You Aren't From Around Here Are You

future and obviously the future involves aliens. Well, the day were probably the day, the day we are recording this is the same day that NASA announced that the Voyager one spacecraft has officially entered interstellar space. Not like the last time that the Internet said that this time, yeah, because again, our our our benchmark for what marks the end of our solar system and the beginning of interstellar

space has changed frequently over the last ten years or so. Yeah. Essentially, we're talking about plasma and the presence of interstellar plasma over solar plasma in the in the environment that the Voyager one is traveling through, and that now it's all the Interstellar spaces Plasma's party time soonified Interstellar Plasma. By the way, it sounds an awful lot like Demon sam Neil is coming for our souls. It actually to me,

I'm very concerned. To me, it sounds like what the fox says, not like what the music video does, but what a fox actually says. Okay, because it sounds like it sounds like screaming. Um. But yeah, it's uh yeah, because what NaSTA did was they they translated the plasma frequencies into audible frequencies for us to hear, and they

played it on their live stream and it was pretty creepy. Wow. Yeah, so anyway, we're we're out there now, We're we're putting our our hat on the table for inner interstellar space. Yeah well, not an intergalactic note sorry, that was totally the wrong word. Interstellar interstellar. Yeah. Well, and it even has an album on board that has information about Earth, essentially things like greetings as music. It has pictures of Earth on it. Yes it is too. Both have gold

disk designed by Carl saying. Well, okay, so that is designed to talk to aliens and um. One interesting thing about that disc is imagine you are commissioned to make it. Yeah, so I'm Carl Sagan. Yeah. How do you design something that would be comprehensible to an alien? It's a really right in English. You have to you have to make some serious assumptions about what an alien is going to find comprehensible exactly and what And the way you would

do that is by imagining what an alien my be like. Right, But we don't know what an alien might be like, and that's what we're about to speculate. In fact, we're going to speculate wildly and with no evidence whatsoever. Oh No, there's evidence, not in terms of direct evidence of what there is, but evidence maybe suggesting what there might more or less likely be based upon a sample size of

one planet that has life on it. So keeping in mind that if you're looking at this from a scientific perspective, as far as sample size goes, we have a sample size of one so that which means experiment well, right, but so we can say that the chance of aliens being transformers is fairly low. Yeah, but I still hold out hope. I mean statistically statistically chances of transformers Lauren um oh, like an Earth truck. Hey, hey, hey, he was able to take the form of an earth truck

after landing on Earth. It's not like that was his actual form back there. And I cannot think of a number close enough to zero that's pronounceable within the confines of our podcast time. You're breaking my heart freight. Oh okay, So, so I think we should start with the place where we would usually go to get images of what aliens

might look like. We got to start with science fiction, because that's what we got to work with, right right, Um, lots of aliens from science fiction you might notice have something in common, and I'm not going to say what it is yet, but I'm going to start with After Transformers, there's of course my favorite sci fi aliens, the cone heads. Okay, that's a pretty that's kind of hard sci fi. Yeah, no, that's that's right there with Yeah, it's pretty classic Rusumov

Highland cone heads. Yeah, they come from France. Yeah, but I can easily imagine you as a cone head. But it does not take a lot of imagining. It really just takes a little bit of, yeah, stretching and that's it. So, but you take cone heads and then you shrink down the head and add some hair and make them very handsome. And then you have Kryptonians like Superman. You put some some some ridges along their forehead and now you've got clingons yeah, or you point ee up their ears and

then you've got Vulcans or romulans. Yeah yeah, okay. Um. One thing all these really seem to have in common to me is that they all look basically like humans. Well, and I almost as though a human actor we're put into some kind of makeup process. That's fair. Um. In fact, lots of aliens and science fiction just straight up our humans.

I know, we've all seen Plan nine from outer Space yea, the aliens, and that are humans wearing like medieval night costumes, got like a like a shield emblem on their two Well, and then there's things like Balstar Galactica, the nineteen seventy eight version, obviously the superior one, where it's revealed that essentially the people aboard the Ballestar Galactica they're searching for Earth because they've heard that that's where humans are are

dwelling and that they themselves are humans. So apparently the human race in that sense is distributed across the galaxy. Or in Star Wars, which took place as we all know, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Well and and Star Wars actually has some interesting aliens that are not human looking but are still human anoid meaning that they still have you know, they still tend to be bipedal. They have you know, a torso, arms, legs, and a head, and then they might look a little funky,

but basically human, basically bilateral symmetry exactly. A lot of aliens also fit into that category. Think for example, like of predators, the Predator from the Predator movies. These are basically like they're like alien ted nugents and they they just go from planet to planet killing wildlife. I was wondering where you're going with that, but now I got you. I'm caught up. Yeah, but they're they're so human when you look at them, except they've got a weird kind

of bug face. But even or something from Doctor Who, Yeah right, even the xenomorphs from Alien you know, they tend to move. Most of them are basically bipole and bilaterally. Yeah, they might move on all fours at times, but they still like when they stand up, they are essentially the human form. I think the aliens actually are a little

