00:00Where are the aliens?
00:02The biggest mystery of the universe, somewhere out there in that vast universe, there must
00:07be countless other planets teeming with life, think about it.
00:11The universe is not small, it's mind-bendingly huge.
00:16And yet, when we look around, when we tune our telescopes and listen with our antennas,
00:20the silence is deafening.
00:22No messages, no visitors, no flashing signs saying, hey humans, you're not alone.
00:29This puzzle was first put into words by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950.
00:34He simply asked, where is everybody?
00:38And ever since, the question has haunted scientists, astronomers, and dreamers alike.
00:43It's called the Fermi paradox, and it just might be the greatest unsolved mystery in science.
00:50A universe full of worlds, in just the past few years, the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered
00:56thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars.
01:00If we do the math, it looks like our Milky Way galaxy alone might hold half a trillion
01:05planets.
01:06Now, let's be conservative.
01:08Let's say only 1 in 10,000 of those worlds has the right conditions for life.
01:14Even then that leaves 50 million planets in our galaxy alone that could harbor living creatures.
01:20With numbers like that, life should be everywhere.
01:24Civilizations should have risen, fallen, and maybe even expanded across the stars.
01:29And yet, nothing.
01:31The timing problem.
01:32Here's where things get really strange.
01:35Our Earth formed about 9 billion years after the Big Bang.
01:39That means countless other planets had a head start.
01:43Life could have begun on those worlds millions even billions of years before Earth ever existed.
01:48Now think about technology.
01:51Look at what humanity has done in just the last 100 years.
01:55From the Wright brothers to space stations.
01:58From telegraphs to smartphones.
02:01If a civilization had even a million years of technological head start, imagine what they
02:06could achieve.
02:07They could colonize star systems.
02:10Build giant energy collecting machines called Geysen spheres.
02:14They are so large and brilliant it lights up the night sky.
02:18And yet, the skies remain empty.
02:21The dark possibilities.
02:23So why don't we see them?
02:25There are several possible answers and some are pretty chilling.
02:28The silent galaxy theory.
02:30Maybe there is a super intelligent civilization out there, but it has enforced a strict rule
02:35of silence.
02:37They're paranoid.
02:38They don't want competition.
02:40They're watching, waiting and ready to destroy anyone who makes too much noise.
02:45Creepy right?
02:46We're rare.
02:48Maybe life itself is common, but the leap to intelligence, the kind that builds telescopes
02:53and rockets, is incredibly rare.
02:56After all, on Earth, it happened only once in 4 billion years.
03:01Maybe we are the freak accident.
03:03Self-destruction.
03:05This one hurts.
03:06Maybe advanced civilizations always invent technologies they can't control like nuclear weapons.
03:12Or AR something even deadlier.
03:15Maybe every time intelligence rises, it eventually wipes itself out.
03:19A tragic pattern repeating across the stars.
03:22The hopeful answers but hey, it's not all doom and gloom.
03:26There are brighter possibilities too.
03:29We're not looking hard enough.
03:31Every now we've only scanned a tiny fraction of the stars in our galaxy for signals.
03:36It's like dipping a glass into the ocean, and then claiming there are no fish because
03:41the glass came up empty.
03:43Wrong technology.
03:44Maybe aliens don't use radio waves at all.
03:48Maybe they've moved on to far more advanced forms of communication quantum entanglement.
03:53Or even signals embedded in dark matter or dark energy.
03:57If that's the case, we wouldn't even know what to look for.
04:01Tiny aliens.
04:02Here's a wild thought.
04:05Maybe civilizations evolved towards smaller and smaller forms.
04:09Just like our clunky stereo systems shrank into tiny earbuds.
04:14Maybe intelligent life shrinks down to the microscopic level to be more efficient.
04:19The solar system could be swarming with aliens right now, and we wouldn't even notice.
04:24The search continues.
04:26The good news is, we're still searching.
04:29The SETI project, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has started releasing its data
04:34to the public.
04:36That means you could actually help scan the stars for alien signals.
04:41Millions of citizen scientists are joining the hunt.
04:44And soon, new telescopes will be powerful enough to scan the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets.
04:51Within the next decade or two, we may be able to tell if those planets have oxygen, water
04:56vapor, or other signatures of life.
04:59Imagine pointing a telescope at a distant star and knowing really knowing that someone else
05:04lives there.
05:06Meanwhile, here on Earth, scientists are trying to create new forms of life from scratch in
05:11labs.
05:13Not just DNAB's life, but entirely new biologies.
05:17That could help us understand how likely or unlikely life might be across the cosmos.
05:23What if we're alone?
05:24And here's the thing, either answer is oi-inspiring.
05:28If we do find aliens, it will change everything we know about our place in the universe.
05:34But if we don't, if we truly are alone then think about what that means.
05:39It means every thought, every dream, every song, every idea that exists, it all exists
05:45only here.
05:46On this one fragile world, and that makes us unbelievably precious.
05:51The real treasure, the truth is, the search itself is the treasure.
05:56The quest for knowledge never gets old.
05:59In fact, it's the opposite the more we learn, the more mysterious and beautiful the universe
06:04becomes.
06:06The unanswered questions are what pull us forward.
06:09So maybe the aliens are out there, maybe they're not.
06:13Either way, one fact is undeniable, we are the universe becoming conscious of itself.
06:19That's a miracle in its own right.
06:22So the next time you look up at the night sky, remember, the silence is not empty, it's full
06:27of questions.
06:29When those questions are waiting for us, stay curious.
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