We'll Find Intelligent Life in 10 Years, Scientists Say

Bright Side

Hey, space enthusiasts! Scientists are super excited and think we might find intelligent life in space within the next 10 years. With all the new tech and missions launching, we're exploring deeper and smarter than ever before. Imagine tuning into alien broadcasts or discovering signs of life on distant planets! It's like we're on the verge of the biggest discovery in human history. Keep your eyes on the skies – the next decade could be out of this world!  Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00Chances are we're going to find life beyond Earth by 2035 and there's no need

00:05to travel to a galaxy far far away. Our Milky Way galaxy is full of totally

00:10suitable environments. Don't get too hyped up though, we're talking about

00:14microbes or chemical markers, not Hollywood like green humanoids. Even so,

00:20when we finally find traces of life it will change how we see our place in the

00:25universe. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope discovered something incredible. Almost

00:31every star has planets and many of these planets might be habitable. Rocky planets

00:37like Earth and Mars are even more common in our galaxy than gas giants like

00:42Saturn and Jupiter. Also, we already know that our galaxy is very rich in water.

00:48There's water in interstellar clouds where stars and planets form, in the

00:53debris disks around other stars, in comets, just everywhere. What's really

00:58hard though is finding life itself. Ideally, to finally find it we need to

01:04land on every single planet out there and literally check under each rock. But

01:09thanks to the newest research we can at least narrow down the search to

01:13potentially habitable worlds. The James Webb Space Telescope, a super powerful

01:18telescope that was launched into space in 2021, is on to this. It checks the

01:24atmospheres of nearby super-Earths, rocky planets that are a bit bigger than Earth.

01:28It searches for life-related gases, chemicals that can only be produced by

01:34living things. And they already found some clues. For example, they detected

01:39signs of such a chemical on a planet called K2-18b. This planet is 120 light

01:47years away, which is pretty close on a space scale. This planet is in the

01:51Goldilocks zone, which means a zone around the star where the temperatures

01:55are just right for liquid water to exist. It orbits a red dwarf star, the smallest

02:01type of star there is. Such stars are a bit fainter than our Sun. It will take

02:06about a year to check if these hints of life are real. If so, it would mean that

02:11life is much more common than we previously thought. But even if it's not,

02:16there are 10 more Goldilocks planets on their list to study. The James Webb

02:21Space Telescope is a very cool tool, but it has limits. It can't detect small

02:27Earth-like planets due to their size. To fix this, NASA plans to launch another

02:33tool, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope. This one will be even better

02:39at spotting such planets and life-related chemicals. And also, we have

02:44the SETI project. SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This

02:50project has been on a hunt for extraterrestrial creatures since the

02:531980s. They also believe that we'll find signs of life within the next 10 years.

02:59Not so long ago, they started a super big and cool project. It's called COSMIC, and

03:06it uses an array of radio telescopes in New Mexico. You might have seen those in

03:12the movie CONTACT. COSMIC allows scientists to listen to hundreds of

03:18thousands and potentially millions of star systems at the same time. If there

03:23are any interesting signals, scientists can check them right away, instead of

03:28waiting for weeks or even months. The signals themselves are often very sudden

03:32and short, but COSMIC can detect even the shortest ones that last nanoseconds.

03:38COSMIC can also help with other research, like studying mysterious and

03:43unexplained fast radio bursts or even dark matter. This is the biggest and most

03:48powerful tool for searching for extraterrestrial life we've ever created.

03:52But it's not enough to just listen. Why don't we reach out ourselves? NASA has

03:58sent some signals into deep space. In 2002, their Deep Space Network sent a

04:04signal to the Pioneer 10 satellite, but there was an obstacle in the path. A

04:09white dwarf star, 27 light-years away from Earth. If there's a planet around

04:14this star, perhaps the signal reached them too. If there are any intelligent

04:20species there, we could receive a reply by 2029. The DSN keeps sending powerful

04:27transmissions into space. These signals will bump into 222 stars within the next

04:33three centuries. Maybe someday we'll receive a reply from somewhere far away.

