You content is like the old school stuff you'd find in the late 90s on the learning or discovery Channel before they found reality TV!

Haha thanks!

as always, your videos make me regret not studying astrophysics at university... you are one of my favourite scientists in the world! love your story-telling style

I thought our star was white, not yellow.

The Sun is indeed white if viewed in space, but when we view it usually appears yellow due to several effects, I didn’t really want to get into the nuance of this as it’s mostly irrelevant to the video so we’ll just stick with the colour most people see!! (I posted a more detailed explanation about this as a separate comment)

So many of the best conversations about the universe happen with friends!

Always not sober, at least for me

@@CoolWorldsLab Indeed

@@WildZeratul I can relate

Can you guys clarify if our sun is white or yellow?

*enough of you

Thank you

Otoh you could just say that "G yellow dwarf" is just the name of the classification. Just like "pink" is the name of a pop star...

NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDD!!! (Genius Envy)

Am I wrong for thinking all stars would look more or less white because they emit the entire spectrum of visible light, it's just which wavelength is the most prevalent that gives them their "colour"?

It's also likely that any planet in a red dwarf's 'goldie locks' zone will be tidealy locked to their sun and will have one side always facing the sun.

So basically the Trappist system?

@@Icetea-2000 or Proxima B

True. No need to guess. Habitable zone is not habitable at all.

@@KennethScharf you can live on the pole

I don't think you can have Earth like life around an M star. Maybe simple microbial life, fungus. that's about it.

"The universe is only 13 billion years old." This idea is being challenged, because the Universe is expanding at such a rate that there are parts of the Universe we cannot ever see (from Earth) due to the amount of space being created. Literally, beyond the furthest reaches of the Universe we can see, more space is being added than light can traverse, so the light never reaches us. Thus we have no idea how big our Universe actually is, or how old, since we literally can't see that far back. Remember, when we look up into the sky, we are also looking into the past: we see the moon as it was 1 second ago, the Sun 8 minutes ago, the star Alpha Centauri as it was 4.3 years ago, as it takes that long for light from those objects to reach us. 13 billion years is about how far we can "see" - anything further away, we literally can't see because the light can't reach us. So that 13 billion number is actually a minimum, based on current available observation. The Universe could be 80 trillion years old, for all we know.

Right❤️

👏👏

I feel like the most fortunate person just to have exposure to both of these incredible gents during my lifetime 😁

A perfect post. Well said. 1,000 applause.

Yep. Totally Sagan reincarnate. It's something in the voice, mannerisms, presentation, wording, structure...je ne sais quoi. Calm, clear and therapeutic. Only some have it by sheer luck and it can't be faked. Needs to go mainstream badly and replace that dirty manc accent of cox on TV.

That would be my resolution... that there is probably simple life but complex life needs another 50 or so billion years on red dwarves

There's also the possibility that planets in the Goldilocks zone would suffer solar winds powerful enough to sterilize surface life such as cyanobacteria.

there could still be tides. look at io

@@weltraumameisenbaer8789 IO's orbit is pretty elliptical and irregular, and the tides are a result of that and the tug of war between Jupiter and the other 3 Galilean moons upon it. By definition, any planet would have cleared its orbit and thus would not have a 3 body problem going on. The orbit would be circular and regular and would not have any other outside influence on it. What you are describing would be something more akin to an asteroid belt body rather than a planet.

right, i havent thought about the other moons. i thought it was just because of excentricity.

You found this information, how come a Phd astrophysicist did not? Red dwarf stars have no habitable zone.

