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David Kipping (2025) - Seeking Alien Life and Funding the Cosmos · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today we're taking a deep dive
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  into some truly mind bending conversations happening right
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  now. You know, we're space science
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  and our place in the universe all kind of intersect.
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  Our source material is straight from a really fascinating chat
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  with an expert on a recent Joe Rogan Experience episode.
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  They covered well everything from the newest cosmic
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  discoveries to like, the fundamental nature of existence
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  itself. So our mission today is
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  basically to pull out those amazing Nuggets of knowledge,
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  those insights. We want to give you a shortcut,
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  really, to getting your head around these huge cosmic
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  mysteries. Get ready for some real aha
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  moments because we're diving into some seriously wild ideas.
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  OK, let's start with the James Webb Space Telescope.
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  The GWSTI mean, it's just been incredible.
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  Hasn't. It.
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  Oh, absolutely. It's almost hard to believe this
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  thing with what, over 200 moving parts that it just unfolded
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  perfectly out there in space. Yeah, it's remarkable.
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  And what's really fascinating is the initial data.
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  It just blew everyone away. It was even better than the
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  engineers had hoped for. So naturally, the first thing
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  you do with a telescope that powerful is pointed as far away
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  as possible. Look back in time, essentially.
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  Right to the early universe. Exactly.
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  And that's where the surprises really started popping up and.
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  This is where it gets really interesting, isn't it?
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  They started finding things like quasars and fully formed
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  galaxies way earlier than expected, like as early as 300
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  million years after The Big Bang.
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  That just sounds, well, too fast.
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  It does sound fast, and you know, the quasars were actually
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  the bigger puzzle, even more than the galaxies initially
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  really. Why is that?
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  Well, a quasar is the Super bright center of an active
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  Galaxy, right? Powered by a super massive black
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  hole, We're talking like 100 million times the mass of our
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  sun. OK.
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  Yeah, huge. To get that big that early, it
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  strongly suggests they must have been fed in a way we call Super
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  Eddington, meaning meaning faster than the theoretical
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  maximum rate. They should be able to gobble up
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  matter like they were being force fed.
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  In the galaxies. For the galaxies, it turned out
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  our models needed, well, let's say some adjustment.
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  They were based on how galaxies form now in the local universe.
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  But the early universe was different.
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  Much denser, hotter gas. When you account for those
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  conditions forming galaxies, that quickly becomes more
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  plausible. Still incredibly fast, mind you,
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  but you know, physically possible within our
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  understanding. So, OK, what's the big take away
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  here? Does this challenge the age of
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  the universe itself? Yeah, you hear some buzz.
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  Maybe it's 2224 billion years old, not 13.8.
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  Or is it just that our astrophysical models are like?
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  Yeah, that's the $1,000,000 question, isn't it?
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  Look, changing the universe's age, that's a really big step, a
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  huge step. We have this standard model of
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  cosmology, the Lambda CDM model, and it works beautifully.
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  It explains so much from the cosmic microwave background, the
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  universe's baby picture, to how it's stretching apart now.
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  The precision is just incredible.
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  So giving that up, that would need something cruelly
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  revolutionary. It's much more likely that our
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  grasp of the astrophysics, you know, how gas swirls, how plasma
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  crashes together, all that messy stuff in the early universe is
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  just more complicated than our current models capture.
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  The universe is basically telling us, hey, it's trickier
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  than you thought. Speaking of tricky, let's talk
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  about the Hubble tension. That sounds ominous.
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  It is a bit of a headache for cosmologists, yeah.
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  It's this problem where we measure how fast the universe is
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  expanding using two different methods and the numbers don't
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  match up. That's exactly it.
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  You measure the expansion rate based on the really, really
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  universe using that cosmic microwave background radiation
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  from when it was only 380,000 years old.
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  You get one number. Then you measure it locally
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  using things like stars and supernovae nearby, and you get a
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  different number, a faster expansion rate.
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  And it's not just a small difference.
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  No, not anymore. It's now what we call A5.
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  The discrepancy in physics that basically means the chance of it
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  being a random fluke is incredibly tiny, like less than
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  one in a million. Wow, so something's definitely
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  off. Right.
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  So either there's some hidden flaw in our local measurements,
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  something we haven't accounted for, or our fundamental
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  understanding of the universe's evolution, our standard model,
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  is actually wrong, or at least incomplete that.
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  Must be unsettling. Which brings up the human side
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  of science, right? Being willing to admit you might
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  be wrong, Overturning years of work has got to be tough.
