What if we are being watched by god-like aliens?
Looking up at the night sky and its beauty can be baffling and intriguing experience for many.
But aside from this beauty, there can be something scary out there? Or maybe not scary. As Arthur C.
Clarke said, “We are either alone in this universe or we are not. And both these ideas are equally
scary”. But today we are going to talk about the former one. Yes, we are talking about aliens,
but in a totally different context. What if we are being watched by Aliens or infact,
a God-like alien civilization? Are they just watching us like we watch animals in a zoo? We
have seen and read a lot of sci-fi movies and novels which show that we live in a simulation
or we are some kind of experiment not knowingly and there is someone watching and observing us.
But the word ZOO has a certain significance which we can relate to. Today the animal zoos
have to keep animals caged so that we can observe them and more importantly go on a summer evening
and just watch them with some snacks. What if we are the same animals for a god-like alien
civilization? The thought itself is terrifying for a lot of people. So, Today in this video we will
talk about the possibility of what if we are being watched by aliens? Also, We have already made a
video on the Fermi paradox and why we haven’t seen any aliens. Make sure to watch that video too.
Recently there has been a lot of Hype about UFOs and aliens. And on June 25,
2021, the Pentagon released its much awaited report on extraterrestrial life. The idea that
we have a special place in the universe was first challenged by copernicus in the 16th century.
Since then scientists have built upon that Idea and ripped apart every possibility of us having a
special place in this universe. We now know that, we, along with seven other planets and other dwarf
planets, asteroids and comets orbit a medium sized star, which is just a fairly ordinary star in an
ordinary galaxy. The universe is very vast and has billions of galaxies. These billions of galaxies
have trillions and trillions of planets and many among them are habitable too. So where are they?
Shouldn't the universe be teeming with spaceships? Well that is the Fermi Paradox.
Since the Copernican revolution two questions have eluded humanity for years:
Is Life Typical or Is Intelligence Typical? Life on earth formed and evolved in the
harshest of conditions. And since we don't have a special place in this universe,
Life might exist outside earth. Infact, Jupiter's moon Europa is the greatest contender of microbial
life in our solar system itself. But the question is can we find intelligent life? The Search for
extraterrestrial life abbreviated as SETI is an organisation that looks for life in Outer space.
Of all the 4000 exoplanets observed the vast majority have been detected using just one
technique: The Transit method. This is the most used method to detect extrasolar planets because
it's so damn simple. The simple idea behind the transit method is you keep taking photos
of a star, and see if there is a dip in its brightness. So if an exoplanet around that
star has a right orbital alignment it will sometimes pass in front of the star, thereby
blocking out some of the star's light. Based on the magnitude of dip in brightness we can
then infer the size of the planet, its orbit, its moons and even its atmospheric chemistry.
So why is it important in this discussion? Where do the aliens come in? Well, if we are able to
observe thousands of planets using this method, then an alien civilization could be watching us
via a transit method. Any star which is lined up with our ecliptic will most certainly see earth
transiting for about 13 hour since very 365 days. And this is just one particular part of the sky.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that we can see them transit and they can see us
transit. The transit probability of an earth-like planet in front of a sun-like star is one in 200.
Following the math after this we come to a conclusion that only one in 40,000 stars around us
have just the right configuration for a reciprocal transit, which means we see them transit and they
see us transit. It's confusing right, but just hang on for a minute. But this observation begs a
question, how many of these earth-like reciprocal transits might be out there? The answer comes out
to be roughly 1000 stars that can directly observe us transiting and we too can see them transiting.
There might obviously be other planets that might be able to see us transiting,
but we cannot see them back. But in this video we will only talk about the ones we can see back.
So let's remember this number cause we will come back to it again later.
Before we go to the concept of living in a zoo which we discussed briefly in the beginning.