@@frankkolmann4801 Not to mention the glaring issue with the 1 percent statistic in the video - while it's true that red dwarf stars have the time advantage with a lifespan of up to trillions of years, Dr. Kipping pointed out in the video that the universe has not even _existed_ for trillions of years, hardly having passed 10 billion years of age. The time advantage that red dwarfs have for evolution hasn't even _had time_ to come into play yet, since most yellow (technically white) dwarfs are still very much alive and in the main sequence. Again as said in the video, at the current point in the universe, there are only 5 times as many main sequence red dwarfs as yellow dwarfs. This brings the red sky paradox chances back up to 1 in 5 for us at this point in the universe's history, even with all else being equal, making Resolution 1 look much more likely again (although a yellow-sky alien in a trillion years would have much more to think about!) Then you add in what you and OP said, and suddenly there are even more factors indicating that a red dwarf civilization would not be so likely after all, and might be quite rare indeed... at least, for now. {{ More below, about additional alien paradoxes related to the red sky paradox}} That brings up the obvious but lesser "orange sky paradox" questioning why we live around a G type sun-like star instead of an orange K-type, which is the relatively mellow, fairly long-lived halfway point between us and the M-type red dwarfs. These stars are less likely to be turbulent for their home planets than the red dwarves, meaning they might have a slight numbers advantage that isn't cancelled out by their absence of a habitable zone. But again, their time advantage has not yet taken place, so this is not likely to cause a significant gap yet. And as a way to wrap this whole argument of mine up: We can't make accurate theories about the accuracy of the cosmological principle or the differences between ourselves and aliens, due to our sample size of... us. Unless we're the only aliens in the universe or one among very few, that's not a very good sample size for any study. Which naturally leads into the Fermi Paradox - why _haven't_ we found anyone else? Well, for all the debating we've done about the Fermi Paradox, many have based their assumptions around a flawed premise - that if aliens were out there, even fairly close and rather loud, we would have already and quite easily picked them up. This is simply not true, not even assuming that they're broadcasting in the right frequencies and with sufficient strength for us to pick them up. Refer to the universal constant that terrorizes sci-fi authors, xenobiology theorists, and rocket scientists everywhere - the speed of light. The first radio broadcast ever sent by humanity was sent 127 years ago. Naturally, this means it has traveled 127 light-years. Even assuming the weak and muddled signal hasn't dissolved into background static over that distance, it's only reached the closest 6,000 or so stars to us, and if there's an alien race with about the same technology as us 100 light years away that received the signal 20-something years ago and blasted something back, we won't know about it for another 73 years at best! Look at the fact that the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, and you realize it'll likely be a different geologic era before we get a reply to something we shot out into the cosmos, and twice as long before we can be sure they've received our message back. Forget deciphering the alien message - it'll be almost as difficult to figure out what WE sent so long ago! This applies the other way around, too - for us to discover aliens 500 light years away, they have to have shot a signal strong enough to detect, directly at us, 500 years ago. Considering that a signal that strong and focused would be a pretty big task even for us now, that raises the question of just how long ago we really expect aliens to have _had_ such advanced tech, or if that'd be so rare that nobody in range would have developed it yet. This difficulty goes up by orders of magnitude if we ever expect to have a Star Trek future of hopping from planet to planet and meeting a vast variety of different species face-to-face in our travels: such journeys would take thousands of years, and by the time Captain Kirk's ship would have returned, the descendants of his crew could have evolved to become just as alien to us as we were to Neanderthals!

Bro, not all red dwarfs are flare stars! Plus YOU COULD ACTUALLY LIVE IN A FLARE STAR IF YOU HAVE A STRONG MAGNETIC FIELD AND GRAVITY. In fact, red dwarf stars do have a habitable zone uncultured swine.

​@@frankkolmann4801 "Red dwarf stars have no habitable zone." That's not entirely true. The larger the star, the larger the habitable zone, but the shorter the life span of the star. This is why we don't look for intelligent life in blue supergiant systems, because the star itself only lasts for millions of years, not the requisite billions+ for evolution of intelligent life as we know it. Further, our own Sun is considered a G-type star, technically a "yellow dwarf", one size in range larger from red dwarfs. This is just to put the discussion in perspective. As covered in this video at 3:24, red dwarf stars have a range of sizes. If we were to go hunting for intelligent life in red dwarf systems, if I were to choose, I would target the larger red dwarfs, closer to the 1/2 the size of the Sun category, rather than the tinier red dwarfs closer to the size of Jupiter. Why? The habitable zone point brought up in this thread. The smaller stars _effectively_ have no habitable zone (too small in range that the odds of a planet being placed just right make looking for them almost a fool's errand.) Then there is the additional factor that makes looking for life on such stars moot. What is that additional factor? As a star ages during its main phase (the longest phase, where it burns hydrogen for energy), its nuclear reaction and heat output goes up to compensate for the increase in helium in its core. Our own Sun is 30% brighter now than it was 5 billion years ago, if I recall correctly. As the energy output increases, so does the habitable zone "range" - but the habitable zone also moves further away from the star. 5 billion years ago, Venus was more ideally placed in the habitable zone as back then the zone was a little closer to the Sun due to the lowered energy output. As of now, Earth is ideally placed. In a red dwarf system (assuming this star is half the size of our Sun as an example), a planet just outside the habitable zone at formation 10 billion years ago might be ideally placed in it today, with life only now starting to thrive on it.

you are likely right see my reply to too cool worlds lab, and the reference that supports exactly what you said. who is likely no Red sky paradox, several publications support that m dwarf exoplanet would require a huge magnetosphere to keep an atmosphere especially in the nearby habitable zone. if we can agree mars never had any intelligent life, what is believed to have had water, and had its atmosphere stripped away, studies CME-solar winds have estimated m dwarf exoplanets require magnetosphere many times earths not to have its atmosphere stripped away like mars.

