Alex Berezow - We Are Effectively Alone In The Universe

Alex Berezow - We Are Effectively Alone In The Universe

It does not matter if intelligent life exists elsewhere. We will never find each other. Key Takeaways

• The debate over extraterrestrial life has shifted from fringe to mainstream.
• The belief that humans eventually will encounter aliens is based on two assumptions: (1) life evolves easily, and (2) interstellar travel is possible and practical.
• Neither of these assumptions is likely to be true.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following in foecast is a presentationof the Xoon Broadcast Network, Xoon TV
Channel and Roma McConnell Media Company broadcastin from Canada to the world and beyond.
We are effectively alone in the universe. When I was a kid,

(00:23):
there was an older guy who frequentedour local McDonald's and always carried around a
boxful of random papers and a flyswatter. He was an archetype of the
UFO enthusiast, sort of a coupbut a lot of fun to talk to.
In the nineteen nineties, there wassomething of an alien abduction craze that
swept the country. The popular showUnsolved Mysteries featured them, and an entire

(00:47):
TV series, The X Files,was built around the belief that extraterrestrial life
had taken a keen and perhaps malevolentinterest in Earth. Of course, the
aliens were also working in collaboration withthe US federal government. However, outside
of popular culture, few serious intellectualstook the notion of alien seriously. It

(01:10):
certainly was not a major academic topic. The prevailing view was that life is
uncommon throughout the universe, and Earthjust might be the only planet lucky enough
to have it. Today, theexact opposite view prevails. Thanks to advances
in astrophysics, we now know thatthere are billions of exoplanets in the Milky

(01:30):
Way alone, leading most of thescientific community to conclude that life probably does
exist elsewhere in the universe. Thosewho do not believe so are now considered
the koups, and while alien abductionsare still not in the mainstream, UFOs
are so much so that the USintelligence community just issued a report on them.

(01:51):
It does not matter if intelligent alienlife exists elsewhere in the universe.
We will never find them, andthey will never find us. In other
words, we are effectively alone inthe universe. The academic debate now is
not whether life exists, but inwhat form. Many scientists assume that the

(02:12):
commonest form of life is microbial,a fair assumption given that on Earth,
humans are a relatively modern invention,while microbes have been around for three point
five billion years. So many astrobiologistsare spending their days examining the atmospheres of
exoplanets for telltale signs of bacterial likecreatures. Still, others have gone further
and pontificated on what if it exists, Alien intelligent life might be like the

(02:38):
late Stephen Hawking argued that contacting aliensis not wise because, just like in
the movie Independence Day, they areprobably plotting to come to Earth, break
our stuff and steal our resources.Doctor Hawking warned, one day we might
receive a signal from a planet likethese eight thirty two C. But we
should be wary of answering back.Bring the alien debate back to reality.

(03:02):
I suppose this is all fun tothink and talk about, but the alien
debate suffers from a serious lack ofperspective. If there is any chance of
humans encountering alien life, at leasttwo extremely unlikely things must be true.
Life evolves easily. Decades of researchhave yielded little in the way of identifying

(03:23):
the mechanism of a biogenesis, theformation of life from non living matter.
There are several different theories on theorigin of life, and none of them
are any good. In the laboratory, we have had some success in creating
biomolecules such as amino acids from gaseousprecursors. The Milliary experiment is the most

(03:44):
famous of these, but scientists haveyet to come even close to reproducing life
in the laboratory. This strongly impliesthat life does not evolve easily. But
even if we were to see thepoint that life can evolve easily given enough
time, there is another problem.The vast majority of exoplanets are inhospitable to

(04:04):
life. New research suggests that moststars are incapable of supporting plant life via
photosynthesis. Harvesting a star's energy isthe first step for the evolution of life,
but evolution cannot even get started ifthere is not enough of it.
Interstellar travel is possible and practical.This, in my opinion, is even

(04:28):
more unlikely than the easy evolution oflife. We know life evolved at least
once here on Earth, but wehave no idea if interstellar travel is possible.
Sure, we could get on aspaceship to day and head for a
planet orbiting the nearest star Proxima centaury, but we better pack a lot of
fun sized bags of pretzels because itwill take about six thousand, three hundred

(04:50):
years to get there. The notionthat we will develop, or that some
advanced alien civilization has already developed theability to easily tra verse the galaxy is
pure speculation. It is physically impossibleto travel at the speed of light,
though it may be possible to travelat a substantial fraction of the speed of

(05:10):
light. Still, even if lightspeed was possible, the distances between stars
is nearly unfathomable traveling at the speedof light. Proxima Centauri is still more
than four years away. The otherside of the galaxy is over one hundred
thousand years away. Theoretically possible doesnot mean probable. Sci fi enthusiasts note

(05:32):
that unknown technologies may develop, suchas the ability to warp the fabric of
space time or to travel through awormhole. But again, these suggestions are
purely speculative. Other than some fancymath that suggests such maneuvers could theoretically be
possible, we have no idea ifeither can actually happen. Just because unicorns

(05:55):
and mermaids are theoretically possible does notmean that they exist. What about black
holes? Perhaps we could dive intoone and pop out somewhere else. For
the sake of argument, let's saythat we know that is absolutely true.
The trouble is that the closest blackhole to Earth that we know of is
one thousand, five hundred light yearsaway. Putting all this together, the

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sobering conclusion is that it does notmatter if intelligent alien life exists elsewhere in
the universe. We will never findthem and they will never find us.
In other words, we are effectivelyalone in the universe. To listen to

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all the shows on the X ZoneBroadcast Network, visit www dot XZBN dot
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dare to be heard. The xZone searching for answers, demanding the

(07:04):
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to admin at RAHLHEIFENMA dot com forRoma McConnell Media Company in London, England.
I am Brooke Maguire.