The Future of the Search for Life
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
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Astronomers have found more than 5,000 planets in the last three decades, but that’s not nearly as exciting as potentially coming across the first extraterrestrial creatures. And we may finally be in a position to make that discovery.
Hosted by: Hank Green (he/him)
Thumbnail Courtesy: TMT Observatory Corporation
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It's weird to be at an age where I hear a future date and realise that I may not be alive at that time. I really want to know what those future telescopess find!
I've been feeling that way for a few years. I was hoping to see some really cool stuff growing up watching Star Trek TOS. The saddest part is that instead of a planet where diversity is the norm we're still stuck with so much hate.
same... i am not old ish, but i am still hoping i get to see something ground breaking before the ticker well stops.
@@rainydaylady6596 Saddest of all is so many young people grow up without learning to judge people based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
High oxygen level would be a sign of life, oxygenation would eliminate free oxygen within a few million years.
@@raybod1775 Life as we know it, at least.
1:04 the most logical answer to the Fermi paradox I’ve ever heard.
we are ants listening for the songs of angels.
My favourite explanation is a product of PBS Spacetime's "What If Humanity Is Among The First Spacefaring Civilizations?".
It's not satisfying on its own, but it's an additional factor that makes other probable reasons feel that much better.
I'm glad they pointed out some of the difficulties and possibilities of false signals and uncertainties.
One of my favorite Si-Fi movies is 'Contact'. A major milestone toward our search for extraterrestrial will be when we can actually image exo-planets. I hope I'm still around for that and the first human landing on Mars. I was very excited to witness our first lunar landing on July 20, 1969 just after graduating H.S. and now I'll be able to see our return next year.
I'm going to be very upset if we don't discover alien life in my lifetime. It is the one thing I am most curious about.
Same! I have good 40 years left i hope
I have 27 years, 1 month, 14 days, and 7 hours left. I hope they hurry up.
I have anywhere from 0 - 80 years left, I don't know where you guys are getting such specific numbers lol
There is no aliens! God created life on earth and that's it.
got 30 years left if I'm lucky. but just know, this universe is teaming with life. we've already found 1000's of planets. and our little telescopes can hardly see them in our own galactic back yard! actually we cant even really 'see' them yet. just bits of their signatures. i wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if our planet's bio signatures have already been spotted and pinned for further investigation by other more advanced life. and that realization is good enough for me.
I refuse to believe that we are alone in the Universe, just that life might be a bit rare, like maybe on 1 planet in a billion, in galactic scale, that's relatively rare, in Universal scale, it would be common, but of course we don't know. The question is then, will we ever discover alien life? Maybe, but if we could be so lucky to find life or traces of life or building blocks of life on just some of the moons in our own Solar System, it would be THE NR.1 GREATEST scientific discovery ever.
"More than five thousands planets" Wow! This is a lot! I remember the first one(s).
"In the last three decades" Wait... I resent that that one. 🤨
What I would love to see is observatories built on the dark side of the Moon and networked together.
The _far_ side of the Moon. The Moon doesn't have a dark side any more than the Earth does. It has a night side and a day side.
@@AndrewTBP I stand corrected.
I would still love that array of telescopes, though.
The thing with studying atmospheres is the best we can get is "highly probable". Only "intelligent" life could send signals or show signs of life "beyond any doubts" and those have abysmal odds. Even at that scale.
Still. Exciting stuff! Keep on going researchers.
Let's hope we don't destroy ourselves before we can get to those distant worlds.
or the distant worlds destroy us
It's amazing most people who say that indentify with a certain ideology and believe everyone else in wrong.
We have trashed the planet by land, sea and in orbit. We are proceeding to do the same to the Moon and Mars, albeit at a much slower pace. After 300,000 years we are still like monkeys in trees trying to work something out. We need to evolve much further before contacting other beings. But unless we make drastic changes now, we have maybe 10 years at best before the planet becomes uninhabitable. So ET can breathe a sigh of relief.
