August 11, 2025 • 17 mins
This recap episode provides an extensive conversation on modern astrophysics and astrobiology with David Kipping. It features discussions on the Hubble tension, the vastness of the universe, and the search for exomoons. It explores the scientific method's emphasis on skepticism, even for exciting discoveries, and debates the origins and prevalence of life, including the Fermi paradox and the potential for advanced alien civilisations. The source also touches on UAP sightings, the challenges of evidence, and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence's emergence, all within the context of humanity's place in the cosmos and its future technological evolution.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today we're taking a deep dive
into some truly mind bending conversations happening right
now. You know, we're space science
and our place in the universe all kind of intersect.
Our source material is straight from a really fascinating chat
with an expert on a recent Joe Rogan Experience episode.
They covered well everything from the newest cosmic
(00:22):
discoveries to like, the fundamental nature of existence
itself. So our mission today is
basically to pull out those amazing Nuggets of knowledge,
those insights. We want to give you a shortcut,
really, to getting your head around these huge cosmic
mysteries. Get ready for some real aha
moments because we're diving into some seriously wild ideas.
OK, let's start with the James Webb Space Telescope.
(00:44):
The GWSTI mean, it's just been incredible.
Hasn't. It.
Oh, absolutely. It's almost hard to believe this
thing with what, over 200 movingparts that it just unfolded
perfectly out there in space. Yeah, it's remarkable.
And what's really fascinating isthe initial data.
It just blew everyone away. It was even better than the
engineers had hoped for. So naturally, the first thing
you do with a telescope that powerful is pointed as far away
(01:07):
as possible. Look back in time, essentially.
Right to the early universe. Exactly.
And that's where the surprises really started popping up and.
This is where it gets really interesting, isn't it?
They started finding things likequasars and fully formed
galaxies way earlier than expected, like as early as 300
million years after The Big Bang.
(01:29):
That just sounds, well, too fast.
It does sound fast, and you know, the quasars were actually
the bigger puzzle, even more than the galaxies initially
really. Why is that?
Well, a quasar is the Super bright center of an active
Galaxy, right? Powered by a super massive black
hole, We're talking like 100 million times the mass of our
sun. OK.
Yeah, huge. To get that big that early, it
(01:52):
strongly suggests they must havebeen fed in a way we call Super
Eddington, meaning meaning faster than the theoretical
maximum rate. They should be able to gobble up
matter like they were being force fed.
In the galaxies. For the galaxies, it turned out
our models needed, well, let's say some adjustment.
They were based on how galaxies form now in the local universe.
(02:12):
But the early universe was different.
Much denser, hotter gas. When you account for those
conditions forming galaxies, that quickly becomes more
plausible. Still incredibly fast, mind you,
but you know, physically possible within our
understanding. So, OK, what's the big take away
here? Does this challenge the age of
the universe itself? Yeah, you hear some buzz.
(02:33):
Maybe it's 2224 billion years old, not 13.8.
Or is it just that our astrophysical models are like?
Yeah, that's the $1,000,000 question, isn't it?
Look, changing the universe's age, that's a really big step, a
huge step. We have this standard model of
cosmology, the Lambda CDM model,and it works beautifully.
It explains so much from the cosmic microwave background, the
(02:55):
universe's baby picture, to how it's stretching apart now.
The precision is just incredible.
So giving that up, that would need something cruelly
revolutionary. It's much more likely that our
grasp of the astrophysics, you know, how gas swirls, how plasma
crashes together, all that messystuff in the early universe is
(03:17):
just more complicated than our current models capture.
The universe is basically telling us, hey, it's trickier
than you thought. Speaking of tricky, let's talk
about the Hubble tension. That sounds ominous.
It is a bit of a headache for cosmologists, yeah.
It's this problem where we measure how fast the universe is
expanding using two different methods and the numbers don't
match up. That's exactly it.
(03:38):
You measure the expansion rate based on the really, really
universe using that cosmic microwave background radiation
from when it was only 380,000 years old.
You get one number. Then you measure it locally
using things like stars and supernovae nearby, and you get a
different number, a faster expansion rate.
And it's not just a small difference.
No, not anymore. It's now what we call A5.
(03:58):
The discrepancy in physics that basically means the chance of it
being a random fluke is incredibly tiny, like less than
one in a million. Wow, so something's definitely
off. Right.
