WEBVTT - The Habitable Epoch 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.200 Works dot Com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:15.080 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julia 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.320 Lee Douglas. Julie, welcome back from vacation. Where did you go? 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:22.080 I went to Via Keys. It's a small island right 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:27.440 outside of Puerto Rico. I went to go see bioluminescent Bay. Yeah. Yeah, 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:32.199 with a microplankton that blows. Unfortunately, and they don't know. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:34.640 I'm not quite sure what's going on there. They were 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.400 not surfacing, so they don't know if it's a changing 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:41.879 climate or if they were disturbed somehow. But um, kind 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.440 of a bummer. But I hope that they get that 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:45.480 back because it's an amazing thing. I think it's only 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.080 one of two places in the world that has that 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.360 level of bioluminescence. Cool. I mean you get to see 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.959 other stuff obviously, Yeah, lots of wild horses, um, all 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:57.520 sorts of really cool things. Well, welcome back, thank you, 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:01.000 Welcome back to the podcast, and welcome back listeners to 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:03.840 outer Space. We've been talking about wanting to hit some 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.520 more space content because I mean that's part of the 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.160 DNA of the show and we haven't been there recently, 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:14.680 So here we go into space into some big cosmic questions. Yeah, 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:17.880 because we've talked about this before, this idea of the 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:22.200 goldilocks principle and how Earth is just the perfect place, right, 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:24.840 it's not too hot, not too cold. Um, but what 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:27.440 else is going out there in the universe? And we're 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.319 going to try to get at this idea of you know, 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:34.240 the universe is not this dead, you know, void of space. 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.720 It's actually a living universe. Yeah. You you always end 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:39.920 up coming back around to that, that whole scenario. Right. 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:42.840 You look out into into space as as much as 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.080 we can as an individual understand space. You see all 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:50.200 that darkness and uh. And as the saying goes, there's 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.400 the idea that there's life out there, and there's the 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:54.680 idea that there's nothing out there. And both of those 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:57.760 ideas are completely mind blowing to think that there is 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.760 life thinking or just kerdel ng and and and you know, 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:04.840 reproducing itself somewhere, or there's just nothing it's just a 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:08.560 dead universe. And both of those have a tremendous effect 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.160 on you if you stop to really chew them over. Yeah, 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:13.919 especially if you add the time element to it because 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:16.880 one hand, you could look at you know, some people 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.400 look at space and the universe and they think of 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:21.880 it in futuristic terms. One day we will conquer it. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.080 One day we will know more about it. Other people 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.160 look at it as a relic. As if you're peering 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.720 into deep space, you are peering into deep time, and 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:33.440 you can reverse engineer time and try to figure out 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.920 something about how we came into being exactly now, we 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:41.160 of course have a humans have an evolving, continuingly evolving 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.040 understanding of the cosmos. Uh. You go back not even 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.720 too long ago, in our very brief period of time 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:51.000 and as a species in this cosmos, and it is 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.640 just a very like the briefest little tip of the needle. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:57.920 Um and uh, and you have our understanding based on 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.800 basically ancient Babylonia and cosmology, you know, and you have 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:04.760 just just very rough ideas about what we are and 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.840 where we are. You our cosmos was limited by what 0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:11.280 we could see with the naked eye, and we, inevitably, 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:14.200 being self centered as we are, put ourselves at the center. 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.160 So there's the idea that the Earth was the center 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:22.240 of the observable universe, which again was not even that large. Yeah, um. 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:26.520 And a lot of this boils down to the Copernican principle, right, 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:32.760 we're talking about the mid undreds when astronomer Nicolas Copernicus said, hey, 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:34.600 the Earth is not the center of our solar system, 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:39.480 which really was disturbing too many people because that was 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.040 putting out the question of well, what if we're not 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:45.600 the center of it, and God is not the center 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.520 of it, then who is the center of it? Who's 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:50.920 driving this ship? And he introduced the idea of the sun. 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.800 He was a heliocentric, the idea that the Sun is 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:56.560 the center of things and we are just revolving around it. 