you know monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain just yeah so your brain is composed of neurons neurons connect together and form a network that can talk to each other through synapses they're the connection points between neurons and they communicate using chemical signals known as neurotransmitters all of your senses everything you experience in life it's all just neurons firing electrical signals or otherwise known as Action potentials when neuron spikes occur these neurotransmitters are released information is then relayed across its synapses and eventually reaches another neuron now multiply this process by 100
billion and that's your brain in a nutshell electrodes are the way that neuralink and other medical practices study your brain activity by placing these electrodes close to neurons the action potentials that create electric Fields inside your brain can be detected and transferred to a machine that records and measures the data near link plant to use this to its Advantage your brain has two main systems your lyic system and your cortex these two are in a relationship with each other your limic system is responsible for your basic emotions your survival Instinct your cortex is responsible for
your problem solving skills your critical thinking it's where your Consciousness exists near link is aiming to create a third layer to this the implants will be a third wheel in this relationship but would increase our capabilities by multiple orders of magnitude they plan to increase the number of neurons that you you can access regularly that you can use to remember things or regain access to certain parts of your brain that may no longer be active this is extremely useful for medical patients some of which who had absolutely zero options up until neuralink became a reality
the goal is to make this one of the most simple procedures there is similar to people getting lasic to improve their Vision but why do we even need this in the first place well in most cases it's a bandwidth issue now many people hear this but don't exactly understand what that means it's a speed problem it's an energy problem it's how fast you can get information into or out of your brain if you have something that you want to write down on a computer you have to type it with your hands or speak it into
a microphone that's probably going to mess it up if you want to learn something it could take days weeks months or even years to fully grasp if we were able to solve this bandwidth issue we could accomplish exponentially more in less time with much less physical effort neuralink cuts out the middleman and allows input and output directly from your brain to whatever you're doing on a machine or vice versa it's like going from writing using a quill to having a pencil to having a keyboard to having Siri to now potentially having nothing but the power
of your own brain this is where brain machine interfaces come in and they change everything a brain machine interface or BMI is composed of two things a brain and a machine the machine could be anything a phone a computer a bionic arm anything that provides you with sensor inputs from the outside world or an external Source these inputs are then returned back into your brain where you can process them but you need something artificial in your head to return this data to now don't worry it's not like putting a CPU inside your head it's actually
quite tiny each neuralink N1 chip is roughly 4x4 mm with 1,000 electrodes each it's feasible to fit up to 10 of these inside your head in different areas all to measure and affect different parts of your brain but companies and neurosurgeons alike can't just go around throw anything they want into someone's head it's usually a lengthy process to getting these things approved by the FDA for medical purposes and later on public use bmis contain the potential to help people with a wide range of clinical disorders using just 256 electrodes or about 2 and a half%
the number of electrodes near link eventually plans to use human patients have been able to control computer cursors robotic Limbs and speech synthesizers the full potential with nearly 40 times that amount of electrodes is hard to imagine currently the best FDA approved BMI is used for Parkinson's patients and it only has 10 electrodes for neuralink this is just the beginning and it's already a thousand times better than what is currently approved in version one each electrode is inserted into your head via tiny threads that are roughly 5 microm thick they're around 10 times smaller than
a human hair and contain 32 electrodes each it's roughly the same size as a neuron which is a good idea there's a size limit for things that you want to stick in your head something too large is inevitably going to cause problems so the smaller the better neuralink actually made a robot that is used to insert these with extreme Precision which is pretty much mandatory humans couldn't do it if they wanted if we want a better future for Humanity we have to be involved in building it and we can only do that by learning the
skills of the future things like how algorithms and artificial intelligence work the best place to learn these things online is brilliant.org sponsor of today's episode I recently completed brilliant how large language models worked course and it taught me everything about how generative AI tools like chat GPT and Claud Sonet 3.5 work although it's a very complex subject brilliant made it super easy for me to understand thanks to the fun and interactive features the course has brilliant offers thousands of other courses on different concepts like logic math and computer science each course is designed by a
team of award-winning teachers researchers and Industry experts so you can rest assured knowing you're getting the most upto-date information in the industry brilliant courses are broken down into small pieces which makes it super easy to learn using their app wherever you are if you're interested in trying out the course on AI or any of the other thousands of lessons bra has to offer you can do so completely for free for 30 days by clicking the link at the top of the description we're going to brilliant.org aperture which also gives you a 20% discount on an
annual premium subscription back to our story this is a penny it's pretty small right it's roughly the same size as the tip of my thumb now zooming in extremely close this right here is the needle that will be inserted into your skull placing it beside a penny you actually couldn't see it as the robot inserts each thread one by one at the end there could eventually be up to 10,000 of these electrodes inside your head each responsible for recording separate neurons which can later on be analyzed but not only can they read data from your
brain they can also input data as well it's a two-way street it's sort of like being able to upload and download things from your brain brain implants aren't exactly new either though they go as far back as the 1950s hearing implants are a good example nink just plans to take the Baton and continue down the path but in a different way other bmis approach the situation differently for deep brain stimulation the kind of implants that were used to assist Parkinson's patients that I mentioned before they essentially used larger stiff needles that were pretty much just
shoved into the brain to affect neural activity just as the electrodes from neuralink Will it works well but there's a pretty high probability that complications will occur over time seizures strokes and even more it may fix one issue but it's probable that multiple other issues will show up see your brain doesn't sit still inside your head it moves around with you even if you think you're sitting still your brain moves with each breath each heartbeat this is what can cause issues and is why a robot is needed for neural Link's procedure to be successful neuralink
is taking a different approach and it really isn't even a huge surgery your head isn't going to be completely peeled open for these chips to be inserted each chip will be inserted into your head through a small incision of 8 mm at most so less than a cenm you won't need stitches you won't need any of that it's hardly a surgery at all by the way those chips that are inserted are completely wireless as you would probably hope the craziest thing of all is that you won't need to go to a hospital or random place
to hook yourself up to use this interface there's no us B Port sticking out of your head you won't need a caretaker or anyone to help you with the use of a single wireless battery powered computer behind your ear it will actually be able to connect you to your smartphone effectively making your phone an official part of you the options and potentials for this technology is Limitless and it's only going to improve over time now I don't want to overreach here and throw out ideas that are impossible so I won't but I will give some
solid uses and some pretty cool ideas for neuralink that can actually become a reality one day this is my computer ironide sent it to me a couple months back and is great for everything I need to do it has a 280 TI graphics card an I9 processor and 64 GB of RAM I can edit much faster and more efficiently than I was able to before I can play pretty much any game on ultra settings but in order to do these things I need to use my hands well duh I need to use a mouse and
a keyboard to get things done in the way I want or to move my character in games but nearly may be able to change this if a patient is able to control an arm with his or her mind then it's not unfeasible to believe that one day you may be able to control characters and video games with your brain as well considering it's all Bluetooth all Wireless it's not too much of a stretch to ask this coupled with advancements in virtual reality will cause video games and potentially even films to become almost fully immersive let's
