Neil deGrasse Tyson: Could Aliens Be Made of Pure Energy?

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[StarTalk]

*New Video-Neil deGrasse Tyson: Could Aliens Be Made of Pure Energy?*
A fan asks if an alien species could exist as pure energy, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explores a potential drawback to energy-based life forms. Comic co-host Eugene Mirman just wants to know if you could eat them. Enjoy this StarTalk Radio “Behind the Scenes” Cosmic Queries video. Watch now:

[ASIRA]

"we are getting invaded by aliens!"
"what are they made of?"
"pure energy!!"
"everyone! take your spoons!!!"

[AlphaFoxDelta]

My only idea is, and from an extremely human and biased perspective, that they use waves to store information. To be more specific different frequencies to represent a bit or multiple for a byte. I'm a programmer so I can only use what I know to guess what it may be like going off of what I know... perhaps they would use a high frequency wave to represent a 1 or ON bit, and a low frequency to represent an OFF bit. They could somehow couple these differently oscillating waves into strings of 8 bits or a byte, and then confine trillions upon trillions of these bytes to form storage for their consciousness/memory. Confining these waves into an enclosed space would be another thing entirely... maybe they would use an interference pattern to confine the waves, idk... it's millions of years away how should I know lol

[bmx]

It is had to imagine a form of intelligent beings made of pure energy, but imagine trying to explain the complexity of the rover mission to mars to a scientist from the 1800s, sure, he'd have some understanding of physics etc, but overall he'd be coming out of his element in terms of understanding this. Now, assume for a moment that alien species transverse from organic to energy forms after their bodies fail them, but retain all their thoughts etc. That seems unbelievable, but not for an advanced civilization with thousands or even millions of years of advancements ahead of us.

[funderder]

New mission for nasa: hunt energy aliens for super food.

[LiaoK]

I'm thinking Q from Star Trek or ascended ancients from Stargate. 

[roxinouchet]

Could you do longer videos ? Compiling several questions for example ?

[bmx]

I also think these very commonly found orb style UFOs might be a type of lifeform that travels or at least observes via drone control. With every close up video I've found they seem to be pulsing like energy.

[SandyOC]

These videos are so short, where can i find the full length interviews?

[ABitOfTheUniverse]

It's hard for me to imagine a being composed of pure energy, as in, no particles (atoms, protons, electrons, neutrons or even free quarks or leptons _(Where do we draw the line? Bosons?)_) but, that said, I could imagine a being composed of gasses or plasma, evolving in/on a world somewhere between that of Jupiter and a star. Thing is, in order for it to have complexity I'd first imagine that the beings started out with tremendous volume, like the size of a hurricane or a solar prominence.
If the gaseous were held together by magnetic fields similar to those we see on the sun it could form some semblance of a structure that would allow for a degree of complexity to arise.
When I try to image what sort of other life forms may exist elsewhere in this universe I generally try to keep in mind some of the important aspects of life (reproduction, adaptation, metabolism, reaction, organization, growth, structure, movement, respiration, sensation, excretion, nutrition, etc.) on Earth and then find parallels to them in other forms. We, for instance, use chemicals to transmit signals, from cell to cell and from organ to organ via our circulatory system. This form of communication between cells and organs might be achieved via electromagnetic waves, much the same way we communicate to each other via cell phones. However, in the case of radios or cell phones there needs to be a physical device, in our case, to produce and receive the signals. Then that means that if we were to search for life in stars or gaseous planets we may have to look for similar 'formations' capable of replicating the production, distribution and reception of radio frequencies.
Any sort of being capable of utilizing the range of radio frequencies to communicate with it's itself and other beings like it would have a great advantage over beings such as ourselves who do most of our communication through physical mediums, be it through vibrations (sound) or molecular interactions the way we use neurotransmitters and such.
There are many alternatives to consider, even just on the molecular level, when it comes to aspects like metabolism.

