WEBVTT - Can we explore the galaxy with self-replicating probes? 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.959 It's a vast, cold, and mostly empty universe, and as 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.080 lucky as we've been to live in a time when 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.480 we are discovering planets around other stars, we still have 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.800 no evidence that there is anyone out there living on 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:23.720 any of them. The prospect that we are the only 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.280 life in the universe, or the only intelligent life, still 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.560 haunts us. Of course, people say the aliens could be 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:33.920 out there even if we haven't found them. So let's 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.400 flip the script and think about it from the aliens 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:40.199 point of view. Why haven't they found us? Could they 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.120 find us? There are lots of planets in the galaxy, 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:46.240 after all, and we're only on one of them. Today 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:48.760 in the podcast, we're going to explore the prospects for 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:53.640 a technology that promises to unleash vast exploratory power, one 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:56.400 that might allow us to visit any planet in the 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.320 galaxy and to look for aliens in a reasonable amount 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.520 of time, or to allow aliens to have come and 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:08.600 visited our planet. That technology is self replicating probes spacecraft 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:14.080 that build more of themselves, growing our fleet exponentially. Because 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:16.720 if we can do it, we probably will do it, 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:19.959 and if we can do it, aliens likely could also 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:24.920 welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary and so far barren universe. 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:38.440 Hello. 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:39.479 I'm Kelly Reader Smith. 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:42.360 I study parasites and space, and I had so much 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:43.440 fun in today's conversation. 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:44.920 But also I'm not going to sleep tonight. 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.720 Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and though I'm 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.600 technically self replicating, I haven't made any exact copies of myself. 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.080 Oh, I guess no human has made an exact copy 0:01:58.120 --> 0:01:59.120 of themselves. 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:02.160 Yet, although you know so my two children are both blonde, 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:05.560 and my wife is blonde and I'm not, and so 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.760 people joked occasionally, since she is a biochemist, that maybe 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:10.680 she had just cloned herself in the lab. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.000 Hazel does look very Katrina issue. 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.799 Yeah, yeah, they both. Do you know those dominant Viking genes. 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.960 I guess they wiped out your genes. 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.160 I'm not unhappy about that. They both look great. 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:30.680 So my question for you today, you are super excited 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:31.600 about aliens. 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.880 Yes, no news to anyone there. 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.280 If you could make self replicating probes and release them 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:39.840 into the universe so that you could communicate with aliens, 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:41.320 would you do that? 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.760 M Oh my gosh, Well, you know, I'm on the 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:48.000 record for being willing to invite aliens to come visit 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:50.800 Earth as long as they share the secrets of the universe, 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:53.440 even if they send us to the hydrogen minds and 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.240 enslave us. That's how badly I want to meet aliens 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:58.040 and learn how the universe works. 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.079 I'm so glad academics have like zero hour over anything. 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.160 Well, that's what makes me free to say these ridiculous stus, 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:08.640 because I'll never ever be around that table where we 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.760 make these decisions. So I mean, if you're asking me, 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.320 like Daniel, would you launch self replicating probes that could 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:18.839 put us in touch with aliens that might be able 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.359 to tell us the secrets of the universe, even if 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:25.360 it risks like wiping out all matter in the galaxy 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.720 because the probes go crazy and convert everything into paper 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:34.160 clips essentially, Then yes, I think I still would because 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.080 the other alternative is too disappointing, Like we are stuck 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.200 on this planet and the aliens are stuck on that planet, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:42.360 and we can't talk to each other because we're afraid 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.360 that our technology is going to run amok. I don't know. 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:46.560 That just seems too dark. 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:48.800 That's more dark than all of us getting to still 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.080 exist but not talking to each other. 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:53.160 You're warped, man. 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.840 Yes, yes, I'm warped. I will totally admit I'm warped. 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.280 But I want to know who's out there. I want 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.760 to know if our other civilizations, and the idea that 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.200 there could be out there and we never find them, 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:08.960 that's to me just too difficult to accept. So any 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:13.120 technology that's going to help us make contact with other civilizations. Yes, 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:15.200 I'm a booster. I'm an investor, all right, So. 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.799 If you are anything like me, you might be thinking, one, 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.120 I hope Daniel never runs for public office, and if so, 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:23.680 he does not have my vote. And two, I want 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.760 to know how likely is it that we could build 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.120 these self replicating robots so that if some Daniel Ooyd 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.320 individual gets a position in Congress, do they have a 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:36.200 chance at wiping this all out with these self replicating robots? 