WEBVTT - Grizzly Bears from Outer Space 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.120 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:18.080 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So Robert, Yes, 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:20.880 I want you to do a little experiment with me. 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:23.720 All right, let's do it. Put yourself in the shoes 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:29.080 of a paranormal phenomenon investigator. Okay, okay, somebody with some judgments, 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:33.159 some authority. You're not necessarily a skeptic or true believer, 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:38.239 maybe somewhere between Molder and Scully and you old scolding 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:43.360 older sculder exactly. You are Sculder, and you have just 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.920 been caught by security guards while raiding the file cabinets 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:52.400 of a secret evidence room chock full of alien conspiracy documentation, 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:55.960 and before you can get a good look at all 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:00.640 these autopsy reports and heavily redacted witness Affidavid. You've pulled 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:03.560 the security guards who caught you. They lead you down 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.920 the hall, this long dark hall, to the office of 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.080 a bald man with a goatee and a green Paisley 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:14.480 bow tie, obviously a major player in the shadow government. Yes, 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.720 that's what the bow tie signifies. So Paisley bow Tie 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.160 stares you down, and he says, Okay, hot shot, you 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.080 think you know a lot about aliens. Well, I've got 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.160 a test for you, and if you pass the test, 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:30.600 I'll let you in on the whole conspiracy and you 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:33.680 can know everything. But if you fail, you're going to 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.080 spend the rest of your career at a weather station 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.240 in the Arctic Circle. Okay, so the stakes are pretty 0:01:39.319 --> 0:01:42.880 high here, right, So he pushes a short stack of 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:46.880 staple documents across the desk towards you and gestures for 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:49.720 you to peruse them at your leisure. And here's what 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.920 he says. One of these five accounts is true. The 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:57.360 other four are lies. Pick the right one and you pass. 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.440 So you flip through the documents. They tell this first 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:03.120 person account of a young woman who was abducted by 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:06.880 aliens while hiking on the Appalachian Trail, And in all 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:10.200 five accounts, the abductee is lifted off the ground in 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.320 this beam of strobing violet light and sucked into the 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.960 interior of an alien spacecraft, where she meets a group 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:19.760 of aliens. They take a blood sample, They check our 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.880 blood pressure, maybe do a cheek swab cotton swab on 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.960 the inside of the mouth, very on the level. Everything 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.160 is very professional, yes, uh, and then the next morning 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.560 she wakes up in the forest with vague memories. Now, 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.520 the only difference in the five accounts is how the 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:41.160 aliens are described physically. So, in one account they're tall, 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:46.120 about seven to eight feet tall, beautiful humanoids with smooth 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:51.880 skin and pure white eyes. In another one, they are short, 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.200 stout humanoids about three to four feet tall, covered in 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.720 thick black body hair from head to toe, with curling 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.720 tusks extending for the lower jaw. Okay, so so far 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.040 we have elves and we have dwarves to choose from. Gotcha? Yeah, 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:10.000 pretty much? Okay. Then you've got eight legged, crab like 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:14.360 animals with a brittle exoskeleton, two pairs of grasping claws, 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.160 one larger pair and one smaller pair of claws, and 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.560 compound eyes. The whole creature is approximately the size of 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:25.360 a cargo van. Giant crab. Gotcha. Then you've got small 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:29.440 blobs about one meter cubed of thick beige putty that 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:32.280 seemed to move as though guided by intelligence, and they 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:36.680 interact with onboard machinery and communicate psychically with the abductee. 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:39.680 Each one moves about on the spacecraft on four long 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.000 stilts on the underside of the putty, and occasionally they 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.480 excrete small puddles of sludge resembling muddy snow onto the 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.080 floor of the cabin, and these puddles are promptly removed 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.680 by room by like robots that emerge from the vents 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:56.400 whenever needed. And then in the fifth account there are predators. 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:01.080 They just straight out predators from the dreadlocks, the wrist blades, 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:04.840 the mask predators. Okay, so which one is the true account? 