I've seen a few people respond with this which is what I originally thought aswell. Makes you wonder why this guy would totally ignore this possibility?..

@@himynameis3664 From an optimistic standpoint, he simply ignores it to make the arguments for such a paradox more convincing. From a pessimistic standpoint, his simply trying to click bait people who don't know any better.

@@musicheaven1679 Yeah, after watching the entirety of the vid I think he did kind of mention it but he glossed over it so quick I nearly missed it. And for something that pretty much resolves the "paradox" it shouldn't be glossed over.

this is my thought also. the solar system is 5~ billion years old in a supposedly 14~ billion year old universe. We are so early to the scene it's not funny. You can't even compare red dwarfs fairly because red dwarfs might live for 100 trillion years but we haven't even come close to that figure yet so their lifespan increase is negligible. I think it's pretty likely that the first 5-10 billion years of the universe were probably more inhospitable for life due to just way more crap going on, so it seems reasonable to me that we could actually be part of the first generation of life. That's not an implication we are the *first* life, just part of the early generations of it, which also explains our loneliness because the light from other early generation life can't reach us yet. It's all speculation of course, but to me this seems more feasible than not.

@@empty5013 this makes the most sense to me. We exist all as vibrations of crazy ass particles and quarks. We are an example of when things go right for life it will find a way. We mustn’t let the future and possibly other reality frequency vibrating beings out there down!

8 hours ago

12 seconds ago

All of the above ;)

I have actually taken all of Coolworlds videos and joined them all together without the adverts etc, it took a 2 tb drive to do it !.

It’s possible some can have a 3:2 resonance like Mercury.

He often cuts to a diagram or visual aid while talking. Clever editing can hide a lot of things, but it does seem as though the scripts are incredibly well rehearsed.

Amateurs do 2 takes hahahaha

It’s just the way he produces the video. He puts a lot of cut screens in there. You only see his face during those long segments where he doesn’t cut.

Maybe he just knows what he’s talking about

Well, he does give lectures as a professor and as a speaker so I'm guessing he's used to it. I personally like it better with out cuts even if there is a mistake. It's just UKposts, not an actual TV show in LA or something. lol.

Our hauntingly beautiful universe

If Life can only arise around G type stars then ~7% becomes the upper bound for the fraction of stars with habitable planets. (not an unreasonable assumption). Also...if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle but she doesn't(as far I know) so she's not.

I think its because those people are afraid to accept the fact that its highly likely they're not the most intelligent species in the Universe. Especially if some of them have the technology to travel through interstellar space in order to come visit us, and observe us as we do animals in the wild or the zoo.

@Smee Self it's equation with so many unknowns it doesn't help... all we've really got are observations

Maybe they should split habitable zone into suitable for life to evolve vs us being already evolved being able to live there. From what i understand brown dwarfs have VERY violent activity. Like way way waaaaaay more violent then our sun. In fact, if you look all the other solar systems we've discovered so far and compare them to ours, our solar system is STRIKINGLY orderly. Not saying it was constructed, but if thats what it takes to get life to evolve, then life is probably REALLY rare.

Orange dwarves are where it's at.

How about both? A cat that is scared of cucumbers but can also fart the names of the stars in the sky.

@@Phoenixash-delfuego id watch that all day bruva

@@Phoenixash-delfuego algorithms and payed for advertising 🤦‍♂️ theres years old vids from people i follow ive never seen but youtube keeps throwing tik tok shite at me lol

How can anyone not find this stuff absolutely facinating???🤔

@@roydoncrerar2852 my thoughts exactly. Too many people nowadays are so addicted to themselves & to the mindless egotistical content of others (esp on social media) that they literally can't see beyond that. Since I was a kid I've always paused in wonder to look up at the moon every time I see it in the sky. Our original Cool World. The only celestial body that we can see as a sphere with details on, & my introduction as a child to the Universe beyond. How many people do that these days? Far too few in my opinion. Channels like this will hopefully change that...

works for me. To be honest this just seems as a desperate grab for content. This isn't a paradox, it's just a question, a question with what I suspect will be a trivial answer. Case and point the explanation given by Nir Ophek

‘nanometers’ and ‘electron volts’ are not compatible. @Nir Ophek.