take an example of where neuralink technology could be used in a pretty cool yet practical way let's say you're about to take a month-long trip to Tokyo you're an American and as most Americans most of us only speak one language we'll have no clue how to get around any City that doesn't have street signs or directions completely in English but luckily near link can help us out here imagine there's a Tokyo local who's lived there his entire life looking at the action potentials of that particular person studying their neuron spikes in a region of their
brain called the hippocampus and in which order they occur you can trace out a path throughout the entire city from when these on Spike and once this data is input into your brain you'll be able to Traverse the city like you've lived there your entire life telepathy is no longer unrealistic the electrode implants that detect neuros signals wirelessly transmit their data back to the small computer behind your ear so the idea of transferring data back and forth between these devices is relatively simple to imagine and because the electrod can both read and write data you
could theoretically communicate back and forth between people who also have neuralink implants now at the moment the technology isn't exactly close to making this happen maybe a word or two but in theory and with enough improvements it is possible for high bandwidth communication between two people using nothing but their minds it may be an aggressive approach as Elon tends to take but you can see neuralink implants in human patients by the end of this year and once that happens it's only up from there improvements will slowly be added and I can honestly see this becoming
a big and common practice within the next couple of decades you always hear that there's new technology coming out that will change our lives but I'm serious when I say this if this is taken seriously and can work in the ways we're studying and planning on at the moment I see this as an invention that is on the scale of the internet it will change the world the way airplanes impacted travel the way antibiotics impacted medicine computers and the internet threw us into a brand new digital age phones and computers have become extensions of human
beings they can answer almost any question you could ask at a moment's notice they've both been pivotal in connecting the entire planet bmis like the one neuralink are creating are going to have a similar and honestly even larger effect than that as time goes on as we enter a new decade technology that we've passed off as unrealistic becomes more and more plausible things that we've written off as impossible end up being the same things that push Society forward airplanes Rockets medicine all things that used to be seen as Wizardry or some voodoo magic are now
things that we use every single day as neuralink progresses and gets better and better its cultural impact will grow larger and larger kids being born today will grow up in a world vastly different than the one we're living in today the same way that we're living through a Time vastly different than the previous generations we will make mistakes along the way the past shows that pretty well however humans overcome we adapt and we move forward if you think we're living in the peak of the digital age you have no idea what's just around the corner
in 2013 Eric Lumis was pulled over by the police for driving a car that had been used in a shooting a shooting mind you that he wasn't involved in at all after getting arrested and taken to court he pleaded guilty to attempting to flee an officer and no contest to operating a vehicle without the owner's permission his crimes didn't mandate prison time yet he was given an 11year sentence with six of those years to be served Behind Bars and the remaining five under extended supervision not because of the decision of a judge or jury of
his peers but because an algorithm said so the judge in charge of Mr Lumis his case determined that he had a high risk of recidivism through the use of the correctional officer management profiling for alternative sanctions risk assessment algorithm or Compass without questioning the decision of the algorithm Lumis was denied probation and incarcerated for a crime that usually wouldn't carry any time at all what has Society become if we can leave the fate of a person's life in the hands of an algorithm when we take the recommendation of a machine as truth even when it
seems so unreasonable and inhumane even more disturbing is the fact that the general public doesn't know how compass works the engineers behind it have refused to disclose how it makes recommendations and are not obliged to by any existing law yet we're all supposed to finally trust and adhere to everything it says reading about this story a few important questions come to mind how much do algorithms control our lives and ultimately can we trust it's been roughly 10 years since Eric Lumis is sentencing and algorithms now have a far greater penetration into our daily life from
the time you wake up to the time you go to bed you're constantly interacting with tens maybe even hundreds of algorithms let's say you wake up tap open your screen and do a quick search for a place near you to eat breakfast in this one act you're triggering Google's complex algorithm that matches your keywords to websites and blog posts to show you answers that are most relevant to you when you click on a website an algorithm is used to Sur youw ads on the side of the page Those ads might be products you've searched for
before stores near your location or early enough something you've only spoken to someone about you then try to message a friend to join you for your meal when you open any social media app today your feed no longer simply displays the most recent posts by people you follow instead what you see can be best described by Tik Tok talk for you page complex mathematical equations behind the scenes decide what posts are most relevant to you based on your view history on the platform YouTube Twitter Facebook and most notoriously Tik Tok all use these recommendation systems
to get you to interact with the content that their machine thinks is right for you and it's not just social media Netflix emails you recommendations of movies to watch based on what you've already seen Amazon suggests products based on what you previously bought and probably the most Sinister of all Tinder recommends you the person you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with or at least that night these might seem like trivial matters but it's more than that algorithms are also used to determine who needs more healthare and when you have your day in
court and a computer program decides whether you'd spend the next decade of your life behind bars for a crime that usually doesn't carry any time one of the most dangerous things about algorithms is the data that is used to power them because the more data you feed into an algorithm the better its results and what do companies get this data is from their users like you and me most of the time giving out this information is harmless but a lot of times these companies sell your information to data brokers who then sell that data to
other companies that want to sell you stuff that's why you keep getting targeted ads from random companies you've never heard of before and what's worse is that these data Brokers are often targeted by nefarious actors who steal all the information they have in data breaches I'm not saying that all algorithms are bad and we should get rid of them an algorithm is probably the the reason you're watching this video in the first place I'm saying we as a society need to make some changes to the way we currently interact and use these systems one of
the scariest things about algorithms is that they're built and altered in a black box with little oversight the engineers behind them determine what we see and don't see they classify sort order and rank and we don't get to know how or why even the government doesn't get to know how and why and if they did would they understand it the engineers themselves often don't know why an algorithm behaves the way it does they use AI in machine learning which can make the outcomes become hard to predict they become a mystery to Makers as well when
companies like Google or Facebook are challenged about their platforms after something terrible happens they hide behind the Mythos of the algorithm they're C unbiased systems they suggest they're rational to eror is human not machine they claim this is the notion of algorithms that is potentially dangerous we think of them as pillars of objectivity incapable of the kind of biases that corrupt Human Society but are they genuinely unbiased are they pure instruments of rationality as much as big tech companies would like you to believe they are the sad truth is they are not when the engineers
choose to classify and sort they're using pre-existing classifications which are filled with bias already and their methods of sorting and force biases that can have real negative consequences in 2019 an algorithm was used on more than 200 million patients in US hospitals to determine who would need more care although race wasn't included in the criteria black patients were discriminated against by the machine anyway they were determined to require less care than white patients how did this happen if race wasn't even an input you might ask well while race directly wasn't in the equation previous Healthcare
