and then there's Tiktok, which I think could be considered as a possible solution/contributing factor to the Fermi Paradox. Imagine alien civilizations seeing what people put online; Hopefully they'd see things like this and realize we're not (yet) a lost cause!? :D
The stars are within our potential. Also I think the Prime Directive forbids alien cultures from contacting any species with a TikTok similar app!? Space ain't big enough to let those weirdos in! :D:D
That o'neill cyllinder seems like a wild idea for an RPG game setting. You would be in a civilisation thats just inventing advanced technology but you find out your whole world is an anomaly and the universe works vastly differently.
Not only that; but I could imagine a setting where a recovering civilisation on an O'Neill cylinder is far less technologically advanced, but not needing 9 odd kms^-1 of delta v, would be prolific space travellers with significantly more primitive technology (I.E, taken to the extreme, a pre electrical civilisation on an O'neill cylinder could probably manage short manned spaceflights to other nearby O'Neill cylinders once they figure out the airlock controls, classical physics and some thermodynamics)
@@tophatsurgeon7469 this type of scifi is perfect for educational game where the AI on board has a secret education course in their language to teach them science once they discover the truth.
Not only an RPG setting but a lot of sci-fi stories too. A cylinder that was abandoned but has become a danger, perhaps with some people in board. Or there is something important in it, rockets to stop an asteroid or cameras to observe the planet. Information that is needed to stop a problem. Or it is the danger, heading to planet earth with hostile colonists in board or the disease ridden survivors of an expedition.
I wonder. How did a primitive civilisation got onto one of these habitat? If it is built by an interstellar empire trying to preserve a primitive culture on a doomed planet, this action will ought to leave some myths and legends behind. Something like, gods descended in massive metallic arks that darkened the sky, carrying the people to a paradise above the mortal world. And despite tales of extraterrestrial activity being common in ancient myths, gamers are likely to take it much more seriously than historians, because they knew the messages are significant to the plot of the game.
One interesting perspective I've heard about the Fermi Paradox is that the great filter might be the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, which is necessary for any form of complex life. The basis of this is that the eukaryote only evolved once on Earth, and only after over a BILLION years of simpler life. Thus the evolution of the eukaryote would be a stupidly rare, one-in-a-billion event that only happened on Earth and a few remote places. I particularly like this theory because it implies that out there there might be plenty of planets with prokaryotic bacterial life that could provide us with oxygen and nutrients without all those pesky ethical questions you get with more complex life.
Reminds me of a Greg Egan book called "Quarantine". It involves the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. A giant alien civilization relies on galaxies not being collapsed waveforms into clusters of stars but when we start looking out we start collapsing galaxies into clusters of stars so they build a solid opaque sphere around our whole solar system until we learn to control our ability to collapse quantum wave duality. One of the strangest books I ever read.
That in turn reminds me of a different book. The Pathfinder series by orson Scott card I believe his name is. It involves time travel, time manipulation, paradoxes, quantum mechanics, and a lot more. Also one of the stranger books out there. Highly recommend if you can deal with how confusing it actually gets sometimes.
Is that based on the knowledge that beams of light behave differently until observed? Or something like that, I saw a video on that, it was described along the lines of Schrodingers cat hypothesis where the cat in the box is there, not there, dead, and alive in a state of Flux until the box is opened, and 1 reality is set, there was an awesome anime about an experimental machines meltdown created multiple paradoxes, and their effects on organic, and inorganic objects, it blew my mind, the poor marble fell right out of my ear, lol.
One of the more interesting "solutions" to the Fermi Paradox I've heard is that Humans are just rather early to the party. Like, out Galaxy isn't THAT old, and it was vomiting out a lot of ionizing radiation, which would seriously hurt life in pretty much any form. So it took awhile to get going. So congrats guys, we aren't alone, we're just the Ancient Species everyone else gets to talk about and find!
I suspect that is one of the biggest factors in the Fermi paradox combined with complex life being generally rare, and civilizations developing industrial revolution levels of technology being relatively rare as well. Most other filters seem to be too weak at least on their own.
Not to mention the generations of stars that have had to come and go to seed enough heavier elements into the cosmos to actually form rocky planets, ice giants, and even gas giants.
We are early to the party. Life was only made on earth and ~6026 years ago. But we might still colonize the whole place, depending on if #datpostmil is correct
One thing people should keep in mind is that our intelligent brain isn't the be-all-end-all of evolution. There's a reason that life keeps evolving into crabs.
Niven's Ring World was a prison planet. Partly because the solar system had been disassembled to build the Ring by the Pak, and there wouldn't be anything to explore unless you had relativistic vehicles able to reach another star within a lifetime, so there wasn't much point except for the most advanced Ringworlder civilizations. But mostly because the Puppeteers released a persistent plague prior to the expedition in the first book, that destroyed all advanced technology on the ring used by the civilizations living there like room-temperature superconductors, out of paranoia that the Ringworlders could become powerful enough to challenge them if Ringworlder tech advanced enough to copy the Pak engineering used to build and maintain the ring.
@@MartijnHover That inherent instability, and the extreme engineering to make it work again as it breaks down, is the basis of the plot of the later books in the series.
What bothered me about that was the author's speculation that "addictive behaviors" could be bread out, that a population could just let all addicts kill themselves. It struck me as Eugenics, and spoiled it for me as someone who has dealt with family and friends with addictions. If I ever met Niven I'd punch him in his face. The jerk!
@@squirlmy Well, there is a genetic component to lots of human behaviour. Or so it would seem. Addictive bahaviour seems to be one of those. If you could cure it with medication that could be created through gene-technology would you feel the same? I had more of a problem with his hypothesis that you could breed human beings for "luck".
watching Isaac Arthur without his speech tendencies would be like watching Stephen Hawking without his digitized voice. it just wouldnt be the same. Love your channel, content, and above all, the touch you bring to it all. --stutterin' mike
Great episode. Imprisoned planets; not to be confused with prison planets (Australia in spaaaaace) or impounded planets ("Where'd it go? I only left for a century...")
The intergalactic void one reminds me of Iain Banks' "Against a Dark Background" which is actually set in a star system in intergalactic space, cut off from the rest of the universe by the vast gulf. They can see that galaxies exist, but they're so far that even if they developed FTL the journey would be impractical, so the entire system is just literred with millennia of civilisations building on top of each other.
as a longtime SFIA listener, I know that's bunk. O'Neill cylinder with fusion, sent at 0.1%c even from 1Mly away, would only take a billion years but the reality is there's enough stars out there that they could reach one in a few centuries and start dysoning
@@cosmictreason2242 Those timescales are not practical from a human scale, and like I said they were deep in the void between galaxies, there were no stars in their near vicinity they could travel to. If ther'es no other stars for hundreds or thousands of LY, the *desire* to develop tech or attempt to go there is gone, because the gulf is too large. You don't dream of going to the stars if the stars are civilisation-lifetimes away at light speed itself
The thing is, you don't necessarily need "STEM geniuses" to get tech going. Give me a kid who can read and write and I could give you an adult who would be at least somewhat useful in a creative problem solving capacity. Which is really what you need in order to push boundaries in STEM, not necessarily 1-in-1000 level genius. It is a mistake to think that because the intellectual elite comprise some fraction of a percent of the population, that only a fraction of a percent are capable of solving the same problems.
Exactly, "what's a century in the grand scheme of things". For basically all of recorded history, the bottleneck in technology hasn't been individual intelligence, it has been raw materials, perquisite technologies, economies of scale, etc. Many incredibly disruptive technologies have been incredibly simple. It doesn't take a genius to design a bicycle or a heat engine or even a rocket, it just takes a lot of knowledge from previous experimentation and the specialized materials required.
Yes, but realistically by the time the 100 IQ people figure out how to keep dirt fertile that society would have already died because there wasn't enough farm land. Not saying they die completely, but a good portion of them would. Then they start again, and again before they can figure out how to make farm land tenable through generations; they die off again. Eventually they may and probably would figure it out. But they may never become space faring due to similar situations playing out again and again. If they did however, they would be billions of years past us. The universe is 14 billion years old. Life on Earth started 3.5 billion years ago. It took at least 5 billion years for the universe to stabilize to a point that life giving planets could even start to form. Realistically, we are also lucky because humans evolved near the beginning of energy expansion (do not like the term big bang as it creates a visual that is not accurate in any way). Our luck, will happen infinite times after after. There will be infinite other species to do what we do. We just happen to be one of the earliest species to have this amount of luck. As he mentions, we are maybe 1% into the beginning of the universe falling apart. And even then, the universe will still support life for trillions of years after. We are not the 1%. Earth is the 0.0000001%, in my opinion anyways. And part of that is having people like Einstein. Actually irritated by him saying "What's a century in the grand scheme of things". Not much when you consider the age of the universe. But is a lot, when you consider the life span of humans and the damage they can do to their planet in that time (which he also mentions - but seems to be overlooked). A month ago, I would have said humans are doing fairly well and will probably survive. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and I start to question how this will all end. 3 weeks, being the difference in how things are. Realistically, with things as they are, it might be a day that determines the fate of humans. One day Russia sends a nuke to hit Tacoma. 15 minutes later the US Nukes two Russian cities. 15 minutes later, a few thousand humans are still alive. A century isn't much in universal standards, but 15 minutes can be everything to a society looking to colonize space. And lastly, the Earth has many societies. Likely, a majority (not saying a vast majority, but it does affect the odds) of planets with intelligent life would end up with a single government/ruler. In that case, scientific progress would probably be hindered. Just another hurtle that Earth has avoided, by somehow having close to 200 countries. If we die by nuclear war, I hope your last thought is. Even though we are a very lucky world, We lost to the odds. We made it through 1 in a million chance, twice. But even of those worlds. 2 out of three of them fail afterwards, and we are one of the 2. Out of the very rare planet that makes it to where we are, some of us have to fail. Our luck ran out, and that is the why we do not see aliens. Hope that does not happen, but realistically we are fighting the odds everyday to continue to survive where many aliens have failed.