The solution is very simple. You need to calculate for god.

We don't "know" that life "began" in the sea. Are you serious with that statement??? There's no evidence whatsoever that life came from non-living material, ever. It's mind boggling where scientists and other people get off saying stuff like that when it's never something that's been observed and there's no evidence for at all. What the hell is wrong with our scientists these days? Abiogenesis is the dumbest thing holding humanity back from actually progressing in our knowledge, it's so ridiculous and frustrating.

@@JustinOhio For you, this is the wrong channel!

That was quick!!

Samsies

That was my thinking...and also because of that many planets within the habitable zones of these starts would be tidally locked, making them virtually uninhabitable. Though they say habitability within the "twilight zones" of those planets could be possible, it seems unlikely that life could persevere in such a small sliver of an entire planet.

@@digitalfootballer9032 I agree with the 2 commenters above..all the radiation, solar eruptions, solar wind, and being tidally locked dont spell out a good chance of life..i.e. proxima b

Life is much more resilient than we tend to think. Even if tidally locked and bombarded with radiation, an underground ocean would be able to host life.

Yes, this video is a joke. Red dwarfs are much more active than our sun, making life harder. And as you said planets would also have to he closer to be in the habitable zone resulting in even more exposure to dangerous radiation. This video was pretty pointless im ngl.

Does he seriously not address this in the video? With a title such as this one I’d assume these basic factors would be looked at. But it seems like (what I’m getting from the comments) is that he went out of his way to present it as much more of a paradox than it is. He even responded to a comment by saying “you make a good point and I have no rebuttal but I’m stubborn so I still don’t agree with you.”

*heavy breathing*

Me: misses 4 99 percent chance shots Enemy: lands 4 1 percent chances

Yup. Both of those look like subtypes of resolution II. I'd have been happier to have the tidal locking problem at least mentioned in the video... I'll be happier about knowing what explanation is plausible when we can at least detect water vapor (or its absence!) in the atmospheres of these worlds (as an index of how bad the flare damage is) and preferably to also detect oxygen. One other possible resolution to the Fermi paradox as a whole might be from the expected water abundance on superearths. Some of the models predict oceans hundreds of kilometers deep on most of them. Perhaps near-Earth-mass worlds are mostly divided between waterless, lifeless worlds and ocean worlds with plenty of life, but no dry land, or land animals, or technology. Worlds with just the right amount of water to spawn life but also with dry land and fire-wielding technologists might be exceedingly rare.

Red dwarves will, eventually, calm down and flaring will stop. Plenty of them are already pretty timid. In my opinion, it's just too early. In older universe planets around them could boom with life. We are most likely one among the first few odd civilizations in the universe, and also incredibly lucky.

@@Mandrak789 heres a thought experiment. We are refugees of a much older race of beings, a progenitor race that evolved in a much younger universe cast adrift in the universe after their home world/local star cluster expired. This progenitor race had the technology to manipulate the orbits of planets, being directly resposible for tidal locking and sun/moon cycles to create the conditions for us to exist on this planet to their specifications. They then left and continued to seed life in other locations, the only trace of them existing left in ancient structures and myth and our genetics..

@@livinglight9915 ah yes that's one of my fav scenarios, although it must be worked out in details to be believable; lot of plot holes there unfortunatelly

@@Mandrak789 I see conflicting reports on how much red dwarves settle down. E.g. www.universetoday.com/148709/even-older-red-dwarf-stars-are-pumping-out-a-surprising-amount-of-deadly-radiation-at-their-planets/ says Barnard's star, 10-12 billion years old, is still flaring 25% of the time. The other question is, even if the flaring eventually stops, if planets' atmospheres were stripped by the flaring, is there any mechanism to replenish them? Hopefully we'll eventually be able to observe the atmospheres and see what survived or was replenished - or not.

I had the exact same thought

Even worse, the early red dwarfs (and their possible planets) were formed long before there were heavy elements with which to form planets… and life. In fact, the era when there were significant heavy elements was approximately when the Sun formed. The only stars we should be comparing with are the other stars formed in that era. Lifespan of the red dwarfs is thus irrelevant.

