There's a twisted part of my sense of humor that's just tickled by the idea of a bunch of aliens looking at our path to a DIY extinction event, going "Well so much for that one," and moving on.
So a fun quirk of Dyson spheres is that if there was one out there in the universe, we *wouldn't* know about it. After all, it's a star that's been completely encased so all of its light can be used. From the perspective of anyone outside that system, it's just be a black dot in space; there might be some kind of lights on it, but they'd be undetectable compared to the luminosity of a whole-ass star.
I hate to "ackshully" you, but this isn't entirely true. Due to thermal radiation, a.k.a. heat, there will always be some loss of energy radiating out into space. You could, in theory, build multiple stages around the star to recapture the heat put off by the previous stage, but each stage becomes exponentially more expensive for exponentially less energy. At some point (most likely after the first or second stage), it just doesn't make any logical sense to continue building more stages. This means that the "star" will still be visible in the infrared spectrum of light....something like the James Webb is perfect for looking at. We would know what we were looking at the moment we saw it, for what we would see is nothing but a massive infrared signature that doesn't seem to have anything backing it up. Plus, there is another problem to the dyson sphere theory that Slap and DK didn't talk about, and its that dyson SPHERES are impossible, simply due to how gravity works. It would be absolutely impossible to center the star perfectly within the center of the sphere, and even if you did, you would have to account for outside sources of gravity. This includes nearby stars, and even the galaxy itself. You would have to center the sphere, something that would be millions of miles across in diameter, on basically a constantly moving, infinitesimally small point inside the star in order to keep the sphere from becoming uncentered, and crashing into the star. Good flipping luck. Instead, a far more feasible option is a dyson SWARM. This is an entire fleet of solar panels orbiting around the star that all capture a significant percentage of light and energy from the star......but never 100%. There will always be some light that is able to sneak it's way past the solar panels. Ironically enough, this actually loops back around to your comment, in that the star wouldn't be deleted from the skies....it's that we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The amount of light that did sneak past the solar panels would be enough to fool pretty much every telescope that isn't the size of a solar system into thinking that it is just a normal star just a couple light years out. The only real way we would be able to detect it is if we caught it in the process of being built. Because we would see an extremely rapid, severe, and constant decline in the luminosity of the star. A dyson swarm is something that humanity itself could reasonably start building within the next hundred years or so, and we estimate that we could get a very significant swarm that captures something around 80 to 90% of the Sun's light in just a little over 30 years. A star doesn't lose 90% of its luminosity in just 30 years. It either loses it all at once in a supernova, or actually grows in luminosity over time as it ages. Thus, the only explanation we would have for something like that is a dyson swarm.
Terrifying, but also exciting. The concept of there being other life out there is indeed incredible and terrifying to comprehend. But even the notion we're the only intelligent life in existence? That means then that the rest of existence would literally be ours to mold into whatever we saw fit. And that to is incredible to comprehend what those that follow us, thousands if not millions of years down the line, might do.
Given the cosmic scale of time and space I personally subscribe to the notion that life as a concept is still in its very, *very* early stages when you consider the grand scheme of the universe and how long planets, stars, and galaxies might exist for in totality. The best analogy I can draw upon is this: think back thousands upon thousands of years to our early hunter/gatherer ancestors. Primitives who hadn't even dawned upon the notion of building dwellings to live in or planting and harvesting crops to feed themselves. One tribe on one side of the planet is going to be entirely unaware of the existence, let alone be able to comprehend, the existence of other peoples living on the other side of the planet. That is where we are in our development at this point, comparatively. We are just still too small, our science hasn't come far enough yet, and our ability to truly comprehend the scale of the questions we're asking is just something we're incapable of truly being able to grasp. And that's OK, because understanding such notions takes time. Just thinking of our technology, imagine how blown the minds of people who lived and died in 1924 would be by our progression and development in 2024. These type of things, much like our daily lives, are things that can only be taken slowly. One step at a time.
In the Vast time scale of the universe's life cycle- It's absolutely possible for tons of civilians to have existed, exist, and will exist. At different points trying to communicate. But, the chances of them meeting due to those efforts is: like hitting 1 bullet, with another bullet fired from Alpha Centauri
It's funny, I was just having a conversation about these very subjects a few weeks ago with some coworkers. I'm a fan of the idea that we're actually incredibly late to the cosmic game; I've heard it hypothesized that the universe was much more likely to harbor life in its first few billion years of existence, since all matter and energy would have technically been closer and more likely to intermingle. It's admittedly a little pessimistic thinking of the universe as little more than a cold, uncaring sandbox - but at the same time, that kind of turns all of reality into one massive archaeological site, y'know?