expenses were a determining factor in deciding whether someone would need more care and because black patients have historically spent less on Healthcare the results were that they required less care and incorrect blanket conclusion for situations that should be case-by case evaluations although the racial bias was unintended it still occurred as a result of the engineer designs it's because of issues like these that we can't hide behind the myth of the infa machine biases like these will exist in machines as long as humans are the ones building them and there is one bias that exists in
almost every algorithm we use today with far more reaching consequences meta Twitter Google Amazon Netflix Tinder most tech companies and the platforms they offer you and me as Services design their algorithms to maximize one thing and one thing alone profit these platforms generate Revenue by primarily selling ads and to generate more ad Revenue they try to keep you on their platforms longer because the longer you're there the more ads you'll see and the more money they make take YouTube for example there's three main things that make any video successful on the platform click through rate
watch time and session time so all YouTube cares about is can you get people to start watching your video and can you keep them watching for as long as possible so we can serve them more ads for the most part this works as it's supposed to and people get served content they enjoy but would have never found on their own as with everything in life though there are downsides people have learned to game the system by using clickbait to lower viewers in and then to push conspiracy theories that keep people glue to their screens whether
the information is factual or not YouTube's algorithm has also been accused of having a radicalizing effect on its viewers moderate content always leads to recommendations of more extreme content which leads people down the notorious Rabbit Hole you can start by watching videos about jogging and YouTube would continue to recommend you videos that push you further slightly until one day you wake up and you're watching videos about running an ultramarathon Facebook's algorithm shows you more content from friends whose posts you've liked or read in the past this process slowly funnels you into a bubble where you're
mostly reading the same opinions you already have reinforcing them in your mind the goal of this approach is of course to keep you on the platform longer with views you agree with the consequence though is that many harmful beliefs are cemented into the heads of users on the platform instead of being challenged the more you think about the algorithms of social media the more they start to seem like programs for creating social problems for the sake of profit so if that's the case are all algorithms just evil piles of code that are determined to Doom
us all maybe but maybe not they do have extraordinary benefits to offer when used correctly a data set of 678 nuns from the nun study a research project started in 1986 on the development of dementia and Alzheimer's showed something very peculiar researchers tried to find if they could spot any patterns in the data to suggest a relationship between something in a person's early life and the onset of these diseases later in life but to no avail the team also had success to the letters that the nuns wrote decades prior when they were entering into The
Sisterhood around ages 19 and 20 an algorithm was able to detect in incredible accuracy through these letters which nuns would go on to have dementia in their elderly years this is what algorithms are great at comparing data sets and figuring out tiny patterns that humans are more likely to miss they're sensitive to variations in data in finding patterns that lead to Reliable predictions of possible outcomes today algorithms are used in detec the likelihood of getting breast cancer and presenting better models for tackling climate change except the machine isn't great on its own every potential positive
here only works with a human behind it algorithms can act as the first layer for screening breast cancers but a human has to act as that necessary second layer to verify the results using an algorithm for determining an appropriate jail sentence might one day make sense only if there's a human deciding whether or not the generated output is sensible or not one of the main problems with their Eric lum's case is that the judge didn't question the algorithm's recommendation he simply accepted the supposed objectivity of the machine and sent a man to prison for a
crime that didn't warrant it as it stands now we just seem to be part of this enormous social experiment being run by Tech gurus and every year or so another social experiment is added to the mix with its own unique set of social consequences more recently we're discovering what a rapid stream of bite-sized videos does to teenagers or what a completely user generated game does to twins so far this video has been pretty hard on the big tech companies but I think it's also really important to acknowledge that they are trying to address some of
these issues with algorithms YouTube for example has changed its algorithm to include quality and Authority as measures of determining whether a video is recommended or not Facebook has limited its targeting options to try and avoid another Cambridge analytical Scandal where user data was distributed without consent for political purposes are these adjustments to the algorithm helping yes but not as much is necessary even more is the fact that these efforts point to two things one is that human intervention in algorithms is not only necessary but needs a much stronger presence two is that tinkering with the
algorithm is probably not going to resolve the consequences of their most significant bias profit seeking keeping people on a platform is always going to be easier with content that Sparks the most outrage that's not always the case of course there is great content on YouTube in Earnest viewers like you watching this video right now but for every Creator seeking to share legitimate information there seems to be several others blatantly exploiting the algorithm for a quick book how can we take these platforms back from them the sad truth is we can't the algorithms need to change
they need to put human welfare above profits we need to stop designing machines that take advantage of our psychological weaknesses to make that world possible we need to be more critical of the algorithm we need to dismantle the notion that the algorithm is all no objective and rational the black boxes need to open up and our blind trust in these systems needs to be challenged at every turn to paraphrase the co-founder of the center for Humane technology Tristan Harris we're all looking out for the moment when technology would overpower human strength and intelligence but there's
a much earlier moment when technology overwhelms human weaknesses that point is being crossed right now and it's reducing our attention spans ruining our relationships destroying our communities it's downgrading humans in some of the most popular films writers will often use a point of no return to force their main character into action it's a point in the story where the protagonist can't return to their former life without going through trials that bring into question who they are and what they're capable of it's a great device for driving a narrative to a satisfying conclusion but is Humanity
ready for its point of no return for an individual it's a challenge to overcome so that they can return to their daily lives but for humankind it's a new more dangerous world and there is no going back to the way things were once we cross that threshold our point of no return is a major climate Tipping Point if we don't significantly curb our greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 we won't be able to prevent a 2° c rise in global temperatures and that might not sound so terrible at first glance but that increase will create far-reaching
disasters that we're not prepared for we will be entering a more dangerous world that threatens the majority of life on Earth it's a world with deadly heat waves massive flooding along coastlines and extreme storms entire ecosystems will be lost countless species will go extinct it's the point where our daily life is disrupted so often that government bodies won't be able to keep up and society as we know it may start to collapse the question most of us keep shouting into the ether is why can't we stop catastrophe with all the technological advances we've made in
climate research at our disposal why are we driving life on Earth to a mass extinction the answer is complicated but there are a few obvious culprits the influence of the oil and gas industry is staggering for decades the fossil fuel industry has spread misinformation or intentionally guided us to unrealistic climate Solutions governments have been too vulnerable to lobbyist to tackle climate change in any serious way and of course working against us is the basic fact that such a large LGE scale change requires a level of cooperation among nations that hasn't existed to date and then
there's greenwashing to boost their corporate image companies will advertise how environmentally friendly they are while their actual efforts do little to impact our climate goals 2035 is the point of no return but why the specific date is somewhat arbitrary it's a deadline chosen based on climate data and findings intended to provoke immediate action the idea is that we need to reduce Global emissions by 60% by that date to avoid a 2° rise in temperature and the catastrophic consequences that will unfold as a result by 2030 we need a 43% reduction while also lowering methane emissions