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.240 M Now this is an interesting quandary to deal with 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:13.600 because on one level, like just knowing what I know 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.440 and what I actually believe about encounters with aliens, and 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.479 in any kind of paranormal experience, I would I would say, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.240 I would want to pick the thing that could that 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:27.400 that that matches up with our expectations more in our 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.640 popular minds that concerning aliens. So in that regard, I 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:35.960 would tend to either go with predators or or perhaps 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.560 the the eleven creatures, because they're kind of matches there 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:42.920 the grays right. Okay, so you're saying you're more likely 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.760 to see these show up in fiction, So so that 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.279 this seems like if one were to have a paranormal experience, 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.720 if one were to have an hallucinatory experience, um, your 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.839 mind would would be more likely to pick from those 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.440 two buckets of alien content. However, wait, hold on, so 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:02.000 wait are you assuming the abduct team made this whole 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.839 thing up? Yeah? That my My first response to this 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:08.960 would be, all right, this, this individual has had a 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:12.120 paranormal experience that feels very real to them, but is 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:17.600 ultimately uh, but is ultimately not supernatural. It's ultimately is 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:22.000 all about their mind uh making sense of some sort 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:27.560 of um, you know, abnormal experience. But so she actually 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.000 just kind of like got dizzy from walking too much 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.560 one day, passed out and dream you know, she's or 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.440 she's been awake for an extended period of time. However, 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:37.360 if i'm if, I'm going to get outside of that 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.160 mindset and get in the mindset if someone's actually act 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.920 actively assuming as same one actually happened, assume one of 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.520 these is actually legit. I would probably go with the blobs, 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.960 because the blob idea, as as you laid it out here, 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:57.440 feels weird enough, unique enough, inhuman enough, and departed enough 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:01.600 from our more mainstream ideas of what alien life who 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.040 consists of so I would think that one sounds out 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.400 there enough to actually be out there. You know, I 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.719 wondered myself because I was trying to decide after I 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.000 wrote these which one is more plausible. And I also 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.560 felt like the blobs. But maybe that's just because I 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:20.479 used the deceiver's tactic of adding interesting details like the 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.200 stilts and the and the sledge pooping on the floor 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.120 that seemed to make things more believable. If you add 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.960 weird little details, yeah, you you embellished it enough to 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.040 where I I got a sense that there was actually 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:33.719 some sort of, h you know, a culture going on here. 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:36.719 If you were to subtract to those details, I wonder 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:39.400 if I might not drift towards the crab. You know, 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:41.560 I I love predators, but I might have to go 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.679 for the crab because the crab has two things going 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.479 for it. It's both weird enough and different enough from 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:54.359 humans to be sort of conceivable as as outside the 0:06:54.400 --> 0:07:01.800 realm of normal standard abductee imagination. But it's also familiar 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:05.440 enough that I can see biology creating that. I'm not 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:09.119 quite sure that the chemicals available in the universe would 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:13.600 create sentient blobs. Maybe that would, but I'm not sure. 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:16.760 I know that the chemicals in the universe can create 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.560 things like crabs, yes, And I guess my reluctance to 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.520 go with the crab is that it's essentially a giant crab, 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.240 that it's essentially just something very terrestrial that it's just 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.200 been u spaced out a little bit, you know. But 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.239 there's one feature of the giant crab that might actually 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.280 be a selling point, depending on how much credence you 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:38.760 give to a recent paper that came out that's sort 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.600 of like the inspiration for this episode, which is that 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:45.560 the crab is the size of a cargo van. Uh. 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:47.400 And this is a paper we're gonna get to in 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.280 a little bit, but it actually did some statistical calculations 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:56.680 to try to determine one particular aspect of what alien 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.240 bodies are going to look like in that aspect's size, 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:05.400 because obviously there are countless additional questions regarding the possibility 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.520 of life elsewhere in the universe, but this particular study 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.600 that we'll look at deals exclusively with just the size 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:15.680 of the organism. Yeah, and well in the numbers you 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:17.760 would expect and what their planets look like. But the 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.000 one takeaway about the alien bodies themselves is the size. 