We could be early

@@jursamaj This is exactly right and a well known fact whenever considering life formation. To be more precise we need a high enough density of phosphorus to allow for organic chains. Second there is likely no chance for photosynthesis at infrared (or it would have likely evolved on Earth by now). Third there is a mess with tidal locking and tidal forces

You could think of life span as a fuel tank, the star dies when it runs out of fuel, the ages of these stars are simply calculated by the rate at which they use energy not by direct observation.

Stay away from abiogenesis and you'll be just fine. It's a dead field of study that has made zero progress in like 60 years, quite literally.

@@JustinOhio But do ask if red-dwarf systems are unlikely to gestate life not only because of hostile stellar conditions , but because the Earth-like planets age and die .

Yoooo same here dude!! 😎👊

YT likes 10 min videos

Were red dwarfs common in the early universe (12-13bill yrs ago) ? Or did they only become the most abundant type of star later in its evolution, say 5-10billion yrs ago? Curious to know, as it would have certain implications to the paradox as noted above... ie that red dwarfs born early in the universe's history would be poor candidates for finding life as they wouldn't have the necessary ingredients. Wonder if there exists a population iii red dwarf somewhere out there?

thats a very good point

And then you can further reduce the quantity of red dwarfs as relevant because they suffer a lot more negatives for the evolution of complex (key word here) life. Tidal locking, solar flares, many factors that red dwarfs are more likely to experience than yellow stars because of the proximity of their Goldilocks zone. Could life still evolve in those conditions? Absolutely. But they’re very harsh to the evolution of _complex_ life. So the fact that we, complex life, find ourselves around a yellow star at a calm and safe distance rather than around a red dwarf as we get bombarded with solar winds and coronal ejections is not really a paradox anymore

Truly openminded? Take a look at plasma cosmology.😉

So do I. Exciting, informative and fascinating, and very well presented.

It could be that we are in very early history of civilizations! Perhaps M-dwarf civilizations will happen in 100 billion years!

Yeah, we really are almost as soon as we could have been on a cosmic scale. The entire universe is barely three times as old as our solar system, and you have to take into account that metals and heavier elements just didn't exist at first. It's pretty crazy to think about. Life has existed on Earth as soon as it was possible, and an habitable planet like Earth existed as soon as it could. We are merely wotnessing the dawn of life and civilisation in the universe.

@@leirbag1595 Very excellent points. The Red Sky Paradox doesn't even mention tidal locking (which is huge) and greatly downplays solar flares. So I doubt it considers what you mention, which is something else that likely nullifies it. Sad, but this "paradox" does not appear to be any better than the Drake equation. But, anyway, I've seen and read some really interesting stuff that DO account for the age of stars / presence of metals and when life first began on Earth that do seem to indicate that life began pretty damn quick, pretty much as early as it possibly could have. Which helps towards the case that life may actually be very prevalent in the universe. Now, intelligent life is a totally different thing though - intelligence may be rare even if life is very common. We have no way of knowing how common intelligence is, and probably won't for quite some time.

@@Me__Myself__and__I Multicellular life needed a billion years before it was able to form on Earth, so we will likely only witness intelligent life on planets which are consistently habitable. Though to address tye solar flares and tidal lockings around red stars, an underground lifeform would be sufficiently protected from the former and might evolve to resist them, and a tidal lock, while unquestionably shitty, leaves an habitable zone with an unending twilight. The conditions on a planet like that would be much more difficult than usual, but given that these worlds would have more time to develop, they might still develop life. Intelligent life should still be extremely rare, especially human-level intelligence. Goven how long it took for us to appear and how specific our evolutionary path was, most worlds would likely just not recreate them. Otherwise, yeah there is definitely life out there. Even just in the solar system, there are three other places than Earth that I can think of that ccould be hosting life, plus others which could in the future.

@@leirbag1595 I don't recall the exact details, but multi-cellular life did not take a billion years. Early earth had issues such as asteroid impacts, high temperature, etc. that would have precluded life at the beginning. Once you subtract that time out life took less time to develope. The thing with Red / M Dwarves is that they haven't really had all that much more time. This video says 20x, but the universe isn't old enough to allow that. Plus, the earlier generations of stars didn't have enough heavy elements available yet. So when you discount the 15x+ time of red dwarves (that hasn't yet occurred) and the earlier timeframe where there weren't yet enough heavy elements - M Dwarves really haven't had much additional time over our star in the present day.

