Crowded or Lonely? The Statistics of Alien Life

New research paper from the Cool Worlds Lab! Today we explore the implications of a classic result in statistics but applied to alien life for the first time. The result implies a startling conclusion, the cosmos is either teeming with intelligent civilizations, or we're essentially alone. Join us today as explore how this works and what the implications might be.

Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping.

THANK-YOU to D. Smith, M. Sloan, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, S. Brownlee, N. Kildal, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zajonc, C. Wolfred, L. Skov, G. Benson, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, M. Sanford, T. Donkin, K. Myers, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, J. Black, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, K. Weber, S. Marks, L. Robinson, S. Roulier, B. Smith, J. Cassese, J. Kruger, S. Way, P. Finch, S. Applegate, L. Watson, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, E. Dessoi, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, C. Hays, W. Evans, D. Bansal, J. Curtin, J. Sturm, RAND Corp., M. Donovan, N. Corwin, M. Mangione, K. Howard, L. Deacon, G. Metts, R. Provost, B. Sigurjonsson, G. Fullwood, B. Walford, J. Boyd, N. De Haan, J. Gillmer, R. Williams, E. Garland, A. Leishman, A. Phan Le, R. Lovely, M. Spoto, A. Steele, K. Yarbrough, A. Cornejo, D. Compos, F. Demopoulos, G. Bylinsky, J. Werner, B. Pearson, S. Thayer, T. Edris, B. Seeley, F. Blood, M. O'Brien, P. Muzyka, D. Lee, J. Sargent, M. Czirr, F. Krotzer, I. Williams, J. Sattler, J. Smallbon, B. Reese, J. Yoder, O. Shabtay, X. Yao, S. Saverys, M. Pittelli, A. Nimmerjahn, C. Seay, D. Johnson, L. Cunningham, M. Morrow, M. Campbell, R. Strain, B. Devermont, Y. Muheim & A. Stark.

REFERENCES

CHAPTERS
0:00 Aliens!
1:00 Jaynes' Experiment
3:33 What about Drake?
6:31 Birth-Death Balance
9:51 Bridging to Jaynes
11:04 Challenging the Optimists
13:17 Just Sample More Stars?
15:39 Disequilibria
17:22 The Case for SETI
19:31 Outro & Credits

#Aliens #AreWeAlone #CoolWorlds

[nikidino]

I'd like to mention that it's really nice that you do not use background music. It helps me to concentrate on what you say and your voice is so soothing too.

[JohnMichaelGodier]

Absolutely compelling and a fresh take on the Fermi Paradox that's going to give me pondering material for a good long while. For anyone interested in the possibilities of other life in the universe, this is a gem. And also, exomoons! We want exomoons!

[visvivalaw]

Drake never meant the equation to be used. He meant it to be an agenda for discussion at the astrophysics conference where he presented it.

[reiki-guy]

As an uneducated layman, I'm genuinely grateful for the way you explain your theories to the likes of me. Thank you, my friend.

[DavidGS]

The fact that we took 4 billion (with 1 Billion years left before life dies out entirely) years to evolve, 1/3 the age of Universe is a serious issue. Prokaryotes evolve very quickly; however, eukaryotes unambiguously evolved 1.6 bya, multicellular life evolved 0.6 bya, so combination evolution of eukaryotes, multicellular life, & intelligence is a great filter. We're lucky to be here.

[JonnoPlays]

"Cool Worlds searched for aliens and what they found was TERRIFYING"

What the title would have been if this was not a real science channel 😅

[jsb_running]

YouTube is either teeming with intelligent scientific channels or there are barely any.

Cool Words is the shining beacon on an otherwise desolate video sharing platform!

[kinderdm]

E.T. Jaynes thought experiment is the perfect embodiment of the quote "Once is never, twice is always." Unfortunately, we are stuck on the once is never part of it, both for stars with life in the universe, and in regard to civilization developing on a world filled with life.

[CoughSyrup]

The irony that Jaynes' initials are E.T. was not lost on me.

[jpx]

Been waiting for this update from Cool Worlds for several years. Probes the limits of academic literature relevant to the Fermi paradox and the question of aliens all the while steeping in the ever deeper wonders and mysteries of the universe - Cool Worlds doing what Cool Worlds does best.

[takanara]

I do think there is one major problem with this though is that while you have a 'death' term a more accurate term would be 'invisible' - in other words when we would no longer be able to detect a civilization with our existing telescope technology. One reason for that could be death, another reason would just be a switch to wideband radio communication, as well as more use of cables, etc. Like, even though we use way more communication tech today then in the 1960s the amount of 'radio light' we give off from more modern technology is probably a lot lower. And TBH I don't really think that if there was another planet with earth-like technology, we wouldn't see it. All the techno signature stuff is based on the idea of civilizations way more advanced then ours (i.e. dyson spheres, etc) But we don't actually know if there will ever be a dyson sphere around the sun, for example.

Honestly at this point, it doesn't seem like we would be able to detect a planet with earth level technology with our current "observation power" (other then, ironically, chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere - which we are phasing out anyway!)

[NewMessage]

As a great man once said... "Ack ak. Akk ACK-AKK!"

[javierolazaran]

The problem is that people think of the Drake equation as an actual attempt at prediction when it was just meant to organize a meeting agenda to discuss SETI.

[Nocturne]

This is a compelling paper – there are a couple of things I find problematic, you address some of these which can mitigate the 0% conclusion, and I am glad you addressed them:
1). As I understand, the formula supposes uniform galaxies across the universe, but we know they vary in both size and shape. Some may have a lot of life, some close to nothing 2). The theory supposes technologically advanced civilizations, but we might be the only ones who’ve gotten this far (though I find that hard to believe). There might be other forms of life we are unaware of, as you said. 3). The signatures we are looking for may be the wrong type. If aliens truly are out there, what are the chances they would be using radio waves? 4). We might be at the very beginning of the curve; earth is 4.5 billion years old. What if take-off on the curve is in another 500 million years?

[XostrichX]

Thank you for such great content. I love that you go beyond the typical pop-sci slop and actually get into the math/statistics behind your and others’ work—which I really love learning about. Also, as this video shows, I appreciate your realistic view of the universe—such as the true difficulties of interstellar travel and the likely rareness of other Earths and intelligent life.

I can’t wait to become a member of the Cool Worlds Lab when I start my new job after graduating later this summer. Keep up the awesome work.

[justbaqirr]

very rare to see a video mentioning aliens, while still grounded in reality

[Kroogles]

You are a boon to humanity. Thank you for seeking to ground a conversation widely polluted by people who are happy to say anything that gets them attention.

[Silvaria]

To me, the idea that we are all alone in this entire Universe is not terrifying but very depressing.

[tonib]

One thing that has always struck me is, we are looking, but we have only been looking for maybe a few hundred years in the optical, maybe 100 years using radio telescopes. This is out of 13. Billion years. Aliens would have to be relatively close, technologically advanced and be existing at roughly the same time to have overlap with ours. It’s that overlap I think will be the most important factor.

[Jolielegal]

While our observations can clearly rule out every planet having a technological civilization, it's still entirely possible that every suitable planet has life. The Earth could very well be representative of this; it has had life for almost its entire history, while only having a civilization for a very brief moment. In other words, maybe life is extremely common, and civilizations do try to emerge very frequently, but they are so short-lived that no one ever lives long enough on astronomical timescales.