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.800 And by self replicating robots, Kelly is referring to not 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:43.880 just probes that NASA builds here on Earth, bespoke things 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:45.880 that take ten years, and we send out one of 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.560 them and we cross our fingers and hope that it survives, 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.600 or even two or ten of those. We're talking about 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.760 probes that can make more probes, Probes that are not 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.919 birthed here on Earth, but out somewhere in the galaxy, 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:01.000 maybe five ten generations down, that let us tap into 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:04.560 the power of exponential growth so that we can effectively 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:08.480 explore the entire galaxy without ever leaving our rock. 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:13.080 Amazing, and so we asked our extraordinaries, what do they 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:17.159 think can we even build self replicating probes to explore 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:17.799 the galaxy? 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.359 Is this actual technology that's around the corner, maybe a 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.279 few hundred years from now, or is this just Daniel's fantasy? 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.600 Thanks very much to everybody who answered these questions. Think 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:29.680 about it for a moment. Do you think we are 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:33.599 around the corner to building self replicating probes? Here's what 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:34.599 our listeners had to. 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:36.080 Say, Yes, we can. 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:38.520 It will take a while until we can, and they 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:39.960 might eat us afterwards. 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:45.120 It's plausible that we are somebody else's self replicating probe in. 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.560 Terms of practicality, I mean, you know, the short answer 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:54.640 is no. The long answer is well, no, I. 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:59.760 Don't think our current engineering precision is up to the 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:05.000 tech of making probes that would in turn make probes 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:10.200 with equally good precision. And so on all the way down. 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:13.000 You know what would happen if this w a ry 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:18.560 and we had bands of world destroying robots roaming the galaxy. 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.200 That seems like, if it's not already the plot of 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:22.720 a sci fi novel, it should be. 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.640 You know what, we don't know. We really just don't 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:26.120 know yet. 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.280 So I feel like, yeah, maybe in the next twenty 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:31.320 thirty fifty hundred years. 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:33.600 We can't write now, but we won't be able to later. 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:35.400 I mean, we can do anything if we. 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.200 Try once we have sufficiently advanced AI. 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:43.000 I can't see what the point is unless we also 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:47.480 invent near to speed of life travel. Once they got 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.680 to another solar system, we'd be long gone. So who 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:53.520 would they actually be exploring for. 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:58.080 We can't even build self replicating robots that'll do our 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.960 dishes and our laundry, Yet in a near future dish 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:03.800 might very well be pushable. 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.839 Okay. I absolutely loved these answers. 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.080 There was a lot of diversity in these answers, and 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:11.840 as always, there was some like hilarity in there too. 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:14.800 I liked the short answer is no, long answer is. 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:17.480 Correct me up. 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.160 But yeah, lots of people thinking we could do it, 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:22.280 some people saying why should we do it? Some people 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.480 say we could do anything. I loved it. 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:26.800 Some people on the Kelly whipb blanket side saying they 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:29.800 might eat us afterwards. You know, that's fair, that's fair. 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.200 I think it's important to point out the possible pitfall 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.320 so we can make decisions with clear eyes. 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:36.760 Maybe that's just me. 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.680 That's good for when we have that Oppenheimer moment. You know, 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.120 are we going to push signs forward at risk of 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.440 destroying everybody? Or are we going to cower in the darkness? 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:47.640 Those are really the only two options available. 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.240 Okay, do not run for Senate. 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:55.160 So so today we got super lucky because we have 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:57.160 an amazing guest on the show we do. 0:07:57.280 --> 0:07:59.560 We got to speak to Phil Metzger, who actually has 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.800 a patent for space concrete. He knows what he's talking about. 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.560 He's really thought about building industry off the Earth, and 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.560 he disagrees with Kelly about stuff in space. So we 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:11.800 thought who better to come on the podcast. 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.120 I think our disagreements aren't about like the facts. I 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.800 think our disagreements are about optimism. And he is a 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:22.600 more optimistic human being that I am, and he's probably 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:23.480 happier for it. 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.040 Yeah, and I think disagrees with Kelly describes like a 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.120 vast swath of the space industry community. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.640 Yep, yep. And that's a okay, all. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.440 Right, So let's jump into our interview with Phil. It's 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.040 my pleasure to introduce to the podcast Professor Phil Metzger. 