I was thinking this too. What does it matter if they can last trillions of years? The universe isn't that old yet. Moreover, I'm a geologist, and I have a running intuition that says that the window for lie to develop on a world is relatively short after it's creation (on a timescale of billions of years). Either the world is going to go snowball and not develop life (in the case of red dwarfs this is even worse, since they are most energetic when young), or it will go hothouse like venus (more common around sunlike stars where the sun's power gradually ramps up). At least in earth's case, it seems that the earth's temperate climate has been stabilised by feedback loops of CO2 and O2 that life itself is responsible for. For Earth, life seems like it was necessary to prevent it turning into a second venus.

Thank you. This is what I was thinking also

Very interesting. I've never heard that and will have to look into it.

This could explaim the fermi paradox, as it would imply that live is rare because the majority of stars arent capable of developing life

This was also my immediate question about the likelihood of lifeforms not only being created in the first place, but having enough of the right amount and type of radiation to continue to evolve and ultimately survive across the number of generations it would take to become complex organisms. The initial creation of life could possibly happen all the time in these habitable worlds, but they simply don't survive long enough to become intelligent. This paradox asks why we, as the infinitely complex organisms that the human species has become, did not emerge on a planet orbiting a red star. Well, we are only able to survive the amount of ultraviolet radiation that we receive from the sun because of the ozone layer of our atmosphere shielding us and bringing the amount of radiation down to a level that is tolerable for not only us, but that feeds the plantlife that sustains the animals we prey upon. However, this amount of radiation is also something of a 'goldilocks' attribute of our planet, because it also not too low. Too little radiation, and the plantlife would not be able to generate enough energy through photosynthesis. So ultimately, the problem of proper radiation exposure is one that occurs repeatedly along the temporal scale for the potential of producing intelligent life. All of the elements have to be just right, and that lessens the possibility of it occurring even more.

I totally agree with you...the accent and the tone are just right...enjoyable to listen to and he could be just telling kids stories and it would be good...

It's true. We are getting smarter.

That’s a great suggestion and one a couple of colleagues discussed with me too whilst working on this. A couple of issues are that first we don’t really know how long planets can remain geologically active, super Earths may last far longer for example. Nor is it clear to what degree this is crucial for life. Second, this doesn’t really explain why Ms are less habitable than FGKs, although it would certainly attenuate the temporal advantage effect.

My thought too. The 10 billion year half life of Thorium 232 should keep a planet geologically active longer than 6-8 billion years, but not orders of magnitude longer. The trillion year lifetime of the star doesn't help.

@@jimbaerg1100 I agree with you, but don't forget -- before 2-3 of bln yrs Thorium will decay, the convection in mantle will ceased. So, continents will stop moving. And then a metal liquid core gets so thick, that magnetic field will disappear. All of this means -- the planet is dead!

Thank-you Ian!

Good question! I think you’re sort of imagining that universe is 13.8 Gyr old and we can only exist if that’s that old and no older. Of course we could emerge whenever in the universe (so long as we have habitable conditions) so the setup here is somewhat misplaced

@@CoolWorldsLab I really appreciate your prompt reply, I am aware of the fairly recent doubt cast upon the age of the universe but we exist now and life which evolves in the future is beyond our ability to predict or interact with. Feel a bit stupid, like I'm missing something that should be obvious :)

I was a little confused by this being a layperson and all - although M Dwarves might live 20 x longer eventually, they may only have been around for say 5 x longer so far? So it might be that we are just talking 5 x 5 rather than 5 x 20 which is a fair difference...

@@krest2848 My friend, I'm still confused. Given that our solar system is roughly one third the age of the universe and that life couldn't have developed around population II stars, surely the only factor worth considering is that M Dwarves are more abundant? Not their slower fusion rate.

​@@krest2848 I'm glad I'm not crazy and someone else in the comments came to this realization! If we took the logic at 3:29 to the extreme and said that M-Dwarves live forever, they would be infinitely more likely to support life even though the universe is only ~13 billion years old. This is unless he meant that M-Dwarves *have* existed on average 20 times longer than our type of star.

😆Sounds like you'd make a great Jehovah's witness

We're stoked you found us!

Interesting there is speculation that a gamma ray burst causes the evolution of human. A cosmic event causes prolonged droughts in Africa forcing homonids to travel long distances too find food. This favors the smartest to survive because making the wrong decisions on where to go leads to starvation.