by 1/3 it's all a part of a greater goal to reach a Net Zero by 2050 this would lead us to a 1.5° increase in temperature globally these assessments aren't guaranteed however climate scientists are dealing with probabilities and it's still very possible that the current plan for reducing emissions could result in a higher than expected increase in temperature Earth is complex it's composed of many different systems that are beyond our ability to fully predict all we can do is make informed estimations which is all the more reason to take action as urgently as possible the
consequences of doing nothing or not enough will impact you and everyone you know they will be fatal for many and disastrous for others the most direct impact to humanity is an increase in temperatures leading to a rapid rise in heat related deaths entire regions will soon become incapable of supporting human life for long stretches even the exposure to prolonged heat can have a negative effect on people car crashes rise while test scores lower we sleep worse and chronic conditions are exacerbated pregnant women are more likely to have still births and violence increases in all its
manifestations coastal areas will increasingly become flooded by storm surg and sea levels will rise as many of the world's largest cities are completely submerged by ocean water 37% of the world's population lives within 62 Mi of a coast in the United States alone the lives of 3 million people will be disrupted on a monthly basis by flooding whether that's their homes or power facilities Rising Tides will make life increasingly unbearable along the coast the total cost from climate change in general is estimated to be $38 trillion a year by halfway through the century if not
enough is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the more obvious impacts of climate change will also have cascading effects we will soon lose entire ecosystems starting with arctic and Mountain zones these systems fall apart when one source of food is disrupted in the Arctic melting sea ice will cause a decline in the abundance of algae Zu Plankton feed off of this plant and their population will drop as a consequence this impact will continue down the food chain to Cod seals and polar bears our species is also very vulnerable to a rise in global temperatures droughts
are already causing problems for our Global food supply which will only get worse without intervention food shortages will often lead to masturbation and large scale human migration as these disruptions continue political instability Rises when billions are displaced and food is scarce Society begins to crumble this is where the world starts to become apocalyptic in nature you're probably familiar with the Gulf Stream it's a strong ocean current that delivers warm water from the Gulf of Mexico past the Eastern regions of North America and spreads all the way to Western Europe the Gulf Stream keeps much of
the southeastern United States warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer it's also what makes England warmer than regions of a similar distance to the equator as colder areas in Canada as Greenland's ice caps continue to melt the resulting massive influx of fresh water will weaken the Gulf Stream until it eventually collapses the consequences of this disruption are hard to Fathom sea levels would rise quickly in North America temperatures would drop in Europe rainfall that billions of people depend on for growing food would be diminished and storms would increase in frequency if climate emissions
aren't dramatically cut a controversial 2023 study published in nature Communications outlined how the Gulf Stream could Collapse by 2095 perhaps the biggest challenges with climate change aren't the predictable outcomes but the unforeseen consequences Earth is composed of complicated and interconnected systems and as we disrupt any one of them we cause a change in many others The Gulfstream collapse for example could intensify elino in the southern hemisphere this is the world's most powerful weather pattern its heat will grow with even greater intensity and thunderstorms will occur with more frequency there's an unfathomable amount of potential consequences
that could devastate life on Earth so why exactly are we doing so little to prevent Global disaster there's a lot of money invested in spewing carbon emissions into the atmosphere scientists working for Exon Mobile a $500 billion company synonymous with fossil fuels earily predicted global warming in the late 1970s the entire fossil fuel industry has taken many approaches to prevent industry intervention by government bodies oil and gas companies put a lot of money into discrediting climate change from buying news coverage to intensely lobbying politicians global warming became a partisan issue with right Ling parties siding
with big oil and Center left parties acknowledging the problem while doing little to help the cause so far few governments have been willing to upset those who profit from emissions but the reality of climate change has become undeniable as for as fires rage out of control as a seasonal event especially in North and South America last year alone Canada lost over 44 million acres to flames fossil fuel companies have adapted to the new reality of the climate catastrophe by changing their strategy instead of outright denial the oil and gas sector is emphasizing carbon capture technology
rather than cutting oil and gas production Nations around the world simply pull carbon emissions out of the atmosphere the glaring problem is that even a robust roll out of this technology working as envisioned would only scratch the surface of our emissions output the vast majority of carbon captured projects have failed to get off the ground despite government's approving $20 billion of Public Funding and 200 billion ear marked for the future to power the capture facilities needed to limit climate change to 1 1 12° we would need 26,000 ter hours of electricity generation which is more
than the global electricity demand in 2022 the investment needed in the required roll out of technology is currently not even remotely feasible and even worse 3/4 of the current capture projects insert the carbon back into the ground to improve oil and gas recovery in oil fields they're essentially just another way of extracting more fossil fuels these projects also pose a great risk to the people living around them leaks not only harm anyone in the area but also release a highly concentrated quantity of carbon emissions into the atmosphere and so far there are plenty of examples
of leaks occurring in one case the sleep nurse storage site in Norway leaked capture carbon into a geological layer raising concerns over how that could impact the region these carbon capture projects are also used by some governments to justify the expansion of fossil fuel extraction the emissions that are taken out of the atmosphere just Inspire more oil and gas production carbon capture is a pipe dream while this technology might play some role in the fight against climate change positioning it as a primary strategy will be disastrous programs like carbon offsetting also have similar issues they
justify the use of fossil fuels by asking people to offset their emissions with a donation these contributions supposedly support climate friendly projects however these initiatives rarely offset the equivalent amount of carbon emissions and often do nothing developers who receive incentives from these programs can generate carbon credits without making any changes at all if they cut down less trees than expected they can be awarded more carbon credits but these developers often just cut down less trees anyway if it suits a particular project they just have to do better than a very low standard it's what some
would call a racket this isn't to suggest that all of these projects are unhelpful but that most of these carbon Credit Systems don't help prevent climate change in any significant way the truth is you can't offset your emissions so easily they need to be reduced but is Humanity up to honestly fighting climate [Music] change a lot of data cited in this video has come from climate scientists where it is relevant in a recent survey leading climate scientists Express doubt about our ability to prevent global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels many believed we have a
semi dystopian future ahead filled with mass migration famine War wildfires and other disasters [Music] we still have a path forward to mitigate emissions in a rising Global temperature the two largest sectors contributing to Global emissions are electricity production and transportation we already have potential solutions for these sources of pollution renewable energy is not only readily available but has been getting cheaper quickly and spreading Fast Wind solar and Hydro power generation are a reality now the transition to renewable energy will also help reduce the emissions from another evolving innovation in transportation electric cars while EVS aren't
a perfect solution for fighting climate change they could reduce our overall carbon output substantially an electric vehicle powered by a clean grid is responsible for 13 tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime by comparison a gas powered vehicle contributes 80 tons of CO2 the emissions evolved in EV production is bound to decrease over time as Battery Technology improves to reach our Net Zero goal we are actually ahead of targets when it comes to solar energy and closing in on the battery production required for EVS and stationary battery usage wind energy and heat pump are lagging