Per radioactives: granite often is relatively high in such materials. Not your first or second choice for that, but as a sixth or tenth, granite is a potential fissile material ore.
i really like the planet "detritus" in the skyward series -- the humans living there crashed some hundred years ago, but they can't get off because the previous occupants built an insane amount of semi-orbital infrastructure (basically a shell around the planet) oh and also there's a basically constant war with some alien race that wants to keep them prisoner, but the shell is still a big hinderance to space travel there
This reminds me of Star Control 2 where the Ur-quan imprisoned anyone who refused to be subservient to them, confining them to their own worlds with a red forcefield, apparently for their own good. Great plot and great game.
also, don't forget the Spathi who, once you give/sell them the tech, make a shield around their world. (Not to mention my 'favorite' the Ur-Quan Korh-Ah who just xenocide species) they come across
@@toddkes5890 Yes well updated to todays graphics. The star map was revolutionary I’m pretty sure whoever created the star map for Mass Effect also played Star Control 2. The version on Ur Quan Masters is the 3do version.
That is both sad and scary. We have to set an example to future species, and also we have to be alone. Maybe we can seed the galaxy, and even the universe with species. kinda like that one from that ST:TNG episode where they found out about that one that seeded life throughout the galaxy in the hopes of them all becoming friends.
"Highly technological societies in the universe often destroy their own natural environment, such as humanity is doing now. This requires that they travel to other worlds to gain resources and begin the process of engaging in certain contexts for trade and commerce. This profoundly affects their cultures. In many cases, they are overtaken by stronger races. In other cases, they are able to survive and to maintain their own identity. They have not mastered the physical requirements of life, such as is so hoped for here in the world. They must deal with their own physical requirements. They must deal with security issues regarding other races. And they must become functional in the mental environment." A quote from a free online book - *Preparing for the Greater Community* - by Marshall Vian Summers.
It might be a mistake to be searching for a single, universal solution to the Fermi Paradox. It seems to me that the creation of an interstellar civilization might be a case of everything going right, and there are a lot more of ways for *something* to go wrong than for everything to go right.
I think Matt's point is that there may not be a great filter. Which is very true. Several minor filters could clearly do the same filtering as one or two great filters. The question is mostly about how much of the filtering is previous to _our_ level of development, vs. in _our_ future. On the other hand, the solution, by definition, *_does_* have to be "universal", in the sense that it has to apply universally to actual and hypothetical planets, life, civilizations, etc, -universally. The question isn't why one particular civilization hasn't colonized our Galaxy, but why _all_ of the possibly possible civilizations _have failed to_ colonize our Galaxy.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 there are multiple filters, a filter is just Fermi paradox jargon for anything that would prevent a civilization from expanding beyond their home planet.
I love Isaac’s content, so I say this with all due respect, but I think his speech impediment unfortunately hinders his channel’s potential growth. I have no doubt he’d already have 2 million subscribers otherwise.
@@alexcallender if you’ve followed this channel you’ll know he once or twice said he was going to hire a narrator for this channel but everyone here said NOOOO!!!! So, I’m afraid you’re in the minority.
@@Jaggerbush No, I'm aware of that, and I acknowledge there is certainly a vocal component of Isaac's already existing audience which pretty passionately disagrees with me, but I'm talking about his potential growth - new subscribers - and I sincerely believe his speech impediment is also an impediment to wider popular reception of his content. Obviously you don't have to agree with me, and I've accepted nothing is likely to change, but I feel your comment kind of misses the point.
In terms of gravity I think with enough effort a civilisation on nearly any sized planet could reach space, it would just get exponentially harder to get enough up to do anything useful , If you had a super earth with a super dense atmosphere with enough effort you could still launch things to space by raising the ship high in the atmosphere using a launchpad floated with vast balloons first and from there use a railgun to accelerate a rocket or ion propelled spaceplane to minimise the delta v required by the actual ship to get from launch to orbit, to get out of the gravity well you'd need something very efficient with minimal fuel required like ion engines. Whilst there may be planets with atmospheres too turbulent for even that to work where it's truly impossible to escape I Imagine most civilisations on rocky planets would be able to escape their planets with varying degrees of required investment and effort.
A world of heavy gravity, where the apex species are those able to raise their heads enough to look towards the horizon to see the low to the ground herds. Would a world like that even breed a species capable of looking up and dreaming of what lay beyond the blank sky?
"I really have difficulty picturing a dystopian ruin of civilization where alcohol was not considered a valued commodity." Judging by 90s Russia, I think you could basically say Dystopian ruins usually have a society stabilized BY alcohol. And judging by 2020 USA, Alcohol went to become such a valued commodity people couldn't by concentrated alcohol because of supply shortages and rampant speculative hoarding, though mostly for cleaning, not drinking.
Those references seem quaint and old fashioned to me. Have you explored PBS Space Time on RUclips? The science is more advanced than on this channel and generally loses my attention as it's too much. 🤯 After struggling with that, your reference seems a little out-of-touch 🤷
1:25 Space race was between USA and USSR because these were the two dominating countries back then. In a theoretical situation where one of them had conquered the world, there would be no international space race. The ability of this single country to develop space flight would then relay solely on this country's stance to promote or block the economic competition and thus technological progress.
Actually with regards to cosmic voids there is pretty strong evidence that our galaxy the Milky Way is actually within an enormous cosmic void. Sure we are within one of the largest galaxies within the local void but this still opens up the possibility that life might be restricted to forming in voids where planets might have enough time to develop complexity before something disrupts their ecology via collisions or blasting away the planets atmosphere etc. This doesn't deal with the possibility for life around the various stars of said galaxy but if the timescale for intelligence is greatly constrained by additional factors i.e. scarcity of phosphorus it is very possible we could be among the first generation of civilizations within the Milky Way. If this is the case it could greatly constrain the local subset of places alien civilizations could arise
Though not so easy to analyze as Physics and Technology, one of the major aspects influencing space tech and space communication (maybe deserving a whole episode) is cultural mindset that needs to happen in sync with technological ability. Perfect example here on Earth are Ancient Egyptians, many way more capable cultures have followed but none attempted anything even close to the monumental building as their Great Pyramids were... Many theoretically could but didn't, despite the ability... That may be the crucial filter...
Any society that forms on a planet and decides to reach into space, will have to be at minimum inquisitive if not acquisitive in nature. Both those attributes could be classified as low level “violent” at a minimum. And let’s not forget during what period our first real rocket advances occurred.
My issue with this is that this pretends that our galaxy is way too small to hold more than one civilization. Sure, the Milky Way is not the biggest galaxy, but it's still really, really big. There's more than enough room at the table for everyone, so anyone trying to hog the food is just being a jerk. Given that the biology of other alien civilizations may possibly mean that they could colonize planets we can't, there's no good reason that we all just can't share. While we still have only one planet, it might be a problem, but even we only had a territory of about 100 light years, there wouldn't really be any reason to go to war over a lack of resources. The only reason any interstellar civilization might go to war is either a civil war, a clash of ideals, or just because "We don't like sharing, so screw you guys."
You know what sucks. If we fixed the socioeconomic issues plaguing the majority of the world or even in respective first world countries the Average I.Q would increase since these factors hinder I.Q by several points for a variety of reasons of negative enviornments and the stressors it puts on humans in those environments and those affected by the negatively affected humans (Ripple Effects). "Strong as your weakest link".
I have always felt that the Fermi paradox isn’t really that much of a paradox. When we consider evolution, we see that nature incentivizes behaviors that keeps an organism alive. If you lived in a jungle and a tribe heard rustling in the grass nearby, the guy that went out to investigate was far less likely to pass on his genes because the rustling might have been created by a tiger or any predator. It’s likely a spacefaring capable species have little desire to stray off planet so they don’t run into the proverbial space tiger. Other species simply might not have any desire to explore at all because the tech required to do so would have to be so advanced they should also have the tech to satisfy any wants or needs so they might not see the point of exploration. We might be unusual in that since we also evolved to be more than herbivores and have hunted we might have been more biologically adapted for exploration than what is typical.
@@Mr1995Musicman well, I am going to r/wooosh myself here and just drop that it is impossible to change the average IQ by its very definition. It is always centered around 100.