“When my teacher asked me, what I wanted to study? I said I wanted to learn Alienology. He just laughed…There’s nothing out there he said…it’s all just Dead Space…”
I started on adeptus ridiculous and found out I preferred detective ridiculous just because of the real world aspect and how terrifying the world is and now I'm here, I listen to all 3 podcasts still! But I really really look forward to this one every time a new episode comes out 😁
So one of the funny things about Earth-ending meteors is that we do have the power to stop them by hitting them early enough. The question is how much money governments want to use to shunt these objects away from us and how much we care that they would think there's too much speculation to "be prepared".
The fermi paradix always makes me think of Dead Space. Theres nothing else out there because everything that ever reached a spacefaring stage was killed by something incomprehensably horrible.
There was this band called Tub Ring that had albums called The Great Filter and The Fermi Paradox. They also have albums called The Drake Equation and The Zoo Hypothesis. They are all related theories. The fermi paradox is the opposing theory to the Drake equation
Yay I'm not the only one who remembers this band and albums. I literally posted pretty much your comment right before I saw yours. I loved this band so damn much back in the day
Do you remember on their website the had all that hidden stuff? Like they had individually highlighted red letters and if you put all those letters together you went to another website and then there was another puzzle from there to go to another website and another puzzle and on and on.
The thing about Space, when speaking about something as infinitely vast as the universe, any variable becomes possible but paradoxically also unlikely, Life is likely to exist but the likelihood of them contacting us specifically is unlikely.
A good book that kinda discusses this is 'The Singularity Trap' by Dennis E. Taylor. In the book the Great Filter for a race of our development is narrowed down to three options: 1) Humans kill Earth through environmental upheaval and global warming, 2) Humans kill each other through the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons, and 3) Humans develop "The Singularity', basically AI revolution. It's a good read, and if you get it on Audible it is read by Ray Porter who narrates most of the Andy Weir books among others. 7/10, would recommend
For those who haven't heard of dyson spheres, stellaris has this and so many more. then you have the gigastructures mod for the same game that lets you turn a solar system into a starship.
The one I like to think if there is other life, they paralell evolved into hermit kingdoms, not just hiding from humanity, but *_everyone_* else. Its better for some outside party to wander in, poke the hornets nest and directly learn their lesson, than being the lone probe, drirecting them straight back to your home. Oh shit i forgot we had a probe.
Fun fact: the planet's core actually *does* rotate. The rotation is actually what produces our magnetosphere. And if you think a Dyson Sphere is nutty, take it a step further with the idea of a stellar engine. It's an idea that you can harness solar radiation, with something as simple as a giant mirror or as complex as a laser-tethered thruster that feeds off the sun, to produce thrust, you could push the sun like a rocket & gravity would tow the planets with it, essentially turning the entire solar system into a spaceship.
You know what, in this case i firmly believe "ignorance is bliss" considering how much shit i have to deal with irl i simply am too busy to worry about the chances of an asteroid wiping out existence as i know it or a spacefaring species out there actively genociding other civilizations in the stars
In the Core movie, the issue caused by the core stopping is that the magnetosphere weakens and will eventually stop altogether. The magnetosphere protects us from most of the harmful effects of solar wind, and the Ozone also helps with that. Without the Magnetosphere, the solar wind would blow the atmosphere off of earth, irradiating all of earth and killing all but the most hardy of life forms.
My favorite possible solutions for the Fermi Paradox are: 1) Space is really, really big, alien civilizations are out there, we just haven't encountered them yet. 2) Aliens passed by Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, they found no intelligent life and haven't bothered to swing back by. 3) We're in the galactic version of 'that neighborhood' and no one bothers to come through unless they're looking for trouble. 3) We have nothing they would want or need, so why would they bother swinging by? 4) There's one or more extremely hostile civilization(s) out there and nobody does anything to attract attention out of a sense of self-preservation.(The Dark Forest) 5) A species that establishes colonies on other worlds eventually becomes other species due to different environmental pressures, then for a myriad of reasons, the original society completely implodes, leaving all of the colonies stranded and on their own. 6) They just don't know about us yet.
