Machine Civilizations, Aliens, The Zoo Hypothesis & AI | David Kipping [INTERVIEW]

The biggest mystery is just how come we

didn't see anything. But they were

thinking about self-replicating machines

that would spread across the galaxy and

slowly essentially convert normal matter

into more probes. And the terrifying

thing about what they wrote was how easy

it is. Well, maybe we're the first. You

know, there's just it never happened

before. We are the first example of

someone to build in these types of

machines. Why don't we see these probes?

Why don't we see AI everywhere? Maybe

it's just so slow that they can't reach

us. as they showed in in these early

papers, that doesn't make sense. We may

be living in the oasis, the backwater of

the universe, where for whatever reason,

we are a weird fluke of a galaxy where

that just hasn't happened. If an alien

species was looking out to the cosmos,

so they'll probably notice the Earth is

unusual. They'll probably notice that

life on planet is maybe unusual.

>> The This is World Channel is partnered

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quantum computing companies.

>> It's a great pleasure having you here.

Yeah, thank you so much. Don't you think

because very often we use term alien

civilizations.

Don't you think that we should maybe

call them uh machine civilizations

because you know maybe somewhere there

deep inside the universe there is super

power AI or something like that that can

colonize another planets. Maybe this is,

you know, the global misunderstanding

calling them alien civilizations.

>> Yeah. I mean, this kind of comes back to

some early ideas that sort of von Newman

had actually. So, this idea called the

von Newman probe in the 1960s and the

bracewell probe and and around the same

sort of time and these were two

physicists who suggested along these

kind of lines. Not necessarily they were

thinking about AI. I don't think the the

term AI was really in popular lexicon at

that time, but they were thinking about

self-replicating machines that would uh

spread across the galaxy and slowly

essentially convert normal matter into

more probes or what I guess in in modern

parliaments we might say computer

substrate. It would go around just

converting dumb matter into smart matter

essentially like a 3D printer. And the

terrifying thing about what they wrote

was how easy it is. So, you know,

Voyager 2 is one of the fastest

spacecraft we've ever made. It's leaving

the solar system, but it's still

pitifully slow. It takes tens of

thousands of years to reach the nearest

stars. And so, people normally, you

know, might use that as a solution to

the so-called FIC paradox. Why don't we

see these probes? Why don't we see AI

everywhere? Maybe it's just so slow that

they can't reach us. But, um, as they

showed in in these early papers, that

doesn't make sense. Even traveling at

Voyage 2 speeds, you can actually

circumn the entire galaxy a few times

over given its current age. Um, so the

galaxy is about 100,000 light years

across. So if even if you traveled uh

say 1% the speed of light, you could go

across the entire galaxy over 10 million

years from one end to the other in 10

million years and you would be able to

do that journey over the lifetime of the

galaxy which is about 10 billion years a

thousand times over. So there is plenty

of time for even slow spacecraft AI 3D

printed probes to have spread across the

galaxy and converted everything by now.

And that is known as uh Hart's fact a

cuz that clearly hasn't happened

otherwise we wouldn't be here to talk

about it. The earth has not been turned

into a computer. We would not see

obvious evidence of manufacturing in the

solar system or something like this. So

that is a puzzle. Um my you know there's

two resolutions to that. One is I said

well maybe we're the first. You know

there's just it never happened before.

We are the first example of someone to

building these types of machines. We

haven't obviously built a 3D brace world

probe that could 3D print itself across

the universe yet but it's it's

conceivable we could get there in in our

lifetime. I would say that we could

probably build something like that. Um

so one solution is we are the first.

Another solution I like to point out

which I don't hear spoken about as often

is that maybe actually that is typically

what happens. Maybe most of the galaxies

around us that has already happened. In

fact um we would necessarily as organic

beings who naturally evolved on a planet

we could not develop in those galaxies.

It would be impossible because those

galaxies are already essentially sterile

because they all have been turned into

computer substrate if you like. You mean

early galaxies

>> maybe a few billion years ago uh these

nearby galaxies around us and beyond the

entire maybe 99% of galaxies in the

universe have been converted into

computers at this point essentially

there's no reason why that couldn't have

happened um and that would naturally fit

in with our expectations of life should

be common intelligence should be common

AI should be common it would naturally

fit in with that sort of mediocrity

principle type view and it would also

explain why we live where we live. We

could not live in one of those galaxies.

We may be living in the oasis, the

backwater of the universe, where for

whatever reason, we are a weird fluke of

a galaxy where that just hasn't

happened. In most galaxies, that happens

pretty quickly. But in our galaxy, for

whatever reason, just by pure luck,

probably um no other civilization

previously developed. So, I think us

being the first in our own galaxy can

also be comported with the idea of life

being common elsewhere. What revelations

uh you know is the web telescope

bringing about early galaxies?

>> A lot. It it is helping us to understand

those galaxies and it's providing some

surprises I would say. I mean from our

previous conversation it's not really

helping with alien searches too much.

These galaxies are the galaxies that

James is looking at are so distant. they

are, you know, literally on the other

side of the universe when the universe

was first forming essentially. They're

they're 13 billion light years away in

some cases, right? So vast vast

distances and so these um these galaxies

are surprisingly wellformed given the

age that they appear at. So based off

the red shift of these galaxies, we can

date them and uh we can tell that there

are some galaxies which are formed

within the first couple of hundred

million years of the universe existing

after the big bang and that's very fast.

um especially we expected there to be

sort of proto very small galaxies but

these are very large you know well-sized

galaxies too large for us to be able to

really uh expect them before James whip

launched and so that caused a lot of

controversy um people you know there

were headlines out saying big bang

theory is wrong and things like this but

there's another explanation either the

big bang theory is wrong or our

understanding of how

>> it is

>> it could be wrong or it could be that um

the formation our understanding of how

galaxies form. Could be wrong, right?

There's there's two possibilities. Now,

if you're going to throw away uh big

bang, which is really to say lambda CDM,

which is a a cosmological model, which

explains the cosmic microwave

background, it explains large scale

structure, it explains um the cosmic

infrared background. Um it it explains a

huge number of observations at this

point, polarization of the sky, um B

modes, all this kind of stuff. So it

it's if you throw that away, you have to

sacrifice a lot of of scientific

predictability. I mean some of the

predictions of the lambda CDM are within

01% of these multiple moments that you

measure on the sky. So just really

beautiful level of precision in terms of

the predictions or it could be that the

physics of gas coming together that's

that's plasma astrophysics, right?

That's how gas combines, how it gets

funneled into black holes, how those

early structures form. That's very

difficult to simulate. That's a much

harder problem uh physically speaking to

to work through than than cosmology.

Cosmology is actually kind of a simpler

problem.

>> That's my next question, David. Is it

not under meaning actual cosmological

model

>> undermining it?

>> Yeah.

No, I think I think e well I would say

yes it either undermines the

cosmological model or undermines the

galaxy formation model. One of those is

undermined by those observations and

because

>> that undermining everything, right?

>> I don't think you have to throw well you

don't think you have to throw away both.

You have to throw one you have to throw

away one of them to make sense of this

puzzle. One of them has to be wrong.

It'd be surprising if both were

completely wrong because that that would

seem a little bit excessive to throw

both out. And I said the co the

cosmological model explains so much

data. It's it's a hard cell to get rid

of it. Whereas when we look at um I give

you an example for the for the star

formation. So when we're forming

galaxies, you have to predict the number

of stars that are formed as a function

of time and how gas um combines together

to form giant molecular clouds that then

collapses to form stars. That's the

process of building these proto

galaxies. Now a lot of the uh rates at

which gas collapses down and forms those

stars um is very difficult in a computer

to simulate. You have to simulate I mean

think about it every gas particle

trillions and trillions and trillions

and trillions of particles. You have to

simulate in a computer to come together

and we just we can't we don't have the

resolution even with modern computers to

do that. So, we have to use these very

blocky it's kind of like playing Donkey

Kong or something like these kind of

very blocky re approximations of how

these gas clouds actually form stars and

galaxies. So, we we don't completely

trust those models because we know that

we know we're limited by our computers.

We know we know what we put into those

simulations and we know it's not right,

but it's an approximation because what

else can we do? And yet, it seems to

more or less explain the star formation

that we see in our galaxy. So, that's

why we feel fairly good about it. But

then when we take those same models and

we apply it to the early universe, it

doesn't seem to work or or big bang

theory is wrong. But that's one

possibility, right? It doesn't seem to

work. And it's probably because I mean

in fact there's a kind of growing

consensus this is the case that those

simulations that we used and seemed

effective for the Milky Way were largely

calibrated to be. So there's a when you

do these simulations there's a huge

number of tuning parameters we call

them. um and that's because of these

approximations. So you have to say what

is the efficiency at which gas collapses

um per unit time and you just have to

basically choose a number for that in

the simulation. We don't know what to

choose. So what the simulators normally

do is they choose that number so that it

matches the stars in the galaxy. So they

tune a lot of these numbers so

everything looks good. Now if those

numbers are different in the early

universe to how they are in the modern

universe then the simulations won't

work. And there's good reason to think

they would be different because the

environment of the early universe is

completely different. It's a much

warmer, hotter, denser universe than it

is today. So why should the efficiencies

and these other tuning parameters all be

the same? So I think that's a much more

likely answer. But you know uh talking

about the universe all the time we use

the term you know billions of billions

years 30 billions years in the universe

uh trillions of of trillions of

something. uh these numbers

are real for human mind.