@phapnui …. I agree except I give us 100 years. But, we are quickly headed towards humanity’s “great filter”
@@SMaamri78 depends on when the nukes start flying. Could destroy everything just because someone has a tiny ego but enormous world destroying power
Telescopes are our starships. We may not ever be able to travel the stars like in sci-fi, but we can do so much with telescopes thankfully. I really wish we would prioritize many more telescopes and get the luvoir up before 2040!
I had my eyes closed and heard you talk about the “Play Doh” telescope. I think I should probably lay down for a while.
Me 2
I'm relieved I wasnt the only one hearing this
It's named after the host of Science Friday.
Hey Hank, i know you love learning. You can say Chile like the chileans if you read it backwards "Elihc" then keep that "E" sound (phonem) for Chil"E" instead of Chil(ee, ɪ). Hope you like it, if you do, try it for the next video!!
Great video, Hank, but I'd say that the greatest moment in human history will come when we stop destroying the only habitable planet we know. If we ever have a convo with aliens I'm sure they'll ask why are we not taking care of our green jewel. We don't even have an answer for that.
The calendar looks great 👍
There could actually be alien life all around us but if they're light has to travel a thousand light-years to get to us we wouldn't see it
1:45 , I understood that Stargate atlantis reference.
This is so awesome!
Fantastic
If there is any life on another planet, one thing is for sure. They will all start as simple single cell organism. How ever what they will evolve into is where things get complicated.
Just the probability that one single cell organism will engulf another to form a complex organism with a nucleus is extremely low, and even for those to grow into multicellular is even lower than that. Everything from the amount of energy from their star to the gases in the atmosphere to the geography of the surface of the planet will make a huge difference as to where their evolution will take them.
I wouldn't discount convergent evolution.
And even prokaryotic life would be extremely interesting.
thank you
The future of search of life AS WE KNOW IT FROM EARTH would be the correct title
LITERALLY WAS JUST LOOKING FOR THIS YESSS
Thumbnail: "Could this find life?"
My first thought: "Maybe. Let's get a bird up there and see."
Thanks 👍
If we find a planet with a heavily polluted atmosphere, does it count as harboring an intelligent species?
Depends. Do they have a media and political apparatus spending billions on preventing anyone from demanding change?
no, not really. Volcanic eruptions also produce pollutants, so if an earthlike planet has a pollutant signature, it could be just a volcanically active planet
I really hope we can set up some sort of system to use our sun to create an Einstein ring. Like... Please do this before I die. I want to see alien worlds in detail. I want to experience that moment when we conclusively prove we aren't alone.
They did a video about why that's impractical. You'd only be able to look at one star, to focus on another one you'd have to move the secondary mirror millions of miles.
It's life Jim, but not as we know it
not as we know it, not as we know it
It's life Jim, but not as we know it
not as we know it, Captain
Esperare con mucho gusto! Love from México baby
Go Go Sci Show!
Forget space. We should be trying to find intelligent life here.
Lost cause!
Counter point: since we didn't find any here, time to look outwards.
@@drasco274 or are we simply looking to see if everyone else out there is as dim as we are?
Still searching
Not gonna happen
We're going to have a VERY hard time if we end up discovering (or getting discovered) by a form of life that does not have one single solitary thing in common with ANY of the lifeforms on this planet. We'd have literally no idea what we were looking for
Dark matter aliens.
Pretty safe in saying that that’s not going to happen… If you consider all the elements, events and complexities that happened which led to humans emerging I’m pretty confident that we are more than likely the only intelligent life capable of space travel in the entire Milky Way galaxy… unfortunately…
Like me and a potential life partner 🤷
@@Bowie_E 🤔
Or they could end up treating us like the first Colonist treated the natives.
Murdering most of us horribly, and possibly enslaving if they feel like we could be of use.
Of course we have to look for life as we know it. How would we even recognise life as we *don't* know it?