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:23.600 But I thought that was an interesting thing to address 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:28.240 because actually, in fiction we've seen a vast sort of 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.800 range of imagination in how large aliens can be expected 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:37.160 to be. Obviously, the most common are your human sized aliens, 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.560 because they are there are human actors playing them. That's right, 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:42.959 I mean, that's always the concern, right if you're and 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.480 and it is understandable if you're dealing with you want 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:47.400 to get a really cool sci fi idea out there, 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.000 and you want to discuss it, and you want to 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:52.440 shoot it in a way that actually, uh comes under budgets. 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.480 Under budget, It's far easier to just put somebody in 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:58.400 a guerrilla suit than put a microwave on their head 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.800 and call it an alien robot. Yeah, the what was 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:03.439 his name? I think I have it in my Roman 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:08.440 Roman Extension x J two. Yeah, folks at home, if 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.439 you haven't seen Robot Monster, it's a classic. It's pretty fun. 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:14.359 I mean I like to think of it as um, 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:17.360 you know, kind of like a biospace suit worn by 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.640 some other organism that just happens to look like a 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:22.439 gorilla costume with a like a TV set on its head. 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.200 Oh that's interesting, but yeah, we have countless examples, like 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.760 Star Wars and Star Treker are particularly just loaded with 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:34.680 humanoid roughly human size alien species, the track being the 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:38.360 most scandalous in its way because it's because we you know, 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:40.760 it's just like a ripple on the forehead makes this 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.679 species and this entire you know, this entire strain of 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.439 evolution different from this one, or sometimes just give them 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.160 different clothes. That's enough. And then, of course there is, 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:54.280 in my opinion, the greatest and most scientifically plausible vision 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.360 of alien life ever created, which is Cone Heads. Yes 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:01.360 you are now are you yourst referring only to the 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.079 original Saturday in Life skits or the Oh no, I'm 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:08.120 including the films. Yeah, the film includes lots of relevant details. Yeah, 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.240 we we learned about their mating practices and so well. 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.000 I don't know. Those might have been the sketches too, 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.520 I haven't seen all of them. I remember they had 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.000 a great stop motion creature in the film. It actually, 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:21.160 yeah they did. I think it was claymation. It was 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:24.360 this Ray Harry Housing kind of thing. I don't know 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:26.920 who actually created it, but it was pretty awesome. There's 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.040 a monster towards the end. I can forgive just about 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:32.800 any film if it has a cool stop motion creature 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.520 in it, I am right there with you. You ever 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.200 made it to the end of Howard the God, I 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.720 was just thinking about Howard the Duck, like that's literally 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.520 the only thing that I remember about it is that 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.640 at the end um the dude of the mustache turns 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:50.000 into this awesome, like weird technically creature and and it's 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:54.800 it's glorious the dark overlord of the universe. Yeah. But 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.120 then of course we've also got aliens that have been 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.480 imagined to run rather to the small side, which I 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.840 think is kind of interesting. Often if you hear the 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.840 actual abductee stories, so you go back to that scenario 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.520 we had at the beginning, I think most likely you're 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.400 going to hear that people were abducted by the gray aliens, right, 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:16.960 which you're typically pretty small, right, Yeah, generally got two 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.000 to four feet tall, and you're in varying accounts. Yeah, 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.040 this is this is sort of the alien mythos that 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:26.120 has sees the popular consciousness, and so they're these short, smooth, 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:29.920 gray things with large black eyes, big heads. Yeah. So 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:32.920 it's since it's the idea that's in the popular consciousness. 