I’ve always been skeptical of Dark Forest Theory because with the sheer scale of the galaxy alone there’s no truly valid reason to war for resources or territory. Cultural, maybe, but not logistical
The idea that we haven't encountered other advanced life because we are simply the most advanced thus far is almost paradoxical to the human psyche. One the one hand you have the collective ego that like the idea: 'we are the best in the galaxy, possibly the universe'. On the other you have a much darker conclusion, that we, as a race, cannot truly work in unity for the betterment of our species and instead squabble and fight over resources and meaningless 'wealth', have not even fully utilized renewable energy, and have no real protection against natural disasters or world ending catastrophes and we are the best the universe has to offer! There is a part of the human mind that almost needs to believe there is something more advanced out there to give hope that we can find a way to protect ourselves from species ending threats that we know are ultimately inevitable. If they did it, so can we. The idea that all we have is what we developed so far is scary on an almost primal level, like we are basically children in a vast endless space trying to survive 🤷
Dyson spheres feels like such a specific thing, is it not possible that there are other ways to produce great amounts of energy that dont require these admittedly cool, but gigantic structures? Seems like a very odd category to measure how advanced civilisations are, no?
I don't think we're alone in the universe. I do think that we can't see any forms of life in other planets because they are so far away that when we do observe far away planets/stars, we are looking at how they look like thousands of years on the past. Aliens would need to somehow be able to see things faster than light, and be able to travel just as fast for us to have contact.
What's scary is, the chance for sentient life to develop is not 0%. We know this, because we exist.
"Earth: Mostly Harmless" - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"mostly"
There's a twisted part of my sense of humor that's just tickled by the idea of a bunch of aliens looking at our path to a DIY extinction event, going "Well so much for that one," and moving on.
So a fun quirk of Dyson spheres is that if there was one out there in the universe, we *wouldn't* know about it. After all, it's a star that's been completely encased so all of its light can be used. From the perspective of anyone outside that system, it's just be a black dot in space; there might be some kind of lights on it, but they'd be undetectable compared to the luminosity of a whole-ass star.
Imagine if the Bootes Void is a type 3.5 civilization. We just can't see it because all the galaxies are being used in that manner.
I hate to "ackshully" you, but this isn't entirely true.
Due to thermal radiation, a.k.a. heat, there will always be some loss of energy radiating out into space. You could, in theory, build multiple stages around the star to recapture the heat put off by the previous stage, but each stage becomes exponentially more expensive for exponentially less energy. At some point (most likely after the first or second stage), it just doesn't make any logical sense to continue building more stages.
This means that the "star" will still be visible in the infrared spectrum of light....something like the James Webb is perfect for looking at. We would know what we were looking at the moment we saw it, for what we would see is nothing but a massive infrared signature that doesn't seem to have anything backing it up.
Plus, there is another problem to the dyson sphere theory that Slap and DK didn't talk about, and its that dyson SPHERES are impossible, simply due to how gravity works. It would be absolutely impossible to center the star perfectly within the center of the sphere, and even if you did, you would have to account for outside sources of gravity. This includes nearby stars, and even the galaxy itself. You would have to center the sphere, something that would be millions of miles across in diameter, on basically a constantly moving, infinitesimally small point inside the star in order to keep the sphere from becoming uncentered, and crashing into the star. Good flipping luck.
Instead, a far more feasible option is a dyson SWARM. This is an entire fleet of solar panels orbiting around the star that all capture a significant percentage of light and energy from the star......but never 100%. There will always be some light that is able to sneak it's way past the solar panels. Ironically enough, this actually loops back around to your comment, in that the star wouldn't be deleted from the skies....it's that we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The amount of light that did sneak past the solar panels would be enough to fool pretty much every telescope that isn't the size of a solar system into thinking that it is just a normal star just a couple light years out.
The only real way we would be able to detect it is if we caught it in the process of being built. Because we would see an extremely rapid, severe, and constant decline in the luminosity of the star. A dyson swarm is something that humanity itself could reasonably start building within the next hundred years or so, and we estimate that we could get a very significant swarm that captures something around 80 to 90% of the Sun's light in just a little over 30 years. A star doesn't lose 90% of its luminosity in just 30 years. It either loses it all at once in a supernova, or actually grows in luminosity over time as it ages. Thus, the only explanation we would have for something like that is a dyson swarm.
@@Electru522nah my roof blocks the suns totally lmao - you definitely see the sun if you were trillions of light years away 🤓🤓🤓
there are two answers to this we are alone or we are not, both are equally terrifying
Terrifying, but also exciting. The concept of there being other life out there is indeed incredible and terrifying to comprehend. But even the notion we're the only intelligent life in existence? That means then that the rest of existence would literally be ours to mold into whatever we saw fit. And that to is incredible to comprehend what those that follow us, thousands if not millions of years down the line, might do.