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.960 Now again, based on his limited under understanding, an observation 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:02.080 that made perfect sense, and that was a huge step 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.760 in the right direction, because the Earth is revolving around 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.800 the Sun. Yeah. And we've been building on that idea 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.600 ever since and really sort of expanding out from that 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.400 and trying to figure out, Okay, so if you know 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:16.480 the Earth is not at the center of it, and 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:18.880 you know we're revolving around the Sun, and let's move 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.560 beyond that, let's move beyond our galaxy. Um. And so 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.120 we're still trying to move toward that. But you had 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:27.160 said something I thought was really interesting. You said that 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.480 are really our history and our idea of this in 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:34.320 terms of deep time is just occupying a space on 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.479 the tip of a pin, right, And I wanted to 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:41.920 mention if you guys haven't already seen this um in Cosmoses, 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:44.440 I know exactly where you going. Yes, uh, which is 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:49.720 hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. He gives a wonderful explanation 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.680 of this idea of of really how much time we 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:56.800 humans are occupying in deep time, and he takes the 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.479 entire three thirteen point eight BILLI in the Age of 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.080 the Universe, and it condenses it down into one year. 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:05.880 This is not going to give justice to it, this explanation, 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.680 So that's why I urge everybody to to check out. 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.520 I think it's in the first episode. I think towards 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:14.359 the latter part of the first episode. Yeah, this graphic 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.599 of this calendar this one year. The first second of 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.400 January one is the Big Bang. In the last second 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:22.839 of December thirty one is the present day. And he 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.200 walks you through this and according to this calendar, all 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.640 life on Earth only appears within the final week of 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:32.720 that year, and humans appear only in the last hour 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.800 of the last day, and all of our recorded history, 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:38.719 from the founding of every religion to the fighting of 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.760 every war, takes place in the last four seconds of 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.520 December thirty one. Yeah, it's crazy, like just to think 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:48.320 that even if life on Earth exists only one million 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.920 more years, say in a million years, something catastrophic happens, 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.080 then life on Earth was still just this tiny little 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:59.560 blip in in this in this grand time timescape. Now 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:01.640 for something, well, that might make you feel sort of 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:06.599 divorced from um, from life, but for others, you can 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:10.400 look at this deep time and realize that this fabric 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:14.520 of um of matter that's helped to create us has 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:17.920 always been well, and I have not has always been there, 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:20.000 but it's been there for a really, really really long 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.920 time before and after us, and we all are intertwined 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.080 by that. So again, you mentioned that that calendar year, 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:30.120 that our entire cosmic history as a calendar year, that 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.919 calendar year is representing, roughly, based on our current estimates, 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:38.960 thirteen point eight billion years of history. That's thirteen point 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.599 eight billion years from the beginning of the universe as 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.400 we understanding it to the present day. Yeah, and how 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:46.840 do we know this, How can we calculate this? Well, 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:48.919 First of all, the universe cannot be younger than the 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:51.640 objects contained within it. So you start to look at 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.279 the objects. For instance, you look at stars and you 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.760 begin to measure their mass and their brightness and figure 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:02.440 out the lifespan of the start. So you have more 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:06.800 massive stars burning faster than their lower mass siblings. And 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.360 by the way, the more massive, the more brilliant they are, 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.480 and the easier they are spot So a star ten 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:16.000 times as massive assemble burn through its fuel supply in 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.240 twenty million years, while a star with half the Sun's 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:23.920 mass will last more than twenty billion years. And that 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:26.600 gives us a clue, especially when you look at something 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:32.280 like globular clusters, which have these similar characteristics, and you 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.480 know that the oldest one of these globular clusters have 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:40.480 stars with ages between eleven and eighteen billion years. All right, 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:42.600 So that's that's one set of evidence. It's kind of 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:45.720 like trying to figure out what times some guys robbed 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.560 a bank. You asked one one witness and I think 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:50.840 they went in around five pm. And you ask another 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.200 and they say, I think they went around on five pin. 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.120 And then you sort of compare the notes. Well, one uh, 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:58.840 one witness here is saying, I think it was it 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:00.880 has to be about an eleven and team billion years 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:04.080 based on the the age of these globular customers. Yeah, 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:05.880 that there's one clue that kind of gets us in 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.560 striking distance. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.560 about why people have you know, the general consensus of 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.160 their team point eight billion years in a second. But 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:16.800 we have to kind of go even further back into 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.640 the path before we can do that, and we've got 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.280 to talk about this fog at the beginning of time. 