>> No, I don't I it's hard. I mean when

when you hear like the national debt is

trillions of dollars, who can really get

their mind around that compared to our

typical amount of you know dollar bills

that we play around with in our hands.

So yeah, I I think the human mind really

struggles. But um I certainly feel

comfortable with it as a mathematical

construct. You know if you write down

10^ the 12

>> you know maybe we are not capable of

understanding that numbers

>> I think we can we can it depends what

you mean by understand it can we

visualize 10^ the 12 objects in our mind

no we cannot visualize that many objects

but do we need to visualize that many

objects to um make to make progress with

our mathematical models I think we I

think that's clear that we can um we

don't need to necessarily be to

visualize what a billion objects looks

like to be able to um multiply 1 billion

by you know another number or something

like we can we can make progress with

that in our models. So it is a I

certainly feel when I look up at the sky

and you look up all the stars and you're

only seeing a fraction of course of the

of the stars in a in a local universe

let alone um that's truly out there you

the mind cannot truly fathom the the

vastness of even the local universe let

alone the entire uh cosmos beyond but um

I don't lose sleep about that aspect I

mean that's just why why should we

expect that a primate, which is what we

are, has the ability to visualize

astronomical scales in our minds.

There's no there's no reason why it

should be. I mean, there's no reason why

the universe should be comprehensible to

us. It is a miracle that it is as

comprehensible to us as it is. Why is it

that there's no evolutionary benefit to

us being understand cosmology, right?

There's no there's absolutely no benefit

to that. But apparently, we can to some

degree. We have pretty good models. Why

can we understand quantum physics to

some to remarkable levels of precision

that we can make these experiments and

build semiconductors and do quantum

teleportation and quantum computation? I

mean there's no re evolutionary reason

why we should be able to do those

things. Um so it is I think it's a

miracle that the universe is as

comprehensible as it is. But I'm very

comfortable with the idea that there

could be stuff that we will never truly

be able to wrap our heads around.

>> Hello quantum enthusiasts. Our partner

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>> under your research.

Which informations ever shocked you the

most about aliens civilizations about

you know that scope of your research?

Yeah, there's there's many mysteries. I

think the biggest mystery is just how

come we don't see anything? I mean, it

it's it sounds um a little bit tur to

put it like that, but there is a and and

a lot of people would push back and say

we've barely scratched the surface.

Maybe they're communicating ways that we

can't see or doing things we don't

detect. But the shocking thing is the

universe as far as we can tell from

everywhere from the edge of the universe

that big bang that James Webb can see

all the way up to the local galaxy.

Everything is apparently consistent with

natural. Every star we've looked at,

every galaxy, it all is consistent with

a natural explanation. And that's kind

of shocking that that a natural

explanation explains so much. Um, and so

that I mean, why don't we see the

occasional star that's been engineered

in some obvious way? Why don't we see

relics in the solar system like

spacecraft just floating around? Or why

don't we see warp drive trails through

the sky? Uh, why don't we see laser

beams shining at us? Why don't we see

galaxies that have been converted into

just computer substrate or something?

You know, we these things we can think

of experiments to do it. We've surveyed

a 100,000 nearby galaxies looking for

what we call a cardv type 3

civilization. in these kind of these

greedy energy hungry civilizations and

of a 100,000 galaxies we don't see

anything

>> and that's that's just very lonely. You

know, it's very odd that we appear it's

maybe sad or maybe it's um like playing

the universe in sandbox mode. You know,

if you play a computer game and there's

no opponent, you just get to play and do

whatever you want in the game. And maybe

that's the way it is for us. Maybe there

are there's no agent to stop us from

doing whatever we want. We there we

could expand through the galaxy and no

one's ever going to prevent us. There's

no barriers. We could essentially do

whatever we want and that's quite

exhilarating. So we have two options. We

are either totally alone or uh

surrounded by hidden aliens.

Don't you think that is basically you

know Pascal wager?

>> Yeah. So maybe I mean there's no obvious

>> that's like you know Pascal's wager.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, Pascal's way is about a

benefit to you though. So, what would be

the benefit to us in believing one or

the other? In this case, there's no

obvious benefit for you to believe in

aliens or not to believe in aliens. In

this case, believing in God in Pascos

wager has a potential benefit because

when you die, you go to heaven. But it

doesn't really matter if you believe in

it unless unless they have some way of

sucking up your spirit or something that

you know, you have some idea of that.

But I think if you're going to go to

that far, you may as well just invoke uh

fairies or Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.

Pascal's wager pass wager pass

everything. I should just pass cause

wager in the most insane thing because

that would um maximize my benefit. So I

mean personally I like truth. I try to

seek you know what is it's not always

going to be something I like. And

usually as a truth seeker it's it's

probably the opposite of what I want.

And so I really challenge people to ask

themselves this question. What do you

love more? What you want to be true or

what is true? And that's that's a really

difficult question to like look in the

mirror, stare hard at it, and ask

yourself, what do I want more? And so

often, even in politics and uh modern

society and uh social media, you'll see

a story pop up that maybe agrees with

your worldview. Maybe a political figure

you don't like has been accused of doing

something bad and you will just, you

know, be rubbing your hands together so

happy that this politician has been

caught out for doing something bad. But

that's cuz you want that to be true. So

maybe that might be a pause for pause

for concern. You know, I actually really

would like it if this politician was

caught doing something dirty. So maybe I

should be more skeptical about that

idea. And vice versa when it's a good

for one of your friends. And I think

this is um one of the things we really

struggle with is science is all about

you know just just what is really true

and our emotions we are human beings

doing science and we'll cloud that

process and we have to guard against it

really consciously and forcefully when

we do that and I think aliens is a great

example of this but I think it's a

lesson for life it's a lesson which

translates to every aspect of society

really ask yourself what what do you

want more and often a lot of people if

they're being honest with themselves

will probably prefer prefer, you know,

their their favorite ideology to win out

rather than necessarily the truth to

bear out.

>> What is um the mechanism of the halo

drive that you propose?

>> The halo drive. Yeah, this was a fun

little uh project I worked on about

black holes and uh really asking what

are the limits of transportation in the

galaxy. So, uh, Freeman Dyson, to give a

little backstory behind this, um, had

this idea of using two neutron stars

that were in a very compact orbit

circling around one another. And they

get so close that they move close to the

speed of light in in their in spiral

phase. And so he suggested you could do

a gravitational slingshot around one of

those stars. And because they're moving

so quickly, you could steal velocity

essentially close to the speed of light

and then travel between the stars. And

the beauty of this is that you're

stealing energy. So your spaceship

doesn't really require a propulsion

system. It just drifts in at the right

time and comes out. The problem with

this is that that's like a blender,

right? So these stars are moving so fast

in those final moments. It's like trying

to throw a stone into a blender and hope

that it bounces off the propeller at the

right moment. And it's a very hazardous

environment to fly into a high radiation

environment. So maybe not a healthy

thing to do. So I suggested, hey, why

not replace those black ho those neutron

stars with black holes. Um, and a black

hole has the advantage that you don't

need to get so close to it because we

could use light. So we shine a light

beam and we just miss the black hole

just to the side.

>> Black hole as a cosmic engine.

>> Yes, we're using it as an engine to

power our spaceship. So there's the

there's two black holes or maybe even

just one that's moving very quickly and

we fire a light beam, a laser beam, and

it skirts around the edge around the

event horizon. Doesn't quite go into the

event horizon, just off the event

horizon. And so it will orbit around and

complete one. It's called a boomerang

geodessic. It kind of looks like a

mirror. So you can actually see your

reflection. If you looked at just the

right angle around a black hole, you

could see yourself. So this light beam

skirts right around and comes back to

your spaceship. And when it does, it

will like throwing a ping-pong ball off

a moving wall. It will pick up energy.

Imagine like a tennis racket that's

moving through space and a ball hits it.

It comes off with more energy than it

initially hit. And so this black hole

that's moving towards you will force the

light beam to pick up more energy. So it

will get blue shifted and then that will

hit your spaceship and propel you

forward. So the beauty of this system is

that you could propel very very large

vehicles through space very very fast.