@@JCavinee That is not the point. Humanity did in fact get collectively smarter since the implementation of the IQ scale, as education improved overall. The scale is however defined to be always centered around 100. IQ 100 is THE mediocre inrelligent person right now. If you have an IQ of 120 you are smarter (at least by the scale) than a specific amount of humans, etc.. You can get smarter, but you can't push the scale. It is comming with you.
In my top 5 favorite channels on youtube. I truely appreciate this. I hope this channel never experiences a book burning, or a loss. These ideas are to be studied, pondered upon, and applied even in our modern times. Have you ever considered organizing a few different programs with multiple videos.. & burning them to DVDs, & sending them out to different institutes? Such as schools, writers guild, directors etc. (Or doing so digitally & emailing with an adequate & eyecatching title) It wouldn't be overly expensive & I think doing so over a few years we could see a huge spike in these ideas being propagated & potentially sparking a surge of inspiration in young creative &/or scientific minds.
Thanks ror another excellent episode. FWIW: Assuming the solution to the Fermi paradox isn't simply "because there is nobody out there" I wonder if the answer might be that after billions of years of evolution solely on one's planet of origin species that might try moving in to space find they are so suited to their home planet that they are physically and psychologically incapable of leaving for anything other than the kind of short trips we have currently attempted.
Only a solution for non-technological species since any planetary conditions can just be exactly reproduced on a habitat or the need for them edited out of the genome
Thank you! I read Dragon Egg by Robert Forward in the 80's but forgot the name of the author and the book. I have been looking for it to add to my library for some time, and now i can. Yeah, there are so many reasons to love this channel!
32:23 The Iain M. Banks novel "Against A Dark Background" is set in a star system that was long ago ejected from it's galaxy, having flown out far enough that there are practically no stars in the sky and all of the planets visited are within that system. It's never explained how it became colonized by humans in the first place and clearly it was long ago given all of the ancient tech that the characters come across that nobody knows how to recreate.
We're at the baby stage of the universe, considering the enormous timeline 'til heat death. Perhaps it's exceptionally rare for the conditions of spacefaring life to be met at this stage, and simply by chance the next civilization of that kind is so far away that its light hasn't reached us yet. Of course, the plausibility of this varies depending on the existence of faster-than-light travel, how much faster it is, and what kind of "great filters" might apply to it, if any. Of course, my "baby stage" logic here is also an exercise in human pattern thinking, given the obvious lack of data beyond our own planet, and prone to being fallacious thus. After all, the prevalence of favourable conditions for such civilizations might be plotting quite differently from the age of the universe.
There was a movie a few years ago about the Manhattan Project where a couple of the scientists were trying to get a meeting with the President to beg him to not use the atomic bomb because, "If you use the bomb you will give away the only secret worth keeping: That it can be done at all." Another very good (although naturally audience limited, being a VERY adult story) post-collapse rebuilding civilization is shown in the graphic novel Tranceptor. (The second chapter came out a few years back, after about a 17 year wait, so the third chapter might come out any time now.) The first chapter takes place at a way-station maintained at what they call a mine. They dig tunnels through the ground looking for, in their case, internal combustion engine parts in the desert soil. (They seem to find them in groups, implying they're digging through the remains of a storage facility of some kind. Nobody mentioned anything about finding unfinished parts, raw materials, or any kind of forming machine.)
If you have a world surrounded by dead habs, having one deorbit every 100 years could reset progress. It would still be a slow march of progress to get to space before the main belt of habs crash at once.
I figure we would, because we'd still see things moving through the air. Bubbles, seeds, leaves, etc. We'd have to work more from scratch since we'd have fewer biological inspirations.
Actually I think it would have happened quicker. Even cavemen saw smoke rising. Early inventors would have focused on that rather then ridiculous flapping machnes.
On this earth, flying is possible for some creatures due to the level of gravity and thickness of the atmosphere. For there to not be any flying creatures, some of these physical characteristics would have to be different.
Civilisations in those intergalactic voids will probably face distinct challenges to reaching humanity’s mid-late 20th century tech level. Like assuming they’re on earth-like planets, imagine the development of navigation without a big celestial map over your heads
Have only just found this channel and was wandering where to start as I’ve noticed they blend one to another, if anyone could advise me, absolutely love this man already.
No particular need to start anywhere specific, just pick a subject of interest, though newer does of course tend to be better done. I'm sure you've noticed that though.
My solution to the Fermi paradox is that there are few civilizations within our practical threshold for detecting them currently in our position around the galactic core. I assume there are 10 or so, and more of them are concentrated near the core. I don't think we've gone around the core once yet since modern humans even appeared. So as our solar system swims its way up and down the galactic equator and around the core, perhaps we will eventually "swim" near core civilizations and the Fermi paradox will turn out to have been an artifact of when we started paying attention and where the few civilizations are to be found. This occurred to me when I heard the podcast with Avi Loeb, which suggested Oumuamua was a navigational buoy, and it didn't so much pass through the solar system, as we "swam" *past* it. Perhaps we are approaching the suburbs of the Milky Way.
Why do so many people think that the Universe is "old"? We measure the age of the Universe to be about 13.8 billion years, and forget or disregard the fact that the Universe has trillions of years to exist, as we have no idea as to what could possibly stop the Universe from existing at all. It is true that at some distant time the last star capable of producing heavy elements will cease to exist, and then pretty much any Life will stop being created, but that is so long into the future that it does not matter to us or could possibly affect us. We exist because stars can now produce the elements of which we are made. This situation will come to an end when the Universe is old. It can be said that the Universe came into existence a month ago, that is, it is young.
Heyyyyyy you didn't tell us you were going to do a new episode on our own little rock! What a nice surprise! Also, what's the actual name? Terra? Earth? What are we using for the official name of our planet, I forget. Like Sol-Sun or Luna-Moon...
"A person dumped into New York city tries to find signs of intelligent life by going to Antarctica" Seems perfectly reasonable to me, it's not like there's any of that in New York
If all the fossil fuels are exhausted its hard to believe a civilization could go from a wood burning or a pure bio-fuel based technology are not energy dense and would not be able to have a large energy base to restart an industrial revolution.
:) Thanks Akira, sorry its your first reaction form me, I'm sure I've read comments from you before, the UserID seems familiar, I just tend to read most of the comments after the first couple hours in my email inbox
@@isaacarthurSFIA and a reply. You made my year omg 😱 You've helped change my mind about humanity. I used to be doom and gloom, "humans bad". I'm now 100% team "Gardener" and "live to 700 or die trying" by following rule #1, using enough brute force 😂
I think this is the most likely "solution" to the paradox. Life isn't exceptionally rare, but space travel is prohibitively difficult. Life is trapped where it gets seeded. Going out requires a chain of inventions, a chain of exceptionally smart and dedicated people. You absolutely need: computers & math (in one breath), life support, a good body, a generation ship, unimaginable goals and their accompanying demand/dedication/desperation. You don't just need to be space faring but you need to be galactic faring.
math & science is definitely necessary but life support, "a good body", & gen ships definitely aren't. You can colonize with robots, you can self-modify for whatever environment, & you can use sleeper, seed, or data ships to colonize
This episode strangely embodied the opposite of existential dread for me. Even if WW3, 4 and 5 came, even if we bomb ourselves into oblivion. The chances for humanity to survive and venture out into the stars again are not that low. Inspiring!
If there's a WWIII, you won't have to worry about another for a thousand years. To paraphrase Einstein, world war four will be fought with sticks and stones.
Maybe planets that don't have materials that allow the making of rockets... That could explain it, or planets with very high gravity, many reasons that could make space travel impractical for other species.
It could be rich with life but missing dry land. Launching a rocket from underwater is not easy. Making fuel or forging metal isnt easy either but could be done with volcanic vents or something... how would a fish alien even discover fire right?
I swear if I hear the word "fermi paradox" one more time I'm gonna demote pluto from dwarf planet to oversized comet. We've been looking for alien intelligence for less than 50 years, and we've only searched like 1 septillionth of the stars in our observable universe. There shouldn't be any surprise that we haven't found anything yet, and it certainly doesn't warrant the naming of a paradox from our lack of findings. Just based on the shear number of stars in our universe, it is a mathematical certainty that life elsewhere exists. So please just keep searching instead of wondering why you haven't found anything yet after only examining a few million stars. Btw this isn't aimed at you Isaac Arthur, I love your content. This was just a rant aimed at the scientific community in general
Well said. SETI is wonderful, but we couldn’t hardly detect a civilization equal to our own, more than a few dozen light years away. Drives me nuts. We have the technological equivalent to a grubby cup against the door, and are acting like it’s a surprise when we don’t hear anything. Frankly the lack of a space based radio telescope array is disturbing to me. I am not convinced that the people in charge are particularly interested in really listening.
Nostalgia for war does have the point that it is a likely cause for a Kessler Effect. Nevertheless, I get a bit tired of hearing "civilizations self-destruct" themes. It is basically a contradiction in terms. I do understand that the 20th century provides a case in point - and, so far, the 21st century does not seem significantly improved in terms of social evolution. The so-called United Nations seems no more effective that the League of Nations. Nevertheless, most educated people believe that social evolution is a useful goal. So, while progress seems like "three steps forward, two steps back" ... I think there has been some progress. I am old enough to remember when psychology and social science was much cruder than it is today.