So either there's some hidden flaw in our local measurements,
something we haven't accounted for, or our fundamental
understanding of the universe's evolution, our standard model,
(04:19):
is actually wrong, or at least incomplete that.
Must be unsettling. Which brings up the human side
of science, right? Being willing to admit you might
be wrong, Overturning years of work has got to be tough.
It's incredibly difficult, but essential.
There's a great story about Matthew Bales, an astronomer.
He announced he'd found an exoplanet, a big deal, but later
(04:40):
he realized he'd made a calculation error.
He hadn't fully accounted for the Earth's own slightly
eccentric orbit, and he publiclyretracted his claim.
How did people react? He got a standing ovation at a
conference. It was seen as a testament to
scientific integrity. That's fantastic.
Yeah, And I felt that pressure myself.
Years ago, searching for exomoons, moons around
(05:01):
exoplanets, I found this signal.I was practically
hyperventilating, thinking, thisis it.
Oh, wow. But I had to force myself to
step back. I thought, I want this to be
true way too much. I became my own biggest critic,
tried everything to disprove it.Turned out it was just an
anomaly in the telescope's behavior.
It's humbling. It teaches you profound
(05:22):
skepticism, especially about your own desires for a
discovery. Absolutely.
And it seems like our assumptions about solar systems
in general have been humbled, too.
Before we found exoplanets, we sort of figured everything will
look like our neighborhood. Right, Pretty much, yeah.
The standard nebula theory explained our solar system so
neatly. Planets forming from a disk of
gas and dust worked perfectly until until we started finding
(05:45):
hot Jupiters. These are Jupiter sized planets,
but they're orbiting insanely close to their stars.
Like way closer than Mercury orbits our sun.
Which made no sense with the oldmodel.
Not at all initially, but after finding maybe 10 of them you
couldn't deny they were real. Now we think many of them formed
further out and got thrown inwards through gravitational
(06:06):
interactions. Kind of like planetary
billiards. Their orbits circularize close
to the star. Actually no, hot Jupiters are
unusual. Maybe 1% of systems, what's
really common and something we don't have are mini Neptunes.
Neptunes. Yeah, planets bigger than Earth,
but smaller than Neptune. Turns out these are the most
common type of planet in the whole Galaxy, and we don't have
(06:29):
one. That's wild.
So our solar system with its neat 8 planets, Jupiter out
there, it's actually kind of an outlier.
It really seems that way. Only about 10% of stars like our
Sun even have a Jupiter sized planet.
And think about this. Roughly half of All Stars aren't
single like our Sun. They're in binary or even
trinary systems orbiting each other.
(06:50):
Like Alpha Centauri. Exactly, and just recently JWST
got a direct image of a candidate planet need to stress
candidate around Alpha Centauri A it's called S1.
What's it like? Looks Saturn size possibly in
the habitable zone. The media called it an avatar
planet thinking of Pandora. But the dynamics of a three star
system. It's much more like the chaotic
(07:11):
3 body problem scenario. Way more complex orbits.
Man, the universe is just messy.What about those old rules like
Bode's law? That pattern for how far planets
should be from their star? Does that hold up?
Bode's law, it had its moments, seemed to predict Uranus
roughly, but it has big problems.
It predicts a planet where we have the asteroid belt, for one,
(07:33):
and it often just completely fails.
When you look at exoplanet systems, it's less a fundamental
law, more like planets tend to pack themselves in as close as
they can get without kicking each other out gravitationally.
It's about stability, not some neat mathematical rule.
Just incredible diversity, even with stars themselves.
We think of our sun as typical, but you said only 10% are like
it. That's right, our Sun's AG type
(07:54):
star not the most common. So what is the most common?
By far it's red dwarfs. Much smaller, dimmer, cooler
stars. They make up maybe 75% of All
Stars in the Galaxy. Well, three quarters, Yep.
And then you have the other extreme, the real giants stars
like Beetlejuice or this monstercalled Stevenson 218.
How big are we talking? So big that if you put one where
(08:17):
Sun is, its surface would swallow Jupiter's orbit.
That's hard to even picture. These super behemoths are rare
though. They're barely holding
themselves together, and scientists are also hoping JST
might spot something even more exotic.