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.160 People have these paranormal experiences and they tend to draw 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.960 from that that bucket of content, if you will. Um 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:44.800 outside of the grays though, the average ewalk stands about 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.160 three ft tall a little over depending on the you 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:49.240 know they ran. You have your your wickets, but then 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.400 you also have those bigger, sort of chunkier monkeys. You know. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:56.760 I do wonder exactly how small and actually intelligent organism 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.120 could run. Indeed, I mean in our science fick and 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:05.240 you see, uh, such creatures as the virus, the flood 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.840 from Doctor Who, or the thing from John Carpenter's two Masterpiece, 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.160 where every cell of the shape shifting organism is itself 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.839 an individual organism with its own survival instake. And that's 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.560 how they end up discovering who has been replaced by 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.440 the thing sticking the hot wire and the blood and 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.120 seeing if the blood tries to escape. Yeah, yeah, they 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.160 take a blood sample from each one, and if your 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:31.000 blood tries to defend itself, that's not a good sign. Yeah, 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.640 And that's uh, that's if not a space faring species, 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:38.880 at least a species intelligent enough to steal the space 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:43.160 faring technology from another species. Yeah, so it could perhaps 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:45.760 co opt the intelligence of a host species, if even 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:50.320 if it's not particularly intelligent or conscious itself. But certainly 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:53.480 when we look at terrestrial models, and we'll be coming 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:56.800 back to this again and again, um, it's it's hard 0:12:56.840 --> 0:13:00.600 to find any examples of a particularly small all life 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.959 where you can say, oh, well, there you go, that 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.520 that could be a space faring species on its own. Yeah. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.480 But of course this paper we're about to talk about 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.160 in a minute doesn't say that aliens run small. It's 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.280 ays that they run large. And we've got no shortage 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:16.679 of large aliens. You could run all the way up 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:20.120 to probably some Kaiju monsters, right, Oh yeah, yeah, the 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.000 let's see. Uh I was looking around and there are 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.320 a lot of Kaiju monsters to consider, Um, how many 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.480 of them are actually aliens though? Yeah, because yeah, a 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:33.280 number of them have more terrestrial origins. I found one, 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:37.000 in particular, a hundred and thirty foot tall millenniums from 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:42.880 god Zilla two thousand UM millennium which came out and 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.680 uh I, it seems like various other Tohoe properties in kaiju, 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.320 and certainly when you get into um like power rangers 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:52.480 and whatnot, right. I mean, they're always battling some sort 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.280 of giant creature. And but doesn't that take a magic 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.520 wand to make the monster grow? Well? Yes, but if 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.280 you look at them, magic wand is some form of technology. 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.800 I don't know, it gets kind of complicate. But but 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.600 even then you have other examples of really huge alien 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.000 life and sci fi. Um. You know, Old Cathulu stood 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.839 hundreds of meters tall, and he, of course was an 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:20.880 extraterrestrial creature. What about the native inhabitants of Arakushea, the sandworms, Uh, 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.640 they are They at least had been measured up to 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.640 four d fiftys long, but there were speculations that in 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.680 the polar regions of Iraqis they might reach seven hundred 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.200 or even a thousand meters. So that's uh, upwards of 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:37.880 three thousand, hundred and eighty feet long. That's pretty big. 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.280 I'm not sure why, but intuitively I find it more 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:45.000 plausible that a giant land dwelling animal would be worm 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:49.160 like and sort of horizontal, rather than like a upright 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.800 two legged kaiju monster. Yeah, I think that. Yeah. The 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:55.440 larger to get when you start looking at the limits 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:59.280 of morphology, um, Like the human model is just gonna 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.120 fall upon part if you just try and wave the 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.440 magic wand at it right. And then then of course 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.560 you've got your aliens that are just basically huge humans, right, 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:12.800 the engineers of Prometheus, they're about seven ft tall. Um, 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:15.480 there are the oh did you ever see Fantastic Planet? 