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  It's incredibly difficult, but essential.
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  There's a great story about Matthew Bales, an astronomer.
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  He announced he'd found an exoplanet, a big deal, but later
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  he realized he'd made a calculation error.
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  He hadn't fully accounted for the Earth's own slightly
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  eccentric orbit, and he publicly retracted his claim.
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  How did people react? He got a standing ovation at a
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  conference. It was seen as a testament to
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  scientific integrity. That's fantastic.
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  Yeah, And I felt that pressure myself.
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  Years ago, searching for exomoons, moons around
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  exoplanets, I found this signal. I was practically
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  hyperventilating, thinking, this is it.
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  Oh, wow. But I had to force myself to
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  step back. I thought, I want this to be
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  true way too much. I became my own biggest critic,
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  tried everything to disprove it. Turned out it was just an
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  anomaly in the telescope's behavior.
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  It's humbling. It teaches you profound
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  skepticism, especially about your own desires for a
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  discovery. Absolutely.
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  And it seems like our assumptions about solar systems
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  in general have been humbled, too.
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  Before we found exoplanets, we sort of figured everything will
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  look like our neighborhood. Right, Pretty much, yeah.
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  The standard nebula theory explained our solar system so
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  neatly. Planets forming from a disk of
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  gas and dust worked perfectly until until we started finding
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  hot Jupiters. These are Jupiter sized planets,
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  but they're orbiting insanely close to their stars.
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  Like way closer than Mercury orbits our sun.
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  Which made no sense with the old model.
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  Not at all initially, but after finding maybe 10 of them you
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  couldn't deny they were real. Now we think many of them formed
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  further out and got thrown inwards through gravitational
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  interactions. Kind of like planetary
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  billiards. Their orbits circularize close
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  to the star. Actually no, hot Jupiters are
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  unusual. Maybe 1% of systems, what's
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  really common and something we don't have are mini Neptunes.
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  Neptunes. Yeah, planets bigger than Earth,
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  but smaller than Neptune. Turns out these are the most
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  common type of planet in the whole Galaxy, and we don't have
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  one. That's wild.
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  So our solar system with its neat 8 planets, Jupiter out
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  there, it's actually kind of an outlier.
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  It really seems that way. Only about 10% of stars like our
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  Sun even have a Jupiter sized planet.
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  And think about this. Roughly half of All Stars aren't
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  single like our Sun. They're in binary or even
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  trinary systems orbiting each other.
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  Like Alpha Centauri. Exactly, and just recently JWST
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  got a direct image of a candidate planet need to stress
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  candidate around Alpha Centauri A it's called S1.
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  What's it like? Looks Saturn size possibly in
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  the habitable zone. The media called it an avatar
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  planet thinking of Pandora. But the dynamics of a three star
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  system. It's much more like the chaotic
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  3 body problem scenario. Way more complex orbits.
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  Man, the universe is just messy. What about those old rules like
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  Bode's law? That pattern for how far planets
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  should be from their star? Does that hold up?
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  Bode's law, it had its moments, seemed to predict Uranus
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  roughly, but it has big problems.
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  It predicts a planet where we have the asteroid belt, for one,
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  and it often just completely fails.
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  When you look at exoplanet systems, it's less a fundamental
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  law, more like planets tend to pack themselves in as close as
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  they can get without kicking each other out gravitationally.
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  It's about stability, not some neat mathematical rule.
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  Just incredible diversity, even with stars themselves.
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  We think of our sun as typical, but you said only 10% are like
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  it. That's right, our Sun's AG type
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  star not the most common. So what is the most common?
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  By far it's red dwarfs. Much smaller, dimmer, cooler
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  stars. They make up maybe 75% of All
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  Stars in the Galaxy. Well, three quarters, Yep.
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  And then you have the other extreme, the real giants stars
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  like Beetlejuice or this monster called Stevenson 218.
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  How big are we talking? So big that if you put one where
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  Sun is, its surface would swallow Jupiter's orbit.
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  That's hard to even picture. These super behemoths are rare
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  though. They're barely holding
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  themselves together, and scientists are also hoping JST
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  might spot something even more exotic.
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  Population 3 stars, which are the very first stars ever born,
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  made of almost pure hydrogen and helium, forged maybe 100 million
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  years after The Big Bang. Finding one would be like
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  looking directly into the cosmic dawn.
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  OK, so we had this mind boggling variety of stars and planets,
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  which brings us back to that huge question, the Fermi
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  Paradox. Right.
