What Actual Aliens Might Look Like

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Transcript

00:00What do real aliens look like? We know that life on Earth is incredibly diverse

00:05and exists in the strangest and most extreme places, from blue dragon sea

00:10slugs to aye-ayes or chrysomelon snails with shells of iron, or whatever this is

00:16supposed to be. Let's use our imagination and real science to travel to three

00:23possible worlds, each more alien than the next. Put on your future science suit and

00:28enter the portal to witness wonders never seen before. The Eye of Oculus. This

00:37is the red dwarf star Oculus, five times smaller than our Sun and a lot less

00:41bright. A bit larger than Earth, but orbiting its star 20 times closer, you

00:46see the ice hell of the planet Ipa. It's tidally locked, so one side experiences

00:52a never-ending night and the other an eternal day, lit by the star's dim glow.

00:57In the region facing the dim star directly, temperatures are warm and

01:02pleasant. The hell of ice has melted into a shallow black ocean, the Eye of Ipa.

01:07About the size of Europe, barely 200 meters at its deepest point, churned by

01:12a never-ending storm where hot air meets the frigid winds from the icy outskirts.

01:16But below this inhospitable chaos we find calm stability, an ecosystem in

01:23almost perfect balance. Let's dive in. Instead of meeting open water, we splash

01:29into a floating underwater jungle. We know places like this at home. Kelp

01:34forests made from seaweeds up to 65 meters long, sheltering countless smaller

01:39creatures. On Earth we get abundant white sunlight, so our plants evolve to be

01:44green, absorbing the most useful red wavelengths for photosynthesis and

01:48reflecting away the rest. But Oculus shines not nearly as bright and its dim

01:52rays are even further dulled by the storm. So here plants are a deep black to

01:58make use of the weak infrared leftovers, which also gives the Eye of Ipa its

02:03striking black color. Over billions of years, the jungle has occupied all

02:08possible space in the Eye. Its roots extend deep into the seabed mud, anchoring

02:13them and providing access to nutrients. They drop their seeds in the few free

02:18spaces in the mud. Only death makes room for new life. Big and streamlined

02:24teardrop-shaped creatures push through the dark water. They kind of look like

02:28fish? Just like many sea creatures on Earth, their shape is optimized for the

02:33lowest drag when traveling through water. Like underwater cattle, they lazily swim

02:38through the forest, grazing on leaves in peace. Suddenly, a patch of strange

02:43looking leaves begins to move and wraps around a distracted grazer, dragging it

02:48down into hungry jaws. A predator that's had eons to adapt its camouflage to fool

02:54its prey. But not only by imitating leaves. Both hunter and prey never

02:59evolved eyes in this dark underwater murk. Instead, they do battle with sounds

03:05and textures. Listen. There's a whole cacophony down here. Countless species

03:12are singing to each other, sending warnings or invitations, forming a

03:16collective song. Like the noisy jungles of Earth, except howler monkeys and

03:21screaming pijas are replaced by chattering sea eaters poking at the mud

03:25with snapping pincers, squeaking spike bulbs loaded with poison, and the flailing

03:30fins of starfish-shaped grabbers hunting small prey. Beautiful and unsettling. In

03:38this stable and never-changing ecosystem, their music will never end for billions

03:44of years. You seem to have been noticed and blind creepers are crawling towards

03:49you. You want to explore this world, not become part of it, so it's time to leave.

03:55The clouds of Nimbus. You're immersed in the blinding light of the B-type star

04:03Kairoulius, shining hot and blue, orbited by a dozen lava planets burned to a crisp.