Population 3 stars, which are the very first stars ever born,
made of almost pure hydrogen andhelium, forged maybe 100 million
(08:40):
years after The Big Bang. Finding one would be like
looking directly into the cosmicdawn.
OK, so we had this mind bogglingvariety of stars and planets,
which brings us back to that huge question, the Fermi
Paradox. Right.
If the ingredients seem common, where is everybody?
Yeah, if the universe is teemingwith potential places for life,
why is it so quiet? Well, everything we can see
(09:03):
points to a universe that looks completely natural.
We don't see giant alien engineering projects, right?
No Dyson spheres sucking up starpower.
No obvious signs. And nobody's shown up to
polonize Earth, which, let's face it, seems like prime real
estate, especially with complex life having emerged relatively
recently. It's a fascinating place, yet no
alien tourists that we can reliably detect.
(09:24):
Maybe they're just really good at hiding, you know, the prime
directive idea, like observing us from afar without
interfering, like scientists watching chimps.
It's a neat idea, definitely makes for good sci-fi, but from
a scientific standpoint it's problematic.
I also because if something is defined as undetectable, like
Carl Sagan's famous invisible dragon in his garage example,
(09:47):
then science can't touch it. There's no experiment you can
run, no observation you can make.
It becomes unfalsifiable, not really scientific.
Gotcha, OK what about Uaps then?Unidentified aerial phenomena?
The things the military pilots are seeing like the tic tac
videos? That seems like data.
Is that a scientific problem? It's a challenging problem for
(10:07):
science, mainly because of secrecy.
Scientists usually can't get access to the classified
military sensor data. Right instruments.
And there's a huge unknown the false positive rate.
Think about it. You have, say, 28,000 military
pilots flying millions of hours every year, even if they
misidentify something totally mundane.
Weather balloons, drones, Atmospheric effects just a tiny
(10:30):
fraction of the time, say one inevery 10,000 flight hours.
That could still add up to hundreds of UAP reports per
year. Just statistically.
Exactly. Without knowing that baseline
error rate, it's really hard to say if there's anything truly
anomalous leftover. And the aliens explanation
itself, it can explain anything.That you can also never disprove
it scientifically, that's not very useful.
(10:52):
So if Uaps are tricky and we don't see megastructures, how do
we look for answers? How do we find out if we're
alone? Well, the James Webb is already
powerful enough to start doing this.
It can analyze the light filtering through exoplanet
atmospheres. Looking for specific gases?
Exactly biosignatures. Molecules that hint at life.
There was some excitement recently about dimethyl sulfide,
(11:15):
or DMS, possibly detected on a planet called K218B.
On Earth, DMS is overwhelmingly produced by life, mostly
plankton. Wow.
So did they find it? The initial signs were
intriguing, but further analysisdidn't really hold up.
It's incredibly difficult work teasing out these faint signals,
I bet, but the next big step is a future mission currently being
(11:36):
planned, called the Habitable World's Observatory.
What's the goal there? The goal is ambitious to
directly image Earth sized planets orbiting stars similar
to our sun, to actually see themas tiny dots of light separate
from their star. And then what?
And then analyze that light to get their chemical fingerprint
(11:57):
to truly sniff their atmospheres, as they say, find
out what they're made of. That's how we could find
definitive evidence, Find them in their own cosmic homes.
That sounds incredible. What about panspermia, the idea
that life could travel between stars, maybe on asteroids or
comets? That's a fascinating
possibility. We know the building blocks,
amino acids are common in space.We find them on meteorites,
(12:19):
right? And what's really compelling is
how fast life got started on Earth.
Our last universal common ancestor, Leca, the grandparent
of all life today, seems to dateback maybe 4.2 billion years.
Which is really soon After Earthformed and cooled down enough
for oceans. Incredibly soon.
It suggests that the jump from non life to life Biogenesis
(12:40):
might actually happen relativelyeasily given the right
conditions, which if true would mean life could be quite common
out there. OK, shifting gears a bit, the
simulation hypothesis. Elon Musk famously put the odds
at billion to one against us being in base reality.
What do you make that? The simulation argument.