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:19.480 Actually haven't? Oh yeah, nineteen three wonderful animated film, and 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:24.160 you have these these enormous blue humanoid drugs uh stand 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:26.520 about three nine ft tall, and they keep little human 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.040 homes as pets. So they are these little naked humanoids 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:32.120 that they they kind of dress up in like weird 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:35.720 kind of cute, kind of sexy doll costumes and just 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.120 keep them as pets. It's a creepy, fabulous film. But 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:44.360 but they had another extra large critter there. Um, there's 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.560 a tin foot tall species and E. N. M. Banks 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:51.280 culture series uh known as the Darians. And they're also 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:54.400 a three legged uh species, which is interesting. I think 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:56.920 that's interesting because fun fact, did you know that there's 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.680 no such thing as a three legged animal anywhere on Earth? Um, 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.760 not a single side of the dogs you see, but right, well, 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:06.480 and naturally occurring three legged animals. So there are some 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:09.160 things that sort of actual like a tripod by using 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.760 back legs and balance with a tail or something. So yeah, 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.760 some things like a kangaroo or something might sort of 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.440 use a tail sort of like a leg, But there's 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:21.080 no such thing as a three legged animal. That's kind 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:25.440 of a strange fact about the way life emerges on Earth. 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:28.760 If you go millions of years back, you see certain 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.280 particular body plans emerge, and one of those body plans 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.280 is the four legged body plan that informs all reptiles 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.120 and mammals. But you didn't have an ancestral three legged 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:42.480 body plan to grow into animals that survived today. Yeah, 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.040 the the sort of stand the standard models become set 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:49.800 in stone evolutionarily, and uh and and yeah. So if 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:51.200 you go back far enough, I feel I feel like 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:55.320 there there is an example or two of like three 0:16:55.400 --> 0:17:00.920 eyes and very small creature. Really, I think one in particular. Um, yeah, 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:03.800 animals with odd numbers of features. That's weird, Yeah, but 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:08.080 it is rare. Generally you see the typical two legged, 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.879 four legged, two eyes. Yeah. Alright, so we've hinted that 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.000 this paper we're gonna talk about says aliens are going 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.920 to be rather large. What's the deal with this actual paper. Well, 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:22.919 in March, the cosmologist Fergus Simpson of the University of 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:27.679 Barcelona published this paper pre published on archive called the 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:31.320 Nature of Inhabited Planets and their Inhabitants, which is a 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.560 great name for a scientific paper. And so what was 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.879 his reasoning? How did he come up with the idea 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.000 that aliens are going to be on balance rather big? 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:46.359 Well for starters, he uh largely employs Bayesian statistics, which 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.200 is a model based on Bay's theorem. So the way 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.239 of calculating probability of things, like if anyone out there 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:55.480 is familiar with what a Nate Silver, right, Yeah, who's 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.440 who's made a name from self predicting things like presidential elections, 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.639 Like he used his Bayesian logic and in crunching the 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:06.920 numbers on the statistical possibilities of varying outcomes, and that's 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.680 scarily good at predicting the future. Yeah, yeah, And it's 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.160 this is the same model that that Simpson employees here. 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.879 So as we as we mentioned, his work concerns the 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:21.560 statistical probabilities of inhabited planets, how many aliens would be 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:24.400 on those planets, and then the size of those uh, 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:27.280 those aliens, what would be the sort of standard model 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.560 and uh and in determining the number of individuals UM 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.959 that would most likely live in a given civilization, he 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.200 came up with fifty million or fewer individuals. While any 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.080 given alien in our universe would likely be from a 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:43.640 high population world in the same way that most people 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.040 on Earth are going to be just statistically Chinese, Indian, 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:52.479 or American, um, very few worlds would host either a 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.280 small number or or a large number of individuals. Right. 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:58.560 So the idea is that if you randomly select a 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.600 human from anywhere Earth, it's more likely they'll live in 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.400 China or the United States, one of the most populated countries. 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:07.040 But if you randomly select the population of a country, 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.399 you're more likely to select a country that's near the 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.520 Median somewhere in the middle. That's you know, like Canada 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:17.000 or some you know, not particularly huge, not particularly small. Yeah, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.440 it's kind of like imagine all the nations of the Earth, 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:22.520 and each nation is its own planet, some large, some small, 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.399 and then the larger ones have higher populations. Yeah, okay. 