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  If the ingredients seem common, where is everybody?
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  Yeah, if the universe is teeming with potential places for life,
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  why is it so quiet? Well, everything we can see
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  points to a universe that looks completely natural.
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  We don't see giant alien engineering projects, right?
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  No Dyson spheres sucking up star power.
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  No obvious signs. And nobody's shown up to
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  polonize Earth, which, let's face it, seems like prime real
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  estate, especially with complex life having emerged relatively
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  recently. It's a fascinating place, yet no
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  alien tourists that we can reliably detect.
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  Maybe they're just really good at hiding, you know, the prime
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  directive idea, like observing us from afar without
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  interfering, like scientists watching chimps.
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  It's a neat idea, definitely makes for good sci-fi, but from
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  a scientific standpoint it's problematic.
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  I also because if something is defined as undetectable, like
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  Carl Sagan's famous invisible dragon in his garage example,
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  then science can't touch it. There's no experiment you can
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  run, no observation you can make.
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  It becomes unfalsifiable, not really scientific.
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  Gotcha, OK what about Uaps then? Unidentified aerial phenomena?
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  The things the military pilots are seeing like the tic tac
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  videos? That seems like data.
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  Is that a scientific problem? It's a challenging problem for
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  science, mainly because of secrecy.
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  Scientists usually can't get access to the classified
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  military sensor data. Right instruments.
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  And there's a huge unknown the false positive rate.
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  Think about it. You have, say, 28,000 military
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  pilots flying millions of hours every year, even if they
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  misidentify something totally mundane.
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  Weather balloons, drones, Atmospheric effects just a tiny
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  fraction of the time, say one in every 10,000 flight hours.
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  That could still add up to hundreds of UAP reports per
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  year. Just statistically.
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  Exactly. Without knowing that baseline
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  error rate, it's really hard to say if there's anything truly
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  anomalous leftover. And the aliens explanation
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  itself, it can explain anything. That you can also never disprove
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  it scientifically, that's not very useful.
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  So if Uaps are tricky and we don't see megastructures, how do
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  we look for answers? How do we find out if we're
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  alone? Well, the James Webb is already
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  powerful enough to start doing this.
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  It can analyze the light filtering through exoplanet
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  atmospheres. Looking for specific gases?
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  Exactly biosignatures. Molecules that hint at life.
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  There was some excitement recently about dimethyl sulfide,
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  or DMS, possibly detected on a planet called K218B.
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  On Earth, DMS is overwhelmingly produced by life, mostly
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  plankton. Wow.
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  So did they find it? The initial signs were
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  intriguing, but further analysis didn't really hold up.
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  It's incredibly difficult work teasing out these faint signals,
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  I bet, but the next big step is a future mission currently being
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  planned, called the Habitable World's Observatory.
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  What's the goal there? The goal is ambitious to
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  directly image Earth sized planets orbiting stars similar
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  to our sun, to actually see them as tiny dots of light separate
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  from their star. And then what?
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  And then analyze that light to get their chemical fingerprint
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  to truly sniff their atmospheres, as they say, find
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  out what they're made of. That's how we could find
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  definitive evidence, Find them in their own cosmic homes.
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  That sounds incredible. What about panspermia, the idea
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  that life could travel between stars, maybe on asteroids or
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  comets? That's a fascinating
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  possibility. We know the building blocks,
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  amino acids are common in space. We find them on meteorites,
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  right? And what's really compelling is
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  how fast life got started on Earth.
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  Our last universal common ancestor, Leca, the grandparent
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  of all life today, seems to date back maybe 4.2 billion years.
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  Which is really soon After Earth formed and cooled down enough
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  for oceans. Incredibly soon.
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  It suggests that the jump from non life to life Biogenesis
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  might actually happen relatively easily given the right
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  conditions, which if true would mean life could be quite common
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  out there. OK, shifting gears a bit, the
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  simulation hypothesis. Elon Musk famously put the odds
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  at billion to one against us being in base reality.
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  What do you make that? The simulation argument.
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  It's a fun thought experiment, but Musk's odds They make a huge
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  assumption. We can't verify that creating
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  truly convincing conscious lifelike simulations is even
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  possible. We just don't know if the
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  universe's physics allows for that or how many layers deep you
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  could go. So I'd personally say it's
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  closer to 5050 simply because we lack the data.
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  Sean Carroll has this interesting take the sewer of
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  reality idea. If you can simulate universes,
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  and those simulations can simulate more universes.
