a government-funded program called SETI or the search terrestrial intelligence
has been listening for intelligent life in the universe with their radio telescopes
for the past 50 years, but so far nothing has been found. Is it possible that the
hundreds of scientists around the world that are looking for intelligent life
are in a futile mission to nowhere. The shocking answer is yes I'll explain why
in the next three minutes.
how is it possible that we could be the only intelligent life out there.
I'm talking about intelligent life not just any kind
of life. I think ordinary life is probably everywhere in the universe.
intelligent life is a completely different animal, no pun intended, than
simple life forms like bacteria and viruses. There's a good chance that there
is no other intelligent life and here five reasons why. Number five Earth has a
very large moon compared to its home planet. And this moon was formed due to
the colossal impact with another planet early in Earth's history.
This collision caused the earth to almost completely melt which led the
molten iron being pulled to the center of the earth. The reason this is important
is because it is the flow of this iron that allows earth to have a relatively
strong magnetic field. Without this field, life would not exist because cosmic rays
from the Sun would wipe out any life and would have certainly wiped out early life.
The moon also gives the earth orbital stability and has absorbed potential
meteor impacts that would have otherwise devastated earth. Such massive collisions
with another object that caused the moon to form are probably very rare in the
universe. Number four, there was a massive extinction event that occurred on earth
about 500 million years ago long before the age of dinosaurs. Over 80% of all
life on Earth was wiped out but luckily for us a tiny creature less than two
inches long called pikaia, which had a backbone survived. This creature is the
ancestor of all animals with a backbone including us. If it had not survived this
extinction, we would not be here. Number three, for over a hundred million years
mammoths were small mousy shrew like creatures that lived under the shadow of
the dinosaurs. They only came out at night because during the day they would be
easy prey for the huge dominant species of the day, dinosaurs
The only reason mammals dominate the earth today, and by the way, we are the
most dominant of the mammals, is because the dinosaurs were wiped
out by a huge six-mile-wide asteroid that fortuitously killed our overlords
about 65 million years ago. If it wasn't for that lucky asteroid we wouldn't be here.
Number two, arid conditions in East Africa millions of years ago. It didn't
happen anywhere else, but only in East Africa. it so happens that living in East
Africa at the time were these tree-dwelling apes that were forced to
leave the trees and journey into the grasslands below to find food to eat. Not
only did this force these primitive primates to stand upright which freed up
their hands for using tools, but it also forced a huge increase in brain size
because these animals needed a much bigger brain and higher processing power
to help them find food. We are a direct descendant of these primitive apes. If
these arid conditions had occurred anywhere else on the planet, it would not
have resulted in us. Before I reveal the number one reason we are probably
completely alone in the universe, if you liked this video please subscribe and
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And now the number one reason there have been millions of species of animals that
have lived on earth. In fact there have been many more millions of animals that
have gone extinct on earth than are living today. But out of all these
species of animals that have evolved nearly every feature and trait that you
could think of, only once only once has the trait of high intelligence ever
evolved. We are the only animals that have ever lived on earth over it's 4
billion year life span that has evolved to have super intelligence. Intelligence
is by no means an inevitability in the course of biological evolution. If it was
then there would have been many such evolutions of highly intelligent species that
would have inhabited the earth over its four billiona year lifespan. Had we not
had many strokes of luck and multiple events going our way we would not be
here at all. So it is quite possible that we may be
listening with our radio telescopes to complete silence, because there's nobody
else out there other than us - imperfect humans on a tiny rock orbiting an
unremarkable star in the ordinary galaxy in a generic point of a universe.
All we have is each other