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.720 He's a planetary physicist with the Florida Space Institute. He 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:48.840 has the distinction that he has designed spacecraft. He also 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:52.559 has a three mile wide asteroid named after himself, and 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.480 he has strong opinions on the definition of a planet. 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.960 Plus he has studied the issue of building industry in space, 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:01.800 so he actually knows what he's talking about. Phil, Welcome 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:02.599 to the podcast. 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:04.000 Hi glad to be here. 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:05.840 So can I dig into one of those things? 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.839 So I know Phil pretty well for his work on 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:10.920 like you know, regolith on the Moon and stuff like that, 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:13.560 but I don't know about Phil's strong opinions about the 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.240 definition of a planet. So is Pluto a planet or 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:18.680 not a planet? What am I missing? 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:21.400 I'm going to say it's a planet. And that's because 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.439 the definition of a planet, going back to the Copernican 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.040 Revolution was not based on orbits. It was based on 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:31.880 the geophysical nature of the objects. And that was really 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:34.120 a crucial part of the Copernican argument. 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:36.240 What do you mean the geophysical nature? You mean, like, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:37.320 is it mostly spherical? 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:41.360 Well before the Copernican Revolution, they thought that the majority 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.600 of view is that planets were made out of unchanging 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.760 ether and they were perfect spheres. They followed heavenly physics, 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.440 not earthly physics, and so the Copernican Revolution said, no, 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:56.400 Earth is in the heavens, and these objects are geological bodies, 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.800 just like the Earth is. And the primary example they 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:03.360 had was the Moon because they could see it with telescopes. 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.760 Galileo saw mountains and those the existence of mountains and 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:11.280 the existence of earth shine reflecting off the Moon allowed 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.199 him to create arguments about this category of objects called planets. 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:19.800 And the category he was arguing for was all the 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.120 geological bodies in our Solar system, including the moons of 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:28.040 Jupiter which he called planets, and our moon, and it 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.760 was all based on the fact that they are geological 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:35.160 bodies like the Earth. It was not broken into what 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:39.600 they orbit. Now. Kepler introduced the category of secondary planets, 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.560 meaning a planet that orbits another planet, and that was 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:46.200 the primary term, the technical term we had for that 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.680 subcategory of planets all the way until well as early 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:53.920 in the nineteen hundreds that this taxonomy got lost, and 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.080 it was for non scientific reasons. We ended up with 0:10:57.320 --> 0:10:59.560 the terminology that's most commonly used today. 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:01.440 If it were up to you, we would have like 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.360 hundreds of planets then, because every moon would be a planet. 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:04.880 Is that right? 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:09.840 Well if there, we've refined upon Galileo's definition since then, 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.280 and we now understand that there are small bodies that 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.880 wasn't known at the time, and we need to have 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:21.640 a lower size limit because they become dissimilar and the 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.599 category is not useful if we include everything down to 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:28.480 a dustpec. And so it was Kuiper in the nineteen 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.320 fifties who proposed the lower limit based on gravitational rounding. 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:37.240 He didn't understand the planet formation exactly. And since then 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:41.199 we've refined our understanding of planet formation, and so Alan 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.880 Stern and well Alan I think first proposed a refinement 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.080 to Kuiper's definition where he said it didn't matter the 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.000 formation process, if it ended up large enough to become 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.440 gravitationally rounded, then it should be a planet. So that's 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:56.680 the history in a nutshell. 0:11:57.320 --> 0:11:59.959 Well, maybe the solution is buried in your previous comment, 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.400 and you know, maybe this category is just not useful. 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.800 It's sort of historical and archaic and reflects our feelings 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.120 about the importance of the Earth, and that now we're 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.000 doing all this like layers upon layers upon layers to 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:13.920 try to preserve it as a thing. Maybe we should 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:15.720 just give up on it and accept the fact that 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:17.920 the Solar System is filled with all sorts of stuff, 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:19.760 from tiny specks to huge blobs. 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.959 Well, you bring up a great point, and I've heard 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.800 Neil de grass Tyson say the same thing, that maybe 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:29.400 we should say that planet is not a useful category. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.640 But you know that's really the outcome of the way 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:36.240 it's currently defined. It's not useful. But if you went 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.439 back to the Galileo and you know, the refinements to 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:42.439 the Galileo definition, then it actually is useful again. And 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:46.240 the idea is that planets are unique in the cosmos 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:51.679 because those are the locations where chemical complexity develops and 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:58.720 geological complexity and biology emerges, and civilizations emerge. And that's 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:02.840 an important concept in understanding our place in the cosmos, 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:04.880 And in fact, I would argue that might even be 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.520 the most important concept I think planets not only is 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.680 it a useful concept if you go back to Galileo's definition, 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:14.960 but it might be the most important concept in physics 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.480 and understanding why we're here in the cosmos. 