So you could literally take Jupiter, the

planet Jupiter, and propel it at

relativistic speeds through the galaxy

with this thing and it wouldn't and the

black hole wouldn't even notice cuz it's

so massive. So if you wanted to move an

entire civilization or a huge amount of

mass, this would be the great way to do

it. And there's about a million black

holes in the galaxy altogether. We don't

know where they all are, but we expect

there are about a million from stellar

formation history. Um, and so there's a

network essentially out there waiting

for us to tap into. And I like to think

of a bit of like a highway system,

right? So these are the highway points

between each black hole and you can

accelerate and decelerate between these

points and then you get off the offramp

at each one and you go to your local

star system. So who could the hell dry

mechanism push a ship to the speed of

light?

>> Not to the speed of light. It would be

limited by the speed of the black hole

itself. So these in the fire in you know

these black holes have varying speeds

but some

>> close to speed of light. Right.

>> Yeah. I I would say um maybe like 30 40%

speed light something like this. Yeah.

Is it technically possible to create a

prototype

or of the hurdle drive?

>> Um, possibly. We don't obviously have a

black hole. That's the big problem. So,

you need a black hole to test this.

There are some analogies to black holes

we've been able to make in the

laboratory setting called acoustic black

holes where instead of light being

trapped in an event horizon, you can get

sound waves to be trapped in an event

horizon. And so you might be able to do

a kind of sonic version of it more or

less just to demonstrate the idea. Um

but really if you wanted to truly

utilize this thing you need something

which can do this light reflection

technique which is what the black hole

serves. So you need something that's

moving fast and can bend light around

it. So for that you really do need a

black hole. Um yeah I mean my when I

when I approach problems like this I

think of story as science as a

conversation. So you have to listen to

what's been said before. And so imagine

you're at a cocktail party and there's a

group of people talking. So I walk into

the room and I hear Freeman Dyson

talking and he's talking about these

neutron stars and how they merge

together. And in my mind I'm realizing

there's a problem with that suggestion.

And so I hear his what he's added to the

conversation and I think we can all do

this as scientists. We can all think,

hm, is there anything about that which

could be improved? Is there anything

about that which maybe uh an assumption

there that I don't like that maybe I

might challenge? And so our job as

scientists is not to ne necessarily

reinvent the wheel but to take ideas

that have come before we stand on the

shoulders of giants and to tweak it and

to say is there a better way of doing

that. So this is a tweak and I hope

other people will tweak it in the

future. Hope someone else will come

along and find an even better way.

>> So one futuristic question if you had a

hello drive how would you use it?

>> You could use it to move civilizations

across the galaxy.

>> How would you

>> how would I use it?

>> Yeah. Uh I would I guess I would love to

uh travel um and see another earthlike

system and just see what is it like?

Yeah. Are there other creatures on

there? So for me I mean some scientists

are astronomers are drawn by the

question of how the universe works. So

maybe some people would travel to the

center of Sagittarius a star or

something. Maybe they'd fly themselves

into a black hole to see like what

happens. Well, how does the physics

work? But other scientists and other

astronomers like myself, I think we're

more drawn to the question of life. And

that has always been the ultimate

question for me. So I would I would want

to travel and understand um how special

are we?

>> What are Davidson's figures?

>> So this is again one of Freeman Dyson's

brilliant ideas. Um and he was thinking

about the ultimate limits of energy

harvesting.

So we know we're going through a period

on the earth of building more and more

solar panels on this planet of

harvesting solar energy. And of course,

we're kind of limited by the surface

area of the Earth eventually. I mean,

we're nowhere near that limit right now,

but in principle, you could tile one

hemisphere of the Earth completely in

solar panels, and you wouldn't be able

to do any better than that. So, the next

step might be to go to space. And in

fact, some companies are trying to do

this as well. Right now, they're trying

to build um space station, space

satellites that will have solar panels

and then maybe beam the energy back to

the Earth. And so, you might grow more

and more and more of these things. And

eventually you would have so many of

them in orbit of the sun which of course

is your energy source that the sun is

basically enshrouded in satellites to

such a degree it almost becomes

invisible from another star system. So

when Dyson described it he did use the

term sphere I believe in that original

paper but most the time we think of it

today we think of it not as a monolithic

structure but more of a a swarm of

material of some kind. It could be I

mean a solid structure just isn't

stable. So that's why we tend not to

focus on that. It would it would have

enormous tensile strength. It would

break itself apart and even the

strongest materials we know of. No way

it could sustain this kind of force.

It'd also be unstable to gravity. If you

if you just prodded it on one side, the

sphere would fall into the star. So,

there's lots and lots of problems with a

solid sphere. But a swarm material is is

quite reasonable and it would be the

ultimate way for a civilization to

harvest vast amounts of energy from

their star. Could Dason's sphere

obvious in our data?

>> Yeah, people have looked. So it poss I

mean likely yes, but not with 100%

certainty it would be visible. So what's

happening is the on the inside of that

sphere or the inside of that swarm they

are collecting energy from the star. Now

that energy can't be destroyed and by

conservation of energy energy has to be

conserved. So the energy has to come out

somehow. Otherwise, the thing would just

get hotter and hotter and hotter and all

boil to death on the inside. So that

energy has to come back out. So the

question is how does it come back out?

If they think about your laptop or or a

piece of uh like a camera that's

working, it will get warm. So it's

turning the chemical energy in the

battery into thermal energy is

essentially what it's doing. And so the

amount of thermal energy that comes off

your laptop will be the same as the

chemical energy that went into it plus

the light plus the sound. That's the

other two sources of light of of energy

which come off it. But all of those

energy sources have to add up.

Everything that comes out have to equals

everything that goes in. So these Dyson

spheres have to be emitting energy, a

lot of energy, a sum a some amount of

energy, a star amount of energy in some

way. And if they're if they're doing

calculations, if they're doing

computation, it would come out as

thermal waste heat in the infrared. But

it doesn't necessarily it could come out

in nutrinos. It could come out in

gravitational waves. But it has to come

out somehow.

>> I have some questions to you from our

viewers. We ask uh them before our

interview. Um

do advanced worlds go radio silent on

purpose? You know the dark forest idea?

Yeah, Dark Forest is growing in

popularity because of the obviously the

the trilogy of books um and the the

Netflix series which have popularized

this idea.

>> I'm a little bit skeptical about dark

forest um mostly for two reasons.

>> What what is dark forest idea by

>> Yeah. Sorry. The dark forest idea

proposes that civilizations

uh do not produce radio waves, do not

communicate with us um and make their

presence known because they're

essentially fearful of of some kind of

retaliation of some kind of malevolent

species attacking them in the future. So

therefore, the wise thing for us to do

would be to stay quiet. We shouldn't be

doing any uh sending out laser beams or

radio waves because we might get

detected and then someone might come

along and destroy us. So it's it's a

it's a it's a it's motivated by fear is

what it really is. It's a it's a theory

of fear and it's not unreasonable to be

fearful because certainly past

interactions on the earth have been

destructive.

>> This idea mean that we are silent

because we are protecting pro protecting

ourself.

>> Yes. And that all species would

eventually come to the same conclusion

and those that don't would be destroyed

so swiftly that they don't matter. Um, I

would say the the the the reason why

this doesn't make sense is if you are if

you really want to scrub competitors

from the galaxy, right? You because why

would you destroy another civilization?

What's the motivation? Presumably, it's

for protection against yourself that

they might one day overtake you in

technology and become a threat to you.

So, if you really want to scrub out

threats, you would do it preemptively.

There's no reason to wait until they

develop technology, right? So as we

talked about earlier with these brace

probes and vonaan probes, you could

colonize the entire galaxy by now

thousands of times over given the age of

the galaxy. So this is called the

berserker hypothesis. So the berserk

hypothesis is that you preemptively go

around sterilizing planets. So you don't

wait for them to emerge and then do it.

You just you just clear clear the table

to begin with. That's a much safer

strategy in game theory than waiting for

them to come around because then when

they've come around, they might surprise

you. They might have a nuke that they

can sneak off and and hit you with,

right? So why would you wait to that

last ditch moment to play this dangerous

game? The second reason why I don't like

it is because of the existence of

telescopes. Um yes, we you know sending

out a radio wave will broadcast your

presence, but another advanced

civilization will surely have telescope

technology and so they will know that

we're here whether we send that signal

out or not. You know, they're smarter

than we give them credit for. They we

are already imagining telescopes that

will be able to image cities on nearby

exoplanets, be able to image um the

thermal heat island effect, be able to

image their rivers and mountains and

landscapes on other planets. So if if if

there was another civilization that

could potentially threaten us, they

already know about us and there's no

reason panicking in my book about

sending out a radio signal. That's not

going to change uh their knowledge of

us. They already know we're here. Do you

know what a Zo hypothesis is?

>> Yeah, it's I guess it's kind of inspired

from also from Star Trek. Uh the Prime

Directive in Star Trek has this idea

that you don't interfere with the

species until they reach a certain level

of of of development.