The idea of intelligent life arising in the middle of a intergalactic void is chilling. Not only would they need advanced telescopes to see that they weren't alone in the universe, but they would never even know to look. Building advanced telescopes would seem pointless to such a species.
I understand it's a terrifying thought for you but they wouldn't care and just live their life happy. Technology is also not needed to be happy or anything.
29:51 Wait that was you!? I found that concept in the Stellaris mod Gigastructures way before I found you on a Star Trek fanfic thread. I am impressed. You are very influential
I always assumed there was at least one civilization who happened upon FTL by accident early in their development. They might even be what we would call a "dumb" species who doesn't care how or why it works, just that it works. It could be even as simple as they have some unknown (to the periodic table or theories that we know of) to us element or material that naturally occurs on their world on the surface and you can pick it up without negative effects, oh and it happens to be a shelf stable energy source capable of powering anything (almost) to FTL ;) These guys are the ones in SciFi that make us question how they got to space in the first place; only to find out they are the dominant power in the region due to exorbitant taxes on said material to the rest of the region. Thus we get a plot point for said SciFi show lol. I have enjoyed this episode the most Isaac. thanks for the content.
Just no. That is basically impossible. While I'm willing to think even a "leftover" population might use ancient AI or computers... Consider that according to known science FTL is impossible, then to propose a civilization would accidentally find it... Might as well have wish granting genies in bottles. Pure fantasy.
It won't be proven in any of our lives- but let me tell you all a secret; Most life in the universe a) does NOT rely on killing to consume, b) they develop on rocky moons orbiting gas giants, c) their extremely thick atmospheres are rich in noble gases that illuminate their entire upper atmospheres, in 2 distinct regions depending on interactions between the moon and gas giant's magnetic fields, and D) most intelligent life stays planet-bound, even AFTER discovering the univers outside their thick starless atmospheres.
A life form originating on a neutron star might be able to tilt the magnetic axis away from the rotational axis, turning their home star into a pulsar, and surf the polar jets to reach space.
"Our civilization collapsed and we sadly forgot how to make ethanol. I'd love to stay and talk about it more but I just realized I forgot to collect that jar of honey I stored in the ground last winter, I hope it's still ok!"
I wonder about those water worlds. They may not have easy access to fire yes. But what about biological materials? Farming creatures and breeding them to have certain traits like produce a specific gas or a have a specific skin or shell or other material. After all many or our materials are made after natural counterparts or at least inspired by what is around in nature. I can definitely imagine that being a way to create a kind balloon to rise above the water to carry thing high up in the air. What i mean is even without fire they may have a completely different path of technological development that is hard for us to imagine simply because we had our path and didn't need to come up with a different one.
15:15 One example that the Finns used in times of crisis and was experimented around the world, was the usage of wood gas as fuel for vehicles. Quite literally, you underburn wood and it produces a combustable gas, that has been used in cars and sleds.
I don't think we are "imprisoned" on our planet but we are more far away of being a space faring civilization than we think. We just have to look to ourselves. We are being told that a virtual ressource named money is everything to get in life. Destroying our planet and nature will be rewarded by economy and we are not scared to even kill each other for low reasons. Instead of knowing we take words for granted and only in the darkests moments we show what we are really capable of if we all work for a common goal. The hardest thing to become a space faring civilization is that we have to change very much. In the first place we have to change ourselves and this is something only a few people can do and wants to do because most of the people don't like change.
Hey man, can you do a video on the fermi paradox and the dark forest, i just finished liu cixin trilogy and really would love to watch one of your videos covering the dark forest theory and the purging scenarios pressented in death’s end
Birch Planets? So I have not watched that episode where Isaac first mentioned this idea. Still it sounds like "Hey a Dyson Sphere sounds neat! But since we have the technology to build a Dyson Sphere; why not use the same technology to make something 10,000 times larger that has Layers?" For a civilization that can build Dyson Spheres; they are likely already space-faring and have colonized hundreds of planets before the first Dyson Sphere is started. If it is possible for a civilization; Birch Worlds would be only 10,000 times the work, and an unknown amount of extra time. With a swarm of a Billion Spacecraft that each has dozens of Assembler Robots and Humans Crew also? Birch World might be built in less than 5000 years...and provide living space for Trillions of Humans for millions of years after that = a really long term real estate project, and worth it if it is possible.
4:42 Pollution, it always comes back, which includes space. (with the exception of using vast amounts of energy or fuel to literally rocket it out of the system or into the Sun.)
I actually danced a bit when I recognized the topic this morning. Waiting until tonight to listen. I just said openly f$%# yes it's 41 minutes long recognizing it now. Thanks brotha.....
Appropos of nothing in this video, there is another excellent concept in the novel "The Mote In God's Eye" (by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven). In the novel a star system evolved in a dense nebula and never realized that there was a greater universe outside it. They completely exhausted all the heavy elements in their entire solar system and never attempted to leave it because why bother if all that is out there is endless gas?
One of the best and smartest things about this show is how it acknowledges known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, or possible current misconceptions. This is a great sign of intelligence and critical thinking.
Indeed.
.. and then there's Tiktok, which I think could be considered as a possible solution/contributing factor to the Fermi Paradox. Imagine alien civilizations seeing what people put online; Hopefully they'd see things like this and realize we're not (yet) a lost cause!? :D
@@TheEyez187 😆 The solution to the Fermi paradox - civilizations go mad from 60 seconds or less videos.
Donald Rumsfeld has a raging chubby reading your comment!
@@PhoticsTV imagine where we could go without TikTok.
The stars are within our potential.
Also I think the Prime Directive forbids alien cultures from contacting any species with a TikTok similar app!? Space ain't big enough to let those weirdos in! :D:D
That o'neill cyllinder seems like a wild idea for an RPG game setting. You would be in a civilisation thats just inventing advanced technology but you find out your whole world is an anomaly and the universe works vastly differently.
Not only that; but I could imagine a setting where a recovering civilisation on an O'Neill cylinder is far less technologically advanced, but not needing 9 odd kms^-1 of delta v, would be prolific space travellers with significantly more primitive technology (I.E, taken to the extreme, a pre electrical civilisation on an O'neill cylinder could probably manage short manned spaceflights to other nearby O'Neill cylinders once they figure out the airlock controls, classical physics and some thermodynamics)
@@tophatsurgeon7469 this type of scifi is perfect for educational game where the AI on board has a secret education course in their language to teach them science once they discover the truth.
Not only an RPG setting but a lot of sci-fi stories too. A cylinder that was abandoned but has become a danger, perhaps with some people in board. Or there is something important in it, rockets to stop an asteroid or cameras to observe the planet. Information that is needed to stop a problem.
Or it is the danger, heading to planet earth with hostile colonists in board or the disease ridden survivors of an expedition.
I'd play this.
I wonder. How did a primitive civilisation got onto one of these habitat? If it is built by an interstellar empire trying to preserve a primitive culture on a doomed planet, this action will ought to leave some myths and legends behind.
Something like, gods descended in massive metallic arks that darkened the sky, carrying the people to a paradise above the mortal world. And despite tales of extraterrestrial activity being common in ancient myths, gamers are likely to take it much more seriously than historians, because they knew the messages are significant to the plot of the game.
One interesting perspective I've heard about the Fermi Paradox is that the great filter might be the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, which is necessary for any form of complex life. The basis of this is that the eukaryote only evolved once on Earth, and only after over a BILLION years of simpler life. Thus the evolution of the eukaryote would be a stupidly rare, one-in-a-billion event that only happened on Earth and a few remote places.
I particularly like this theory because it implies that out there there might be plenty of planets with prokaryotic bacterial life that could provide us with oxygen and nutrients without all those pesky ethical questions you get with more complex life.
I also like the idea that the Great Filter is behind us as well, and the formation of eukaryotic life seems a very plausible candidate to me.
Reminds me of a Greg Egan book called "Quarantine". It involves the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. A giant alien civilization relies on galaxies not being collapsed waveforms into clusters of stars but when we start looking out we start collapsing galaxies into clusters of stars so they build a solid opaque sphere around our whole solar system until we learn to control our ability to collapse quantum wave duality. One of the strangest books I ever read.
That in turn reminds me of a different book. The Pathfinder series by orson Scott card I believe his name is. It involves time travel, time manipulation, paradoxes, quantum mechanics, and a lot more.
Also one of the stranger books out there. Highly recommend if you can deal with how confusing it actually gets sometimes.
Sounds trippy
Is that based on the knowledge that beams of light behave differently until observed? Or something like that, I saw a video on that, it was described along the lines of Schrodingers cat hypothesis where the cat in the box is there, not there, dead, and alive in a state of Flux until the box is opened, and 1 reality is set, there was an awesome anime about an experimental machines meltdown created multiple paradoxes, and their effects on organic, and inorganic objects, it blew my mind, the poor marble fell right out of my ear, lol.
@@dianeneedham6703 what was the name of that anime?
@@FutureMan420Blazer eon Flux? Aeon Flux, something like that
One of the more interesting "solutions" to the Fermi Paradox I've heard is that Humans are just rather early to the party.
