what astrophysicists think about aliens

👽???

References:

Music:
“Mafatshi Leh” by Al Massrieen

Script feedback from @COLORMIND.mp4 and @elliotsangestevez

Chapters
00:00:00 - Cold Open
00:01:28 - Introduction
00:03:40 - Part 1: Searching for Aliens
00:13:19 - Part 2: The Fermi Paradox
00:22:53 - Patreon Ad Break
00:24:23 - Part 3: An Alternate Hypothesis
00:33:29 - Discussion Question
00:34:39 - Final Thoughts
00:40:11 - Comment Sharing + Credits

[moonagedaydream-ohyeah]

Maybe Erikah should call Tyrone, and tell him c'mon, help you get yo ship🛸

[DarylHandsome]

There's insects that have lived out their ENTIRE existence in a person's house without ever encountering a single human. Universe big.

[robertfindley]

Humans have been around for 200, 000+ years and only passively looking for aliens in an extremely limited way for maybe 45 years. Asking why we haven't found any is like asking why your one-day-old infant hasn't developed an improved method for unifying Maxwell's Equations with General Relativity.

[monaoconnell]

Dr. Fatima, I am a 77 year old woman not in the best of health and have no scientific background. I humbly tell you despite my background, keep going on the net. I never stop talking. I don't think there is a great silence. Life will keep on keeping on.

[titi]

I am so ready to get paid to watch a 50 minute long video at my job

[loops]

When you said something along the lines of "tell me your answer to the Fermi paradox and I'll tell you your views about humanity" I thought to myself, "maybe they're just vibing." And then later you're like "maybe they're just vibing."

Maybe we could reorient around longevity rather than growth. Like trees. Stay still more firmly for more time. Deep roots. Deep integration with the environment. We move fast because we are adaptable. Maybe we can adapt to slowness and stillness.

[carlsanderson]

Dr Fatima - stumbled upon your video today and was so inspired! I teach a class of super bright primary school students in Western Australia and I am constantly trying to encourage them to 'think big' and ask really deep questions. You presented your video is such an engaging, clever way that was a perfect mix of hard science and accessible stuff for the rest of us! I hope the girls in my class go on to be as amazing as you - thanks!

[Lambda_Ovine]

I so hope that, if one day we manage to make any sort of respond it be "hi, we're just vibing, you?" and we can confidently reply "just vibing too"

[Arithryka]

My solution to the Fermi Paradox is that I think they're just too dang far away and there's too much stuff in the way and any signals we'd get are too weak and incomprehensible, and what this says about me is that my best friends moved away for college and I still haven't gotten over it. And yes, I do need a hug 😆

[popsicle]

lmao the “zoo hypothesis” about aliens intentionally keeping us in the dark is lowkey social anxiety, but on a universal scale. like we’re worrying that they’d wanna leave us out or smth lol

[MystiqMiu]

"You be good. I love you." is DEVASTATING. I mean, a lot of this video is but this truly boils it down. The empathy and transparency laid bare in 6 words is enormous.

[khashayarr]

"and so they decided to chill instead" is my favourite suffix to any fermi paradox solution.

My personal favourite formulations are the ones that go something like this: forever colonizing is so hard that you either give up and chill or die way before you detectably colonize space. Not because of energy, resource, and sustainability of growth - but because colonization itself is an unreasonably fragile pursuit.

One example is the pancosmorio theory. In essence, it posits that any “advanced” life developed on a planet is uniquely developed to survive that planet - therefore by definition, the environment of space is hostile (to varying extents) to all life forms because they did not evolve to survive it. Now since space is hostile, any space colonizer will need to avoid death using technology and will need to somewhat use technology to simulate the environment it was evolved to inhabit (let's call this Earth). Because of this dependance on home-world realities and their dependency on technology, as colonizers put time and distance between themselves and their Earth, the risk, severity, and likelihood of a catastrophic cascading failure of their technologies-of-survival expands exponentially since their ability to get resupplied, repaired, returned, reinvent, or innovate in time decreases as time/distance away from home increases.