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:23.840 And in order to do that, you got to talk 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:27.239 about the Big Bang. Yes, Now, big Bang, of course 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.760 is is the big theory about how the universe came 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.480 to be and what the basically what the universe is 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:41.640 really very straightforward a manner. Uh. Then the main opposition 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.400 to this was historically the steady state theory, and that's 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.000 the idea of the universe has always existed and therefore 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.000 it's always existed in the same density and then will 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.040 make more sense in a minute. But we're talking about 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.880 the Big Bang here, so there is no before the 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:57.880 Big Bang. That's important to note. There is no outside 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.400 the Big Bang, the Big Bang, to to go back 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:02.920 to the beginning of of of history, to go back 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.480 to the beginning of that that calendar year that we 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.080 talked about, to come to a moment when all matters 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.320 of singularity, and since all matters of singularity, all times 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.800 of singularity, the single point, yes, a single point of time, 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.720 a single point of of matter. It's it's it's almost 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:24.520 almost impossible to comprehend. It's such a foreign and even 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:28.199 though it's very small, it's such an immense idea that 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:32.000 time and space, everything is down to this, the smallest 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.640 point possible. And it's just kind of like my brain 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.439 almost breaks trying because I want to place my understanding 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.080 of it in a in a system of time, because 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:42.560 I exist in time and it's the only way I 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.360 can understand things. And this is something that that is 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.359 wrapped in time and and and it's part of its compression, 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.800 and it was outside of time at one point, right 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:53.679 And when you're talking about that pin point, you're talking 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.400 about this tiny pin point of energy. Um. This description 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.360 is from Nola Taylor Red writing for space dot Com, 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:02.880 and she says, when the universe was just ten thirty 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.800 four of a second, or so old that that is, 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.520 by the way, a hundreds of a billions of a 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.000 trillionth of a trillionth of a second, and age it 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:16.520 experienced a huge burst of expansion known as inflation, in 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:19.800 which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:23.080 And during this period the universe doubled in size at 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.280 least ninety times, going from okay, that that pinpoint, that 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:32.000 sub atomic size pinpoint to a golf ball size uh 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:37.720 ball of energy almost instantaneously. And she says that after inflation, 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.720 the growth of the universe continued, but it is slower rate. 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.840 And then as space expanded, the universe cooled and matter formed, 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.600 and one second after the Big Bang, the universe was 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:53.319 filled with neutrons, protons, electrons and anti electrons, photons and neutrinos. 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:56.440 And this is really this is where it gets very interesting. 0:10:57.280 --> 0:10:59.560 She talked about how during the first three minutes of 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.679 the universe, light elements were born during a process noon 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:08.920 as Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and for three hundred eighty thousand 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.320 years or so, the universe was essentially too hot for 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.319 this light to shine. So you have that heat of 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.080 creation smashing atoms together with enough force to break them 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.640 up into this dense plasma soup of protons and neutrons 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.480 and electrons, and that's scattered like fog. That's the fog 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:29.839 of the beginning of time. That's pretty crazy. Uh, it's 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.840 no real response to that. So here we are, roughly 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.240 three seventy eight thousand years after the Big Bang. Like 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.280 you said, everything has been this this hot mess for ages. 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.839 That's a good way today. And uh, and there's and 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:43.440 there's not much that can really happen there. It's just 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:45.840 everything is kind of I mean, I hate to use 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.280 the word chaos, but it's kind of a chaotic state. 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:52.920 But then the universe cools to about five thousand degrees 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.800 fahrenheit or kelvin. And this is a crucial because this 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:01.480 is cool enough for electrons and protons to combine into 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.760 hydrogen atoms, and it also releases photons, making up the 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:10.320 radiation that we come to know as the cosmic microwave background. Yeah, 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:15.240 that recombination era sets lusa's first flashes of light that 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:18.079 were created during the Big Bank. So now they are 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:22.840 detectable in the form of cosmic wave background radiation. Why 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:25.920 is this important, Well, it's important for so many reasons. 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:27.920 But one is that it helps to support the big 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.040 bank theory, the fact that this is detectable right the 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:34.000 second witness exactly Um. The other thing is that it 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:38.840 allows us to again get a bigger um take on 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:41.120 what was happening in the universe. That gives us a 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.640 chance to reverse engineer the timeline. And it's been measured 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:49.839 with NASA's Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe and the European Space 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:53.880 Agencies plank spacecraft, and so they've looked at this radiation 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.120 leftover from the Big Bang and they can look at 0:12:57.120 --> 0:12:59.800 the density, the composition, and the expansion rate of the 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.920 verse as a result. And in two twelve W M. A. P. 