behind but overall we are making progress if we manage to cut our emissions early we buy more time to reduce our overall emissions and that's time we desperately need [Music] so how long before all this becomes a reality how long before interplanetary travel is an everyday Affair well as you can imagine that's a complicated question it is rocket science after all on May 30th 2020 SpaceX launched its first crude mission to the intern space station it was the first crude Mission with American crew from American soil and an American spacecraft in a very very long
time and while the contents of the mission weren't anything new carrying cargo and crew to the ISS what made this launch so special was that it was the first commercial flight to have done so and all this took place in one of the most trying times Humanity has faced in recent history with protests all across America and a Health crisis that has crippled the entire world like never before seen the launch still went through and that means something and the launch well it didn't just go on it was the most widely watched online NASA event
in history and while it total viewership still pales in comparison to that of the Apollo 11 launch where nearly 1 six of the entire world tuned in something tells me that we're about to break that record sooner rather than later as I just mentioned SpaceX was the first to commercially do all of this but what does this mean and why is that important well it means that NASA is essentially Outsourcing the job of innovating and building the rocket to other companies companies like SpaceX blue origin Boeing and so on they all bid for an opportunity
to build and NASA pays Whoever has the best ideas through a contract in doing so NASA is taking a lot of the weight off of its underfunded shoulders and is using the powers of the free market to its benefit companies competing to see who can innovate better who can create rockets that are faster more efficient and cheaper it's a very important first step to create and maintain a significant presence in low earth orbit and that's where the logistics of space travel changed significantly low earth orbit a popular saying goes that getting to Earth's orbit is
halfway to anywhere in the universe you see gravity can sometimes be benign after all we spend our lives getting used to its effects and sometimes just forget it's there but when you're dealing with potentially millions of pounds of stuff that needs to be propelled upwards we have a problem as soon as we escape gravity however things change drastically there is quite literally nothing nothing to drag you down or up or anywhere for that matter just the slightest of pushes can Propel you endlessly through the vastness of space to give you a sense of the impact
gravity has on space travel during the apoll 11 Mission reaching Earth's orbit took nearly 27 times the propellant compared to the rest of the journey including re-entry into Earth Earth's gravity is an endearing force and in this case a costly one the simplest way to get around this problem is to have an outpost in low earth orbit or somewhere else an interplanetary pit stop if you will where scientists will work and stock up on supplies and refuel before they they embark on their deep space Adventures the International Space Station Humanity's most prominent low earth orbit
Presence at the moment may help us stock up on food in similar supplies but when it comes to fuel things get complicated we'll have to look a bit further 380,000 km to be exact it's a journey we've already made you see the Moon potentially has everything we need to make propellent oxygen and hydrogen and I say potentially because scientists are still not sure about the availability and accessibility of water on the moon but they do know that lunar dust contains oxygen which accounts for most of the weight of the propellant anyway all this means that
the moon can become the perfect Fuel Depot for humans before they head out to further planets such as Mars given launches from the Moon only have to fight one six of the Earth's gravity this crucial step has seen promising progress in the last few years with numerous companies already looking into technologies that can help astronauts mind the lunar surface also on the cards is a lunar space station intended to get scientists more used to deeper space travel before they head off to further planets no known as the lunar Gateway this project is part of NASA's
emis program the missions are said to have a man and woman back on the surface of the Moon by 2024 understandably it's an optimistic deadline NASA is used to that who knows maybe with the push of commercialization we may get there sooner than we think fuel has also seen a few breakthroughs in recent decades the most notable of which is Ion propulsion instead of using chemical propellants these systems Propel ions charge particles using electromagnets add to that the lack of Dragon space and all you need is Newton's third law to push you into the vastness
there's a catch though this ion propulsion while significantly more efficient than the traditional propulsion provides only minute levels of thrust the force it'll be pushing the spacecraft with is equivalent to the force a piece of paper exerts on your hand it's an extremely small Force we keep that up for days weeks or months and it adds up so much that it can possibly reach speeds of up to 200,000 mph nearly six times of what is traditionally possible but the G ESS of the force means ion propulsion is not suited for reaching low earth orbits against
the forces of gravity rather it's only useful in zero or micro gravity situations I personally think future propulsion systems will be a hybrid of both liquid propulsion and ion propulsion but what about time you see the Earth is about 200 times further from Mars than it is from the Moon that's two orders of magnitude using currently existing technology and even with some significant advances such as ion propulsion a journey like this will take a few months at least it's really hard to internalize just how large the distances we're dealing with are for example in the
time that you've watched this video so far Voyager 1 the furthest man-made object has traveled over 4,000 M it's currently traveling at an incredible speed of nearly 38,000 mph but even at that speed it took nearly 35 years to travel through the solar system The resupply Outpost could potentially solve some of the problems allowing missions to carry larger payloads than M four but even then the duration can have mental implications long periods of isolation as all of us have probably experienced by now can lead to a loss of motivation and affect our ability to work
which is a problem when you spend millions of dollars training astronauts coupled that with the idea that food is running out in homesickness unlike any man has ever experienced before and you have mental walls crushing you from both sides one way to solve this issue might be to not have the astronauts be awake for most of the flight in the first place yes the key to solving this problem might be hibernation this field has seen increased attention in the past few years mainly due to space flight you see most of the food we eat is
used up just to maintain our body temperature by lowering this temperature we can potentially cut down on caloric intake by 50% if not more essentially doubling the Food Supplies it could also be a way to prevent muscle atrophy in space that astronauts have always suffered from for longer flights such as those being planned to Mars this becomes an even bigger issue and hibernation may be the only way to counteract it hibernation research is still in its infancy and the most remarkable results are still in animals like squirrels and bearss but scientists believe there aren't any
biological bottlenecks as to why we shouldn't be able to accomplish hibernation in the future the state of hibernation we're interested in is currently prevented by our bodies through shivering if we're able to safely turn that reaction off scientists believe hibernation could be used in short chunks to prolong supplies and preserve the mental well-being of the crew in man's greatest Adventures we're still in the dark about a lot of the effects that long-term space travel has on the human body and missions such as Artemis can help answer them but we can go step further neuralink could
be another part of the space puzzle albeit one of the less obvious ones in its primary stages neuralink intends to help patients with diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's but the goal is also to augment us humans using the power of AI within a few decades and some exponential growth we could have the ability to upload our Consciousness to a computer we could then essentially explore other planets with the dynamic intelligence of a human being but without the physical presence of one of course space flight with AI may not be manned in the tradition sense but
it gives the opportunity to test the waters there's other reasons why artificial intelligence is important in the next generation of man space flight as well there are two factors that are very new to Modern space flight commercialization which we've already talked about is one of them but the other one is AI we've never had it before Apollo 11 famously had a guidance computer with capabilities that would pale even against the oldest iPhone to have the power of AI in such situations could radically change what we're able to achieve in the future in addition Beyond a