Can we find planets, or detect possible life on planets, whose orbital axis goes through us? Such planets don't block their star, nor does the starlight get doppled.
0:22: 🔍 Scientists are using advanced telescopes to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life by studying biosignatures in the light emitted by distant planets.
2:36: ✨ The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is targeting hot gas giants and has spotted water and carbon dioxide, proving its effectiveness. When focusing on habitable rocky worlds, the telescope aims to detect atmospheric biosignatures such as oxygen and methane that could indicate the presence of life.
5:03: 🌍 The search for life beyond Earth involves looking for exotic atmospheric biosignatures that indicate the presence of living organisms.
7:31: 🌍 Different types of biosignatures that could indicate the presence of alien life on other planets.
10:03: 🔍 Finding alien life requires identifying a suite of biosignature signals, and astronomers are using powerful telescopes to search for them.
Recap by Tammy AI
Cool video!
Hank, I can’t tell how excited/concerned you are without you grabbing your hair. Please carry that over.
🤣🤣
After discovering alien life, we do what? Anything. Because those worlds are so many quadrillions km away, it's impossible to say a signal meaning HI and wait the response who will take more than a lifetime.
We probably just watch as closely as we can. Maybe we could get a probe there on a reasonable enough time line.
@@sodapopjones260 isnt thats the problem? How we should get a probe there in a reasonable timeline. Wouldn’t it take thousands and thousands of years and then we cant stop it anyway when it finally reaches its destination?🤷🏻♂️
@@Makabert.Abylon if it was too far away or we only use the same types of propulsion we've previously used, that would be the case. If our space industry matured enough, there are faster means of propulsion available. Even a craft flying past it would still get a closer look. They could design the probes they send to slow down and enter orbit around the planet too, itll take aot more fuel, but we have plenty available to us, especially for the only other planet in the universe discovered to contain life.
Perhaps it would be easier/cheaper to first rule out planets that probably do not have life, then plan expeditions to the other planets.
Or, we could focus our attention on biosignatures that probably indicate life, even if there are known life forms that do not emit such biosignatures. Then we could try to study the life on those planets and thereby gain additional insights as to biological life in general, which could be used to inform our search for life elsewhere.
Now someone come up with a propulsion system that can obtain light speed yet carry life.
Not possible. If we were to create a ship that could do 99% the speed of light, there is no one stupid enough to put advanced life on that vessel.
@@iwantmykidssusan4941 It would take an infinite amount of energy to make an object reach the speed of light
@ ItsJustAJetta …. Then, what if you hit something. Something as small as a pebble? That would be disastrous.
@@SMaamri78 The big bang
Cool.
It is good that all this effort is being put towards searching for et life.
For eventually man will get weary of searching, and finally come to the realization that it is not Intersteller, it is Intrasteller!
Though scientists will continue to stick their heads in the sand, and like a religion, believe that there is a Star Trek universe.
Or, maybe begin to awaken to this greater being dwelling within us, residing in a dimensionally greater universe within consciousness, where all the alien life is to be found.
This world and universe is not your true home.This is a schoolhouse for image making.
So I present to you now Neville Goddard's hypothesis, where Earth is a LIFEBUBBLE.
According to Neville, life is the sole activity of Imagination, who is an actual being, dwelling in a dimensionally greater universe within consciousness, and is presently dreaming your life.
And since life is the sole activity of imagining, you aren't going to find life outside of the Lifebubble, no matter how many space probes are launched, to go and seek for it.
Questions for mainstream science to first ask, before spending billions on constructing an et life-seeking space probe:
*What is life?
*How does it arise from inanimate matter?
*Does life always come from previous life, and unbroken thread?
*Could consciousness and life ever be separated?
The answer is quite shocking, though it explains everything going on around you.
Imagination is meditating your life into existence.
Think DOCTOR WHO, and his phone booth. Step into the phone booth, and now you're in a vastly greater room, which defies the laws of physics!