>> Um yeah, that one is intriguing. I I do

quite like the zoo hypothesis. It does

have some problems on coordination. So

because of the finite travel speed of

light um imagine you you are born in

certain random location in the galaxy

and there's civilizations all around you

in different directions. Now, they all

have to know not to mess with you,

right? So, let's say you just appear,

boop, you just appear on August 1st or

something.

>> All these civilizations now around you

have to know not to interfere with you.

>> So, somehow, let's say civilization over

here has to communicate and send all the

way around this circle of of this sphere

really around us to tell all of these

civilizations, don't mess with this guy.

We just saw them popped up. Let's let

them develop first. And so that one of

the challenges is um because of the

spontaneity of people keep popping up

there might be a new civilization emerge

right next to us that doesn't know about

this rule and will just communicate with

us just randomly because they don't know

to about this prime directive. So the

problem is coordination. The the univer

the galaxy is so big and the speed of

light is so slow that it's almost

impossible to coordinate all these

civilizations. So there's actually some

great work by a colleague of mine Duncan

Forgan and he created a galaxy

simulation with finite light speed

travel and showed this is a real problem

like it's very hard to maintain zoo

hypothesis because people just break it

because they don't know about the rule

and the speed of light's too slow for

you to like tell them in time to not do

it. So I do like it but it only works in

some very narrow sets of assumptions.

[Music]

Heat. Heat.

[Music]

Is our solar system ordinary or

extraordinary

compared to the anothers?

>> Yeah, people argue about that. Um and I

think it depends on what qualities you

look at. There are some aspects of our

solar system which which are clearly

odd. I mean we mentioned the sun.

>> Yeah.

>> Earlier. So the sun is a a yellow G-

dwarf star. And only about 2 and a half%

of all stars in the universe are G-

dwarfs. Over 80% of stars in the

universe are red dwarf stars. We call

them n dwarfs. So to me, I've always

been bothered by this actually. is it's

unusual that we do not live around a red

dwarf star because all things being

equal, there's about a 40 times higher

probability that you would be born

around a red dwarf than a gworf just by

the sheer numbers of stars being

manufactured in the universe. Um the

universe likes to make small things more

than big things. Big things are hard for

it to make than small things. So it

tends to make a lot more small things.

Um and then the solar system itself also

has unusual structure has a Jupyterlike

planet in it. In fact, it has two,

Jupiter and Saturn. And only about 10%

of sunlike stars have Jupiters. We can

tell that from exoplanet surveys. Um, it

of course has an a very ordered

multilanet system as eight maybe nine

planets if you include Pluto. And that's

also kind of unusual. Most planetary

systems we look at aren't quite as

packed and dense as our solar system. We

do see some cases where it looks a

little bit like solar system, but that's

somewhat unusual. And then in terms of

the Earth, that's a big unknown. We

still don't really know how common

Earthlike planets are around sunlike

stars. We do see evidence that about one

in six red dwarfs have them. So that we

can tell. The red dwarfs are easier for

us to do in astronomy cuz they're

smaller. So when a planet passes in

front of those stars, it's easier for us

to detect the presence of those planets.

A sunlike star is just still a little

bit beyond our capabilities to detect

those Earthlike planets. Um, so

estimates still range anywhere from 1%

of sunlike stars have Earths all the way

up to 100%. There's a there's a huge

range depending on who you ask. I think

the best answer is we just don't know.

We need a better telescope to figure

that out. Um, and so it is quite and

then you know there's other aspects of

the Earth like the moon. We have a large

moon. That's one of my passion projects

is trying to figure out if there are

other moons out there around these

planets which there surely are. But the

question is what do they look like? How

typical is our own moon? And for a long

time, people have been suggesting our

own moon might be part of the, you know,

might be the key as to why the earth has

life on it. In fact, um, so this is

called the real.

>> Do you still believe?

>> Do I believe that?

>> Yeah.

>> Um, I I try not to stake a claim of

belief until I have evidence either way

because I'm trying to be a good

scientist, right? So I don't want to

say, "Oh, yeah, that that's definitely

true." before I have any other evidence

besides from the earth to look at. So I

think we need more examples to be able

to build that up and that's what I'm

trying to do by looking for exomoons.

But I think you can make a good case

that that is so and the argument kind of

runs that the the moon stabilizes the

oblquity of the earth. So our tilt is

stabilized by the moon and it also maybe

helped with oceans and uh stripping off

some lithosphere during the the giant

impact that happened when the earth

first formed. So those features may have

been beneficial to the emergence of life

on our planet.

>> NASA informed two weeks ago they found

that you know bio signatures probably on

Mars but still in that statement there

is so many terms like probably

uh not 100%

maybe. Uh what do you think about that?

>> It well it's it's just another round of

the rodeo really. I mean, we've we've

we've done this thing so many times now.

There have been probably a dozen claims

of life, you know, even in my lifetime.

I think there's probably been a dozen

claims of life, but even before that, so

Mars in particular has been subject to

numerous. I mean, I remember as a child,

Bill Clinton stood on the White House

lawn and uh talking about the Allen

Hills meteor, which was um at the time

considered very strong evidence for

life. on this meteor. Um, if you zoom in

with a microscope, you can see these

wormlike fossils on the surface of the

meteor. And that sparked huge interest

that this was the first clear evidence

for life. Um, and then subsequently that

evidence dissolved a little bit. And

really the reason was because um

experimenters were able to show that

under typical Martianike conditions

especially with running water involved

you can actually make stuff which looks

similar to this. Not exactly the same

but you can get some morphological

features which look kind of the same as

those fossils without any life involved

just by the way that water interacts

with minology on the surface of Mars. So

when that happened people started to

maybe question those fossils a little

bit and also the fossils were tiny. It

was so small. I think they were smaller

than even the smallest bacteria on the

earth by quite a long way. So people

were kind of skeptical how it could even

be a fossil to begin with. So there was

a few reasons why people doubted it. And

we've had that, you know, with phosphine

on Venus a few years ago. There was

>> I remember from MI, right?

>> Yeah. Um there was a

>> in a cloud.

>> Yes. Yeah. There was a a team led by

Jane Greavves, Sarah Seagga who

suggested um in the upper atmosphere of

Venus there was phosphine which was a

product of life because it was very

difficult to understand how in Venusian

chemistry that could be produced

abiotically at the time

>> and the temperature is much lower.

>> Yeah, it's actually close to the earth's

surface as you go high up and the

pressure is similar as well. So that

seemed uh compelling. Um but then you

would require some kind of bacteria that

can stay aloft I suppose which is maybe

difficult exactly to understand how that

would work. Um but again that evidence

has been challenged in the subsequent

months and years since. So this has

happened so many times now. We could

keep going listing all these different

examples of of life claims. But the the

continuous lesson is that always other

scientists will, you know, give it a

give it a breather, give it a couple of

years and see what what the skeptics are

able to pull out. And that's how science

works. Science works by someone making a

provocative claim. And I like

provocative claims. I encourage

scientists to make them because that

moves science forward by these

provocative claims. I don't want to say

everybody should just be conservative

and never put their neck out there. No,

we need people to make a leap and

challenge science. So, I think that's

great. But the other half of science is

some the community is going to come and

try and poke holes in that argument. And

really science is like a crucible where

people, you know, you burn away all the

irrelevances until you're just left with

whatever is the residue of of truth.

That's all that's left over. And that's

what this process is. It's skeptics have

to come and they have to attack it. And

the things which survive are the true

things. And so we'll see in the next

couple of years what they have to say

about this. So where scientists should

stay silent?

>> Stay silent about this.

>> Yeah.

>> What do you mean? Tell me more.

>> Uh about the barrier about the

difference between you know science and

sa science. Uh where or when scientists

should stay silent to say no is not

science.

>> I think uh yeah there's it's it's

difficult and there's been arguments

about that.

>> Where is the barrier

>> the dividing line? Yeah, I I understand

your question. Um,

Papa used to give us a clear dividing

line, right? This falsifiability

criteria was sort of seen as a clear

dividing line for a long time. But in

cosmology and string theory, uh, those

are there are ideas there like the

multiverse in cosmology which are not

testable, not falsifiable. There's no

way we can by you know by definition of

being in the universe we can possibly

leave our universe to test the presence

of other universes.

>> Maybe the black hole in that vision also

the black hole uh is the cosmic tunnel

to the another universe. You mean that

vision right?

>> Well per I mean perhaps there are

connections but even I mean most models

don't even involve connections. Um, in

eternal inflation, for instance, there

are universes which are moving away from

each other faster than the speed of

light. So there's there's no way they

could ever possibly interact with one

another. These are like bubble

universes. And in fact, there's an

infinite number of these bubble

universes that form in eternal

inflation. So these are disconnected

multiverses from us. Um, and so it's

it's difficult to know whether you would

call that science, but uh there's some

benefits here. inflation can explain the

early universe very well. one one thing

I think that is a huge misunderstanding

because uh all world think that speed

faster than light it's in opposition to

the Einstein theory but it isn't

>> no yeah space can expand faster than

speed

>> Einstein just only said it speed of

light a constant

>> it's locally it's locally

>> it's locally right

>> but not the fastest so uh maybe the

speed of

>> of something

is faster than light.