Like, out Galaxy isn't THAT old, and it was vomiting out a lot of ionizing radiation, which would seriously hurt life in pretty much any form. So it took awhile to get going.
So congrats guys, we aren't alone, we're just the Ancient Species everyone else gets to talk about and find!
I suspect that is one of the biggest factors in the Fermi paradox combined with complex life being generally rare, and civilizations developing industrial revolution levels of technology being relatively rare as well. Most other filters seem to be too weak at least on their own.
Not to mention the generations of stars that have had to come and go to seed enough heavier elements into the cosmos to actually form rocky planets, ice giants, and even gas giants.
We are early to the party. Life was only made on earth and ~6026 years ago. But we might still colonize the whole place, depending on if #datpostmil is correct
@@cosmictreason2242 the evidence doesn't support that particular set of claims.
One thing people should keep in mind is that our intelligent brain isn't the be-all-end-all of evolution. There's a reason that life keeps evolving into crabs.
Niven's Ring World was a prison planet. Partly because the solar system had been disassembled to build the Ring by the Pak, and there wouldn't be anything to explore unless you had relativistic vehicles able to reach another star within a lifetime, so there wasn't much point except for the most advanced Ringworlder civilizations.
But mostly because the Puppeteers released a persistent plague prior to the expedition in the first book, that destroyed all advanced technology on the ring used by the civilizations living there like room-temperature superconductors, out of paranoia that the Ringworlders could become powerful enough to challenge them if Ringworlder tech advanced enough to copy the Pak engineering used to build and maintain the ring.
It was also an inherently unstable structure, impossible to ceate in any realistic scenario.
@@MartijnHover That inherent instability, and the extreme engineering to make it work again as it breaks down, is the basis of the plot of the later books in the series.
@@nekomakhea9440 Yes, I know. I have read them. 🙂
What bothered me about that was the author's speculation that "addictive behaviors" could be bread out, that a population could just let all addicts kill themselves. It struck me as Eugenics, and spoiled it for me as someone who has dealt with family and friends with addictions. If I ever met Niven I'd punch him in his face. The jerk!
@@squirlmy Well, there is a genetic component to lots of human behaviour. Or so it would seem. Addictive bahaviour seems to be one of those. If you could cure it with medication that could be created through gene-technology would you feel the same?
I had more of a problem with his hypothesis that you could breed human beings for "luck".
watching Isaac Arthur without his speech tendencies would be like watching Stephen Hawking without his digitized voice.
it just wouldnt be the same. Love your channel, content, and above all, the touch you bring to it all. --stutterin' mike
Great episode. Imprisoned planets; not to be confused with prison planets (Australia in spaaaaace) or impounded planets ("Where'd it go? I only left for a century...")
Australia‽ Impossible! Everyone knows 'Space' is the **one place** uncorrupted by capitalism!
@@cheapshotninja Elon Musk: "Here, hold my GigaBier."
Or more specifically space Brisbane. Go space Broncos!
Dude where's my planet?
@@papabaer6069 “I don’t know bro! I swear we parked it right here over 10,000 years ago!”
The intergalactic void one reminds me of Iain Banks' "Against a Dark Background" which is actually set in a star system in intergalactic space, cut off from the rest of the universe by the vast gulf. They can see that galaxies exist, but they're so far that even if they developed FTL the journey would be impractical, so the entire system is just literred with millennia of civilisations building on top of each other.
as a longtime SFIA listener, I know that's bunk. O'Neill cylinder with fusion, sent at 0.1%c even from 1Mly away, would only take a billion years but the reality is there's enough stars out there that they could reach one in a few centuries and start dysoning
@@cosmictreason2242 Those timescales are not practical from a human scale, and like I said they were deep in the void between galaxies, there were no stars in their near vicinity they could travel to. If ther'es no other stars for hundreds or thousands of LY, the *desire* to develop tech or attempt to go there is gone, because the gulf is too large. You don't dream of going to the stars if the stars are civilisation-lifetimes away at light speed itself
The thing is, you don't necessarily need "STEM geniuses" to get tech going. Give me a kid who can read and write and I could give you an adult who would be at least somewhat useful in a creative problem solving capacity. Which is really what you need in order to push boundaries in STEM, not necessarily 1-in-1000 level genius. It is a mistake to think that because the intellectual elite comprise some fraction of a percent of the population, that only a fraction of a percent are capable of solving the same problems.
Exactly, "what's a century in the grand scheme of things". For basically all of recorded history, the bottleneck in technology hasn't been individual intelligence, it has been raw materials, perquisite technologies, economies of scale, etc.
Many incredibly disruptive technologies have been incredibly simple. It doesn't take a genius to design a bicycle or a heat engine or even a rocket, it just takes a lot of knowledge from previous experimentation and the specialized materials required.
And a lot of geniuses in history were only considered such after they'd solved a famous problem.
Give me non sociopaths who can problem solve and I'll fix the world.
Yes, but realistically by the time the 100 IQ people figure out how to keep dirt fertile that society would have already died because there wasn't enough farm land. Not saying they die completely, but a good portion of them would. Then they start again, and again before they can figure out how to make farm land tenable through generations; they die off again.
Eventually they may and probably would figure it out. But they may never become space faring due to similar situations playing out again and again.
If they did however, they would be billions of years past us.
The universe is 14 billion years old. Life on Earth started 3.5 billion years ago. It took at least 5 billion years for the universe to stabilize to a point that life giving planets could even start to form. Realistically, we are also lucky because humans evolved near the beginning of energy expansion (do not like the term big bang as it creates a visual that is not accurate in any way).
Our luck, will happen infinite times after after. There will be infinite other species to do what we do. We just happen to be one of the earliest species to have this amount of luck. As he mentions, we are maybe 1% into the beginning of the universe falling apart. And even then, the universe will still support life for trillions of years after. We are not the 1%. Earth is the 0.0000001%, in my opinion anyways. And part of that is having people like Einstein.
Actually irritated by him saying "What's a century in the grand scheme of things". Not much when you consider the age of the universe. But is a lot, when you consider the life span of humans and the damage they can do to their planet in that time (which he also mentions - but seems to be overlooked).
A month ago, I would have said humans are doing fairly well and will probably survive. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and I start to question how this will all end. 3 weeks, being the difference in how things are. Realistically, with things as they are, it might be a day that determines the fate of humans. One day Russia sends a nuke to hit Tacoma. 15 minutes later the US Nukes two Russian cities. 15 minutes later, a few thousand humans are still alive.
A century isn't much in universal standards, but 15 minutes can be everything to a society looking to colonize space.
And lastly, the Earth has many societies. Likely, a majority (not saying a vast majority, but it does affect the odds) of planets with intelligent life would end up with a single government/ruler. In that case, scientific progress would probably be hindered. Just another hurtle that Earth has avoided, by somehow having close to 200 countries.
If we die by nuclear war, I hope your last thought is. Even though we are a very lucky world, We lost to the odds. We made it through 1 in a million chance, twice. But even of those worlds. 2 out of three of them fail afterwards, and we are one of the 2. Out of the very rare planet that makes it to where we are, some of us have to fail. Our luck ran out, and that is the why we do not see aliens.
Hope that does not happen, but realistically we are fighting the odds everyday to continue to survive where many aliens have failed.
@@justindadswell8610 I admire your faith
Per radioactives: granite often is relatively high in such materials. Not your first or second choice for that, but as a sixth or tenth, granite is a potential fissile material ore.
Such a mine almost saw greenlight in Spain, but the population density in the area was deemed too high.
i really like the planet "detritus" in the skyward series -- the humans living there crashed some hundred years ago, but they can't get off because the previous occupants built an insane amount of semi-orbital infrastructure (basically a shell around the planet)
oh and also there's a basically constant war with some alien race that wants to keep them prisoner, but the shell is still a big hinderance to space travel there
I love that series!
A
This reminds me of Star Control 2 where the Ur-quan imprisoned anyone who refused to be subservient to them, confining them to their own worlds with a red forcefield, apparently for their own good. Great plot and great game.
also, don't forget the Spathi who, once you give/sell them the tech, make a shield around their world.
(Not to mention my 'favorite' the Ur-Quan Korh-Ah who just xenocide species) they come across
Too bad this gem of a game isn't more widely appreciated. A remaster would be great
@@nothingnobody1454 Like the free game 'The Ur-Quan Masters'?
@@toddkes5890 ty
@@toddkes5890
Yes well updated to todays graphics. The star map was revolutionary I’m pretty sure whoever created the star map for Mass Effect also played Star Control 2. The version on Ur Quan Masters is the 3do version.
What if the answer to Fermi's paradox is that we're the first intelligent entities.
Maybe older cubs have gone extinct
And we are the only civ in our galaxy
Firstborn
That is both sad and scary. We have to set an example to future species, and also we have to be alone. Maybe we can seed the galaxy, and even the universe with species. kinda like that one from that ST:TNG episode where they found out about that one that seeded life throughout the galaxy in the hopes of them all becoming friends.
That would suck.