There are worlds within worlds, and you are heir to all of them. Neville
Because of childhood brainwashing with media propaganda and movies, even top scientists jump to the conclusion, that there just HAS to be life in outer space.
We have been indoctrinated to believe in e.t. aliens since childhood. It has become a type of religion. Then it is reinforced by endless science fiction shows, and CGI effects.
Though so far, aliens only exist in the minds of imaginative and artistic humans, who are continually casting forth their CGI enchantments.
For life is a very rare thing in the cosmos, as in nonexistent?
Why does Neville say that? Because you are the light and life of the world. As in a dream, so too here. You are its operant power, it doesn't work itself.
The Earth could be the only place in the universe that could cradle this life experiment.
Why? Because all of life begins and ends in you. Imagination is awakening from a long sleep.
A planet having the right 'building blocks' for life, orbiting in the Goldilocks zone, does not automatically mean that life will arise.
Just look at what we've discovered so far. There are unnumbered examples of planets being in the 'Goldilocks Zone' around their respective star.
Though, none have been found to have the right planetary configuration to support life, when compared to our solar system.
For instance, Jupiter and the gas giants, continually sweep the area clean, taking the asteroid hits for us, and have precision orbits to do so.
Any farther away, and life would be snuffed out. Any closer, and their gravitational pull would tear us apart.
The Moon is also precision in its size and orbital distance. It, and all of the planets are supportive in protecting life here, though still are dead as dead can be.
Could it be true that our universe is just be-bopping along to the laws of physics, and is too poor to produce even one seed on its own? 🙏🧞🐛🦋
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
please tell me you said "more than a puddle jump away" as a stargate reference =P
I was expecting a mention of the Carl Sagan observatory.
Is there really temporal changes due to seasonality on Earth, after all, it is simultaneously summer and winter in opposite hemispheres. Does this not cancel out the effect overall?
I do not have any actual data to back up the statement that I'm going to make. Never-the-less, there should be SOME sort of variation. While it's true that one half of the planet has winter while the other half has summer it is also true that those hemispheres do not have an equal distribution of land and biomes. For instance, the northern hemisphere has much more land at high latitudes than the southern hemisphere. I don't know how those differences would show up in the data but it should be a detectable difference (assuming the instruments are sensitive enough of course)
There is if looking down from above (below/north/south).
It's harder to find systems in that orientation, but eventuality.
Do we use this method on our planet for base statistics?
If not I'm interested lol
Hwo can you detect seasons on the planet if youre only able to see it when he goes in front of the sun? wouldnt be always the same season detected?
That's the easiest but not the only.
So wouldn't plants on a planet orbiting a start producing different strengths and frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum than our own star, act differently. Would they still be identifiable the same way?
Spank the Hank~
As soon as those NIMBYists realize that the TMT isn't a "colonial" project, but rather something that generates knowledge that will benefit everyone (and grant prestige to the locals), the sooner the TMT can be built and fulfill its role in the search for life in the universe.
What happened with the Sagan space telescope?
Very interesting... But where in the video was the observatory from the thumbnail? Did I just get click baited by scishow??
What is that building??? What is the answer to the question in the thumbnail regarding said building!?!?!?
I must knooow!!!
Look up Thirty Meter Telescope. It looks like a rendering of that.
are there any infrared pictures of earth?
id like to see infrared plants.
Yes. There are satellites that photograph Earth in infrared all the time.
Landsat satellite data is downloadable and has infrared bands as well as optical bands. I'm sure there are others.
Animals and humans glow in infrared
Of course the video is made before JWST confirmed it's first exoplanet (and an earth-sized one at that).
Can we confirm if a planet is tidal lock or the axial tilt?
I wouldn't get to excited. If we by some miracle find what we think may be intelligent life several thousand or million light years away we'll never meet them. Would take hundreds of thousands of years to travel there
it can find life if you stand in front of it
Yeah but we looking for "" intelligent "" life
@@indianastanlol
Imagine, 50 or 100 years from now if we discover that there is alien life out there somewhere (or at least all signs point to that conclusion), so much industry would be completely rerouted to reaching or at the very least contacting.