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.760 They said, Hm, we think that, you know, looking at 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.560 the different data here, that the universe is probably about 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:13.840 thirteen points seven seven two billion years old. Then you 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.800 have the plank Um spacecraft that says we're looking at 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:20.440 thirteen point eight two billion years and that's where you 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.680 come into this idea of all, right, the consensus is 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:27.640 thirteen point eight billion years old the universe is. And 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.320 again it's on one hand, we were looking at the 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.520 age of the items in the universe and here we're 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.560 looking at the rate of expansion and how big it 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.680 is and what the cosmic microwave background is telling us. Yeah, 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:44.000 and so okay, this is all important. Why because it 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:45.679 gives us a little bit more data to work with 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:47.920 and we'll talk about this in a second. Because you 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:49.960 start to look at the universe in a different way. 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:54.319 It wasn't just this you know, static thing that's always 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:57.640 been existing. There were dynamic changes and as a result, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.640 it kind of up ends this idea of the Goldilocks theory, 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.560 this idea that you have to have the absolute perfect 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:07.880 conditions for life to occur. Because if you look again 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.040 at our solar system, you look at Earth, that's the 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:12.559 bed that Goldilocks is going to bed down in, right, 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:18.400 because you've got sustainable water sources that are pretty you know, 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:23.480 solid in terms of staying regular um, particularly when you 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.720 look at the distance the Sun is from the Earth. Right. 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:29.080 But if you look at something like Mercury, which is 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:31.960 closest super hot, that's not gonna work. But if you 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.400 look at Neptune super cold, or just if you're feeling nostalgic, 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.640 if you look at Pluto super cold. Um, that's what 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.040 we normally have thought about. We've thought, Okay, Earth is 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:44.680 really special because life has happened here against what seems 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:48.600 like all odds. But when we get back from this break, 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.920 we're going to talk about this idea that life could 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:56.240 be more playful than we think, and perhaps even before 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:06.400 Earth was even formed. All right, we're back, and you 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.760 know it's it's important to to stress again that that 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:12.440 we used to live in in a time where we 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:14.960 have this geocentric fallacy where we thought that the Earth 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.680 was the center of things. But when you get into 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.800 this Goldilocks scenario, you you get close to falling into 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:23.920 another type of geocentric fallacy because you get your again 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.000 stressing the idea that Earth is special, that the life 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:29.040 on Earth is special, and by virtue of that, humans 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:33.320 are special as the as the primary evolved intelligent speechies, 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.000 and therefore I am special, right, and we are all 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:41.480 special to a degree. But if you look into deep space, 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.160 if you look into deep time, then you start to 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:48.000 look at this thing called the habitable epic, and we're 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.920 talking about is for millions of years after the Big Bang, 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.280 the universe was in a kind of interim state between 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:58.000 lumpy gas and the cool galaxy. Suddenly studied darkness that 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:00.480 we see today when we look up at the night sky. Uh, 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:02.920 there were no galaxies at the time, only large stars, 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:07.880 probably embedded in dark matter. So along come someone named 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:11.640 Abraham Lobe, and he is an astrophysicist at Harvard University, 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.880 and he says, hey, we can do simulations of these 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.520 early years, and what people find is that there were 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.920 tens hundreds of times more massive stars than the Sun, 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.720 and these giant stars floating alone could have had rocky 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.800 worlds like Earth in orbit around them. And this is 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.600 where the idea of a habital epoch occurred, after the 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:37.480 Big Bang, but before life on Earth. So what does 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.640 Lobe do. He puts together a couple of calculations here. Yeah, 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.880 and the craziest one here is that, Okay, today, the 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.120 temperature of that relic radiation we're talking about that that 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.360 that CNB, that cosmic microwave background is just about two 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.920 point seven calvin calvin. But at an age about the 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.760 fifteen million years ago that we're talking about here, it 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.480 would have kept the entire universe at three hundred degrees kelvin. 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:06.680 So we're talking about heating emerging from that that cosmic 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:09.600 microwave background. Yeah, and again, this is just a blip 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:12.200 in the eye of time. It's fifteen million years after 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.720 the Big Bang. But any existing planets at that time 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.760 would have been in that habitable habitable zone, as you say, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.399 Goldilocks hair would have had numerous beds to get into 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.600 because the universe was still bathed in that warm gas 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:30.240 from the cosmic microwave background, but it had cooled down, 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:35.040 so you would have liquid on these planets or you know, 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.800 no matter where they were in relation to a star. Yes, 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:41.960 which is huge because liquid water is the one of 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.159 the building blocks of life. Exactly. One of the things 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:45.840 we look for when we look out and sit and 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:50.640 think is this is this exoplanet capable of theoretically supporting life. Yep, 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:53.359 