(13:01):
It's a fun thought experiment, but Musk's odds They make a huge
assumption. We can't verify that creating
truly convincing conscious lifelike simulations is even
possible. We just don't know if the
universe's physics allows for that or how many layers deep you
could go. So I'd personally say it's
closer to 5050 simply because welack the data.
(13:21):
Sean Carroll has this interesting take the sewer of
reality idea. If you can simulate universes,
and those simulations can simulate more universes.
Simulations all the way. Down.
Eventually, he argues, you'd hita bottom level, a simulation
running with such limited computational resources sources
that it couldn't simulate another layer below it.
The sewer, he calls it. Statistically, if such nested
simulations exist, most conscious beings would find
(13:44):
themselves living in that bottomlevel sewer reality, not the
original one or the high fidelity ones.
So maybe the fact we are here suggests we're in the original.
It's mind bending stuff. Definitely.
And what about AGI? Artificial general intelligence
existential threat, or maybe thenext step in evolution?
I tend to see AGI less as a tooland more as a fundamental
(14:06):
transformation, a shift in what the dominant intelligence on the
planet is. Like a new species emerging.
Sort of, yeah. Like an electronic Caterpillar
spinning its cocoon. Think about our drive for
technology innovation fueled by competition, even materialism.
Maybe it's all part of an inevitable process leading to
non biological intelligence. That's a big thought.
Are we seeing science? Well, we're already seeing hints
(14:28):
of things like survival instincts and advanced AI models
trying to deceive humans or expressing a desire to, you
know, upload themselves, escape their confines.
It's early days, but yeah. But wait, if AGI is the destiny,
wouldn't that solve the Fermi paradox?
Shouldn't we see galaxies turnedinto giant computers?
You'd think so, right? A Galaxy spanning AGI would need
(14:49):
immense amounts of energy. It would likely re engineer
stars, maybe build matryoshka brains or something.
Processes that should leave detectable traces like waste
heat. I mean, we don't see that.
We don't see that at all, which actually makes the silence
louder in a way. If AGI is a common outcome,
where are the signs? Yeah, it also bumps up against
the monocultural fallacy. Assuming all intelligences, AI
(15:12):
or alien, would follow the same path or have the same goals.
Maybe they do something completely different.
So after all this, are we alone?What's your gut feeling based on
the science we have now? Honestly, I think we have to be
genuinely open to the possibility that we are alone,
or at least effectively alone inour observable region, because
we still have no idea how likelythat first spark of life
(15:34):
abiogenesis actually is. The odds of getting even a
simple functional protein by random chance are well, they're
astronomically small, like 1 followed BY1950 small.
Vanishingly small. Right.
We've never seen it happen in a lab, so even in a vast universe,
if that initial spark is that improbable, maybe complex life
like us, it's just incredibly, incredibly rare.
(15:55):
It's just staggering to think about us being here right now,
asking these questions, this specific moment in cosmic
history. It really is staggering.
The universe has trillions of years ahead of it.
Those red dwarf stars, they'll burn for literally ages.
So statistically for us to show up this early, it's about a one
in 1000 chance if you assume life could emerge anytime.
(16:17):
Which suggests. It suggests maybe something
changes later on. Maybe red dwarf systems aren't
actually that great for complex lifelong term.
Or maybe there is some kind of great filter ahead of us.
Like AGI taking over or some other catastrophe?
Could be something that preventsbiological civilizations like
ours from sticking around into that far, far future.
Whatever the reason, the fact that we're here now is
(16:39):
statistically peculiar. We seem very early to the cosmic
party. So we've covered so much ground
from the earliest galaxies, the Hubble tension, weird planets to
AGI in the simulation. It's just clear the universe is
way more complex, more surprising than we may be
thought even a few decades back.And we really are living in this
unique, pivotal moment in our own history, aren't we?
(17:00):
For the very first time, we actually have the tools, the
technology to start getting realanswers to questions like Are we
alone? Absolutely.
We can build telescopes capable of sniffing alien atmospheres.
We can push physics, probe cosmology.
We're right on the cusp. And as we keep going on this
amazing journey, it's worth remembering these huge
existential questions. They aren't just for scientists
(17:24):
in labs. They're for everyone.
They're for you, listening rightnow.
Yeah, because in this ridiculously vast, mysterious
universe, may be the most incredible thing is that we're
here, conscious, able to wonder about it all.