Now I like to imagine that all colonizers just get tired of failing so miserably at some point and give up. I like to imagine a "generation ship" crashing into a star because of a cascading failure triggered when someone sharpened a pencil too sharp or something dumb like that. As the colonizing enterprise grows more ambitious, so does its fragility to the dumbest comedy of errors, wasting unimaginable (and growing) expenditures of time and resources each time.

I like to imagine that after failing to colonize jack shit for thousands of years, any wise alien would just chill out before throwing the last of their people into the death pit of space in pursuit of an existence they are inherently incompatible with.

[jaynemccabe]

I’ve been in a “learning rut” lately and this video absolutely pulled me out of it and inspired me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[randomgenretalk]

I think the solution to the fermi Paradox is a more simple and boring answer:
Based on how old the universe is, for a civilization of type 3 or higher to form, they have to develop at avery early stage of the universe which was more chaotic. And even if in the early universe there were habitable zones as we know today with the location of our earth as a reference point. Because of the expansion of the universe, i think those civilizations are outside of the observeable universe, if there are any. Also the expansion makes it harder anyway to find some and time dialation is also a factor, but also how much shit is there to observe. I mean even with advanced technology, to find something while the universe is constantly growing, time is different in different places and the sheer amount of things to look at. It's pretty unlikely for us to find anything, the odds are to wild. Would be still cool though to find some aliens but Orcas are also very cool because they are intelligent enough to hate rich people and that is based.

[poisontango]

I love the insights about music at the end. I recently recommended the YouTuber Farya Faraji to a friend as "the Dr. Fatima of musical theory, " and he talks in his video "Orientalism: Desert Level Music vs Actual Middle-Eastern Music" about how this colonial mindset of "correct" music and tones has not only limited westerners' exposure to new, creative ideas, but has also simplified othered cultures into one or two stereotypes, ignoring all the other diverse and non-Western creations they could contribute to, say, desert music. Kinda like how we might limit our ideas of alien civilizations or simplify all they could be and could value into one or two things that resonate with us!

Which makes me wonder if extra-terrestrials might prioritize creation over survival. This might be a bit more projection of my values onto the nebulous hypothetical of a new civilization, but I do like the idea that we work, sleep, eat, and otherwise sustain life in order to...do something with it? Anything. My parents worked their asses off so I could have an education that would let me work a little less than them, and create a little more.

Right now, I'm getting my MA in Medieval Studies. My dissertation is a deep dive into a pair of Latin poems almost no one's studied in decades, written by a nobody hundreds of years ago about a saint who I thought was huge, but who actually had a small impact in the broad scheme of medieval Christianity, except to her local cult. I'm pouring hundreds of hours into something almost no one will read about a thing that doesn't "matter" to some people, but I love that. I've found my cute, little corner of academia where I feel I can fit, contributing something, filling in one more hole so someone somewhere might have an answer if they dive into my rabbit hole. Maybe, Earth be some extra-terrestrial's hole of academia, and they'll care about translating the Anthropocene like I care about translating these poems. I don't know an end-goal to life beyond the creative endeavors that fill us along the way.

[dj]

I love how smart she is yet still has so much personality and style, I have worked in a medical research lab as a phlebotomist/lab assistant so I could draw blood and make culture swabs I just couldn't read the results (even though i knew how) for years and doctors/scientists like her are so rare.

[shreyarishi]

I'm so glad I found your channel
I always wanted to study astrophysics but because of the limitations of my brain capacity and finances never chose to pursue it. But finding you who brings such scientific nerdy knowledge to me along with my kind of politics is so fulfilling to me ngl. Thank you for existing and also for so many amazing yt channel and documentary recommendations <3

[TheLeksilijum]

I might start celebrating a day I discovered your channel as a holiday. You are an antidote to the algorithm.
All of your videos are so uplifting, and I am in awe of your capacity to emotionally understand the reality you are trained to analyze as a scientist.
You have a wholesome and humbling (in the best of ways) dimension of hermeneutics that I miss in works of other scientific communicators here on YouTube.

[lastkingssaint]

I'm a simple person, when Dr.Fatima posts a video, I like the video instantly. Excited for this information!

[stxrdusted]

As someone with a special interest in astrophysics and politics, finding your page has been like a gift from the heavens