​@@kazedcat I think the real answer is way more complex and involves the evolution of human conciousness. I do not believe that intelligence resulted soley from the need for survival. I believe true intelligence arose from the expansion of conciousness/self awareness. Self awareness is actually detrimental to instincts and survival and takes a back seat in a fight or flight situation. Conciousness and intelligence is something that arises after basic survival needs are taken care of. We could go one step further and consider that there are different forms of intelligence, being logical intelligence, and the other being emotional / creative intelligence. The right / left brain paradigm. One is derived from the need for practicality whilst the other is derived from introspection and self awareness. Intelligence that brings about any real advancement encompases both.

But the answer could also be a lot simpler; we do not yet know the length of time a civilisation will 'live', especially through its growing technological phase. Perhaps many civilisations have already existed on other planets and perished. Perhaps they did not escape their dying planets. Perhaps they wiped each other out before space travel, you get the idea. The rate we are going we aren't far enough away from such a fate ourselves.

​@@qwert_au Statistically improbable. Not only that, most arguments that touch on technology are tainted with bias and assumptions. Realistically our current level of advancement is extremely low to what it could be. Just another 1000 years of advancement there is an extreme probability that not only will we be colonising our solar system but also managing intersteller and intergalactic travel. It also hinges off the assumption that we will wipe ourselves out within the next 1000 years which is extremely pesimistic and partly a result of our inherent nature to catastrophise everything.

@@livinglight9915 i wonder if chemicals from mushrooms or even nutrient dense food had some case for our enlightenment…

Completely agree. Why would I bother watching most of TV when I can spend my time and brain cells on intellectually expansive content.

yeah, that's exactly what I thought. Most people on Earth live in Asia, but still a lot of us were born in villages or small towns that are tens of thousands less likely than Pekin, for example

Thanks, I wanted to write the same. There is no star in the Universe that is much older than 3 times the age of the sun. The factor of 20x is wrong. I was shocked when he mentioned it.

@@Keymaster Yes, and given what he said about the time to "settle down" of the red dwarfs (dwarves?), the relative advantage may be even less.

excellent point!

He tries to shift the argument and say that you can't limit it to one point in time. Okay, but that demolishes the argument because I can just as easily say you can't limit it to one point in space. If you limit the argument to why present-day humans exist around a G type star, then it has to be PRESENT DAY. He can't have it both ways.

Yeah, he would make a great friend for a cross country road trip. By the end I would have learnt so much. :)

While your conclusion is arguable but your analogy misses the mark. You weren't "born human" so much as you developed the cognitive ability to recognise you are human. You are (or appear to be) externalising your sense of self (mind, spirit, what have you) and assuming it is in some way transferable. You (your sense of 'you' anyway) did not exist before you body and you will cease to exist after it, assuming of course that we ignore any theological or spiritual beliefs (i.e. afterlife, reincarnation etc). A better analogy for your point might be something along the principle of- 'just because you have a billion options does not mean you won't fall into the most unexpected one'. This point that you are making was his very first point in the video as well mind you; so I suspect without realising it you have resonated with the first possible explanation to the question: it just so happened the way that it did. Not having a go; just providing some alternative insight.

But, how how can they write papers proposing various solutions if there isn't a contrived "problem" to be solved?

@Smee Self its luck to us because we dont know how to roll the dice exactly the same way because we're not capable of it. If we did, physics would take care of the rest and the dice would essentially roll the same way.

Well, I’d probably toss that honor to mathematics, from whose womb came physics and chemistry, high-achieving and well-behaved, respectively, and followed by engineering, off to war again, and of course, geology, with his head in the sand, and biology, evolution, anthropology and medicine perennially too young to worry about the future. But they’re all darlings, to a fault. (Not a bit like their father, thank god.)

That's my thinking, and the only thing that makes sense. Life can only arise on the absolute singular conditions of our planet, with our sun, our moon, our orbit, our position in space and time. Any single alteration to these conditions and life does not arise.

@@Arvandor81 So you (we really) are the chosen one, it "make sense" as it's the safest way to think about it, also kind of gives you (us) that very nice sense of pride/accomplishment, "We are IT, and only we!" For all we know you might be right, but I see it as likely as that the universe is really infinte and as such has infinte versions of Earth and infinte Earth itself, on each of the exact same infinite versions of Earth, there's the exact same you and me, and they (we?) are typing in the comments of yet another amazing video from Prof. Kipping.