This is the likely solution
"Highly technological societies in the universe often destroy their own natural environment, such as humanity is doing now. This requires that they travel to other worlds to gain resources and begin the process of engaging in certain contexts for trade and commerce. This profoundly affects their cultures. In many cases, they are overtaken by stronger races. In other cases, they are able to survive and to maintain their own identity. They have not mastered the physical requirements of life, such as is so hoped for here in the world. They must deal with their own physical requirements. They must deal with security issues regarding other races. And they must become functional in the mental environment."
A quote from a free online book - *Preparing for the Greater Community* - by Marshall Vian Summers.
That seems like a poorly-informed author. Asteroids are better than planets for basic resources. And, they are not uncommon.
Thanks Ivan
That picture of Isaac in his military days smoking a cigarette hahahaha. As always great video man. 37:44
It might be a mistake to be searching for a single, universal solution to the Fermi Paradox. It seems to me that the creation of an interstellar civilization might be a case of everything going right, and there are a lot more of ways for *something* to go wrong than for everything to go right.
That is a solution itself though. It's called the Great Filter. Isaac has an episode on it :)
I think Matt's point is that there may not be a great filter. Which is very true. Several minor filters could clearly do the same filtering as one or two great filters. The question is mostly about how much of the filtering is previous to _our_ level of development, vs. in _our_ future.
On the other hand, the solution, by definition, *_does_* have to be "universal", in the sense that it has to apply universally to actual and hypothetical planets, life, civilizations, etc, -universally. The question isn't why one particular civilization hasn't colonized our Galaxy, but why _all_ of the possibly possible civilizations _have failed to_ colonize our Galaxy.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 there are multiple filters, a filter is just Fermi paradox jargon for anything that would prevent a civilization from expanding beyond their home planet.
As usual Isaac Arthur bringing great content to the people!
I love Isaac’s content, so I say this with all due respect, but I think his speech impediment unfortunately hinders his channel’s potential growth. I have no doubt he’d already have 2 million subscribers otherwise.
@@alexcallender if you’ve followed this channel you’ll know he once or twice said he was going to hire a narrator for this channel but everyone here said NOOOO!!!! So, I’m afraid you’re in the minority.
@@Jaggerbush No, I'm aware of that, and I acknowledge there is certainly a vocal component of Isaac's already existing audience which pretty passionately disagrees with me, but I'm talking about his potential growth - new subscribers - and I sincerely believe his speech impediment is also an impediment to wider popular reception of his content. Obviously you don't have to agree with me, and I've accepted nothing is likely to change, but I feel your comment kind of misses the point.
Just recently finished "The Three Body Problem" trilogy. Loved this episode!
It's on my reading queue too, thanks to things I've heard about it here!
@@jerrysstories711 definitely recommend it! I also recommend your book to anyone who likes medieval fantasy!
It was good. The most haunting sci-fi series I’ve ever read.
@@beastvg123 Thanks! Also, wow I'm impressed you recognized my username!
@@jerrysstories711 well, your historical fiction writing skills definitely enthralled me! So I remembered from when Isaac linked your channel!
In terms of gravity I think with enough effort a civilisation on nearly any sized planet could reach space, it would just get exponentially harder to get enough up to do anything useful , If you had a super earth with a super dense atmosphere with enough effort you could still launch things to space by raising the ship high in the atmosphere using a launchpad floated with vast balloons first and from there use a railgun to accelerate a rocket or ion propelled spaceplane to minimise the delta v required by the actual ship to get from launch to orbit, to get out of the gravity well you'd need something very efficient with minimal fuel required like ion engines. Whilst there may be planets with atmospheres too turbulent for even that to work where it's truly impossible to escape I Imagine most civilisations on rocky planets would be able to escape their planets with varying degrees of required investment and effort.
...but if your atmosphere is opaque... you wouldn't even know there was a space to get to...
A world of heavy gravity, where the apex species are those able to raise their heads enough to look towards the horizon to see the low to the ground herds. Would a world like that even breed a species capable of looking up and dreaming of what lay beyond the blank sky?
"I really have difficulty picturing a dystopian ruin of civilization where alcohol was not considered a valued commodity."
Judging by 90s Russia, I think you could basically say Dystopian ruins usually have a society stabilized BY alcohol.
And judging by 2020 USA, Alcohol went to become such a valued commodity people couldn't by concentrated alcohol because of supply shortages and rampant speculative hoarding, though mostly for cleaning, not drinking.
This channel and it's content are on par with PBS Nova and Cosmos. Another brilliant episode.
Those references seem quaint and old fashioned to me. Have you explored PBS Space Time on RUclips? The science is more advanced than on this channel and generally loses my attention as it's too much. 🤯 After struggling with that, your reference seems a little out-of-touch 🤷
@@squirlmy Do you have a point? Your comment seems a bit irrelevant and out-of-touch. 🤦🤷
" would be like a person dumped in the middle of new york city trying to find an example of intelligent life *pause*"
there are no accidents
1:25 Space race was between USA and USSR because these were the two dominating countries back then. In a theoretical situation where one of them had conquered the world, there would be no international space race. The ability of this single country to develop space flight would then relay solely on this country's stance to promote or block the economic competition and thus technological progress.
I really appreciate all of the work you put into your videos. Thanks
Actually with regards to cosmic voids there is pretty strong evidence that our galaxy the Milky Way is actually within an enormous cosmic void. Sure we are within one of the largest galaxies within the local void but this still opens up the possibility that life might be restricted to forming in voids where planets might have enough time to develop complexity before something disrupts their ecology via collisions or blasting away the planets atmosphere etc.
This doesn't deal with the possibility for life around the various stars of said galaxy but if the timescale for intelligence is greatly constrained by additional factors i.e. scarcity of phosphorus it is very possible we could be among the first generation of civilizations within the Milky Way.
If this is the case it could greatly constrain the local subset of places alien civilizations could arise
Even without the images, you paint such vivid pictures with words alone.
Though not so easy to analyze as Physics and Technology, one of the major aspects influencing space tech and space communication (maybe deserving a whole episode) is cultural mindset that needs to happen in sync with technological ability. Perfect example here on Earth are Ancient Egyptians, many way more capable cultures have followed but none attempted anything even close to the monumental building as their Great Pyramids were... Many theoretically could but didn't, despite the ability... That may be the crucial filter...
Any society that forms on a planet and decides to reach into space, will have to be at minimum inquisitive if not acquisitive in nature. Both those attributes could be classified as low level “violent” at a minimum. And let’s not forget during what period our first real rocket advances occurred.
You could also consider the similarity in Colonizing and "Imperialism". They seem to come from the same place.
My issue with this is that this pretends that our galaxy is way too small to hold more than one civilization. Sure, the Milky Way is not the biggest galaxy, but it's still really, really big. There's more than enough room at the table for everyone, so anyone trying to hog the food is just being a jerk. Given that the biology of other alien civilizations may possibly mean that they could colonize planets we can't, there's no good reason that we all just can't share. While we still have only one planet, it might be a problem, but even we only had a territory of about 100 light years, there wouldn't really be any reason to go to war over a lack of resources. The only reason any interstellar civilization might go to war is either a civil war, a clash of ideals, or just because "We don't like sharing, so screw you guys."
@@apollyonnoctis1291 civil wars, differences in ideology, & greed....so the usual reasons for going to war
Heya Issac. Keep up the good work. I started watching your videos maybe a month ago, and I am already darn near caught up. I love it!
You know what sucks.
If we fixed the socioeconomic issues plaguing the majority of the world or even in respective first world countries the Average I.Q would increase since these factors hinder I.Q by several points for a variety of reasons of negative enviornments and the stressors it puts on humans in those environments and those affected by the negatively affected humans (Ripple Effects).
"Strong as your weakest link".
I love the little touch of humor you use when making animations. Space should be a little silly
I have always felt that the Fermi paradox isn’t really that much of a paradox. When we consider evolution, we see that nature incentivizes behaviors that keeps an organism alive. If you lived in a jungle and a tribe heard rustling in the grass nearby, the guy that went out to investigate was far less
likely to pass on his genes because the rustling might have been created by a tiger or any predator. It’s likely a spacefaring capable species have little desire to stray off planet so they don’t run into the proverbial space tiger. Other species simply might not have any desire to explore at all because the tech required to do so would have to be so advanced they should also have the tech to satisfy any wants or needs so they might not see the point of exploration.
We might be unusual in that since we also evolved to be more than herbivores and have hunted we might have been more biologically adapted for exploration than what is typical.
"Possibly a plague that made people dumber..." Didn't we just have that?
Nope. People were always that dumb. In fact, it might have very slightly increased the average IQ by preferentially offing those stupid individuals
@@Mr1995Musicman well, I am going to r/wooosh myself here and just drop that it is impossible to change the average IQ by its very definition. It is always centered around 100.
@@pikadragon2783 it's so sad that half of us will always be below average.
@@pikadragon2783 It's not impossible. You would just need everyone to get collectively more intelligent. Not likely, but not impossible.
@@JCavinee That is not the point. Humanity did in fact get collectively smarter since the implementation of the IQ scale, as education improved overall. The scale is however defined to be always centered around 100. IQ 100 is THE mediocre inrelligent person right now. If you have an IQ of 120 you are smarter (at least by the scale) than a specific amount of humans, etc.. You can get smarter, but you can't push the scale. It is comming with you.