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.680 So he also argues that a planet supporting extrastraustrial life 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.560 is likely to be smaller than Earth closer to the 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:36.520 size of Mars. Yeah, and he assumes that about fifty 0:19:36.560 --> 0:19:39.200 percent of Earth's diameter is there, you know, in the 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.239 lower limits. Smaller than that, and it becomes difficult for 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.520 the gravity of the planet to hold onto the atmosphere 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:47.880 in water, right, So you see, Mars is pretty much 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:50.639 at the limit it's about of Earth. And Mars actually 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.960 already has that problem because Mars has almost no atmosphere. 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:56.959 Asphere is like one percent of the thickness of Earth's, 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:00.440 so that's another factor to take into account. He also 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:03.320 says that each individual alien would be more likely to 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:06.080 live on a big planet, as those worlds can clearly 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:10.239 support more individuals. Kind of again, it sounds like an 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.960 overstatement of the obvious, but it's an important one to 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:15.840 get out there. So his basic prediction when you boil 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:19.200 all this down again to figuring out trying to figure 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:22.119 out how many worlds are gonna be um inhabited, and 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.000 then how many uh individuals are gonna live in those worlds, 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.240 and he says that most of these creatures are going 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.760 to be big. Nearly seven hundred pounds three ms, the 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:36.879 size of a terrestrial bear. Um the exact number that 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.560 he ends up spouting in the piece is six pounds 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.680 or three ms um. So we're talking half the creatures 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.080 in the universe are going to weigh more than the bear. 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:51.480 Half are gonna weigh less, but the bear sized extraterrestrial 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:54.040 is going to be the standard model. It's if if 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:58.160 outsiders from another universe peered into ours, according to this paper, 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:00.920 they would say, hey, this is that uni verse where 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:05.960 bear sized creatures with well bear sized creatures do live, 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:08.639 you know. Yeah, And then that's the thing. It is 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.919 something that matches up with why, yeah, why isn't the 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:16.399 bear the dominant species on Earth already? Well, perhaps it is, 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.520 and we're just kind of being selfish, but well, uh, 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:21.359 you know, there are a number of you know, you 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:26.240 get into arguments and just discussions about why humans evolved 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:29.040 to the point where we have all of this, you know, 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:31.520 this great intelligence and then on top of that intelligence, 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:35.200 technologies and culture, right, and a lot of it comes 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:38.959 down to our need to use our brains to uh, 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:41.040 to score our next meal, to use our our our 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.040 intellect because we don't have clause. We don't have we 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.160 don't have if we had bear strength, we'd be dumb 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:49.520 because we wouldn't need to be smart. Yeah. I think 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.600 the thing is that the bear is just The bear 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.920 doesn't need to be super intelligent, because the bear can 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:59.120 do things like like hibernate through the winter. The bear 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:01.960 can care things part with its clause, it can it 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:04.840 can stand up for itself against pretty much anything on 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:07.840 Earth except for the technology assisted human. Yeah. So I 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:10.360 thought this paper was interesting. I gotta admit I read 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.360 it twice and I still don't fully understand the statistical 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:16.280 argument that's being made. I've read some commentary on the 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:19.919 paper where some experts consultant said that they agree with 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.520 the math of what he's doing, saying that the statistical 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:27.240 calculation is is pretty much sound, but he might be 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.320 not taking into account lots of factors that could change 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:36.520 things dramatically, such as just physical conditions that give rise 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:40.399 to life on planets, things like gravity, or some of 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:43.240 just the basic facts we observe about how certain life 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.679 forms make their living in different environments on Earth. And 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:49.040 this leads into one of the criticisms we read from 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:52.919 the seat researchers Seth show Stack. Yeah, and particularly he 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:56.679