>> Yeah, I mean certainly there are

hypothetical particles like a tachion

which travel faster than the speed of

light. Um we have no evidence for such a

thing but mathematically you can

construct such a particle.

>> But I'm sorry I'm interrupted again.

>> Yeah. Um I I think the I mean the the

the idea of universes being fast and

away from each other is just one flavor

of multiverse. There's many different

types of multiverse in fact that people

have proposed but the I think a general

theme of them is that they are

completely disconnected and unobservable

to us even in principle

>> and so that would fail poa's criteria of

being falsifiable but on the other hand

they have explanatory capability and so

maybe what makes a credible scientific

hypothesis is not so much we should be

concerned about this definition but

really ask about the explanatory focus

um and the multiverse can explain lots

of stuff. It can explain the early

universe, the inflation period, but it

can also possibly explain the finetuning

problem which is why is it that the

constants of nature seem to be uh so

well tuned that makes it suitable for

life? Because if you adjust any of these

numbers significantly, uh even atoms

don't form, stars don't form, we would

not be here. So there may be a huge

number of sterile baron universes where

life cannot emerge and we would

necessarily emerge in the in the

isolated cases where everything is just

right to allow for life. Um and so again

it can explain why those constants are

the way they are. But it's almost an

explanation of last resort to some

degree. I think we would much prefer it

if we had an explanation that was more

fundamental than that and it said, you

know, there's this simple elegant

equation and it can predict all of these

constants and they have to be the way

they are because there's no other option

for them to be but these numbers. That

would be the most satisfying solution.

But if we can never find that and we may

never find that, we might have to accept

that. Maybe humanity will never figure

out an answer to that question. The

backs stop solution is essentially well

uh it has to be that way otherwise we

wouldn't be here to talk about it.

What's the probability that our

generation will find life somewhere

there in the universe?

>> I would want to hazard a guess. Yeah, it

I mean I'm optimistic. I'm hopeful. I I

really do hope that we can detect life.

Um I tried to remain very agnostic about

it though. I think it can be, you know,

one of the things that really concerns

me as a scientist is when scientists

prejudge what the answer is. And so with

the question of life, I actually got

upset with the SETI Institute recently.

Um, and I love the work that the SETI

Institute does. The SETI is the search

for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's

in in the US. Um, but they posted a

tweet and it just kind of bothered me

because I said the question is no longer

um if but when for detecting life and

that that sort of rhetoric bothers me.

It's a bit of a a nitpick, but you are

essentially deciding what the answer is.

as a scientist, a scientific institution

is saying life is definitely there even

though we don't have the evidence for it

yet. We've already decided the evidence

is there for it. And that that's a

dangerous position to hold. It's it's

unscientific. Science is supposed to

follow evidence, not decide what the

answer is before we have the evidence.

So that's just an initial problem. Um

and second, it can lead to something

called experimentalist bias. So there

was a bunch of experiments done by I

think it was Rosenthal in the 1960s in

psychology that um showed how dangerous

experimentist bias can be. So they did

this experiment where they got these

rats and they uh labeled them dumb rats

and smart rats and the rats were

identical. There was no difference

between them. They just randomly

selected them and they gave them to some

experimenters and said um put these

through a maze and see how they do and

test their times. And not surprisingly,

the experimenters reported that the

smart rats did much better than the dumb

rats. And of course there there was no

difference in the rats beforehand. But

what was happening is the experimenters

expected a certain outcome. And so

whenever a dumb rat did well, they were

like, "Oh, that must just be a fluke.

Let's not count that case. Something

must have gone wrong that time."

Whenever the smart rats did well, they

believed, "Oh, that must be real cuz

it's a smart rat." So that experiment's

bias can really cloud our ability to be

objective. And so if you walk around the

universe believing life is everywhere as

a scientist, believing intelligent life

is everywhere. But how we can say that

the life maybe it's everywhere in the

universe having no definition of life.

We have no idea how much

>> I agree but some people do.

>> On earth there is no definition. We have

no idea how matter is transformed

into life. There is no life in the

quantum mechanism.

>> There's no theory of life.

>> There is no theory of life.

>> No. No. We don't know how that happened

at all. Um and yeah, that's what bothers

me because um you the typical argument

>> how we can define a dead rock included

live you know from Mars or another

planet.

>> Yeah. How do we detect it?

>> Yeah. how we can detect it having no

definition having no scales you know

having no tools to to to to define uh

how to look at a life

>> yeah so I think you're getting kind of

like a definition aspect like we don't

even know how to define life either so

there's the question of how did life

start but I think really we're talking

about life on the earth in that case um

and then there's a question of how do

you define life more broadly

>> um is a virus alive is an AI alive is um

could there

non-carbon life forms on other planets.

>> But I know scientists that think that

virus it's not life.

>> Yeah. I mean that that we don't have a

definition. That's why people don't

agree. So some people go for like an

information theory based perspective.

Some people look at more Darwinian

evolution arguments. Uh some Yeah. So

there's all sorts of different

definitions. Probably the best

definition is is it's like porn. Like

you know it when you see it. That's kind

of honestly probably the best definition

we have at this point. It is. I think

all we can really do at this point is

look for something which looks like us

and that's limiting because there could

be life which is very very different

from us. But we're not going to

recognize it. Maybe the entire galaxy is

alive. Maybe the Milky Way is a living

creature for all we know. But we have no

way to recognize that. We don't because

we have nothing to compare to. We don't

know what what on Earth that would look

like. We can imagine it, but that's just

that's just speculation. But we do know

what life on Earth does. we do know the

processes. It metabolizes it. It it it

reproduces and it has some kind of

information continuation. So those are

things we could look for um in another

creature in another organism.

>> Have you ever seen any uh

mysteries

objects that could be alien

technologies?

>> No. I mean, yeah, that a lot of

astronomers look up at the sky a lot of

time. I'm I actually don't spend a huge

amount of time at the telescope. I tend

to use space telescope images rather

than groundbased telescopes. But it is

curious that the rate at which

astronomers report seeing UFOs and UAPs

and things like this is far far less

than the general public despite the fact

they are trained professionals who spend

most of their time looking at the sky in

in a professional setting at least. So

that's uh I always think that's kind of

a a red flag that maybe there's

something going on there that the more

trained you are, the less likely you are

to see one of these things.

>> What was the biggest red flag?

>> The big Well, I just think it's in terms

of UFOs, if there really was a swarm of

objects that were consistently and

visibly in visible light, these things

are being reported, right, being seen in

our atmosphere and above the atmosphere.

Then you would think um these surveys

like the Zwiki transin factory or the

Vera Rubin telescope these surveys which

are taking images of the sky every night

just one but thousands and thousands of

images of the of the sky broad wide

field they're making a movie of the sky

basically and they don't it's kind of

weird they don't see any of these things

in those same images. So either you have

to be a conspiracy theorist or um think

that maybe uh there's something

suspicious. But I mean UFOs and UFs,

they're consistently in that low

information zone, right? I mean you look

at the best photo from 1950s of a UFO

and it's grainy, it's blurry. And you

look at the best photo of a UFO today,

maybe it be those Pentagon UAP videos

that were released, it's blurry, it's

grainy. So it's kind of startling that

the quality despite if you look at the

improvement in camera technology from

1950 to 2025 it's just enormous. There's

been huge commercial pressure to make

cameras just so beautiful and

sophisticated now and have you know

thousands and thousands of megapixels

and all this kind of stuff. And so it's

kind of wild that the quality of our

images and everyone has a phone,

everyone has cameras and yet still

>> there's no proof

>> and still the quality hasn't improved.

that that it's always there. I think

there's actually more claims now. There

are there's a higher volume of claims

than there were before because everyone

does have a phone. So, that leads to a

higher volume. But the quality is always

in that low information zone. It's

always a grainy image. It's never

something like a super high resolution

beautiful 4K video of of a of a

spaceship that was landing on the

backyard or something. So that's that's

what bothers me a little bit about those

claims. Um but I I am very open-minded

about it and I do think we should study

it. I do think we should you this there

are some cases that are difficult to

argue against where you know there's

Navy I have pilots which are reporting

stuff very credible witnesses reporting

stuff. So it appears that there's

something in the air. I don't know if I

believe it's aliens but I would want to

know what it is. I just think from a

national security perspective. You'd

want to know what it is that's flying in

your airspace. Um, so I think it's a

it's a problem that we should study. I'm

skeptical that is the solution to the

alien hypothesis. If if I was an

anthropologist trying to study an alien

species, I would not want them to see me

at all. I don't want to be interfering

with that civilization by flying around

in my magical spaceship that's going to

disturb them and freak them out. Cuz now

you're interfering with the experiment.