Love that quote, yeah.
Counter we are the first or the last
Surprised you didn't bring up the Boötes Void when dyson spheres were brought, it's one of the largest voids in space
Given the cosmic scale of time and space I personally subscribe to the notion that life as a concept is still in its very, *very* early stages when you consider the grand scheme of the universe and how long planets, stars, and galaxies might exist for in totality. The best analogy I can draw upon is this: think back thousands upon thousands of years to our early hunter/gatherer ancestors. Primitives who hadn't even dawned upon the notion of building dwellings to live in or planting and harvesting crops to feed themselves. One tribe on one side of the planet is going to be entirely unaware of the existence, let alone be able to comprehend, the existence of other peoples living on the other side of the planet.
That is where we are in our development at this point, comparatively. We are just still too small, our science hasn't come far enough yet, and our ability to truly comprehend the scale of the questions we're asking is just something we're incapable of truly being able to grasp. And that's OK, because understanding such notions takes time. Just thinking of our technology, imagine how blown the minds of people who lived and died in 1924 would be by our progression and development in 2024. These type of things, much like our daily lives, are things that can only be taken slowly. One step at a time.
In the Vast time scale of the universe's life cycle-
It's absolutely possible for tons of civilians to have existed, exist, and will exist.
At different points trying to communicate.
But, the chances of them meeting due to those efforts is:
like hitting 1 bullet, with another bullet fired from Alpha Centauri
It's funny, I was just having a conversation about these very subjects a few weeks ago with some coworkers. I'm a fan of the idea that we're actually incredibly late to the cosmic game; I've heard it hypothesized that the universe was much more likely to harbor life in its first few billion years of existence, since all matter and energy would have technically been closer and more likely to intermingle. It's admittedly a little pessimistic thinking of the universe as little more than a cold, uncaring sandbox - but at the same time, that kind of turns all of reality into one massive archaeological site, y'know?
My favorite answer to the Fermi paradox is the Dead Space series
libera te tutemet (ex inferis)
“When my teacher asked me, what I wanted to study? I said I wanted to learn Alienology. He just laughed…There’s nothing out there he said…it’s all just Dead Space…”
And strangely enough lots of moons
Sounds like something an Alien would say…
Dead Space? Mining the Galaxy and fighting alien "undead".. LETS GOOOO!!!
Was he a Christian too?
@@zenora84 actually he was a realist
I started on adeptus ridiculous and found out I preferred detective ridiculous just because of the real world aspect and how terrifying the world is and now I'm here, I listen to all 3 podcasts still! But I really really look forward to this one every time a new episode comes out 😁
So one of the funny things about Earth-ending meteors is that we do have the power to stop them by hitting them early enough. The question is how much money governments want to use to shunt these objects away from us and how much we care that they would think there's too much speculation to "be prepared".
The fermi paradix always makes me think of Dead Space. Theres nothing else out there because everything that ever reached a spacefaring stage was killed by something incomprehensably horrible.
There was this band called Tub Ring that had albums called The Great Filter and The Fermi Paradox. They also have albums called The Drake Equation and The Zoo Hypothesis. They are all related theories. The fermi paradox is the opposing theory to the Drake equation
I love that feeling of related existential dread that comes from talking/ thinkint about how endlessly vast the universe is.
Don't forget about the hunter in the forest theory
The Fermi Paradox and The Great Filter are also great Tub Ring CDs! (And so is Drake Equation and Zoo Hypothesis)
Yay I'm not the only one who remembers this band and albums. I literally posted pretty much your comment right before I saw yours. I loved this band so damn much back in the day
Do you remember on their website the had all that hidden stuff? Like they had individually highlighted red letters and if you put all those letters together you went to another website and then there was another puzzle from there to go to another website and another puzzle and on and on.
The thing about Space, when speaking about something as infinitely vast as the universe, any variable becomes possible but paradoxically also unlikely, Life is likely to exist but the likelihood of them contacting us specifically is unlikely.
This was wonderfully explained guys, i've already seen a couple Videos os the subject but this was where I paid most attention.
I got sick today. Listening to you guys talk about interesting topics is helping keep up the amazing work
We are in an interglacial period. The Ice Age isn't over for this planet.