In my top 5 favorite channels on youtube. I truely appreciate this. I hope this channel never experiences a book burning, or a loss. These ideas are to be studied, pondered upon, and applied even in our modern times.
Have you ever considered organizing a few different programs with multiple videos.. & burning them to DVDs, & sending them out to different institutes? Such as schools, writers guild, directors etc. (Or doing so digitally & emailing with an adequate & eyecatching title) It wouldn't be overly expensive & I think doing so over a few years we could see a huge spike in these ideas being propagated & potentially sparking a surge of inspiration in young creative &/or scientific minds.
Fermi's solution to his own Paradox is that galaxy colonization is just a pain in the arse. That is hilarious.
Thanks ror another excellent episode.
FWIW: Assuming the solution to the Fermi paradox isn't simply "because there is nobody out there" I wonder if the answer might be that after billions of years of evolution solely on one's planet of origin species that might try moving in to space find they are so suited to their home planet that they are physically and psychologically incapable of leaving for anything other than the kind of short trips we have currently attempted.
Only a solution for non-technological species since any planetary conditions can just be exactly reproduced on a habitat or the need for them edited out of the genome
Anyone ever play Star Control 2?
That red glow over the planet is definitely some Ur-Quan tech
Thank you! I read Dragon Egg by Robert Forward in the 80's but forgot the name of the author and the book. I have been looking for it to add to my library for some time, and now i can.
Yeah, there are so many reasons to love this channel!
32:23 The Iain M. Banks novel "Against A Dark Background" is set in a star system that was long ago ejected from it's galaxy, having flown out far enough that there are practically no stars in the sky and all of the planets visited are within that system. It's never explained how it became colonized by humans in the first place and clearly it was long ago given all of the ancient tech that the characters come across that nobody knows how to recreate.
We're at the baby stage of the universe, considering the enormous timeline 'til heat death. Perhaps it's exceptionally rare for the conditions of spacefaring life to be met at this stage, and simply by chance the next civilization of that kind is so far away that its light hasn't reached us yet. Of course, the plausibility of this varies depending on the existence of faster-than-light travel, how much faster it is, and what kind of "great filters" might apply to it, if any.
Of course, my "baby stage" logic here is also an exercise in human pattern thinking, given the obvious lack of data beyond our own planet, and prone to being fallacious thus. After all, the prevalence of favourable conditions for such civilizations might be plotting quite differently from the age of the universe.
Love your work.
Thanks Darren!
@@isaacarthurSFIA can't really understand some of the words you say
There was a movie a few years ago about the Manhattan Project where a couple of the scientists were trying to get a meeting with the President to beg him to not use the atomic bomb because, "If you use the bomb you will give away the only secret worth keeping: That it can be done at all."
Another very good (although naturally audience limited, being a VERY adult story) post-collapse rebuilding civilization is shown in the graphic novel Tranceptor. (The second chapter came out a few years back, after about a 17 year wait, so the third chapter might come out any time now.) The first chapter takes place at a way-station maintained at what they call a mine. They dig tunnels through the ground looking for, in their case, internal combustion engine parts in the desert soil. (They seem to find them in groups, implying they're digging through the remains of a storage facility of some kind. Nobody mentioned anything about finding unfinished parts, raw materials, or any kind of forming machine.)
If you have a world surrounded by dead habs, having one deorbit every 100 years could reset progress. It would still be a slow march of progress to get to space before the main belt of habs crash at once.
*Isaac Arthur's channel is fabulous .* 💕
Here's a weird thought, if there were no birds or any flying animals on the earth, would man have tried to fly?
I figure we would, because we'd still see things moving through the air. Bubbles, seeds, leaves, etc. We'd have to work more from scratch since we'd have fewer biological inspirations.
yes though it would of taken far far longer to do saw without animals to take desgin traits and learn aerodynamics from.
Actually I think it would have happened quicker. Even cavemen saw smoke rising. Early inventors would have focused on that rather then ridiculous flapping machnes.
On this earth, flying is possible for some creatures due to the level of gravity and thickness of the atmosphere. For there to not be any flying creatures, some of these physical characteristics would have to be different.
Civilisations in those intergalactic voids will probably face distinct challenges to reaching humanity’s mid-late 20th century tech level. Like assuming they’re on earth-like planets, imagine the development of navigation without a big celestial map over your heads
Have only just found this channel and was wandering where to start as I’ve noticed they blend one to another, if anyone could advise me, absolutely love this man already.
No particular need to start anywhere specific, just pick a subject of interest, though newer does of course tend to be better done.
I'm sure you've noticed that though.
My solution to the Fermi paradox is that there are few civilizations within our practical threshold for detecting them currently in our position around the galactic core. I assume there are 10 or so, and more of them are concentrated near the core.
I don't think we've gone around the core once yet since modern humans even appeared.
So as our solar system swims its way up and down the galactic equator and around the core, perhaps we will eventually "swim" near core civilizations and the Fermi paradox will turn out to have been an artifact of when we started paying attention and where the few civilizations are to be found.
This occurred to me when I heard the podcast with Avi Loeb, which suggested Oumuamua was a navigational buoy, and it didn't so much pass through the solar system, as we "swam" *past* it. Perhaps we are approaching the suburbs of the Milky Way.
So we just ran a stop sign
Can we expect a ticket in the post lol
@@seansoraghan3245 could be worse- could be a Vogon fleet!
Everyone knows that if we attempt to leave Q will show up to stop us. 😉
with the very best digital space cage that 1987 discount SFX can offer :)
That won’t happen. If humanity makes it that far it’s because we have become enlightened
Why do so many people think that the Universe is "old"? We measure the age of the Universe to be about 13.8 billion years, and forget or disregard the fact that the Universe has trillions of years to exist, as we have no idea as to what could possibly stop the Universe from existing at all. It is true that at some distant time the last star capable of producing heavy elements will cease to exist, and then pretty much any Life will stop being created, but that is so long into the future that it does not matter to us or could possibly affect us. We exist because stars can now produce the elements of which we are made. This situation will come to an end when the Universe is old.
It can be said that the Universe came into existence a month ago, that is, it is young.
Uh oh... @33:47 you gave flat earthers ammo.... LOL
Heyyyyyy you didn't tell us you were going to do a new episode on our own little rock! What a nice surprise!
Also, what's the actual name? Terra? Earth? What are we using for the official name of our planet, I forget. Like Sol-Sun or Luna-Moon...
Feel free to invent your own!
Call it dirt
Botch planet: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
"A person dumped into New York city tries to find signs of intelligent life by going to Antarctica"
Seems perfectly reasonable to me, it's not like there's any of that in New York
If all the fossil fuels are exhausted its hard to believe a civilization could go from a wood burning or a pure bio-fuel based technology are not energy dense and would not be able to have a large energy base to restart an industrial revolution.
SECOND. Love you Isaac!
Edit: OMG. I'm a long time fan. This is the first ❤️ from you Isaac. Tyyyyyyyyyyy 😆
You are my favorite RUclipsr!
:) Thanks Akira, sorry its your first reaction form me, I'm sure I've read comments from you before, the UserID seems familiar, I just tend to read most of the comments after the first couple hours in my email inbox
@@isaacarthurSFIA and a reply. You made my year omg 😱
You've helped change my mind about humanity. I used to be doom and gloom, "humans bad".
I'm now 100% team "Gardener" and "live to 700 or die trying" by following rule #1, using enough brute force 😂
@@King_Dogspeed The comment definietly brings some extra cheer to my day, thanks Akira :)
I think this is the most likely "solution" to the paradox. Life isn't exceptionally rare, but space travel is prohibitively difficult. Life is trapped where it gets seeded. Going out requires a chain of inventions, a chain of exceptionally smart and dedicated people.
You absolutely need: computers & math (in one breath), life support, a good body, a generation ship, unimaginable goals and their accompanying demand/dedication/desperation. You don't just need to be space faring but you need to be galactic faring.
Computers aren't as necessary as you might think. I mean they really help get some things faster but are not a 'must have'.
math & science is definitely necessary but life support, "a good body", & gen ships definitely aren't. You can colonize with robots, you can self-modify for whatever environment, & you can use sleeper, seed, or data ships to colonize
@@kruk_7279 You're going to eyeball slingshotting around stars? **shivers**
Space-Whales
@@Yezpahr ehh, you know that your smartphone is way more powerfull that all computers humankind have when they sent people to the Moon?!
Do not forget the historically the industrial revolution started with water power using water wheels.
This episode strangely embodied the opposite of existential dread for me. Even if WW3, 4 and 5 came, even if we bomb ourselves into oblivion. The chances for humanity to survive and venture out into the stars again are not that low. Inspiring!
If there's a WWIII, you won't have to worry about another for a thousand years. To paraphrase Einstein, world war four will be fought with sticks and stones.
Maybe planets that don't have materials that allow the making of rockets... That could explain it, or planets with very high gravity, many reasons that could make space travel impractical for other species.
Any planet missing what's needed to make rockets is very unlikely to have any life at all.
