The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2)

Are we the only living things in the entire universe? The observable universe is about 90 billion light years in diameter. There are at least one hundred billion galaxies, each with one hundred to one thousand billion stars. Recently, we’ve learned that planets are very common too. And, there are probably trillions and trillions of habitable planets in the universe. Which means, there should be lots of opportunity for life to develop and exist. But where is it? Shouldn’t the universe be teaming with spaceships? Let’s take a step back. Even if there are alien civilizations in other galaxies, there’s no way we’ll ever know about them. Basically, everything outside our direct galactic neighborhood, the so called “Local Group”, is pretty much out of our reach forever, because of the expansion of the universe. Even if we had really fast spaceships, it would literally take billions of years to reach these places, traveling through the emptiest areas in the universe. So, let’s focus on the Milky Way. The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It consists of up the four hundred billion stars. That’s a lot of stars, roughly ten thousand for every grain of sand on earth. There are about twenty billion sunlike stars in the Milky Way, and estimates suggest that a fifth of them, have an earth sized planet in it’s habitable zone, the area with conditions that enable life to exist. If only zero point one percent of those planet harbor life, there would be one million planets with life in the milky way. But wait, there’s more. The Milky Way is about thirteen billion years old. In the beginning, it would not have been a good place for life, because things exploded a lot. But after one to two billion years, the first habitable planet was born. Earth is only four billions years old, so there have probably been trillions of chances for life to develop on other planets in the past. If only a single one of them had developed into a space traveling super civilization, we would have noticed by now. What would such a civilization look like? There are three categories. A type one civilization would be able to access the whole energy available on its planet. In case you are wondering, we are currently around zero point seven three on the scale, and we should reach type one sometime in the next couple hundred years. Type two would be a civilization capable of harnessing all of the energy of its home star. This would require some serious science fiction, but it is doable in principle. Concepts like the Dyson Sphere, a giant complex surrounding the sun, would be conceivable. Type three is a civilization that basically controls it’s whole galaxy and its energy An alien race this advanced would probably be godlike to us. But why should we be able to see such an alien civilization in the first place? If we were to build generation spaceships that could sustain a population for around one-thousand years, we could colonize the whole galaxy in two million years. Sounds like a long time, but remember, the milky way is huge. So, if it takes a couple of million years to colonize the entire galaxy, and there are possibly millions, if not billions of planets that sustain life in the milky way, and these other life forms have had considerably more time than we’ve had, then, where are all the aliens? This, is the Fermi Paradox, and nobody has an answer to it. But we do have some ideas. Let’s talk about filters. A filter in this context represents a barrier that is really hard for life to overcome. They come in various degrees of scary. One: There are Great Filters and we’ve passed them. Maybe it is way harder for complex life to develop then we think. The process, allowing life to begin, hasn’t yet been completely figured out, and the conditions required may be really complicated. Maybe in the past, the Universe was way more hostile, and only recently things have cooled down to make complex life possible. This would also mean that we may be unique, or at least one of the first, if not the first civilization in the entire Universe. Two: There are Great Filters and they are ahead of us. This one, would be really really bad. Maybe life on our level exists everywhere in the Universe but it gets destroyed when it reaches a certain point, a point that lies ahead of us. For example, awesome future technology exists, but when activated, it destroys the planet. The last words of every advanced civilization would be: “This new device will solve all of our problems, once I push this button!” If this is true, then we are closer to the end then the beginning of human existence. Or, maybe there is an ancient type three civilization, that monitors the universe, and once a civilization is advanced enough, it gets eliminated, in an instant. Maybe there is something out there, that it would be better not to discover. There is no way for us to know. One final thought: maybe we are alone. Right now, we have no evidence that there’s any life besides us. Nothing. The Universe appears to be empty and dead. No ones sending us messages, no one answering our calls. We may be completely alone, trapped on a tiny moist mud ball in an eternal Universe. Does that thought scare you? If it does, you are having the correct emotional reaction. If we let life on this planet die, perhaps there would be no life left in the Universe. Life would be gone, maybe forever. If this is the case, we just have to venture to the stars and become the first Type Three civilization, To keep the delicate flame of life existing, and to spread it until the universe breathes its final breath, and vanishes into oblivion. The universe is too beautiful not to be experienced by someone. This video was made possible by your support. It takes at least 200 hours to make one of our videos, and thanks to your contributions on Patreon, we are slowly able to do more and more of them. If you want to help us out, and get your own personal bird for example, check out the Patreon page.