It could mean a complete redirection of our species' goals.
Hopefully the alien dolphins discovered radio and give af about what we have to say
What kind of gas signature does earth have? Since most of the atmosphere is nitrogen.
N2, along with CO2, is not very interesting because it's so inert.
Based on previous data- Aliens will be crabs.
Basically it's detecting alien farts
My guess when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial life, it is my guess that it'll be never. I suspect we are alone in the galaxy or mostly alone. I think we'll find a few probable signals, but nothing definitive.
Any life at all, or complex life?
@@michaelmicek I think microbial life is uncommon, with complex life being exceedingly rare. If we find life on Europa, that belief will change.
@@MonCappy I agree, but the question before us is whether even microbial life exists off earth.
(Europa is interesting, but since it's not in the habitable zone, not finding life there doesn't mean much.)
There's a big difference between "alone" and "mostly alone".
WHERE IS CAITLIN HOFFMIESTER ???? what have you done with her ?
She's still in the credits as an executive producer.
As Stanton Friedman said,"SETI: Silly Effort To Investigate"
Way to quote a crackpot.
I predict that within the next 100 years we will confirm life on other planets... as to whether there will be life on ours is still up for debate...
@ T Eugene …l There’ll be life. Just not human life.
@@SMaamri78 point taken.
Sadly if we cant communicate with each other i very much doubt we will understand anything alien, even if its broadcast right at us
When I watch videos on finding alien life, I get the feeling we're assuming aliens out there (may they exist :)) don't have any technologies to shield themselves from us. Next question: what would it take for the scientific community to accept a signal as evidence of conscious alien life? I feel like we, as humans, lack a little self-reflecting on whether these aliens really want to show themselves to us in plain light
The technologies needed to hide your planet's life signatures can easily be put into the realm of space magic, imo. Even more so when you don't know which direction you might be watched from, so you need to do it in every direction all the time. I mean, a proper, full Dyson Sphere is pretty much space magic, and that's still easier to achieve than covering all the ways we could detect alien life that Hank has listed in this video (while leaving it's own tell-tale signs).
Also, due to the fact that light has a limited speed and we're thus observing a planet's _past,_ any alien civilisation with that tech must have had it for longer than people have been around, or they won't be able to hide from our prying eyes _today._
For anyone really interested in the critical thinking that goes into the search for ET i HIGHLY recommend checking out John Michael Godier’s channel on RUclips. Mind blowing though processes on every aspect of space, time, and alien life
Our first thought on alien contact: how do they taste? When it turns out they're very hostile, they'll be asking how do humans taste.
Any life we find will only be non intelligent life.
its also crazy to think that infrared light is so healing to humans as well.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for extraterrestrial life to be found, particularly of the intelligent variety. The chances are likely to be ludicrously small, given the extraordinary improbability of our existence. Where are all the aliens? We may be it! At least in this galaxy.
Definitely agree for intelligent life, but prokaryotic life surely has many fewer filters so is somewhat plausible.
And it would provide a data point as to how common life is, and provide a destination for interstellar travel (if that ever became possible... unmanned missions maybe in the next few centuries) so pretty exciting.
@@michaelmicek Agreed. Pond scum would still be extraordinary! ; )
I hope we don't use ourselves as an example of intelligence life
Finding aliens would be catastrophic. We can't even live peacefully with one another.
They're not talking about intelligent life.
Have we, as a species, come up with an international agreement on what to do like, when we actually find life? Or when life finds us?
Contrary to popular belief, such an agreement is not useful or needed. The distances involved are so mind numbingly huge that there will be zero interaction for a very, very, very long time. I hope in my lifetime we discover extraterrestrial life, but any communication with aliens won't happen until after everyone alive today is long gone.