04:38But why haven't we received a response yet? There are about 200 billion galaxies

04:45in the universe, each with around a hundred billion stars. If just 1% of

04:50those stars had one planet, that's still 200 quintillion possible planets. And we

04:56can narrow it down even further. If the chance of them having life is 1 in a

05:01trillion, that would still leave us a few hundred thousand planets. So where is

05:06everyone? This is a famous question known as the Fermi Paradox. The first

05:13possibility isn't that terrifying. It's possible that the universe is full of

05:17life, but this life isn't intelligent in our traditional sense. Some planets might

05:23have microbes, birds, or space dinosaurs. This is called the Great Filter Theory.

05:29It suggests that there are certain filters that life has to overcome in

05:34order to become intelligent, and maybe other species just haven't overcome them

05:38yet. Think about it. Life on Earth started in the ocean, then

05:43crawled onto land, diversified into many forms, went extinct in massive events

05:49five times, evolved again, and eventually led to humans. We built societies,

05:55developed health care, and only then started searching for another life.

05:59There's another idea called the Gaian Bottleneck Hypothesis, which suggests

06:06basically the same thing. While it might not be too hard for basic life to start,

06:10it's incredibly tough for that life to survive and thrive over long periods.

06:16Venus might have had oceans and Earth-like conditions too, but something

06:20went wrong. Its oceans boiled away because of a runaway greenhouse effect.

06:25Now it's sterile. Mars also had liquid water on its surface once, and both the

06:31Moon and Mercury had thick atmospheres for a short time. Meanwhile, Earth has had

06:37liquid water on its surface for almost its entire existence. It's super rare and

06:43remarkable for a planet to hold temperatures from 32 to 212 degrees

06:47Fahrenheit for millions of years. So maybe it's a mistake to look for

06:53intelligent life, especially the one that uses the same technology as we do. It

06:58evolved under completely different conditions after all. That's also where

07:02the so-called Drake Equation comes in. It's a formula that gives us a chance to

07:08calculate the potential of life becoming intelligent on a planet. To calculate the

07:13result, we need to know several variables. How many stars there are, how

07:18many of them have planets, the chance of these planets having life, and so on.

07:24Unfortunately, we don't know these numbers yet, and the result might be

07:28insignificant. But let's assume that there is at least one other intelligent

07:33species. Why haven't we met yet? There might be many reasons. Maybe they don't

07:39think we're interesting enough, or maybe the problem is with us. Perhaps we keep

07:43missing their signals, or maybe we miss the entire species itself. The universe

07:48is insanely huge and ancient. It's over 14 billion years old. If we compress

07:54Earth's entire evolutionary history into a 24-hour day, life starts at 4 a.m.

08:01Dinosaurs go extinct at 1140 p.m. Human-like creatures appear two minutes

08:07before midnight. In this analogy, humans have existed for just 77 seconds, and our

08:14technology capable of detecting extraterrestrial life is even newer, less

08:19than a second. With such vast distances and time spans, the chances of us

08:23existing at the same time as other civilizations are slim. If their

08:28civilization lasted only a few millennia, we could easily miss them entirely. But

08:34that doesn't mean we should give up our search. Scientists were worried that

08:38Earth's radio signals had dimmed over time. But a recent study showed that it's

08:43actually the opposite. The numbers of our satellites keeps growing, and this makes

08:48our planet more detectable. By the end of the decade, we could have a hundred

08:53thousand satellites, making Earth incredibly bright in the radio spectrum.

08:57If there is an advanced civilization out there, they will easily spot us, even from

09:03very far distances. Astronomers are super optimistic about it. There's a high

09:09chance they'll find extraterrestrial creatures while you and I are still

09:13around. That's it for today! So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the

09:18video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click

09:22on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

Category

Transcript

Recommended