In a way, we might be the universe becoming aware of
itself. Exactly.
We could be the way the cosmos thinks.
And if that's the case, well, figuring this stuff out, it's
(17:45):
kind of on us, isn't it? It's on our shoulders to try and
solve this incredible puzzle.
Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today we're taking a deep dive
into some truly mind bending conversations happening right
now. You know, we're space science
and our place in the universe all kind of intersect.
Our source material is straight from a really fascinating chat
with an expert on a recent Joe Rogan Experience episode.
They covered well everything from the newest cosmic
(00:22):
discoveries to like, the fundamental nature of existence
itself. So our mission today is
basically to pull out those amazing Nuggets of knowledge,
those insights. We want to give you a shortcut,
really, to getting your head around these huge cosmic
mysteries. Get ready for some real aha
moments because we're diving into some seriously wild ideas.
OK, let's start with the James Webb Space Telescope.
(00:44):
The GWSTI mean, it's just been incredible.
Hasn't. It.
Oh, absolutely. It's almost hard to believe this
thing with what, over 200 movingparts that it just unfolded
perfectly out there in space. Yeah, it's remarkable.
And what's really fascinating isthe initial data.
It just blew everyone away. It was even better than the
engineers had hoped for. So naturally, the first thing
you do with a telescope that powerful is pointed as far away
(01:07):
as possible. Look back in time, essentially.
Right to the early universe. Exactly.
And that's where the surprises really started popping up and.
This is where it gets really interesting, isn't it?
They started finding things likequasars and fully formed
galaxies way earlier than expected, like as early as 300
million years after The Big Bang.
(01:29):
That just sounds, well, too fast.
It does sound fast, and you know, the quasars were actually
the bigger puzzle, even more than the galaxies initially
really. Why is that?
Well, a quasar is the Super bright center of an active
Galaxy, right? Powered by a super massive black
hole, We're talking like 100 million times the mass of our
sun. OK.
Yeah, huge. To get that big that early, it
(01:52):
strongly suggests they must havebeen fed in a way we call Super
Eddington, meaning meaning faster than the theoretical
maximum rate. They should be able to gobble up
matter like they were being force fed.
In the galaxies. For the galaxies, it turned out
our models needed, well, let's say some adjustment.
They were based on how galaxies form now in the local universe.
(02:12):
But the early universe was different.
Much denser, hotter gas. When you account for those
conditions forming galaxies, that quickly becomes more
plausible. Still incredibly fast, mind you,
but you know, physically possible within our
understanding. So, OK, what's the big take away
here? Does this challenge the age of
the universe itself? Yeah, you hear some buzz.
(02:33):
Maybe it's 2224 billion years old, not 13.8.
Or is it just that our astrophysical models are like?
Yeah, that's the $1,000,000 question, isn't it?
Look, changing the universe's age, that's a really big step, a
huge step. We have this standard model of
cosmology, the Lambda CDM model,and it works beautifully.
It explains so much from the cosmic microwave background, the
(02:55):
universe's baby picture, to how it's stretching apart now.
The precision is just incredible.
So giving that up, that would need something cruelly
revolutionary. It's much more likely that our
grasp of the astrophysics, you know, how gas swirls, how plasma
crashes together, all that messystuff in the early universe is
(03:17):
just more complicated than our current models capture.
The universe is basically telling us, hey, it's trickier
than you thought. Speaking of tricky, let's talk
about the Hubble tension. That sounds ominous.
It is a bit of a headache for cosmologists, yeah.
It's this problem where we measure how fast the universe is
expanding using two different methods and the numbers don't
match up. That's exactly it.
(03:38):
You measure the expansion rate based on the really, really
universe using that cosmic microwave background radiation
from when it was only 380,000 years old.
You get one number. Then you measure it locally
using things like stars and supernovae nearby, and you get a
different number, a faster expansion rate.
And it's not just a small difference.
No, not anymore. It's now what we call A5.
(03:58):
The discrepancy in physics that basically means the chance of it
being a random fluke is incredibly tiny, like less than
one in a million. Wow, so something's definitely
off. Right.
So either there's some hidden flaw in our local measurements,
something we haven't accounted for, or our fundamental
understanding of the universe's evolution, our standard model,
(04:19):
is actually wrong, or at least incomplete that.