You guys might be wondering what a god-like alien civilization is? Based on the Kardashev scale,
civilisations are of three types. We have specially dedicated a video to the kardashev scale
and its significance, so we suggest you watch that video too to get a good insight on civilisations
and their existence. But in simple words, A type one civilization is the one that has consumed all
the natural resources and energy of its planet. Just so you know we are 0.75 at the scale. A type
two civilisation is the one that has used all the energy of its host star, like the concept of Dyson
Sphere. A type three civilisation is the one that has colonised and used all the natural resources
of its galaxy and will be God like to us. And if this God-like civilisation is watching us
what is their purpose? Are they responsible for life on earth? Why aren't they making contact
with us? it could be that they are observing us and once we reach a certain level of intelligence
then they make contact with us. We might be in a tightly-regulated galaxy, and our Earth is treated
like part of a vast and protected national park. This is known as the ‘Zoo Hypothesis’. As said
earlier the zoo word has a certain significance because we can relate to the zoo animals that
we see and enjoy with popcorn on a sunny evening. And if that's the case then we are the zebras and
gorillas that these aliens might be observing. This idea itself might not sit well with most
people. The notion that we are just being observed by aliens as animals in the zoo are, goes way
back in science fiction. Or it could be that we were put here by those aliens, like we put the
animals in the zoo and observe them. And whether or not these aliens will reveal themselves to us.
So if we were living in a galactic zoo it would be pretty much quiet. It would be something like
going out and observing animals in a zoo. Just like in a zoo we observe zebras and then move
on to the other animal. The animals talk or communicate among themselves and we just see
and enjoy them doing their own animal stuff. The aliens in the same way might be observing
us doing our weird human things that we do. But what if we could tweak this scenario a
little bit to actually establish interspecies communication. That's the main purpose of SETI
and a new project called METI (Messaging extraterrestrial intelligence), where they
actively send messages of their brown trying to make contact. And if we are able to conclude or
assume what if we live in a galactic zoo, the next obvious question would be Who are the Zoo Keepers?
Our Milky Way is about 13 Billion years old. Initially it was not suitable for habitation but
after 2-3 billion years conditions were hospitable for civilisations to exist. Our planet is about
4.54 Billion years old and many civilisations could have existed before us. And if these
civilisations that are way older than us, they will be god-like to us and can be our zookeepers.
They might be observing us almost like we observe animals in a zoo? Now in order to make contact
with them we need to be able to see them. That's where the number of reciprocal transits that we
discussed before come in. At first, making contact with a god-like alien civilization might seem a
pessimistic scenario, if they are already watching and observing us and decided not to make contact
when we are animals in a zoo. But then again let's imagine we go to a zoo and we are the zoo keepers,
but then all of a sudden, if a zebra instead of chumming around with others comes towards us
and looks us straight in the eyes and starts counting out a series of numbers that are tough.
That would establish an entirely different kind of relationship between us and the zebra. Now
we wouldn't be interested in the giraffe or the lions, we would try to understand
what in the world the zebra actually wants to say and is reaching out to me.
This is the exact goal that we should have instead of just sitting and waiting for them
to make first contact. In fact there may be some civilisations that are sending us messages
and we haven't received them yet but it may be for some civilisations we need to make the first
contact. If we take the example of Trappist 1 which is just 40 light years away from us,
it has potentially 3 planets at an habitable distance, which we call as the goldilocks
zone. This is why it's a subject of research and curiosity for scientists. But if in case
we don't want to be seen by these reciprocal transiting planets we can sort of cloak our
entire planetary signature or our bio-signatures using a laser cloaking system. It might be a
possibility that the other civilisations might have cloaked themselves if they are paranoid.
But if they haven't cloaked themselves then we can make first contact with them.
It might be that the alien civilization is able to observe us and chosen to not make contact because
they are hyper-intelligent and we might not be that interesting to them. We might just be like
animals in a zoo that they don't care about. So what's going to prompt them to care and to
reply? The thought of making contact with such advanced civilisation might seem intimidating to
some. Because a hyper-intelligent civilization wouldn't have anything to gain from us. Their
scientific technologies and understanding of science might be a million times better than
us. What will we have to teach them? Normally when we meet a stranger, we try to emphasize
our intelligence and power. But as compared to a million years old civilization, we don't have
any of that. In fact we should try to do the opposite and learn as much as we can.
We can learn how we as individuals and as a civilisation survive problems like nuclear wars
and climate change. For a civilisation that has been for a million years that problem will have
been solved. If they have lived for a million years they might live another million years.
But for us that's not the case, we still face the problems of extinction through man made or
natural disasters. So with a lot of open questions we would like to conclude this
video for you. Let us know what thoughts you have about being watched and making contact with a
hyper-intelligent civilisation, in the comment section below. Make sure to like the video and
subscribe to our channel so that we keep bringing some mind-boggling videos like this for you.