It could be rich with life but missing dry land. Launching a rocket from underwater is not easy. Making fuel or forging metal isnt easy either but could be done with volcanic vents or something... how would a fish alien even discover fire right?
Lol im 23 minutes in and he pretty much just said that.
I swear if I hear the word "fermi paradox" one more time I'm gonna demote pluto from dwarf planet to oversized comet. We've been looking for alien intelligence for less than 50 years, and we've only searched like 1 septillionth of the stars in our observable universe. There shouldn't be any surprise that we haven't found anything yet, and it certainly doesn't warrant the naming of a paradox from our lack of findings. Just based on the shear number of stars in our universe, it is a mathematical certainty that life elsewhere exists. So please just keep searching instead of wondering why you haven't found anything yet after only examining a few million stars.
Btw this isn't aimed at you Isaac Arthur, I love your content. This was just a rant aimed at the scientific community in general
Well said.
SETI is wonderful, but we couldn’t hardly detect a civilization equal to our own, more than a few dozen light years away.
Drives me nuts. We have the technological equivalent to a grubby cup against the door, and are acting like it’s a surprise when we don’t hear anything.
Frankly the lack of a space based radio telescope array is disturbing to me.
I am not convinced that the people in charge are particularly interested in really listening.
Wow your voice is getting clearer and clearer
I can confirm that roasted rat meat and moonshine are great together.
Nostalgia for war does have the point that it is a likely cause for a Kessler Effect.
Nevertheless, I get a bit tired of hearing "civilizations self-destruct" themes. It is basically a contradiction in terms. I do understand that the 20th century provides a case in point - and, so far, the 21st century does not seem significantly improved in terms of social evolution. The so-called United Nations seems no more effective that the League of Nations. Nevertheless, most educated people believe that social evolution is a useful goal. So, while progress seems like "three steps forward, two steps back" ... I think there has been some progress. I am old enough to remember when psychology and social science was much cruder than it is today.
Here is something you may consider, book burning culture it self relies on the books, a forgotten forbidden knowledge is destined to be rediscovered.
The vast distances of space and time are the ultimate prison. Many will fail and many won't even try. I hope our species can overcome these barriers.
Hey dude it's all okay.
All we have to do is figure out how to go faster than light.
@@robbirose7032 Or inmortality
@@rommdan2716 yeah. Simple really.
@@robbirose7032 Right, and Dr. Alcubierre already cracked that one. Why was I worried?
@@slabrankle9588 exactly mate.
"An asteroid isn't a crisis, its a free economic boon," Famous last words of Peter Isherwell
you'd BETTER reference the South Park episode where the aliens literally imprison earth
Anyone else think they feel better whenever they see a new post from Isaac?
The idea of intelligent life arising in the middle of a intergalactic void is chilling. Not only would they need advanced telescopes to see that they weren't alone in the universe, but they would never even know to look. Building advanced telescopes would seem pointless to such a species.
I understand it's a terrifying thought for you but they wouldn't care and just live their life happy. Technology is also not needed to be happy or anything.
29:51 Wait that was you!? I found that concept in the Stellaris mod Gigastructures way before I found you on a Star Trek fanfic thread. I am impressed. You are very influential
Cosmic Voids...interesting concept...imagine the religions that came from a place so cut off like that...what society would be like🤔🤔🤔🤔
I always assumed there was at least one civilization who happened upon FTL by accident early in their development. They might even be what we would call a "dumb" species who doesn't care how or why it works, just that it works.
It could be even as simple as they have some unknown (to the periodic table or theories that we know of) to us element or material that naturally occurs on their world on the surface and you can pick it up without negative effects, oh and it happens to be a shelf stable energy source capable of powering anything (almost) to FTL ;)
These guys are the ones in SciFi that make us question how they got to space in the first place; only to find out they are the dominant power in the region due to exorbitant taxes on said material to the rest of the region. Thus we get a plot point for said SciFi show lol.
I have enjoyed this episode the most Isaac. thanks for the content.
Just no. That is basically impossible. While I'm willing to think even a "leftover" population might use ancient AI or computers... Consider that according to known science FTL is impossible, then to propose a civilization would accidentally find it... Might as well have wish granting genies in bottles. Pure fantasy.
@@squirlmy and thats why we all love sci-fi friend 😁
That book the Dragons egg was a awesome read. Loved it . Unfortunately I think it's out of print.
It won't be proven in any of our lives- but let me tell you all a secret;
Most life in the universe a) does NOT rely on killing to consume, b) they develop on rocky moons orbiting gas giants, c) their extremely thick atmospheres are rich in noble gases that illuminate their entire upper atmospheres, in 2 distinct regions depending on interactions between the moon and gas giant's magnetic fields, and D) most intelligent life stays planet-bound, even AFTER discovering the univers outside their thick starless atmospheres.
A life form originating on a neutron star might be able to tilt the magnetic axis away from the rotational axis, turning their home star into a pulsar, and surf the polar jets to reach space.
Prison planet Earth is one of my favorite thought experiments to play around with.
IMHO "the Mote in God's Eye" (by Larry Niven and jerry Pournelle) gives one of the best descriptions of an imprisoned Planet. Read it. Now.
"Our civilization collapsed and we sadly forgot how to make ethanol. I'd love to stay and talk about it more but I just realized I forgot to collect that jar of honey I stored in the ground last winter, I hope it's still ok!"
Thanks for the other excellent episode, Documentaries and other content are the reason content creators are much better then linear TV.
Wait ain’t planet 4546b from subnautica an imprisoned world? It has a giant gun that shoots everyone trying to leave quarantine of the carar disease.
"Imprisoned Planet" is a pretty good name for a heavy metal album
I wonder about those water worlds. They may not have easy access to fire yes. But what about biological materials?
Farming creatures and breeding them to have certain traits like produce a specific gas or a have a specific skin or shell or other material. After all many or our materials are made after natural counterparts or at least inspired by what is around in nature.
I can definitely imagine that being a way to create a kind balloon to rise above the water to carry thing high up in the air.
What i mean is even without fire they may have a completely different path of technological development that is hard for us to imagine simply because we had our path and didn't need to come up with a different one.
Is that Amish in the space habitat an original idea? That is such an interesting concept.
15:15 One example that the Finns used in times of crisis and was experimented around the world, was the usage of wood gas as fuel for vehicles.
Quite literally, you underburn wood and it produces a combustable gas, that has been used in cars and sleds.
Ita just like the endless from halo. Except they are imprisoned in a Large structure called halo. Do when are you gonna do a video about halo Arthur?
37:38 daaam dude is a warrior aaand space scientist/enthusiast ? when alien attack starts we need you to lead the resistance pal. TO THE VICTORY.
Love the graphics on this episode!
I don't think we are "imprisoned" on our planet but we are more far away of being a space faring civilization than we think. We just have to look to ourselves.
We are being told that a virtual ressource named money is everything to get in life. Destroying our planet and nature will be rewarded by economy and we are not scared to even kill each other for low reasons. Instead of knowing we take words for granted and only in the darkests moments we show what we are really capable of if we all work for a common goal.
The hardest thing to become a space faring civilization is that we have to change very much. In the first place we have to change ourselves and this is something only a few people can do and wants to do because most of the people don't like change.
Hey man, can you do a video on the fermi paradox and the dark forest, i just finished liu cixin trilogy and really would love to watch one of your videos covering the dark forest theory and the purging scenarios pressented in death’s end
Birch Planets?
So I have not watched that episode where Isaac first mentioned this idea.
Still it sounds like "Hey a Dyson Sphere sounds neat! But since we have the technology to build a Dyson Sphere; why not use the same technology to make something 10,000 times larger that has Layers?" For a civilization that can build Dyson Spheres; they are likely already space-faring and have colonized hundreds of planets before the first Dyson Sphere is started. If it is possible for a civilization; Birch Worlds would be only 10,000 times the work, and an unknown amount of extra time. With a swarm of a Billion Spacecraft that each has dozens of Assembler Robots and Humans Crew also? Birch World might be built in less than 5000 years...and provide living space for Trillions of Humans for millions of years after that = a really long term real estate project, and worth it if it is possible.
I’m still a proponent of the simulation hypothesis
4:42 Pollution, it always comes back, which includes space.
(with the exception of using vast amounts of energy or fuel to
literally rocket it out of the system or into the Sun.)
One of the best series on RUclips! Change my mind !
I actually danced a bit when I recognized the topic this morning. Waiting until tonight to listen. I just said openly f$%# yes it's 41 minutes long recognizing it now. Thanks brotha.....
Biofuels can be made of agricultural biproducts (like straw) in limited amounts. So biofueled tractors definitely make sense.
Appropos of nothing in this video, there is another excellent concept in the novel "The Mote In God's Eye" (by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven). In the novel a star system evolved in a dense nebula and never realized that there was a greater universe outside it. They completely exhausted all the heavy elements in their entire solar system and never attempted to leave it because why bother if all that is out there is endless gas?
"...Or some long-lasting anti-tech culture of burning books..."
_Looks nervously at certain places today_
We want to explore the universe, we can’t even take care of our very own, special, one in a billion, fragile and beautiful planet