distance of about 300,000 km even at light speed information is going to take more than a second to reach and for larger distances this is only going to increase given that flight functions such as fuel burning have to be precisely timed and flawlessly executed to reach destinations in deeper space even a momentary lag can be catastrophic the presence of AI can really help astronauts when there is no Houston to call on AI can also play a crucial role in Asteroid mining as well but unlike the planets or the moon we know very little about specific
asteroids landing on their uneven surfaces becomes a task no astronaut has any prior experience in AI can help learn the landing surface in real time and allow for a safe landing but it's one thing to do things safely it's another to convince the public about it you are after all much more likely to die by choking on your own food while eating rather than in a plane but I'll let you guess which activity makes people more anxious that skewed incorrect perception of how unsafe something is could be our greatest defense mechanism it might as well
be the fear of consequence that has made planes the safest mode of transportation it's also this fear that has allowed nuclear power generation to lead to fewer casualties than solar power space flight will likely follow a similar path to safety but then again how safe does it need to be after all if the extinction of the human race is what should drive our space Endeavors it only needs to be safer than the likelihood of Extinction right spaceflight fatalities currently have a likelihood of around 3% and 2018 the likelihood of total human obliteration was 1% which
is kind of an incredibly High number if the number doesn't go down orders of magnitude is space flight going to become a safer risk than the alternative of complete destruction public perception plays a crucial role in this aspect of space flight at the end of the day that is what determines how well funded the efforts and how quickly and safely these goals are achieved accidents slow down the progress of space flight remarkably and Destroy public support but the fact that the recent launches took place against a backdrop of global anxiety perhaps goes to show that
space flight still retains excitement to unite us all it has a unique ability to Captivate anyone and everyone by satisfying the carnal desires of flight and exploration even if it isn't us inside the cockpit it's quite literally an escape from our worldly problems during the course of my research for this video I was just surprised how sporadic the progress of space flight has been just based on the content of certain articles and their predictions it's really quite hard to tell whether they were written 10 days ago in response to the space XX hype or 10
years ago however if you read an article about wireless charging or bezeless displays you can immediately tell which generation of cell phones the article is talking about such indistinguishable progress just goes to show how stagnated space exploration has been lately and how the public hasn't really cared enough to stay in the loop the Saturn 5 the rocket that took man to the Moon is at the time of writing still the most powerful operational rocket in the world and it's been almost 50 years since its final flight you could look at this in two ways one
R in space flight has been disappointingly slow or two the Saturn 5 was so good and ahead of its time that nothing else has come close since I think it's a little bit of both and I know I always do this the fact that the Saturn 5 still sits on that Throne is a testament of what Humanity can achieve when it's truly inspired and while that lack of achievement in recent times can be really demoralizing it also makes for a future worth looking forward to one to be excited about and I think that's what Elon
Musk has in mind when he talks about colonizing Mars the reality is we know very little about Mars and at the end of the day it may not be able to sustain life after all but the drive to get there the pursuit of such lofty goals it's technological Indulgence of the highest order and the prospect of seeing another rocket tearing through the sky well it has the ability to inspire Generations once again to give us a reason to be excited excited about tomorrow excited about the future or excited to Simply Be Alive but even if
we end up doing none of this even if we achieve none of the things we set out to achieve even if we fail launch after launch and make error after error of course I still love you 4.18 this number is the reason that you're alive right now under normal conditions that's how many jewels of energy you need to raise the temperature of a gram of water by 1° C also known as the specific heat capacity of water this value this property of water it's special you see if this value were any different Life as we
know it would not exist if it were higher more energy would be needed to raise the temperature of water the amount of water that evaporates into the atmosphere would reduce and that means so would rainfall this also means that there would be a greater difference between the temperature of air near land and the air near water the resulting changes in pressure would lead to changes in the wind speed temperatures would significantly drop and species would slowly go extinct on the other hand if the heat capacity were lower than it is now water would evaporate much
quicker and it would no no longer be able to regulate the temperature of the Earth as it does now it would rain all the time crops would die and again species would slowly go extinct 4.18 it seems is just the right amount of energy this just rightness is seen in other aspects of life on Earth too including where it sits in the solar system too close to the Sun and the water would just boil away before it could form too far and it would just freeze but all these properties are in some way shape or
form related to water and so it's no wonder then that the search for Life anywhere in space is essentially a search for water and we found it lots of it actually you see hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and oxygen is the third most abundant in between them is helium which doesn't really react with much so when the conditions are appropriate water can be formed and it is given the scale of it all and how old the universe is you'd imagine that there must be some planets in an earthlike distance from their
respective stars to allow for the formation of liquid water and by extension life Dr Frank Drake attempted to answer this very question in 1961 using the Drake equation he used factors like the average rate of star formation how many of those Stars could have planets how many of those planets might develop intelligent life forms that could possibly communicate and so on instead of the entire universe Drake focused only on our galaxy which is huge and for practical limitations of speed and time really the only thing we should worry about anyway understandably these inputs are all
assumptions and as such the output of this equation is also an assumption depending on who and when you ask the result of the direct equation could be anything from a small number that is barely greater than zero to a number in the tens of millions our intuition tells us that if that number were somewhere in between that immense range the Milky Way should be beaming with Advanced civilizations making interplanetary Journeys with regularity just our galaxy one of the trillions out there is so incredibly large that even with astronomically low odds you would expect to find
at least some other civilizations to give you a sense of how large it is modern humans have been around for nearly 200,000 years and in that time time late at its incredible speed has traveled the complete width of the Milky Way only twice okay so let's run through this the Milky Way has a lot of stars and a lot of those stars have a lot of planets and a lot of those planets should have a lot of water and a lot of those planets have been around a lot longer than Earth so therefore they should
have a head start compared to Earth so that must mean that there are civilizations a lot more advanced than ours we should have all the tools they need to communicate with us if that's the case there's just one problem where is everybody that's the question Rico fmy asked in 1950 using a similar line of reasoning that I just talked about FY to was confused as to why we hadn't already come in contact with aliens considering how abundant they should have been known more popularly as the fmy Paradox this question draws attention to the discrepancy between
the supposed High likelihood of civilizations out there and the lack of observational evidence to prove their existence To This Day 70 years after F's equation even with the scientific advancements that we've made we are yet to receive any signals from civilization other than our own so really where is everybody nearly 50 years after fery asked his famous question an economist named Robin Hansen figured that just as Humanity had done in the past we may have just been asking the wrong question all along he felt that instead of sticking to the assumption that the Universe should
be filled with life forms like our own we should accept what the evidence is telling us that life is exceedingly rare and that the Earth is the only planet we know that has it and that we should use that information to understand why we're here and how long we might have well if that's the case Henson argued then there must be something wrong with the typical steps of reasoning that lead to the incorrect perception of life's abundance either one or more of these steps are wrong or one or more of these steps are so incredibly