Another avenue to consider, along these lines, is that whole planets or stars may act as individual organisms, never creating distinctions between individuals the way we've done via cells and organs such as the brain acting as a central nervous system for the rest of the body, itself surrounded by a skin or exoskeleton which distinguishes it from the rest of the world. Had a distinction never been made between individuals the planet may have continued down a different path. Who knows, we may be seeing the beginning of that with the internet and the distribution of goods around the globe and it's too macroscopic for many of us to recognize. Maybe sometime in the distant future the planet itself will acquire some sort of awareness of itself that will make cultures, species or even whole ecosystems seem like internal organs do to us and the individual organisms function like cells.
Before then we might break this planet up into sextillions of pieces and scatter ourselves across millions of worlds or more.
There is probably more future than past for life from Earth, especially now that we have the capability to intentionally seed new worlds.
What we could potentially blend into as we dissolve this planet though is an important thing for people to consider. Could be hostile, diplomatic or even romantic.

Look forward to it though, because it will happen. What state we're in when it happens though, is up to us, until it does. For the sake of all the efforts life has undergone on this world over the last four billion years, I'd look forward to at least four billion more.
Would make for an impressive transformation to view in time lapse. At a million years a second an 8 billion year time laps would take roughly 2 hours 13 minutes. By then we'll probably have turned Earth, Mercury Venus and Mars into sextillions of vessels that will be scattered through maybe half the Milky Way. By then we'll have an introduction of billions of more stars and world when we meet up with the Andromeda Galaxy. Maybe, by then, we can transform ourselves into beings that can swim; on, in and between the stars.
Maybe something even better than we have yet to figure possible.

[BangingYourMomSoFast]

It blows my mind that a human brain can develop into something as intelligent as Neil's.

Unbelievable.

[davidsirmons]

To quote Klaatu when he was asked what he 'was' before he was human: would only frighten you."

[Koroistro]

Such an alien species would have a little drawback too :
They wouldn't have experience of time, assuming the question is about pure energy without mass they would be locked at the speed of light, basically they would be photons.

[MrPankaj]

I am not sure how is that possible. As life is a sort of replication based on certain information stored in our DNA. How and where would you store such energy to make some information to replicate? What mechanisms would direct or propagate such energy in the desired direction of the "energy organism"?

[Stikibits]

There are different types of energy. They get converted back and forth all the time. And as far as I'm aware, the way we convert our energy is predominantly by eating and digestion, so there's no mechanism to simply absorb or convert whatever energy, right? We couldn't simply convert energy by mere contact, right? 
There'd need to be some mechanism to convert the energy, and there isn't, as far as we know.

[hookem]

I remember you saying once, that "Iron man's arch reactor is not realistic because the amount of energy it contains would be too hot to wear". Alright. Well, I've been studying kinematics and potential energy. How come a basketball held a mile above earth's surface is not hot? Why does the energy in Iron man's suit, (let's say when he is not wearing it) radiating too much heat? Is it because the ball is not doing any work and the arch reactor is? Maybe the arch reactor, when the suit is off, is not too hot because there is not work to be done.

[Turbine]

I wonder what it would feel like absorbing an alien life form. Would I burp when I'm done.

[frankalien]

I could totally answer this question because I'm obviously an alien, but I totally think it's important to let earthies come to their own conclusions. 

[darshanbhavsar]

isn't light and cosmic radiation a form of energy? or may it be any kind of light or sound or heat or any form of energy. How can it possibly be a life form?
and how would you define this life form? Because generally a 'life' form would have characteristics like locomotion, nutrition, responsiveness to stimuli etc how could you expect that from a form of energy?

[cyris]

Tyson is too generous. "Pure energy" is a wrong concept to begin with, and no sense can come from it. It's nothing but a sci-fi trope and what Goku shoots out of his hands. Energy has to take some form: electric, thermal, kinetic, potential, nuclear, and so on. Energy can be changed from one form into another and none of these is "purer" than any other. If "energy" means "immaterial" to the questioner, then I would say no, life must be localized and have some structure, which requires mass.