You want to observe them in their

natural state, right? You don't want to

be proddding them and poking them in

weird ways. So, I I don't think it makes

a lot of sense from a uh scientific

perspective that they would be

intermittently visible like when they

wanted to be like either they'll just be

completely lurking from us and we won't

know about them or they would just come

and say hello. I don't see I don't see

this in between grounds so much.

>> What do you think about

Mars colonization? why we need to

colonize Mars.

>> Uh I I think some people feel that way.

Um not everyone but some people feel

that way because

>> you know what is a rational reason why

we should do this spending

incredible

amounts for for that monies for that.

>> Yeah. I mean I guess you can make the

same argument. Why why leave Africa?

Like why? It will cost a lot of

resources

somewhere

>> to you know 400,000 years ago all human

beings lived in Africa. So why not just

stay there? I mean that that's we we

evolved there. We developed there. Our

bodies are meant to live in Africa. So

why would we possibly leave and take the

risk of living in a more hostile

environment? So obviously the benefits

of that are clear in hindsight and it's

not obvious what the benefits would be

at the time. So I think human beings

have clearly a natural tendency to

explore the next frontier. I mean it's

just what we've done throughout our

entire history is to look for new

opportunities. Um and similar for you

know when people first arrived in

America they were you know traveling

Louis Clark and going to the traveling

to the west to explore the new frontiers

of America. I always find that time very

exciting in history when there's still

unknowns out there and Mars represents

an unknown. It represents possibility

and it also represents maybe um a

lifeboat. I think that's one of the

reasons people often like to talk about

Mars colonization.

Something could go wrong on the Earth.

You know, maybe a giant asteroid hits

us. Maybe um we destroy ourselves and

some kind of nuclear holocaust or but

there would would be a second uh seed of

life, a second seed of civilization on

Mars potentially if this plan worked

out. The real challenge is how could you

possibly get Mars to a sustainable

position where any any colony we can

imagine on Mars in the near future would

be very dependent on the Earth for

various supplies and materials and food.

Um to get it to that fully

self-sustaining position is probably

going to take hundreds of years to get

to. But um it's hard work. But maybe we

should start now to provide that

lifeboat. Um, and there may by

colonizing Mars, it would have, you

know, boots on the ground. So, it would

make it easier for us to answer

questions about Mars scientifically.

It's very hard to do geology on Mars

with a rover. It's much better to have

human beings walking around on the

surface who can dig and look at stuff

and turn rocks over. So, um, I think

there's also a practical scientific

benefit to having maybe not a colony,

but certainly a long lived habitat on

Mars where people can conduct

experiments. why we are so focused on

looking for aliens

and other civilizations.

We've always wondered that, haven't we?

I think it's been a a problem and a

question that humanity has been thinking

about since the dawn of civilization.

The earliest thinkers were thinking

about this. Um, Metradius of Kios once

said that you know to think that the

earth is the only planet inhabited in

the universe is to think that you know

in a field of millet only one grain will

grow. So in his in ancient thinking even

there was this plurality view that life

should be everywhere in the universe.

And I think the reason why I mean this

is just my own personal hunch. I'm not

a, you know, a psychologist or anything

or a sociologist, but I think we are a

social species. We evolved to be a

social species. That's how we ended up

taking over the planet was by

collaborating with one another to take

down large game and build cities and

eventually take over the entire planet.

And so we like interacting with one

another. And if you put a human being in

isolation,

um, it can actually be one of the most

torturous things you can I think

actually by the Geneva Conventions of

War, it's forbidden to put somebody in

isolation for prolonged periods of time

because it's so arduous to the to the

human condition to be left alone. And

yet as a species, we are alone. And so I

think we are going through a kind of

psychosis and even actually if you put

someone in isolation, they'll start to

hallucinate companions. If you've seen

the film um one of my favorite

adaptations that is Castaway with Tom

Hanks and he has Wilson.

>> Yeah. He gets obsessed with Wilson as a

companion. And I think we are at risk of

that when we look for aliens. We're so

desperate to see something out there. We

often see miragages and hallucinate what

we think are other creatures in the

skies or in our data even sometimes

because we have this intrinsic need for

others and whether it you know some

people look for a parental figure like a

replacement for God. So it might be

instead of you know maybe you you leave

your religion behind and a replacement

for that a substitute to some people

starts to become some alien deity who

will essentially come down and teach

humanity the error of their ways and

enlighten us with the galactic

encyclopedia and all this technology.

And in a sense it is kind of a

replacement for that theologic

perspective of just sort of someone who

can guide our hand and help us to

mature. And perhaps one of the most

terrifying things about us as a species

is not only we're alone, but we lack any

guidance. You know, we if you have a

child and you just let it grow up in a

room by itself with no input whatsoever.

No, no one teaches it language. No one

teaches it how to uh make do in the

world, how to uh read a book or to even

to speak properly. All of these things,

they they'll be like a wild animal. And

yet as a species, we are completely

unttaught. We are selftaught all the way

through. And so I do kind of think that

we are we are desperate for that

connection for someone else out there to

help us through. Um and the greatest

challenge for us as a species is that we

might not ever get that and we're

probably going to have to figure this

out on our own.

>> Could aliens be watching us right now?

>> Certainly. Yeah. I mean we have to be

open-minded to that possibility. We

cannot falsify that there is not a

telescope which is around Alpha Centtory

which is observing us or even much

closer. There is an idea um by the

Benford brothers a a pair of science

fiction writers but also scientists and

they have this lurkers idea. So the idea

with a lurker some spaceship that's

hidden perhaps in the Trojan belt of the

of around Jupiter or something or maybe

in the asteroid belt and it's it just is

to us is inconspicuous. We don't notice

that it is truly a vessel and yet it has

a large telescope on it and it's just

watching what we do. And you know to me

it's as science fiction as that sounds I

try to remain very grounded.

>> No that's more science or more fiction.

>> I mean the science would be can you test

it? So if it's not falsifiable car papa

would say it's not science. And so if

your lurker is truly undetectable to us,

there's no experiment we can do even in

principle. No matter how advanced we

get, they'll always be one step ahead of

us in technology. So we'll never be able

to detect them. If if they truly

represent a an an invisible force, then

it's not science. I would say it's not

amanable to the tools of science.

However, the the motivation I think

comes from a grounded and reasonable

place and that's that the earth is going

through a rapid transition. For 3 and a

half billion years, we just had single

cell life on this planet. That was it.

Um only in the last 600 million years

we've had multisellular life. Only in

the last million years we've had

homminids and only in the last few

hundred years have we had

industrialization and technology

developing on this planet very rapidly.

So, I think an if an alien species was

looking out to the cosmos, I think

earthlike planets are probably not that

common. So, they'll probably notice the

Earth is unusual. They' probably notice

that life upon it is maybe unusual. And

they would maybe even notice that

there's a civilization here going

through a very difficult period and it's

going through its growth pains to try

and mature into something more stable.

And if you're an anthropologist, that

would be the perfect study case to look

at.

>> That's what I'd like to ask you. Don't

you think that such controversial dazes

expose physics to the charge of of being

unfalsifiable?

So some aspects of alien hunting are I

agree. Um I mean even to some degree the

alien hypothesis can never be disproven.

So just take Mars for instance some

something close to home. Um we might run

our rovers across the surface of Mars

and look for life. And uh there has

actually been recently some interesting

evidence of life, but not a proven uh

slam dunk of life. But let's say we just

keep doing this and we just don't ever

find that true slam dunk detection. And

so it seems that maybe the consensus

grows that there's no evidence for life

on Mars. But that never proves that life

was lifeless. You can't prove that

because there could always be another

rock that you hadn't looked under or

maybe there was a you know if you dig

down 10 m below this point on the

surface, you'd find find a microbe. So

in that sense we can never prove Mars is

devoid of life no matter what we do.

Indeed that's true for every planet and

everything in the universe. We can never

disprove life. So in that sense life has

this quality which uh an alien

especially intelligent life as well.

This quality which I call unbounded

evasion capacity UEC I wrote a paper

where we talked about these unique

qualities and that's unusual. there's

not many uh scientific hypotheses which

you can make that claim for that no

matter what you do there's always a way

it can dodge dodge the bullet and evade

your experiment. Um and it also has the

ability to explain everything which is

perhaps even more problematic. There's

nothing that can happen in the universe

that you can't invoke aliens to say

that's that's why that happened. If a

star goes supernova you could say oh an

alien civilization was messing around

with it and made that happen. If you

detect an unusual fast radio burst, this

this high energy radiation from the

other side of the universe, you can say

that's a distant alien communication

that just happens to stray into our line

of sight. Um, even these interstellar

asteroids that are coming through the

solar system. We've had a lot of news

and buzz about that being potential

alien spacecraft. And that's kind of the

problem with the alien hypothesis. It

can explain everything. It is god of the

gaps. It it just fits into all of our uh

things that we don't yet understand. You

mean also 3A atlas, right?