improbable life elsewhere is practically impossible and thus the idea of the great filter was born a hindrance that is so immense in its complexity and improbability that we are quite literally the only species to ever get past it it's perfectly possible that the great filter was whatever initiated a biogenesis the creation of life from non-living simple organic compounds after all it's a process that runs counter to the laws of thermodynamics and that it involves molecules to spontaneously arrange themselves in an ordered and life-giving manner it would be like a cold cup of water just naturally
going hot which by the way is physically possible only unimaginably unlikely things like that just don't happen hot things go cold and things tend towards Disorder so life never really should have formed the great filter could also be the formation of complex cell organisms or it could be the first proper replication of DNA that allowed for just enough mutation that would eventually sew the seeds for evolution or it could be the Collision of Earth with a protoplanet named Thea that led to the creation of the Moon and with it a reliable aess and a stable
climate for life to flourish it could be a lot of things really I don't know regardless if we were to assume that the great filter was indeed in our past it would explain why we are the only ones remaining and why the rest of the universe seems so utterly dead but it would also say that we have done it we've made it past the great filter everyone gets a pat on the back and that's really it but what if the great filter is ahead of us what if the universe was indeed beaming with life just
as we expected it to but something simply kept filtering or killing civilizations one after another which is why no one has really reached out to us and more importantly what if we're next given the general lack of evidence regarding other planets and why they don't have life a filter in the future could be just as likely as one in the past if not more likely so what are some of the possible filters that could possibly wipe out Life as we know it as it turns out the abundance of galaxies that we point to when we
search for other forms of life may just be the very reason why they don't exist our neighboring Galaxy Andromeda is a mere 2.5 million light years away from us but scientists predict that it's getting closer in about 4 billion years it might collide with the Milky Way these collisions are common enough in the cosmic time scales that they're important and although the likelihood of planets colliding with each other is exceedingly Brer given the distances between stars and planets other massive objects might interfere with the effect of gravity of Earth or whatever Planet humanity is on
when androp and the Milky Way galaxy Collide this might plug them out of the orbit they were in and jettison them out into the emptiness of space or life simply ceases to exist extrapolate this possibility far enough and you have a possible explanation as to why life is so rare the cosmic commonality of Galactic collisions keeps destroying life before it can take an Intergalactic form we've just been lucky so far but you might think that Galactic collisions are super rare and still in the distance so how about we focus on something more closer to home
something more recent instead in 1989 millions of people in Quebec woke up to heaters that were no longer working in a city that was completely out of power in one of the rare and extreme cases of coronal mass injections or simply solar storms Quebec's entire power grid failed after 90 some seconds of this geomagnetic storm from the Sun effects were felt in other parts of North America and Beyond as radio signals were jammed satellite measurements when haywire and elevator stalled each of these solar storms can carry well over 100,000 times the energy of today's nuclear
Arsenal so they're not to be taken lightly but typically these storms are distributed over the entire volume of space around the Sun so by the time it reaches Earth most of it simply dies out the Quebec style outage is certainly rare scientists only predict such storms once every 100 years but one only needs to think of a world where we rely on electricity more than we do now we not just our phones but our cars planes and even the military run on electricity this is why these solar storms are classified as high impact low low
frequency risks they don't happen often but when they do they can be catastrophic on the 15th of February 2013 a dash cam and a car captured what is perhaps one of the most iconic space related videos of recent times known as the tellya bin meteor it had entered into the Earth's atmosphere undetected and due to its high velocity and shallow angle had turned into a bright brilliant streak of light that was at one point brighter than the sun before atmospheric entry this 20 M wide object was believed to have had the energy of a bomb
that is roughly 30 times more powerful than the one detonated in Hiroshima it injured nearly 1500 people and damaged over 7,000 buildings from shock waves of the initial Explosion New Evidence keeps emerging about the extinction level threat that asteroids possess you would think that with such a strong presence in pop culture and wisdom from the leading scientists of the world the modern world would be much more aware of a threat than ever before but we're actually pretty underprepared for such an event initial plans included nuking the asteroid but that would in lead to smaller radiation
bathed chunks falling back onto Earth genius idea there boys another strategy could be to fly a ship to the asteroid to create enough of an impact to shift its trajectory but a 2019 paper from John Hopkins University suggested the asteroids are stronger and harder to destroy than previously thought and given a large enough asteroid none of these measures may be enough to save Life as we know it I chose these events specifically because they're all things that have already happened I'll be it at a smaller scale and continue to happen on a regular basis galactically
speaking and while extinction level events are rare and very unlikely in the generation to come we must remember that if life can Sprout from improbabilities it can end with them too these are just some of the ways civilization can meet its end everything from social media to a global pandemic to civilization itself could be hypothesized as the great filter that awaits us as Humanity's final test but as always there's some fundamental flaws with the idea of a great filter and the definitions of life it relies Upon Our sample size is one this one data point
is all we have ever known how can we say with such confidence that a life form Advanced or otherwise would even bother to explore beyond the Comforts of its own home just because we exhibit Colonial Tendencies does not necessarily mean it has to be a universal phenomenon and what if life just is different elsewhere What If instead of water life lives off ammonia or methane or another such solvent in the life that develops in it is fundamentally different from our own our current definitions of Life are simply too specific to be able to incorporate all
the possibilities hidden in the vastness of space the idea of the great filter is shrouded in such deep and probabilities and such extreme extrapolations that it is sometimes hard to pay attention it is one of the more hypothetical topics out there with so much simply based on speculation there might as well be no great filter after all the improbability of our existence may not be because of one or two steps in the line of reasoning but because the entire process is one life nourishing coincidence after another the great filter seeks to remind us about how
lucky we are lucky to be here at this very moment out of the billions of years for which the universe has existed lucky to have come come this far and be so aware of our place in reality and lucky to realize how fine- tuned the universe seems to be for you and me to live in it from the position of our galaxy to the exact values of the natural constants one after another from water's abundance to its specific heat capacity 4.18 on the 15th of August 1977 Ohio State University's radio telescope big ear was listening
to the apparent emptiness of the cosmos as it did every other day the great silence as it is often called persisted Disturbed only by the noisy residents of Earth or the galactic star shows of bursts and ultimately their inevitable explosive deaths that day however their telescope would receive a rather strange signal as it pointed towards the constellation Sagittarius it wasn't similar to any signal they had received in the past the signal only lasted for 72 seconds and it has never been detected since many attempts have been made to explain the origins of the signal including
suggesting that it was man-made it's non- random nature strongly suggested that the signal could be of artificial origin which led people to believe that the signal might be from another intelligent civilization although we don't have any further Evidence about the signal despite numerous attempts to redetect it the while signal remains unexplained to this day it is the closest Humanity has ever come to communicating with another potentially intelligent life form and for all we know that could have been our only chance which really makes you wonder if we came in contact with an extraterrestrial life form
how would we communicate with them and the better question is should we even try let's start by answering the last question first should we even try to contact an extraterrestrial and possibly intelligent life form historically speaking at least the relationships between discoverers and the discovered haven't gone very well those that embark on the risk of exploration are often technologically Superior and the natives they discover stand no chance of being able to defend themselves an intelligent life form that is able to make the interstellar journey to Earth from a distant Galaxy is orders of magnitude more