@@demonbox7780 I disagree with Kipping about the consequences of an infinite universe. Consider this thought experiment. Imagine a very large bin holding balls. The bin contains an infinite number of white balls and one black ball. If you were to randomly draw a ball from the bin it is possible you can draw the black ball because the black ball exists. The probability you draw the black ball is zero. After an infinite number of tries is it guaranteed you'd draw the black ball even once? In this thought experiment all the balls in the bin represent the landscape of all possible universes. The single black ball represents this exact universe. The white balls represent all other possible universes that are not this exact universe. The act of drawing a ball is the process by which the multi-verse takes a possible universe and makes it an actual universe. Why is it that infinite possibilities require everything that can happen to happen an infinite number of times? Why can't certain configurations of matter occur just once?

@@demonbox7780 Perhaps, but as another science video I watched recently pointed out, belief in an infinite universe is not falsifiable, and thus is not scientific.

@@richmigala2539 Because give infinte chances (both spatially and temporally), and also that one black ball will be infinite, so you'll eventually end up draw it out an infinte amount of times. I do not personally believe that's the "configuration" of the universe btw, just stated that from my very ingorant point of view is as likely, if not more likely than, life only happened and will only happen on Earth. Using the ball analogy, at this very moment we are in a situation where, we blindly picked one ball out of a bin containing trillions of balls, we touched them so we know there are A LOT, just don't know how many and what they actually look like and contain. That ball is the Solar system, we opened it and inside there are 9 smaller balls, our star and planets, out of these smaller balls we are pretty confident only 1 has at it's core the elements to create life, but we haven't had a chance to open the remining 7 balls so can't be 100% sure. Now how can we confidently say that's the ONLY ball who could muster life in the whole bin?

Yeah, but these are just Earth based, human philosophies. I mean Jupiter may shield us from SOME things, but space is HUUUUGE. Global killing asteroids can come from SOOOO MANY angles in space, that even Jupiter can't block them all. And having a stabilizing moon. Sure, but more Earth based assumptions. Human life may have done just fine even without the moon being apart of our system. There's just no way to prove tha the moon guarantees us any better successful survival and evolution than being without one. Being in the sun's Goldilocks zone is 99% of the reason why Earth has life on it.

@@blackSUAAAVE i'd disagree with certain points. In my opinion when it comes to probability, proximity to projectiles increases the odds of it teaching us so most of near earth object usually originate from oort cloud or from asteroid belt rather than from outside solar system so i still feel Jupiter plays a major role in reducing mass extinction asteroid event though that's not fool proof, we've had many mass extinctions in past to explain that. I'll rephrase my thoughts about moon, a planet with a stable rotary axis is needed for complex lives to evolve, for us it's provided by moon, (for exoplanets it's very difficult to bet on its axis) constant shift of axis will destabilize life from evolving to complex forms.

@@MrDocAKS - Yeah, but we don't have examples of 'almost life...but they didn't have a moon' planetary systems out there. Sure, it a bunch of Earth like planets were out there, but were barren because they just couldn't quite get the same things we have here on Earth...YES. I would buy the idea that a moon is necessary for life as we know it. If a planet sits in the Goldilocks zone of a stable star, and that planet has liquid water, a magnetic core, an atmosphere, has seasons, it's going to have some form of life on it. Jupiter doesn't even cover 1% of the sky, so how can it be this guardian angel that's keeping Earth protected like a rugged bouncer at a night club? I'm not saying space isn't violent and chaotic. It is, but that's early stages of solar system formation stuff. Once it reaches a point of measurable stabilization, i.e. 2-3 billion years or so into forming itself, all the planetary bombardment of celestial bodies really thin out. Orbits stabilize, the planets 'clean up' around themselves, i.e. pull in or eject smaller bodies around them. Once they clean up, they start to...improve, and evolve. There is life out there in the universe. We humans are just not advanced enough to discover it yet. Some planets only have plant life on it. Some planets have plants and animals. Some have plants, animals, aquatic animals, and yes...sentient beings. Whether or not all of these sentient planets have moons or not is immaterial. There's more than one way to have life on a planet. Having a moon is only one way for it to happen.

There’s one on, but at very mild processing level. I like being close to the mic for the improved tone but it causes more plosives and s of course, I’ll turn it up a bit more next time thanks

@@CoolWorldsLab We just wanted to hear you say “plosive.” 😉

Boy do I have great news for you

Life isn't possible on Earth without either being placed here or created here by something more intelligent. All of those equations are based on a model that assumes life just happens. It does not. It's never been observed. There's zero evidence for it, and it's holding science and humanity back from actually learning.