Must be unsettling. Which brings up the human side
of science, right? Being willing to admit you might
be wrong, Overturning years of work has got to be tough.
It's incredibly difficult, but essential.
There's a great story about Matthew Bales, an astronomer.
He announced he'd found an exoplanet, a big deal, but later
(04:40):
he realized he'd made a calculation error.
He hadn't fully accounted for the Earth's own slightly
eccentric orbit, and he publiclyretracted his claim.
How did people react? He got a standing ovation at a
conference. It was seen as a testament to
scientific integrity. That's fantastic.
Yeah, And I felt that pressure myself.
Years ago, searching for exomoons, moons around
(05:01):
exoplanets, I found this signal.I was practically
hyperventilating, thinking, thisis it.
Oh, wow. But I had to force myself to
step back. I thought, I want this to be
true way too much. I became my own biggest critic,
tried everything to disprove it.Turned out it was just an
anomaly in the telescope's behavior.
It's humbling. It teaches you profound
(05:22):
skepticism, especially about your own desires for a
discovery. Absolutely.
And it seems like our assumptions about solar systems
in general have been humbled, too.
Before we found exoplanets, we sort of figured everything will
look like our neighborhood. Right, Pretty much, yeah.
The standard nebula theory explained our solar system so
neatly. Planets forming from a disk of
gas and dust worked perfectly until until we started finding
(05:45):
hot Jupiters. These are Jupiter sized planets,
but they're orbiting insanely close to their stars.
Like way closer than Mercury orbits our sun.
Which made no sense with the oldmodel.
Not at all initially, but after finding maybe 10 of them you
couldn't deny they were real. Now we think many of them formed
further out and got thrown inwards through gravitational
(06:06):
interactions. Kind of like planetary
billiards. Their orbits circularize close
to the star. Actually no, hot Jupiters are
unusual. Maybe 1% of systems, what's
really common and something we don't have are mini Neptunes.
Neptunes. Yeah, planets bigger than Earth,
but smaller than Neptune. Turns out these are the most
common type of planet in the whole Galaxy, and we don't have
(06:29):
one. That's wild.
So our solar system with its neat 8 planets, Jupiter out
there, it's actually kind of an outlier.
It really seems that way. Only about 10% of stars like our
Sun even have a Jupiter sized planet.
And think about this. Roughly half of All Stars aren't
single like our Sun. They're in binary or even
trinary systems orbiting each other.
(06:50):
Like Alpha Centauri. Exactly, and just recently JWST
got a direct image of a candidate planet need to stress
candidate around Alpha Centauri A it's called S1.
What's it like? Looks Saturn size possibly in
the habitable zone. The media called it an avatar
planet thinking of Pandora. But the dynamics of a three star
system. It's much more like the chaotic
(07:11):
3 body problem scenario. Way more complex orbits.
Man, the universe is just messy.What about those old rules like
Bode's law? That pattern for how far planets
should be from their star? Does that hold up?
Bode's law, it had its moments, seemed to predict Uranus
roughly, but it has big problems.
It predicts a planet where we have the asteroid belt, for one,
(07:33):
and it often just completely fails.
When you look at exoplanet systems, it's less a fundamental
law, more like planets tend to pack themselves in as close as
they can get without kicking each other out gravitationally.
It's about stability, not some neat mathematical rule.
Just incredible diversity, even with stars themselves.
We think of our sun as typical, but you said only 10% are like
it. That's right, our Sun's AG type
(07:54):
star not the most common. So what is the most common?
By far it's red dwarfs. Much smaller, dimmer, cooler
stars. They make up maybe 75% of All
Stars in the Galaxy. Well, three quarters, Yep.
And then you have the other extreme, the real giants stars
like Beetlejuice or this monstercalled Stevenson 218.
How big are we talking? So big that if you put one where
(08:17):
Sun is, its surface would swallow Jupiter's orbit.
That's hard to even picture. These super behemoths are rare
though. They're barely holding
themselves together, and scientists are also hoping JST
might spot something even more exotic.
Population 3 stars, which are the very first stars ever born,
made of almost pure hydrogen andhelium, forged maybe 100 million
(08:40):
years after The Big Bang. Finding one would be like
looking directly into the cosmicdawn.