advanced than we are as a species given that superiority we would be essentially at their Mercy whether they choose to be hostile or friendly is completely up to them this was the exact worry of Steven Hawking but these warnings are possibly too little too late you see with televisions and satellite Communications we've been sending out our signals for over 70 years at this point knowingly or not we've been buzzing our planetary sirens for a long long time we've been loud and clear about where we are and so it's not necessarily going to make much of
a difference if some other civilization is actually listening perhaps a better course of action would be to try and make sure that the signals we do end up sending are the right ones one that convey our nonhostility and accurately represent who we are besides it could be argued that a civilization that is so Advanced that it can reach other stars is simply beyond the idea of aggression that we tend to show our aggression evolved is a trait because it helped us find and protect resources when they're limited and while an extraterrestrial civilization should have the
same problems during its infancy by the time it can make a journey to a different star it's likely to have figured out practically an infinite source of energy it's pretty unlikely that a civilization that is struggling to make ends meet will have resources to travel light years to another planet but how should we send our messages well the wild signal from earlier is a good place to start the wavelength of this radio signal roughly 21 cm has been used to map the universe it's used as such because hydrogen gas is by far the most abundant
element in the universe this 21 cm wavelength is known as the hydrogen line it is everywhere in the universe and so the electromagnetic radiation it emits when its energy State changes is something very useful to astronomers the hope is that technologically advanced civilizations will see a similar significance for 21 cm signals and recognize them when they're sent 21 cm is also used as a unit of measurement and plaques and other Interstellar messages that are hurdling through space as we speak but more on that at a later time once the mode of the message has been
figured out we have to decide what that message will contain here we need to remind ourselves once again that the civilization we're trying to talk to could be a far superior one than our own that would give us a greater freedom in what we want to say in the message since they should be able to crack the code if you will you see some of the messages that have already been sent including the famous arbo message or the plaque that the voyage aircrafts are currently carrying are very complicated these messages are subjective they can be
interpreted in many ways you could have people from all around the world each come to different conclusions so if even humans can agree upon what's being said the very species that made the message then how can we expect another species to understand it additionally what is it to say that the Extraterrestrial civilization shares our visual senses or any of our senses for that matter what is it to say that the images of smiling people in the lacks of Voyager one and two are not hostile signs of aggression in another planet in another time our tendency
to be so centered around The Human Experience can really get in the way to eliminate these problems our messages should be objectively Universal and should make no Earth Centric assumptions about the experiences of our Galactic Neighbors at least to start crafting a message for an alien species is a good exercise for Humanity to truly understand who we are so far only math and maybe some branches of science seem to be truly universal meaning their content seem to be true everywhere we live look the Pythagorean theorem holds as well on Earth as it does anywhere else
in the universe as far as we know things like this are our best bet to initiate communication with the civilization we share nothing else in common with the message should also be as non-random as possible which sounds weird it should be repetitive so that the chances of detection is increased and it should also be as time independent as possible space is massive Interstellar distances means it could take thousands of years for them to reply a timeline in which the Earth and US humans may change drastically even light speed is pretty slow in the grand scheme
of things these and other such details need to be part of a protocol that can be used when sending messages to other stars and Beyond we also need to figure out who and what gets to represent us all in Humanity's most important text message at the moment these protocols have no recognition in National or international law but what if they show up right on our doorstep what if they were already listening in on our very first television broadcast and radio signals and have been on Route ever since is there a post- detection protocol who does
what and who gets to decide theoretically such a post- detection protocol would fall under the review of seti or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and they do have one the movie arrival portrays this very scenario 12 UFOs land in 12 different parts of the world and governments are left scrambling to make sense of it all and respond in such a scenario the front line would be composed of not soldiers and tanks but rather cryptologists trying to decode or decipher whatever messages are being exchanged as the movie depicts xenolinguistics or alien language would be the focal
point in the days after first Contact deciphering in alien language would be especially hard if not impossible since they might not have the natural sense of grammar and structure that our languages do another facet of first Contact would be the risk of a viral infection both to us and to them whoever they may be of course they would need to be biochemically similar to us for a transmission to occur and cause harm but as long as there is a possibility a first Contact would most likely initiate a lockdown of the region in which it took
place if we can't even be immune to the viruses on Earth the planet we evolve to live on we shouldn't try our luck with viruses from another planet the political impacts of first Contact would be immense it would Usher in a new era for Humanity and to be able to claim such an achievement would be the first thing on every country's political agenda this could make the first Contact a destabilizing force in the world religions will be questioned and so will science the presence of just one extraterrestrial species will significantly change the probability of others
being out there too and alter our understanding of life forever we will remember history differently time before and after first Contact the lack of an internationally ratified protocol with the force of law behind it means every country is left on its own on how to react that's bad the apparent reward for an individual country or person to be the first is far greater than the reward for a level-headed approach even though it could likely end in the extinction of the human race we need a post- detection protocol but it's not that easy countries that work
together in the past may not work together now Russia and the United States have worked rather seamlessly or so it would seem in their space missions especially during the long periods in which America couldn't fly to the International Space Station on the other hand if you look at Global efforts aimed at denuclearization it's a different story so if an international protocol is so important why doesn't one exist well it has to do with how real the problem seems it just doesn't seem very likely that we will encounter another life form Earth to-do list is quite
full at the moment but I just don't understand how countries that are willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to to create the next big telescope can be so oblivious to the possibility of actually finding something these technological efforts seem less focused at uncovering the truths of the universe and more at winning the next race for Global Supremacy there's other scenarios to consider too for example what if the other species is less intelligent than us well in that slightly less interesting case we'll likely be the ones to make the discovery and we'll get to
call the shots what if they are exactly as intelligent as us humans probabilistically speaking this is the most specific of all the scenarios and is therefore the least likely then again by the time we communicate with each other and receive replies one or even both species might be extinct another creepy possibility is that of past visitations what if we have been visited before and what if we've been being observed ever since the silence at the heart of the firmy Paradox May reflect stealth not absence these are all possibilities that we have to consider in our
search for extraterrestrials as exceedingly rare as it may seem the Quest for other like forms the desire to answer the question are we alone is incredibly strong so strong in fact that Humanity seems to keep looking for it even if it leads to its own demise you know monkey has been able to control the computer with its brain just yeah so your brain is composed of neurons neurons connect together and form a network that can talk to each other through synapses they're the connection points between neurons and they communicate using chemical signals known as neurotransmitters
all of your senses everything you experience and