100 thoughts on “The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2)

  1. If we are the first, then maybe in the future alien civilizations could develop like us and we'll be the ones eliminating developing civilizations

  2. Aliens have influenced civilization within last 70 years crazy lot. They dropped their UFOs for us to reverse engineer. Boom, now we have insane hi tech smartphones.

  3. Why do we not see our Electro magnetic sphere as a really unique situation, we know that our world would not support life without it. Why do we think another world would have life with out its protection?

  4. Sorry if this comment doesn't really add anything to the topic, but is my idea or the space ship that travels outside the local group at the first minute is the same or a reference to the one in knights of Sidonia?

  5. I feel like 2 planets side by side each other fight space wars or star wars instead of countires in some far away galaxy

  6. Look if I was a space-faring supercivilisation and I found humans, and discovered they'd invented anime tiddies, but not made them real, I'd hide from them too. They disgust me.

  7. Sorry, Kurzgesagt @1:07 your negativity and pessimism is killing me. Google Alcubiere Drive. Downvoted.

  8. 2015: "It takes 200 hours to make one of our videos"
    Close to 2020: "It takes 1200 hours to make one of our videos"

    Keep up the great work 😀

  9. Only one life sustaining planet is allowed per dimension. Each one is trying to perfect intergalactic travel rather than inter dimensional travel. Thus we never cross paths

  10. 400B stars in the Milky Way = 10,000 stars for every grain of sand on earth? Might want to check your math on that at 1:12. I'm going out on a limb and saying there are slightly more than 40M grains of sand on earth.

  11. Well then. Here's my question, if God created the universe. What about the "others". The bible mainly focused on humans but what about the other lifeforms? Does that make them demons? Or there's something the Bible's not telling us. Is it even real to begins with. That goes for every religion that ever existed on this planet.

  12. There's a short story about this topic I find interesting.

    Somewhere in our universe, in our own galaxy, there exists a hyper advanced and cosmically ancient collection of beings that are called The Abyssals. They are similar to The Reapers from Mass Effect, in that they are extremely large, sentient starships that are artificially intelligent, hive-minded, machines.

    The Abyssals where created on a far away planet as artificial intelligence by an intelligent species on a similar level to human intelligence. When their creators created them, they built into their core functionality that they should do all they could do stop suffering.

    After trying almost everything, the artificial intelligences, statistically, concluded that the best and most efficient way to end suffering was to end consciousness, to end all life. This is because they found that a vast majority of beings suffered immensely, while few did not.

    So they destroyed all life on their planet and became The Abyssals. It was their last victims, the remainders of the biological civilization that created them, that gave them their name The Abyssals. They are those that throw all life into the abyss of death to end suffering. They do this because they calculated that of all of the lifeforms that had existed on their planet, most had suffered and few thrived. This, statistically, was what they concluded was the nature of consciousness; many more beings suffer in the set of all beings than those who don't.

    Once their purpose was fulfilled, they set out among the stars, now massive starships of death, to find more consciousnesses to add to their data sets, to determine whether or not their model of consciousness, that many-suffer-few-thrive, was accurate.

    They found that it was. So, the newly founded Abyssals set out to end all consciousness in the universe that they could contact, and they have thus far been successful in eliminating suffering, according to their model.

    The themes in the story are scary, real, and sad. Just on our planet, over all humans that have lived, over all the time we have been, 99.9% have suffered immensely and few have been truly, unequivocally, happy.

    Why should anything exist if such a disproportionate amount of beings have to suffer? What is the moral thing to do? Why does life follow this pattern all across the stars? Unsettling questions for sure.

  13. If you look at the lifespan of the universe we’re in roughly about the first 1000% of its life. So it’s not ridiculous to think that we are one of the first advanced species. Especially within our little corner of the Milky Way.