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:20.880 And incredibly that actually provides a transition to the topic 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:24.400 of the episode. So this whole thing wasn't just a digression, 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:28.520 because imagine that we wanted to explore the galaxy and 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:32.400 to look for other civilizations. Where should we look, right, 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:34.679 should we look in the hearts of stars, should we 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.640 look in stellar atmospheres, or should we look on planetary surfaces? 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:40.960 So from that point of view, it's helpful to define 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.760 like our target locations in the galaxy. So, Phil, if 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.160 you could look anywhere, is that where you would look? 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.040 You'd look for things we currently call planets or the 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.559 field definition of planets, and look on their surfaces for civilizations. 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.959 Sure, and that is what we've been doing. We've been 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.560 looking for exoplanets, looking for biosignatures. There's also a lot 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:04.200 of interest in the large moons of our own solar system, 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.000 like is there life under the ice on Europa? Even 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.840 people talk about on Pluto Deep under the surface of Pluto. 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:18.320 It's believed that there may be a liquid ocean still liquid, surprisingly, 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.360 and maybe there's life because there's organic material on Pluto, 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:24.760 and there's energy that it's kept at liquid this long 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:29.160 energy from nuclear decay apparently. And the literature uses the 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:32.760 word planet including those types of objects. So the people 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.720 that are actually looking for life and looking at geological 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.560 complexity do use the Galilean definition of a planet just 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:40.240 by default. 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.280 All right, So let's say we want to explore all 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.880 the quote unquote planets around all the stars in the 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.240 Milky Way and look for civilizations we can chat with. 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.560 Why can't we just scale up what NASA is doing 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.720 and do a lot more of it. Why do we 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:57.720 need to consider self replicating probes. 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.800 Yeah, that's a great question, I think. And the reason 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.600 why I would argue is because the people or the 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:08.400 civilizations out there that we might detect that might be 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:12.440 communicating may not be biological. It may be that they 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:17.200 have transitioned so that there's now machine life in the cosmos, 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:23.040 and machines are can be designed to be more inherently 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:27.200 capable of long distance travel within the galaxy. They could 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:31.320 be designed to withstand the environment. They could also be immortal, 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.160 live for a very long time. Not get bored. Just 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:39.760 program yourself to not be bored. It's hard, and. 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:42.040 So I've tried that for myself. It just doesn't work. 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:48.280 Yeah, And so it gets back to when Kardishov Alexei 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:50.960 Kardashev was looking for signs of life and the cosmos. 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.480 He defined type one, type two, and type three civilizations 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.880 because he was pointing out that what we're looking for 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.200 might not be similar to what we have here, and 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:06.240 self replicating probes is one of the common channels people 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.760 have discussed of how civilization might go at a larger 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:12.320 scale and end up colonizing the galaxy. 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:14.960 I think you're saying that what we should be looking 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.200 for is aliens self replicating probes. Is that the comment 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.880 you're making. Are you saying that it's important for us 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.360 to send us self replicating probes because they're more likely 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:26.360 to have a fun conversation with alien self replicating probes. 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.600 All of the above, I think that it's important for 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:34.080 us to get beyond the limits of our biosphere here 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.800 on this planet and take life, not just human life, 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:43.320 but take other species with us beyond Earth. And I 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.800 think the only economically viable way to do that as well, 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:50.760 self replication, industrial self replication off the planet. And you 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.640 also raise another interesting question, would would advance civilizations even 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:56.680 bother to talk to us if we saw that we're 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:01.400 primitive biologicals when they are much more advanced machine intelligence, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.360 And you know, maybe that's a factor too. 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:06.760 And just to make sure I'm understanding, are we saying 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.480 that the life in the universe is no longer squishy 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.760 it's actually machines, or that they're still squishy life somewhere 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:16.439 and they're sending machines out to do the exploring and 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:18.800 that's what we would be communicating with or both of 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:19.520 those options. 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.320 Yeah, both of them. I had in mind the idea 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:27.600 that eventually machine intelligence may replace biological intelligence. Out there 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.760 in the cosmos. People have talked about dice and minds, 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.720 where you build a dice sphere and use all the 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:40.000 energy of a star to support one mind, one gigantic compute. 