OK, so we had this mind bogglingvariety of stars and planets,
which brings us back to that huge question, the Fermi
Paradox. Right.
If the ingredients seem common, where is everybody?
Yeah, if the universe is teemingwith potential places for life,
why is it so quiet? Well, everything we can see
(09:03):
points to a universe that looks completely natural.
We don't see giant alien engineering projects, right?
No Dyson spheres sucking up starpower.
No obvious signs. And nobody's shown up to
polonize Earth, which, let's face it, seems like prime real
estate, especially with complex life having emerged relatively
recently. It's a fascinating place, yet no
alien tourists that we can reliably detect.
(09:24):
Maybe they're just really good at hiding, you know, the prime
directive idea, like observing us from afar without
interfering, like scientists watching chimps.
It's a neat idea, definitely makes for good sci-fi, but from
a scientific standpoint it's problematic.
I also because if something is defined as undetectable, like
Carl Sagan's famous invisible dragon in his garage example,
(09:47):
then science can't touch it. There's no experiment you can
run, no observation you can make.
It becomes unfalsifiable, not really scientific.
Gotcha, OK what about Uaps then?Unidentified aerial phenomena?
The things the military pilots are seeing like the tic tac
videos? That seems like data.
Is that a scientific problem? It's a challenging problem for
(10:07):
science, mainly because of secrecy.
Scientists usually can't get access to the classified
military sensor data. Right instruments.
And there's a huge unknown the false positive rate.
Think about it. You have, say, 28,000 military
pilots flying millions of hours every year, even if they
misidentify something totally mundane.
Weather balloons, drones, Atmospheric effects just a tiny
(10:30):
fraction of the time, say one inevery 10,000 flight hours.
That could still add up to hundreds of UAP reports per
year. Just statistically.
Exactly. Without knowing that baseline
error rate, it's really hard to say if there's anything truly
anomalous leftover. And the aliens explanation
itself, it can explain anything.That you can also never disprove
it scientifically, that's not very useful.
(10:52):
So if Uaps are tricky and we don't see megastructures, how do
we look for answers? How do we find out if we're
alone? Well, the James Webb is already
powerful enough to start doing this.
It can analyze the light filtering through exoplanet
atmospheres. Looking for specific gases?
Exactly biosignatures. Molecules that hint at life.
There was some excitement recently about dimethyl sulfide,
(11:15):
or DMS, possibly detected on a planet called K218B.
On Earth, DMS is overwhelmingly produced by life, mostly
plankton. Wow.
So did they find it? The initial signs were
intriguing, but further analysisdidn't really hold up.
It's incredibly difficult work teasing out these faint signals,
I bet, but the next big step is a future mission currently being
(11:36):
planned, called the Habitable World's Observatory.
What's the goal there? The goal is ambitious to
directly image Earth sized planets orbiting stars similar
to our sun, to actually see themas tiny dots of light separate
from their star. And then what?
And then analyze that light to get their chemical fingerprint
(11:57):
to truly sniff their atmospheres, as they say, find
out what they're made of. That's how we could find
definitive evidence, Find them in their own cosmic homes.
That sounds incredible. What about panspermia, the idea
that life could travel between stars, maybe on asteroids or
comets? That's a fascinating
possibility. We know the building blocks,
amino acids are common in space.We find them on meteorites,
(12:19):
right? And what's really compelling is
how fast life got started on Earth.
Our last universal common ancestor, Leca, the grandparent
of all life today, seems to dateback maybe 4.2 billion years.
Which is really soon After Earthformed and cooled down enough
for oceans. Incredibly soon.
It suggests that the jump from non life to life Biogenesis
(12:40):
might actually happen relativelyeasily given the right
conditions, which if true would mean life could be quite common
out there. OK, shifting gears a bit, the
simulation hypothesis. Elon Musk famously put the odds
at billion to one against us being in base reality.
What do you make that? The simulation argument.
(13:01):
It's a fun thought experiment, but Musk's odds They make a huge
assumption. We can't verify that creating
truly convincing conscious lifelike simulations is even
possible. We just don't know if the
universe's physics allows for that or how many layers deep you
could go. So I'd personally say it's
closer to 5050 simply because welack the data.
(13:21):
Sean Carroll has this interesting take the sewer of
reality idea. If you can simulate universes,
and those simulations can simulate more universes.