>> Yes, three eye atlas. I mean and more

more before that were um there has been

some controversy that those objects, you

know, have some unusual aspects to them,

which is true. Uh but unusual compared

to what? So they're unusual compared to

the objects in the solar system. That's

for sure. Um but you know, not

grievously so, I'd say. I mean they they

maybe the the kind of the gases they

produce and the movement of these

objects seems a little bit anomalous

their trajectories and things like this

but at the end of the day we don't have

a basis of comparison because we've only

got there's only been three of these

things ever. So that's truly the sample

to compare to. How unusual are these

interstellar objects amongst the

population of interstellar objects? If

you're comparing them only to the solar

system objects, well it's perfectly

reasonable they'd be different to the

solar system. Why should every rock in

the universe look like the rocks we have

in our own asteroid belt? Surely

there'll be different formation

conditions in every single solar system,

different metallicities, um, atomic

compound. So why should we expect

everything to look the same? And

certainly the sun is unusual. The sun is

not a typical star even. So why should

we expect the other material out there

to look the same as us?

>> Do we know more what 3A Earthlas is?

>> It looks very much like a comet. We're

still studying it. It's still as we

speak it's still on the way in. Um it's

coming close to passing by um Mars. It

will pass Mars in October. Um and then

it will swing in.

>> But there is no tail.

>> There is a tail. Yeah. There is a tail.

Yeah. So there was early Hubble images

which caught the tail. Um but the tail

was much smaller than the coma. So a

comet has two main constituents. It has

um obviously there's the nucleus on the

inside and then has this coma which is

the dust and ice which is evaporating

off and is is in in surrounding the the

nucleus and then usually behind that you

get the tail. Now this object is still

very far out. It's still about 2 and 1/2

astronomical units away from the sun. So

it's a little bit unusual for a tail

that's sort of the transitional period

where a tail starts to manifest. So the

fact it doesn't have a tail is not

necessarily that weird even at that

point. But if you look at the um the

Hubble images that we uh that were

captured by David Jwitt, uh they were

able to see evidence for a tail. It's

it's a small tail. It's much smaller

than the coma itself, but you can see

definitive statistical evidence for the

tail. And then a few months later, maybe

two months later, Gemini South observed

it and it caught a beautiful tail. just

a huge tail which is exactly what we you

know the conventional picture you might

imagine for a comet look just just like

a normal tail. So uh at this point now

we see clear evidence for both the tail

and the coma. So it looks very

cometlike. I think the current anomalies

are just the constituents of it like it

seems to have um a lot of nickel I

believe. Um, so some some of the gases

it's producing are maybe anomalous

compared to what we expect in the solar

system, but again we don't have a sample

to compare to. So maybe it just comes

from a very nickel richch solar system

for all we know. There's no reason why

that there's there's anything to forbid

that.

>> So uh free a it's not alien ship.

>> Well again we can't disprove that. Yeah.

I mean that's the problem with the alien

hypothesis. I I can't ever say to you

100% confidence it is not alien. And no

one can. And I can't say that about the

moon. I can't say that about Pluto.

There's nothing you can ever say with

100% confidence this is not an alien

artifact of some kind, right? Because um

there's there's the aliens have too much

infinite vastness of malleability of

flexibility to explain things as we

alluded to earlier. So I don't think we

can do that. But I think all we can

really do in science is to um ask what

does the evidence um lead us to and is

there a plausible natural explanation

and if there is a plausible natural

explanation then in my book I don't

think we should be reaching for the

alien hypothesis

>> in your future book right

>> well I really mean in my uh in my

account of of logical thinking but yes I

plan to write a book speaking about some

of these aspects as well yeah

>> David if you would if you could find

answer for just only one question about

the reality around what it would be.

>> I have two

two

>> I think uh I really want to know how the

human story ends. That's like a passion

for me to

>> regarding to AI development

>> not even even beyond just yeah what

happens to humanity uh the the time I

mean an astronomer thinks in

cosmological time scales geological time

scales millions billions of years we

tend to as humans think on much shorter

time scales decades centuries um and I'm

curious if you go forward a million

years

>> maybe we'll back to the another big bang

in terms of a well cosmologically there

there's a very small chance of a

universe collapsing but I'm just

interested in the human story of um what

happens to us do we do we spread to the

other stars do we spread to Mars do we

have a colony on Mars do we destroy

ourselves do we turn to something else

yeah what is the interaction with AI do

we do we get through these teething

problems that we're having as a

civilization right now and do we develop

into something more or do we just turn

to dust and That's the end of the human

story.

>> And the second question is

>> and and the the second question would be

how does this play out on other planets?

So yeah, are we the only ones or Yeah, I

would really love to have that zoom out

perspective of the full story of not

just our civilization but all the

civilizations to have that context of

what is how how does this this unique

experiment of an intelligent

civilization how does that play out? I I

thought that you will ask about the

human consciousness.

>> That is intriguing to me.

>> Consciousness is how matter is

transformed into consciousness.

>> I know there are physicists like Roger

Penrose who who think about that topic

very deeply and are fascinated by it.

And I have to say I'm intrigued by it

but it's not it's not the question I

lose sleep about. Yeah. It's I'm okay

with the idea of consciousness as some

kind of emergent property um of of of

these smaller components.

>> How do you look at AI development today?

I remember my interview with Jeffrey

Hinton.

>> He said that we will be second not the

first intelligent on earth. You know you

are looking for aliens and other

civilizations and intelligence somewhere

there inside the universe. Maybe here

>> on the earth

>> we are creating

>> alien. Yeah, it it's we're kind of in a

uh storm of of so much excitement and

speculation about what's going to happen

with AI for good reason because it's it

is clearly

de rapid rapidly developing.

I try to remain grounded about this

topic. It is possible it will transform

everything and be a true advant you know

an AGI something comparable to human

intelligence. I'm a little bit skeptical

that the current implementation these

large language models can do that

because um there are aspects about our

reality you know if you think about how

a ball falls to the ground how we learn

about physics um or the planets orbiting

that's not a problem of language that's

a problem of physical objects in space

that you

>> you mean dimensions

>> yeah even even

>> dimensionality of reality

>> yeah the very um

uh basis function which is essentially

trying to use which is language to

understand the universe is not I would

claim the same basis function that we

use as as as intelligent creatures.

Language is a manifestation of our

intelligence but it's not the it's not

the lowest level of how we operate. I

think even uh

>> because of human senses

>> not just because of senses um but I

think we have an imagination. We have a

capability to imagine. You can close

your eyes and you can see a ball falling

to the ground. There's no language

involved in that. You can just see it

and you can imagine how it will roll

down the stairs. And it's not obvious

that these large language models to me

will have the capability to do that kind

of um abstract thought that we are

capable of. It's it's kind of difficult

to to put into language actually. But I

think that abstract is going to be

challenging. Um and it's also not how

our brains work. I mean these large

language models require

so much training data to to make

progress and it is impressive what they

can do with that once they've got that

training data but a child can understand

patterns with a few examples doesn't

need you know a billion examples of

something to be able to and you can show

six pictures of a dog and it understands

what a dog is from then on. Doesn't need

a billion pictures of a dog to be able

to do that. So there there's definitely

definitely a lack of efficacy in the way

these LLMs work that our brains do not

struggle with. So it's doing something

different to how we work. And so

therefore, for those reasons, it may be

that it's capable of AGI, but it's

certainly not obvious to me that it it's

a guarantee. I think we could just keep

hitting on these LLMs indefinitely and

it might never reach our level of

intelligence. And I think I think that

maybe is um

something we'll see in our lifetimes

whether it comes to bear or not.

>> Hello quantum enthusiasts. Our partner

IQM has created a free resource for you

to learn and access real quantum

computers. Create an account on IQM

resonance and start learning. Find the

link in the description. Uh David once

you said that science

is done by

human being.

What is from your perspective you know

the most important human side of of the

science?

>> I think the most important side is is to

acknowledge our humanity and not pretend

we're robots. I think sometimes there's

a danger that uh scientists act as if we

know everything. Um and especially when

you exchange fields sometimes there will

be a physicist who's a brilliant

physicist who thinks because I'm a

brilliant physicist therefore my opinion

about um some medical problem is as

informed as anybody else's or even

better because because of my background

as this smart physicist. I think

sometimes um scientists can overreach

right we have these you know trained

expertise I'm an astronomer uh

astrophysics astronomy I'm happy to talk

about but if someone asked me to talk

about um uh the uh I don't know like the

the covid vaccine or something like that

I it's not something I feel comfortable

talking about because I'm not trained in

that area. I don't know anything about

vaccines any more than anyone else. If

you want to talk about vaccines, you

should invite a vaccine expert onto your

podcast or onto your newspaper, whatever

story you're writing. And I think there

is a danger of scientists sometimes

feeling uh over their ego gets a little

bit too ahead of themselves and they

feel comfortable um giving advice and

wisdom on things which they really don't

know a lot about. And so that that can

happen. And I think I yeah our greatest

danger as scientists is ourselves is

just um our ego getting ahead of us and

um not recognizing the uh humility of

our own limitations.