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.439 And so maybe there are dice in minds scattered across 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:47.400 the cosmos, and they're so far above us that they 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.439 were not their peers, so they don't bother talking to us. 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.440 But maybe they're out there, maybe they're watching and they're 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:53.080 aware of us. 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:55.760 I feel like I could personally benefit from a more 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.760 broader look at self replicating probes, and so, like you know, 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:03.359 we've talked about how they can have this exponential growth, 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:05.720 but I'm not quite sure what they're growing from or 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.119 how they're growing, And so can you give me a 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.080 bigger picture look at what these probes do and what 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:12.920 they are and why we want these probes? 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.399 Sure? So the first person I know who talked about 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:21.040 this concept was I think as Robert frietas Free to Us, 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.240 writing in the nineteen eighties. He was associated with a 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:30.119 NASA Ames Research Center study in nineteen eighty he talked 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:34.560 about where you send a probe to a star. That 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.680 probe will then mine the gas giants. Maybe it'll set 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:40.960 up factories on the moons of the gas giants. But 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.800 he looked at all the elements that you could get 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:49.840 from a belief to be nominal star system, and could 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:54.160 you create a complete industry using those resources? And you can, 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:58.960 and you could have this factory start small. He called 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.160 it a seed factor, and the seed would be planted 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:04.680 on this icy moon at a giant planet, and it 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.160 would start to build larger factories and it would all 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:12.080 be robotic with autonomous labor and eventually it would start 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:16.639 to build other seed spacecraft, and then those seed spacecraft 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.400 would be launched from there and go to other star systems. 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.880 And so he tried to do some scaling of the 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:28.239 economics of autonomous labor on outer icy moon planets and 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:32.480 colonize in the entire galaxy. Since then, we've started to 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:36.600 develop some of these technologies in order to support NASA. 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.200 We've been working on mining the soil on the Moon 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:45.159 or Mars, getting resources making metal, and as we've started 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:48.760 to do this, it got us excited. We started thinking, wow, 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.800 you know, maybe this idea from FreeDOS is possible. And 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:55.960 so we've done a little bit more recent work trying 0:19:56.000 --> 0:20:03.640 to bring Freetus's ideas into a more concrete instantiation where 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.280 we talk about what exact types of robots would be 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.480 at these factories, what would be their metabolic throughput, so 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.040 how fast can they self replicate and start to build 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:17.919 other spacecraft. So that's the general idea. 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:19.840 Doesn't it go back a little bit further. Wasn't it 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.760 von Neuman who introduced this concept of a von Neuman 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:27.120 probe and the universal constructor or something which can build itself. 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.720 You're absolutely right. Yeah, I forgot about von Neuman. So 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:32.159 he was before freed us. 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:35.040 He's always before everybody and everything. He's got his fingers 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:36.520 and every time he's like Euler. 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:36.960 You know. 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:43.120 Right, Let's go through the exercise of thinking about the 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.040 exponential factor of self replicating probes, because I think a 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.000 lot of people are like, why can't we just get 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.720 Elon to do his SpaceX multiplication on our current thing? 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:54.480 You know, why is it really necessary to have the 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:56.240 probes build more probes? 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:01.760 Well, it's a matter of scale scaling up if you 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:05.119 want to explore the entire galaxy, and maybe you don't, 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:07.760 you know, maybe you don't care about that, But if there's. 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.000 A civili I do, if there's a want to overlook something. 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.560 So if there are any civilizations out there that have 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.000 had the same motive that you have, then it's an 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:21.560 economic question. How do you how do you explore ten 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:26.960 to the twenty star systems, and if your labor force 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:31.520 is only ten to the nine biological creatures you know, 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:34.440 in the order of billions, how do you have an 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.399 industry that can explore on such a vast scale. And 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.600 so you need to have more autonomy and you need 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:43.720 to have a lot of industry with that autonomy in 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.919 order to build all the assets, all the capital necessary 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:51.240 to go out into that gigantic cosmos. So it's a 0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:52.119 scaling question. 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:55.359 Yeah. So if I do a simple calculation, you know, 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.680 if you start out with like five self replicating ships 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:01.920 and each one can make fine more than it's only 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.040 twelve generations before you have a billion ships out there 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:09.440