And if aliens physically visit Earth within the next thousand years, their technology will be so ridiculously ahead of ours that any international agreement we have amongst ourselves will be nothing more than an itsy bitsy teenie weenie curiosity.
Well, the ability to travel to another star is a long way off.
i find the frequency of "encounters" or such "coincidences" go up (increasingly) exponentially instead of linearly/constant hypothically via a wave-system medium (somewhat-to-often analogous to water for ocean waves). Specifically of which, proportional to e^x inclusively.
That's some mighty good complete gibberish.
And you spelt "too" incorrectly in the bracket part of the meaningless rant
he said fun-"j"-i and we cant let hat stand
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
Will they tell us if they find it, though... 🤔
Earth scientists don't know what is in the Amazon rainforest nor the bottom of the Ocean. Looking for life on another planet, don't hold your breath.
If one day we detect city lights on a planet through a telescope, that's definitive proof that there's life. Without needing to even see the beings or inhabitants of the planet.
Look up the canceled NASA Terrestrial Planet Finder and its follow on. We'd be a lot further in SETI and Exoplanet discovery if it had not been canceled.
1) winter/summer flips due to tilt, so only if there is a tilt to the planet.
2) we are virtually alone, we couldn’t communicate with anyone unless they come here and share information, do we really want that? Especially since we are only 100k years old with a beautiful almost virgin planet
Can we smart people collectively decide to live somewhere together?
How will you determine who's smart enough? What kind of smarts? Book, street or a combination of things? I know I'm not going to be on the list and that makes me sad. 😟🤗🖖
@@rainydaylady6596 questions like that make you smart.
Farnsworth's smell-o-scope is the only way forward
When will we hear intelligent alien life radio signals? As soon as we build a radio telescope on the far side of the moon. The moon will insulate the telescope from all but space probe radio signals from Earth. The allocated bands for radio astronomy in the US allocations is dismally tiny, less than 1% of what's used. The atmosphere is also really good at reflecting & absorbing of radio frequencies. On the moon, there is no limit to what signals can be heard because no atmospheric resistor gets in the way. Of course, other science can be done with this radio telescope, but we'll pick up what's there, all of it.
Let's hope the universe is lifeless, let's hope that the great filter is behind us.
When we went to the moon “we might find life or origin”
When we send probe to mars “we might find life”
When we launched Hubble “highly chance to find life”
When we have seti “we might just get signals of aliens”
Launched jwst “sure find life just a matter or time”
Now this? Take a rest. We will never find life. Too vast and huge to even put throw a dart and land on one with life if it were to make into a huge map
The thumbnail shows a picture of the future thirty meter telescope captioned with "could *this* find life?" but the telescope is never mentioned in the video. the giant magellan telescope is mentioned for all of one second and the video is focused on entirely different classes of instruments.
Not what I was expecting.
My friend just bought one of those things A(the thumbnail) it’s an automatic kitty litter cleaner 😂😂😂
If it could, they wouldn’t tell us cattle.
The discovery of extra terrestrial life would never be “the most important discovery in all of human history.” Steel is the most important discovery in all of human history.
The universe is a very lonely place.
ashtronomers
Imagine when we finally do come across aliens is going to change the world. Hopefully we come together instead of fight
coulda shoulda woulda.
perhaps we are putting so much emphasis on space observation and exploration being about finding alien life that we are essentially damaging the field and setting ourselves up for disappointment. The more megaprojects (like kepler) fail to yield results, the less public interest will be in space as a whole...
Seasonal variations are a pretty weak idea. Most planets don't even have seasons because they rotate in the same plane as their orbit. We have no idea whether there is any correlation, positive or negative, between life and seasonality. Raising and lowering the temperature on an intermediate-term basis can change the equilibria of all kinds of chemical species, change states, etc., so seasonal atmospheric change shouldn't be at all uncommon, life or no. Bad idea, cut their funding.
Wonder what our silicon based AI will poop out, human bones! Every speck is on a spectrum somewhere.