I have some of your tweets. I think that

they say a lot about you um you know to

show what was before each thoughts.

>> Yeah. Um and this is the first one.

>> Yes.

Yeah. That that was about uh I think uh

when there was a a the issues with like

Harvard funding and um Colombia was

under attack for federal funding. So

there was uh there's been a lot of push

back from the federal government in the

US to try and uh restrict funds to

universities

and

there was scientists I think rightfully

were explaining what the consequences of

this would be to scientific progress in

the United States and there was a voice

on social media that was saying

scientists should not talk about this at

all but to me that didn't make any

sense. because scientists are the ones

doing the science and if they don't have

the the access essentially the resources

to do the science it is obviously going

to have knock- on consequences to

society and to scientific progress. So

um sometimes yeah people would say don't

scientists shouldn't be able to comment

on anything except for uh specifically

their field of expertise but there's

also the way that science happens which

I think scientists are experts also in

how science actually takes place

>> this is very very interesting space is

be directional but time is not

>> yeah yeah I always think this is a a

curious feature of the universe us that

we

we can walk forwards, backwards, we can

jump up and down, left and right, but we

can't go backwards in time. And it feels

like a real tragedy that that's the

case. And I I so often wish I could hop

forward, especially forward in time for

me to see how the story ends for

humanity. But we're all limited in our

capacity to do that. So, u if I had a

wish, that would be one thing I would

change.

And the last one it's you know that also

with the Carl Sean quartz dead one.

>> Oh yeah. Yeah. This was uh the quote

from from his book and it was also at

the end of the film uh contact with Jie

Foster and I think a little child.

>> I remember I remember I interview Keip

tor

>> uh physicist Nobel Prize winner. He

cooperated with Carl Sean also with

contact.

>> I think I mean I so admire Carl Sean but

I do think like all scientists there's

no no one is uh infallible and and we

should be skeptical and challenge even

even our heroes and I think Carl Sean I

put in that bracket. So when he says

this you know he says it's it's a waste

of space.

>> Are you a little bit philosopher?

>> I think a little bit maybe maybe. Yeah,

I I I think science and philosophy do

overlap in many of these questions.

Yeah.

>> How do you define yourself today?

>> Uh I don't

>> Who are you, David?

>> Yeah. I don't know. I don't I don't try

to define myself too hard. Um I I know

what I am passionate about and I guess

that kind of guides my who who you see

in front of you and that is

understanding how the universe works.

Answering questions about our place in

the universe. You are more scientists,

more communicators, more writer. They're

all they're all different faces of the

same beast. Yeah. I think when you do

communication, it makes you a better

scientist. And when you do science, it

makes you a better communicator and you

get great ideas. So often when I talk

about my research on YouTube, I will get

people comment and say, you know, what

about this or have you thought about

doing a video on this topic? And then

I'll try to research a video. So they I

they are inspiring.

>> Yeah, for sure. And they'll they'll push

me into areas that I I mean the Halo

Drive would not have happened was it not

for YouTube. I'm 100% confident of that.

There's no way I would have written that

paper. It was a product of me. Um if I

was just a typical astronomer, I would

just focus on exoplat that's my that's

my lane. Just keep focusing on exoplat.

But then I was making videos about space

travel and people really liked those

videos. So, it forced me to think harder

about space travel. And the more I

thought about it, the more I realized I

could use my research ability to maybe

add something useful to that

conversation. And so, the if I wasn't

doing that, there's no way I would have

felt comfortable diving into that world.

But I was quite well read on space

travel by that point because of making

all those YouTube videos about space

travel. It had forced me to become

essentially an expert in this topic that

I had no formal training in. like at

university nobody there's no classes on

interstellar propulsion systems right so

this was this was something I

essentially taught myself as a result of

being a science communicator

>> your interviews are extremely

popular on YouTube I remember uh your

interview with Lex

>> that generated from 12 millions people

around the world watch that interview I

uh uh how do you feel

uh

that everything around you.

>> It's It is weird when to think of the

numbers of people that watch something

I've made. Um I I I think I would always

freeze up like when we're having this

conversation, me and you. I'm imagining

this is just me and you. And if I

imagine there's someone else watching

this, I think I would almost second

guess myself too much. and you kind of

the more the more the larger the

audience is in your head, the more

conservative and frozen you can become

in your conduct as a communicator. So I

think the most liberating thing is when

you just imagine there's only one or two

people like a small audience and then it

feels much more like a natural

engagement of conversation. So that's

what I try to imagine. But of course I

know it is having impact and people

watch it. And so it is always very

unsettling to me when someone says, "Oh,

I saw your uh Lex Friedman interview or

I saw you and Jo, whatever it was." And

that's always weird. But um it it it's

nice. I'm for I don't I'm fortunately at

the level where I'm not a household name

or face like Neil Degrass Tyson is or

Brian Cox is. I'm sure they would have

trouble walking down the street. I mean,

I know that because I've been to out to

lunch with Neil and Neil always has to

sit in a back corner of the room to make

sure because otherwise he'll just get

harassed by people and fortunately I do

not have that problem. I can eat at any

restaurant and no one is going to bother

>> in a good place to be second brand.

>> No, I don't. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, that's

my aspiration to be second.

>> But I'm I'm quite happy uh to be around

the sides. Yeah, my aspiration is not to

be the greatest science communicator of

all time. I'm not doing it for that

reason. I'm This is not an ambition to

take over the media world. This is just

I like doing it. It's fun. And my wife

won't listen to me talk about space. So,

I need some

>> Why did you call your lab the Cool World

Lab?

>> Uh that's kind of a fun story. Yeah. So,

the when I applied to Colombia, um I

actually applied to another university,

San Diego, University of San Diego

before Colombia

>> and they have a group called the Cool

Stars Lab. Cool Stars Lab because they

study the the the Endwarfs, these red

dwarf stars in the universe. I thought

it was such a great name. Um, and as a

Cool Stars conference as well that

happens. So I I said, "Look, they've got

the stars group and this was my pitch to

San Diego. I said, "You've got the stars

group, the cool stars group. I'm going

to create the cool worlds lab and we'll

we'll be like a synergy, the two of us.

One of us has got the plants, one of us

has got the stars." Of course, they

didn't accept my applications, but but I

thought it was a great branding and so I

used it um in the rest of my

applications and Colombia liked it. So,

uh that that was the that's the the

naming. And I mean the scientific reason

is because we're interested in plants

which are not hot. We don't want there's

a lot of plants which are very very

close to their star and they're boiling

hot, inhospitable to life. I'm

interested in plants which are further

away from their star where life is

possible. So, hence cool cool worlds.

What are we working on now?

>> The last thing I Well, two things. I'm

working on our James finishing off our

James Web analysis of an exomoon hunt.

So, we have um some fantastic data of a

planet which we think is the the most

ideal planet for having exomoons we've

ever seen. And we have this gorgeous

data set from James Webb that we're

about to publish. So, we're just making

the final tweaks to that. Um so, no

spoilers. So I'll try and keep my my

mouth tight about that until uh the

paper comes out. And then the other one

I I just published a paper on um

thinking about the more of a statistical

paper about this are we alone type

stuff. And it was asking yeah why do we

live around a sunlike star rather than a

red dwarf star which is what I alluded

to earlier. And I think I I think the

most obvious answer to that which I

propose in this paper is that there's

something wrong with them dwarfs

fundamentally. And um they probably my

claim is that probably about 2/3 of all

stars in the universe cannot have

intelligent creatures on them and these

are the low mass stars. So I think the

low mass stars are prohibited from

having intelligent life in them. So it's

a bold claim but I think it's well

backed up in this paper with some

arguments and some hard statistics. I

remember I read an article about woman

she saw your interview somewhere doesn't

matter where and

posted uh she draw a sketch and post it

on a Twitter and to her surprise you

replay

I think in less an hour do you feel

how deeply your work touch the people.

>> Yes, I think it's always hard to judge

exactly how much impact you're having,

but uh the topic that I'm researching,

which is looking for planets and life in

the universe is a topic which I think

everybody has an intrinsic interest in,

at least most people. I'm always blessed

that when I step into a taxi and they

ask you, "Oh, what do you do for a

living?" and you say well I look for

planets in the universe they will

instantly strike up a conversation with

you and it will connect so I think it's

a a universal topic in that sense and I

mean as a communicator uh I'm I don't

know exactly why people have been

gravitating towards the content I've

been making I just try to convey my own

personal passion and my philosophy as a

communicator is it's a bit like being in

love you know I just love this topic so

much when you're in love you want to

tell the world about it and That's how I

feel about my work.

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