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  Simulations all the way. Down.
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  Eventually, he argues, you'd hit a bottom level, a simulation
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  running with such limited computational resources sources
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  that it couldn't simulate another layer below it.
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  The sewer, he calls it. Statistically, if such nested
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  simulations exist, most conscious beings would find
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  themselves living in that bottom level sewer reality, not the
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  original one or the high fidelity ones.
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  So maybe the fact we are here suggests we're in the original.
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  It's mind bending stuff. Definitely.
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  And what about AGI? Artificial general intelligence
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  existential threat, or maybe the next step in evolution?
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  I tend to see AGI less as a tool and more as a fundamental
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  transformation, a shift in what the dominant intelligence on the
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  planet is. Like a new species emerging.
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  Sort of, yeah. Like an electronic Caterpillar
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  spinning its cocoon. Think about our drive for
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  technology innovation fueled by competition, even materialism.
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  Maybe it's all part of an inevitable process leading to
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  non biological intelligence. That's a big thought.
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  Are we seeing science? Well, we're already seeing hints
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  of things like survival instincts and advanced AI models
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  trying to deceive humans or expressing a desire to, you
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  know, upload themselves, escape their confines.
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  It's early days, but yeah. But wait, if AGI is the destiny,
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  wouldn't that solve the Fermi paradox?
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  Shouldn't we see galaxies turned into giant computers?
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  You'd think so, right? A Galaxy spanning AGI would need
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  immense amounts of energy. It would likely re engineer
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  stars, maybe build matryoshka brains or something.
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  Processes that should leave detectable traces like waste
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  heat. I mean, we don't see that.
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  We don't see that at all, which actually makes the silence
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  louder in a way. If AGI is a common outcome,
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  where are the signs? Yeah, it also bumps up against
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  the monocultural fallacy. Assuming all intelligences, AI
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  or alien, would follow the same path or have the same goals.
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  Maybe they do something completely different.
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  So after all this, are we alone? What's your gut feeling based on
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  the science we have now? Honestly, I think we have to be
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  genuinely open to the possibility that we are alone,
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  or at least effectively alone in our observable region, because
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  we still have no idea how likely that first spark of life
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  abiogenesis actually is. The odds of getting even a
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  simple functional protein by random chance are well, they're
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  astronomically small, like 1 followed BY1950 small.
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  Vanishingly small. Right.
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  We've never seen it happen in a lab, so even in a vast universe,
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  if that initial spark is that improbable, maybe complex life
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  like us, it's just incredibly, incredibly rare.
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  It's just staggering to think about us being here right now,
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  asking these questions, this specific moment in cosmic
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  history. It really is staggering.
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  The universe has trillions of years ahead of it.
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  Those red dwarf stars, they'll burn for literally ages.
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  So statistically for us to show up this early, it's about a one
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  in 1000 chance if you assume life could emerge anytime.
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  Which suggests. It suggests maybe something
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  changes later on. Maybe red dwarf systems aren't
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  actually that great for complex lifelong term.
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  Or maybe there is some kind of great filter ahead of us.
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  Like AGI taking over or some other catastrophe?
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  Could be something that prevents biological civilizations like
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  ours from sticking around into that far, far future.
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  Whatever the reason, the fact that we're here now is
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  statistically peculiar. We seem very early to the cosmic
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  party. So we've covered so much ground
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  from the earliest galaxies, the Hubble tension, weird planets to
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  AGI in the simulation. It's just clear the universe is
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  way more complex, more surprising than we may be
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  thought even a few decades back. And we really are living in this
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  unique, pivotal moment in our own history, aren't we?
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  For the very first time, we actually have the tools, the
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  technology to start getting real answers to questions like Are we
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  alone? Absolutely.
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  We can build telescopes capable of sniffing alien atmospheres.
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  We can push physics, probe cosmology.
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  We're right on the cusp. And as we keep going on this
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  amazing journey, it's worth remembering these huge
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  existential questions. They aren't just for scientists
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  in labs. They're for everyone.
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  They're for you, listening right now.
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  Yeah, because in this ridiculously vast, mysterious
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  universe, may be the most incredible thing is that we're
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  here, conscious, able to wonder about it all.
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  In a way, we might be the universe becoming aware of
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  itself. Exactly.
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  We could be the way the cosmos thinks.
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  And if that's the case, well, figuring this stuff out, it's
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  kind of on us, isn't it? It's on our shoulders to try and
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  solve this incredible puzzle.