there would be energy to kick start life forms. You 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.679 have your liquid water which was slashed around the surface 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.320 of planets with atmosphere. Now, as Load points out, this 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.720 would be a very weird time for life to evolve 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.280 anywhere because many of the building blocks of life on Earth, 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.919 like carbon and metals, uh, they only exist because we 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.720 have these massive cellar explosions, we have the supernovast that 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:14.600 so you know, we're all star stuff. And there was 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:16.479 a lot of star stuff to go around. Because this 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.240 is early in the universe, they haven't been many stars 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.879 to die and uh and and this would have been 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:23.920 an age where most of the elements on the periodic 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:27.720 table didn't even exist yet, so you had fewer building 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:30.480 blocks to build things. But it's kind of like if 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.840 if you're really into Legos and then you find the 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:36.280 building blocks, be they Legos or some other brand that 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:38.840 like your father or an older sibling had to think, 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:40.760 how did they build anything? They didn't have those little 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.840 wheelie dus or the little rotating things, and I only 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.399 had the colored blocks. It seems like you would be 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:48.679 you would be very limited in what you could construct. 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:51.600 Uh and and Yes, that's one of the crazy things 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.040 about this is trying to imagine what would what what 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.520 would life on one of these worlds have been like that, 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.000 you know, would it what kind of form would it 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.400 have taken? Yeah, it's kind of funny because Lope says, 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:03.919 if you think about it right now, you look up 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:05.720 into the night sky and you see all these galaxies 0:19:05.760 --> 0:19:08.480 and you see all those stars shining um and that's 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.240 that's sort of you know, our people out there. But 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:15.119 this would have been an isolated a lonely kind of 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:18.680 life with as you say, just a couple of lego parts, um, 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:22.920 would it have borne out intelligent life? Probably not um. 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:27.480 Alexander villen Kin as a cosmologist at Touch University in Medford, Massachusetts, 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.400 and he says that a few million years in this 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.280 habitable epic is too short of time to produce intelligent 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:37.160 life because if you think about humans and how long 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:39.760 it took for us and all the building blocks before 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.960 us to create, um, the sort of complex intelligence that 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.479 we have as four point five billion years of history 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:51.199 on Earth and uh, that's about three point five billion 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.399 years of those in which life has been wriggling around 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:59.280 our planet. But Lobe says, Hey, when I'm talking about 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.320 life taking ape here, I'm not talking about intelligent life. 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:05.600 I'm talking about simple life forms like allergy. Yeah. Now 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:07.639 another thing to keep in mind too, One another thing 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:10.639 that works in the advantage of this, uh, this theoretical 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:13.720 early life would be that that same the same isolation 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.280 that they that they had would also protect them from 0:20:16.320 --> 0:20:20.120 cosmic radiation, asteroid bombardments, and other things that could conceivably 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:22.880 snuff out life before it even you know, got going 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.919 to any degree that mattered. That's true. Um, even though 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:29.439 it have been isolated and lonely. You're right, some of 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:33.040 those elements that might have impacted them greatly them or 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:35.560 whatever life, what a reform that might have taken on 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:39.119 some of those early planets wouldn't have been completely wiped 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.080 out by an asteroid. Now, some of you may be 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:43.960 wondering at this point, Okay, well what you know? That's 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:46.280 that's interesting to think that there was this this early 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.320 epic in which in which very primitive life could have 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:51.919 evolved and then and then perished. But how does that 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:54.600 affect the current scenario. It's like saying, oh, well, you know, 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.520 once long ago this happened, but but how does that 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.760 affect the present? Well? Ultimately, uh, what Loabs really pushing 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:04.399 about this idea is that it makes us have to 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:06.879 rethink what life could be like out there now, and 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:10.840 it changes the equation to a certain degree about life 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:12.800 in the universe as a whole, not just in in 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:15.400 ancient times, in an early epoch, but even in our 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.879 current epoch. That's right. That recast the idea of the 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:23.280 universe as a living universe, not a dead universe. Um, 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:26.000 it doesn't make Earth feel so lonely in the sense 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:30.680 that perhaps it's the only planet that has ever experienced 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.320 some sort of life form on it. Also, it brings 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:37.520 into the question this idea of if we know this, 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:41.199 just this fraction of information about the universe's history, what 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:46.840 else is out there to support the idea that um 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.120 somewhere and you know, buildings and billions and billions of 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.080 light years away that we can't even measure. Is there 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:58.440 another planet that could sustain life currently? Is it in 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.800