04:08But we'll visit the last planet, Nimbus, a gas giant very much like Neptune in

04:14size and composition, except there's a lot more water and seething hot Kairoulius

04:19showers it with 900 times more light than Neptune. So its atmosphere is warm

04:24enough for gigantic white clouds the size of countries to be lofted upwards

04:29by titanic warm updrafts rising from the hazy depths. Millions of years ago, and

04:35astonishingly quickly, life emerged and evolved inside tiny water droplets

04:39deeper down in the planet. Like extremophile microbes on Earth, they

04:43found ways of breathing methane and using exotic enzymes to harvest sulfur

04:48and nitrogen compounds from the air. As Kairoulius grew hotter and brighter, the

04:54higher altitudes of Nimbus became habitable and life spread. Let's dive into

04:59the gigantic white clouds to meet it. Up here live quadrillions of tiny beings, a

05:06kind of cloud plankton so small they're carried on the gentlest air currents. The

05:11most common type resembles flat, four-legged spiders barely a millimeter

05:15wide, tinted yellow by the sulfur they consume. They gain lift with a wispy

05:20electrostatic threads thinner than spider silk, pulling on the charge

05:24differences between the top and bottom of the cloud oceans. A technique

05:28Zysticus crab spiders use to travel great distances on Earth. You're just in

05:34time for mating season. Billions of cloud plankton gather to join their threads

05:39into huge parachutes that ride updrafts for hundreds of kilometers. Here in the

05:44hot heights, they hatch their eggs before their life comes to an end. Other

05:49tiny creatures latch on, most of them predators, looking to feast on fresh

05:53younglings. But not all life on Nimbus is tiny. The other way to stay up in the sky

05:59forever is to become a living balloon. Like the enormous sky whales, taller than

06:05a skyscraper, almost completely made of a wafer-thin membrane. They heat up trapped

06:10gases, making them less dense than the air around them, giving them buoyancy. The

06:15bigger their gas envelope, the more lift it produces, so sky whales evolve to be

06:20as large as possible. Only a lumpy, car-sized spherical bag of organs hangs

06:25at its bottom. Heating up all this gas requires a lot of energy, so it's time to

06:30feed. The spherical body opens up, unfolding and lowering a huge sticky net

06:36into the white clouds. On Earth, the largest animals to ever exist, blue whales,

06:40feed by filtering millions of tiny krill each day. Similarly, the sky whales of

06:46Nimbus filter sky plankton out of the clouds. Most is consumed right away and

06:52burned in specialized glands to generate heat. The rest is converted into an

06:57orange and energy-dense nectar for later. This nectar is the most valuable resource

07:03on Nimbus. Numerous predators are looking for it, but none so hungrily as the

07:07frog-sized jet squids, evolutionary cousins of the whales. Several of them

07:13trail each sky whale, waiting for it to be distracted or sleepy after a succulent

07:17meal. Jet squids are far less efficient floaters, but they're able to superheat

07:22and expel gases in short bursts, like a rocket. Like vampiric hummingbirds, their

07:27long and pointy beaks try to pierce their prey and lap up some of the nectar

07:32inside. Unlike in the stable eye viper, life on Nimbus is doomed. B-type stars

07:39like Caeruleus live for a few hundred million years at most, and this time is

07:43coming to its end. Soon it will be burning through its fuel at an

07:47astounding rate and violently burn our gas giant. Life on Nimbus is only 600

07:53million years old and has barely 10 million years left. Is this tragic, or is

07:59this unique ecosystem lucky to have existed in the first place? Something to

08:03ponder as you move on before your jetpack runs out of fuel. A fatal

08:08attraction. Ørsted is a Y-class brown dwarf, 13 times more massive than Jupiter

08:14and with a magnetic field 60 times stronger. It belongs to the yellow star

08:19Sturgeon, which is about to disappear behind Ørsted's shadow. But you're

08:24interested in Monnier, one of Ørsted's many moons. It should get as much

08:28sunlight as our Earth, but its three-hour orbit around the brown dwarf

08:31means its days are extremely short. Gravity here is a mere 5% of Earth's, so

08:37the moon can only hold on to a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere that doesn't

08:41retain much heat, so its average temperature is far below freezing. As its

08:45cold night begins, a chill descends on Monnier and dry ice snow falls from the