    Either way humanity isn’t necessarily a great example of a society so maybe it’s best we’re left alone for a little while longer. At least to a point we’re we don’t have evil people running our countries.

  14. Great video but honestly I really wish that some of the science videos would start off assuming that the audience has a certain level of basic understanding…that way I didn't have to ffwd through the beginnings of these videos where they are describing what a super nova is or how big the Milky way is ect.

  15. US : we might be the first most advanced planet and at one point if we're to advanced we will get eliminated
    Super advanced alien civilisation : *laughs in multiple timelines and dimensions*

  16. What if there were type 3 civilizations that battled it out on a galactic scale a billion years ago and died out until no-one was left because of engineered superviruses or something and then now we're here wondering where they are?

  17. We are definitely not alone. There could be a universe within a universe and the probability goes infinite. Or maybe we are created by the almighty to serve a purpose.

  18. Why we can't go to other planets with life forms: we breathe oxygen and other planets most likely don't have the right amount of oxygen and other gasses to keep us like we are now and maybe to survive.

  19. If humans started colonizing other planets and such would we eventually start doing what ants do when they go to other continents? Would we end up evolving races to different planets?

  20. How can life just appear from nothing? Even the most primitive single celled organism is highly complex and could not pull itself together from nothing; you have more chance of a car building itself. Stupid insane theory. Surely here on earth we would be able to observe life creating itself considering we already have life here and it is way more accommodating then the primordial soup of our supposed past? But we don't. We all follow a theory that basically says that the universe created itself from nothing and then produced life and continually improves it. This is pseudo scientific paganism, it is worship of the creation and is no different from what the ancient pagans thought except it is packaged in pseudo science to make it more palatable for 'modern' people.

  21. 5:06 hmm… reference to the video game Faster Than Light on the top left corner? x)
    Or maybe it's me..
    Always thought some of your musics had the same vibe..

  22. A stoner once told me. Think of a forest. Now think of an ant hill. Do you honestly believe in that entire forest only that ant hill exists? No, the forest has birds, beetles, grasshoppers, worms, other ants, and much more. Do they communicate or even know about one another? I dont know man * rips a fat one *

  23. What if life on other planets exists but they're wayy less advance than we think
    So then they wont be able to send radio signals n stuff
    Then we will all be forced to live a lonely existence without knowing about the life out there

  24. Our radio signals covered just 100 ly of course nobody has answered yet.
    Same goes for incoming messages, if there is any. Furthermore, what we see with telescopes is light that started (or was reflected) thousands if not millions of years ago, because light has to come all the way to us.
    Maybe some 100.000 ly distant planet that we see as dead and silent is actually thriving with high tech civilization right now.

  25. This is the worst channel I've ever seen. It's just all guess work with zero research it's mental. Thank you for wasting all our time buddy

  26. What if the light we see from other galaxies is just taking so long to travel that by the time they get to earth a civilization there has already started

  27. I mean if there's a civilization on the edge of the universe, what are the odds we as humanity could survive 45 billion years, long enough for their radio signals to reach us, and not go straight through a planet on the way over here?

  28. About aliens outside the local group and our inability to meet or learn about them
    1. They may already by hyper advanced and on their way here at light speed, it wont take billions of years it could happen tomorrow
    2. If we find a way to travel at light speed we can reach very far away galaxies before they recede; not the farthest but at least midway
    3. They may start doing something like blowing up dozens of stars or coating them in dyson spheres, even a billions years away we will notice that (the fact we cant seem to see that now is either another mystery of the paradox or we lack the technology or equipment to look that far away)
    4. Possoible wormholes (long shot but maybe not impossible)
    5. It may turn out that the increasing rate of expansion of the universe isnt as fast, or may turn around in the distant future or, long shot, a hyper race may be able to do something about it

    Generally speaking we might not have a chance of getting to the edge of the universe and realistically might not even get close but aliens from many distant galaxies have a good shot of being able to contact us increasing the base numbers of the fermi paradox by millions if not billions of galaxies

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