We're Probably Wrong About What Alien Life Looks Like

Why is Alien Life so hard to find? Maybe we've been looking for the wrong signs all this time?

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0:00 Why is Alien Life so Hard to find?
1:40 How Do We Look For Alien Life?
7:22 Were We Looking For Life In The Wrong Place?
10:53 Alien Life Might Look Different Than We Thought
14:23 The Purple Earth Hypothesis
16:55 Finding Alien Life In The Not-so-distant Future

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[frujf]

The early start life got on Earth, and the presence of extremophiles both suggest that simple life will emerge whenever possible and may be rather plentiful in space. The criteria for the emergence of complex life, however, are much tighter. That's why it took complex life another 3.5 billion years to appear after the bacteria evolved. Complex life is what is most fascinating about alien life because it is a prerequisite for intelligence and technology.

[psigh]

The fact that most light from red dwarves (obviously) comes in the form of red and infrared oddly supports the idea of entire ecosystems with animals equipped with predator vision

[WouterVerbruggen]

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it

[tesseract_]

I'm rooting for black plants and purple oceans, because that'd be hella goth. 😅 💜🖤💜🖤

[Alex.The.Lionnnnn]

I love how excited the young woman is about her work. Nerds nerding out is awesome.

[snozzmcberry]

Lisa speaks about this subject with such joy and passion. It's enchanting.

[lamujerbrillante]

we keep searching for life that is like us, but if life can exist in places on earth that humans could not tolerate, then why couldn't there be developed life that don't require the same conditions?

[Alvie-bean]

I love this guy, he’s teaching me so much. I want to be a scientist as well

[stevenverrall]

Thank you for providing a link to an open-access paper. The public must demand that all publicly funded research is published open access.

If this means that authors and their institutions must pay thousands of dollars for each publication, then so be it. This will encourage more interdisciplinary collaboration and more research participation from undergraduate students.

More coauthors implies more cost sharing for risky theoretical projects that are unlikely to receive funding.

[bendybruce]

If you are searching for alien life look no further than the back of my refrigerator..

[hoi-polloi]

Scientists: There used to be purple life on Earth!
Laymen: So what happened to it?
Scientists: Cyanobacteria killed it by producing toxic oxygen. But don't worry, there may be purple life on other planets!
Cyanobacteria: “I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…”

[sstorm]

I have seen what looks like trilobites or isopods about an inch or inch and a half wide swimming happily in blood red sulphuric acid ponds and lakes on top of a Cu Zn mine tailings deposit. Could never find anybody else in the world who knows of this life form or Which is weird. If you work more than few days on a drill on this site, your clothes fall into pieces due to the acidic air on top of the pond.

[Mandate]

Our version of life has its sweet spot using a specific chemistry within a narrow range of temperature and pressure. But we don't know very much about how permutations of those parameters ultimately favor or hinder the development of other kinds of life. Are there other collections of chemical that will undergo abiogenesis in different environments? Could there be cold life on ice moons, metabolizing and reproducing super slowly over thousands and millions of years? Or as one scifi author put forth decades ago, could there be super fast life existing on the surface of neutron stars?

[musicsubicandcebu]

"O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams". (Hamlet)

[miscbits]

The reasons for Chlorophyll's light absorbtion spectrum are rather interesting

There are other forms of primitive life on earth that absorb green (blue/green "algae") and early earth oceans were likely to have been full of them - meaning chorophyll probably evolved to absorb what was available at depths sufficient to block UV penetration

On a more terrestrial note, there are some experiemnts to try and tweak chlorophyll into absorbing a wider spectrum of light - which would result in BLACK plants

[bartekrosner]

amazing and underrated video, glad I came across it

[lady_draguliana]

Modern Humans: about 300, 000yrs on earth
Photography: 2k yrs max... MAX... 🤷 if there's life in our own solar system, we lack the ability to detect it atm, much less lightyears away!

[rocksnot]

I'd be really surprised to find life that doesn't use water. It's the closest thing to a universal solvent that exists.

[gab]

I am now convinced the Artist Formerly known as Prince was an Alien.

[jmmahony]

Blue stars are big and hot, but burn so fast they have short lifespans. So short, it is unlikely life would have time to evolve there.