A good book that kinda discusses this is 'The Singularity Trap' by Dennis E. Taylor. In the book the Great Filter for a race of our development is narrowed down to three options: 1) Humans kill Earth through environmental upheaval and global warming, 2) Humans kill each other through the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons, and 3) Humans develop "The Singularity', basically AI revolution. It's a good read, and if you get it on Audible it is read by Ray Porter who narrates most of the Andy Weir books among others. 7/10, would recommend
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
Arthur C. Clarke
Love this concept so much. And honestly hoping to see more alien stuff from you guys! I always find these talks super interesting
I wanna think DK had Control in the brain cuss Bricky had been talking to him about it.
For those who haven't heard of dyson spheres, stellaris has this and so many more. then you have the gigastructures mod for the same game that lets you turn a solar system into a starship.
The one I like to think if there is other life, they paralell evolved into hermit kingdoms, not just hiding from humanity, but *_everyone_* else.
Its better for some outside party to wander in, poke the hornets nest and directly learn their lesson, than being the lone probe, drirecting them straight back to your home.
Oh shit i forgot we had a probe.
DK just got the smooth brain no thoughts perfect to tell stories too.
Fun fact: the planet's core actually *does* rotate. The rotation is actually what produces our magnetosphere.
And if you think a Dyson Sphere is nutty, take it a step further with the idea of a stellar engine. It's an idea that you can harness solar radiation, with something as simple as a giant mirror or as complex as a laser-tethered thruster that feeds off the sun, to produce thrust, you could push the sun like a rocket & gravity would tow the planets with it, essentially turning the entire solar system into a spaceship.
Surprised they didn't bring up recent fusion development
Ah. A classic. We're doomed either way🎉
You know what, in this case i firmly believe "ignorance is bliss" considering how much shit i have to deal with irl i simply am too busy to worry about the chances of an asteroid wiping out existence as i know it or a spacefaring species out there actively genociding other civilizations in the stars
In the Core movie, the issue caused by the core stopping is that the magnetosphere weakens and will eventually stop altogether. The magnetosphere protects us from most of the harmful effects of solar wind, and the Ozone also helps with that. Without the Magnetosphere, the solar wind would blow the atmosphere off of earth, irradiating all of earth and killing all but the most hardy of life forms.
My favorite possible solutions for the Fermi Paradox are: 1) Space is really, really big, alien civilizations are out there, we just haven't encountered them yet. 2) Aliens passed by Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, they found no intelligent life and haven't bothered to swing back by. 3) We're in the galactic version of 'that neighborhood' and no one bothers to come through unless they're looking for trouble. 3) We have nothing they would want or need, so why would they bother swinging by? 4) There's one or more extremely hostile civilization(s) out there and nobody does anything to attract attention out of a sense of self-preservation.(The Dark Forest) 5) A species that establishes colonies on other worlds eventually becomes other species due to different environmental pressures, then for a myriad of reasons, the original society completely implodes, leaving all of the colonies stranded and on their own. 6) They just don't know about us yet.
I’ve always been skeptical of Dark Forest Theory because with the sheer scale of the galaxy alone there’s no truly valid reason to war for resources or territory. Cultural, maybe, but not logistical
The idea that we haven't encountered other advanced life because we are simply the most advanced thus far is almost paradoxical to the human psyche.
One the one hand you have the collective ego that like the idea: 'we are the best in the galaxy, possibly the universe'.
On the other you have a much darker conclusion, that we, as a race, cannot truly work in unity for the betterment of our species and instead squabble and fight over resources and meaningless 'wealth', have not even fully utilized renewable energy, and have no real protection against natural disasters or world ending catastrophes and we are the best the universe has to offer!
There is a part of the human mind that almost needs to believe there is something more advanced out there to give hope that we can find a way to protect ourselves from species ending threats that we know are ultimately inevitable. If they did it, so can we. The idea that all we have is what we developed so far is scary on an almost primal level, like we are basically children in a vast endless space trying to survive 🤷
I'm actively playing destiny rn 16:41
Dyson spheres feels like such a specific thing, is it not possible that there are other ways to produce great amounts of energy that dont require these admittedly cool, but gigantic structures? Seems like a very odd category to measure how advanced civilisations are, no?
I don't think we're alone in the universe. I do think that we can't see any forms of life in other planets because they are so far away that when we do observe far away planets/stars, we are looking at how they look like thousands of years on the past.
Aliens would need to somehow be able to see things faster than light, and be able to travel just as fast for us to have contact.