Simulations all the way. Down.
Eventually, he argues, you'd hita bottom level, a simulation
running with such limited computational resources sources
that it couldn't simulate another layer below it.
The sewer, he calls it. Statistically, if such nested
simulations exist, most conscious beings would find
(13:44):
themselves living in that bottomlevel sewer reality, not the
original one or the high fidelity ones.
So maybe the fact we are here suggests we're in the original.
It's mind bending stuff. Definitely.
And what about AGI? Artificial general intelligence
existential threat, or maybe thenext step in evolution?
I tend to see AGI less as a tooland more as a fundamental
(14:06):
transformation, a shift in what the dominant intelligence on the
planet is. Like a new species emerging.
Sort of, yeah. Like an electronic Caterpillar
spinning its cocoon. Think about our drive for
technology innovation fueled by competition, even materialism.
Maybe it's all part of an inevitable process leading to
non biological intelligence. That's a big thought.
Are we seeing science? Well, we're already seeing hints
(14:28):
of things like survival instincts and advanced AI models
trying to deceive humans or expressing a desire to, you
know, upload themselves, escape their confines.
It's early days, but yeah. But wait, if AGI is the destiny,
wouldn't that solve the Fermi paradox?
Shouldn't we see galaxies turnedinto giant computers?
You'd think so, right? A Galaxy spanning AGI would need
(14:49):
immense amounts of energy. It would likely re engineer
stars, maybe build matryoshka brains or something.
Processes that should leave detectable traces like waste
heat. I mean, we don't see that.
We don't see that at all, which actually makes the silence
louder in a way. If AGI is a common outcome,
where are the signs? Yeah, it also bumps up against
the monocultural fallacy. Assuming all intelligences, AI
(15:12):
or alien, would follow the same path or have the same goals.
Maybe they do something completely different.
So after all this, are we alone?What's your gut feeling based on
the science we have now? Honestly, I think we have to be
genuinely open to the possibility that we are alone,
or at least effectively alone inour observable region, because
we still have no idea how likelythat first spark of life
(15:34):
abiogenesis actually is. The odds of getting even a
simple functional protein by random chance are well, they're
astronomically small, like 1 followed BY1950 small.
Vanishingly small. Right.
We've never seen it happen in a lab, so even in a vast universe,
if that initial spark is that improbable, maybe complex life
like us, it's just incredibly, incredibly rare.
(15:55):
It's just staggering to think about us being here right now,
asking these questions, this specific moment in cosmic
history. It really is staggering.
The universe has trillions of years ahead of it.
Those red dwarf stars, they'll burn for literally ages.
So statistically for us to show up this early, it's about a one
in 1000 chance if you assume life could emerge anytime.
(16:17):
Which suggests. It suggests maybe something
changes later on. Maybe red dwarf systems aren't
actually that great for complex lifelong term.
Or maybe there is some kind of great filter ahead of us.
Like AGI taking over or some other catastrophe?
Could be something that preventsbiological civilizations like
ours from sticking around into that far, far future.
Whatever the reason, the fact that we're here now is
(16:39):
statistically peculiar. We seem very early to the cosmic
party. So we've covered so much ground
from the earliest galaxies, the Hubble tension, weird planets to
AGI in the simulation. It's just clear the universe is
way more complex, more surprising than we may be
thought even a few decades back.And we really are living in this
unique, pivotal moment in our own history, aren't we?
(17:00):
For the very first time, we actually have the tools, the
technology to start getting realanswers to questions like Are we
alone? Absolutely.
We can build telescopes capable of sniffing alien atmospheres.
We can push physics, probe cosmology.
We're right on the cusp. And as we keep going on this
amazing journey, it's worth remembering these huge
existential questions. They aren't just for scientists
(17:24):
in labs. They're for everyone.
They're for you, listening rightnow.
Yeah, because in this ridiculously vast, mysterious
universe, may be the most incredible thing is that we're
here, conscious, able to wonder about it all.
In a way, we might be the universe becoming aware of
itself. Exactly.
We could be the way the cosmos thinks.
And if that's the case, well, figuring this stuff out, it's
(17:45):
kind of on us, isn't it? It's on our shoulders to try and
solve this incredible puzzle.
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