08:51sky. A green, blue and red aurora illuminates the landscape, made from

08:56star plasma caught in Ørsted's magnetic field and striking Monnier's

09:00atmosphere. The Sturgeon system was born from a nebula saturated with metals, so

09:06iron and lead are abundant. In this frigid cold, chock-full of toxic

09:11minerals, life found unique ways to make the best of a bad situation by using

09:17ammonia instead of water, which would freeze in the short nights. And by

09:21incorporating magnetized minerals and Ørsted's magnetic field into its

09:26biology. On Earth, species like lobsters or bees have learned to sense magnetic

09:32fields, but life on Monnier takes it to a whole other level. As Sturgeon rises and

09:38its red rays filter through Ørsted's crescent, a yellow glow rushes over the

09:42horizon. The snowfall stops and temperatures quickly rise. The ground

09:47creaks and multicolored liquids trickle out from fissures all around you.

09:51Cryovolcanism, just like on Jupiter's moon Europa. Brittle-seeming bundles

09:57start to unspool and climb off the ground towards the bright star. Like

10:02arctic flowers on Earth sprouting in the short summer, these plants don't have a

10:06minute of daytime to waste. Their blossoms are saturated with magnetic

10:11minerals, making use of the extreme magnetism and low gravity to levitate,

10:15reaching up to a kilometer into the sky, extending the sunset for as long as

10:20possible. Hey, don't touch them! With a loud crack, the sky flower detaches

10:26itself from the ground and drifts out of reach. Suddenly, you're surrounded.

10:31Hundreds of shiny critters zoom by. They look like ice-skating snails and can

10:36circle Monnier faster than the sunset. From their head, they extend two long

10:40stalks that are electrically conductive and merge up top. A magnetic kite that

10:46drags them along the surface at breathtaking speeds. The skaters formed a

10:50symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic purple microorganisms that live in their

10:56shells. These biological soda panels produce sugars that they share with the

11:01skaters in exchange for continuous starlight. If the skaters ever stop, they

11:06risk their partners freezing and death by starvation. The harmonic scenery is

11:12violently interrupted as the ground splinters open and a spiked metal claw

11:17grabs a skater and crushes it. It belongs to an animal that looks like a cross

11:21between a sea lion and a beetle. As it devours its prey, it gets covered in pink

11:26and sparkly fluids. These ambushers hide in the crystalline ground, spreading an

11:31array of electrically sensitive whiskers that they use to detect their prey and

11:35strike just as they zoom by. Like living landmines that could be buried

11:40everywhere. Maybe you should end your stroll. The darkness will return soon.

11:45It's time to return home. Back home. Earth. Warm and pleasant. It's good to be

11:53home, in the environment you and all other life that's not made up evolved in.

11:58But who knows, if you look up at the countless flickering lights, there may be

12:03countless strange worlds, home to life stranger than anything you've seen.

12:07Scientific speculation is fun, but also useful, giving us ideas about what we

12:12should look out for. And, who knows, maybe in a few thousand years, our

12:17descendants may actually visit exotic oceans, fly over white clouds the size of

12:22continents, or pet metallic animals. And maybe, just maybe, even talk to others

12:28like us, who are also marveling at all the strange life in our universe.

12:34Want to go beyond imagining aliens and start uncovering real secrets of the

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14:16Welcome to the Kurzgesagt lab. Let's conduct a few stellar experiments. We'll

14:22first add some more mass to this protostar. More. A bit more. Wow, we've

14:29just created a blue giant, a star with 10 times the mass of our sun. Let's now

14:34add a couple of million years and see what happens. A supernova. Breathtaking.

14:40And look, it leaves behind a black hole. Fascinating stuff. Now we record our

14:47findings. Be careful to preserve the sparkle. It's now time for Duck's final

14:52inspection. This one is always a nail-biter. He has incredibly high standards.

14:57Luckily for us, our work is scientifically accurate, offers an overview of important

15:03astrophysical processes, and is a real stunner. Duck approves. Looks like it's

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