more interesting than that because they're not purely anthropomorphic. They also incorporate um insect hive behavior, I think in a in an interesting way, and I think we can come back to that when we talk about some of the more plausible theories of what advanced alien life might look like. Well. Also, also, they're not squishy the way that say a Klingon is or something like that. They never tried to hug agin on, so I don't know how squishy they can. They've they've

got an exoskeleton, their blood is is acid. Yeah, the floors lava. So there's also the the tendency that aliens will sometimes have multiple organs. For example, Uh, time lords have two hearts. Uh, I think cleanlands do to. Actually, I'm pretty sure Cleanon's have two hearts. Don't quote me on that. That's me just referencing my yeah, my memory of Star Trek. But there are a lot of different variations of that where you find out, you know, like I think, um, you find out Dr Zoidberg and Futurama

has several different copies of organs in his body. Okay, what do you think are the stupidest sci fi anatomy? Alright? So alien anatomy one are the dumbest um I think. Well, going back to the xenomorph, seeing the mouth within the mouth was a little weird. I like it. I mean it's a cool it's a cool effect. I just don't know about the actual evolutionary pathway that that would happen. But then again, you look at some insects and they have some pretty pretty weird proboscis types seem all that.

It seems a little weird to me. The acid blood also seems a little weird to me. I don't know, I can see it here. Here's what I would go. I would go with basically all the ones that are exactly humans that speak English, of course. But then also that was always like a babel fish or something like that, right right, uh. I hate to say it because he's so wonderful, but but eat doesn't make any sense. I mean, et has the problem of the Okay, so we're just

sort of like uncritically going basically humanoid. It's it's bipedal with with a face like ours and the same shape and all that, except he's like melted and he has magic powers. He can he can magic powers. Part that really sets you off yeah, well Superman is the same way though, you know, actually, yeah, the entire concept that the radiation from our son could could cause superpowers in an alien, particularly flight, there's no mechanism there. What do

you think is the stupidest? Lauren Um, I I didn't. I didn't. Actually, I'm gonna go with Kryptonians. Really, we're going to be honest. I want to go crazy ones because yeah, human ones I just dismiss out of hand, because you know, I mean that's I think triples are totally plausible. I'm not going with triples. Okay, those are stupid. Well, trying to think of one that I'd really go with.

Hold onto that thought, because maybe it's time for us to transition to talking about the actual science behind this and and what are some things that might actually be more plausible than other things according to some thinkers, because a lot of thought has been put into this kind of thing. I mean, even just when we're trying to classify life on Earth, we start really having to hit up some hard definitions like whether or not a virus

is alive and stuff like. Yeah, and to be fair, if we're going to talk about intelligent life, there are some who argue. I mean, there's some some scientists who argue that the bipedal humanoid form is possibly what will encounter. Now,

there are others who argue very much against that. But one of the proponents is Cambridge University paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, who sort of has expressed uh an argument that the bipedal form is almost like an evolutionary inevitability, like that is just a it is a basic form that evolution pushes towards. Well, I'm paraphrasing to be fair, but but also he feels that if we were to find alien intelligent alien life, he would not be surprised if that

alien intelligent life appeared as a bipedal humanoid kind of figure. Now, there are others who say that this is this is

an example of protagoras is bias. Protagoras was a Greek philosopher predecessor to uh So crates Um, and Protagoras said that man is the measure of all things, so essentially measuring everything against mankind and that that and other people have pointed out to think saying that's really a logical fallacy, you know, to sit there and just a centric well, I mean, at that point in time, we did think that the entire universe literally revolved around the planet Earth.

Well so most of us did. Uh I was not really that vocal back in that day. But um, so there are some considerations I think that that we could give to this the idea, well, what if they do look like bipedal humanoids in our sample size of one that did happen only so we know that it's we know that it's plausible, whereas we don't know that other

advanced intelligent body forms are plausible. Sure, however we do I mean the the emotional and intellectual maturity of some other non eipeedle animals on on Earth, like like cuttle fisher, octopus, or dolphins or um whales. Lawyers, lawyers, that was mean, Jonathan, Um you know, are like like to the point where there's certainly as as intelligent as our young before their brains developed past put essence well. And also a lot of the critics that that Morris has and others like

Morris not just more of something. Morris is one person who has this this belief, but a lot of the critics say that, like Michael Schermer, for example, says that it's almost an impossibility that intelligent alien species would resemble a bipetal primate, because in Earth's own history only one species ever developed into that bipetle mode. We don't see examples of this, like a reptile version or a fish version,

which you wouldn't expect anyway, just because the Ironmen. But at any rate, we don't see anything other than this one branch having developed that particular that particular model. And therefore, if you're talking about a planet where that's only ever happened once, then the possibility of that happening somewhere else maybe even lower. So who knows, maybe the intelligent life on another planet, particularly say let's say it's one that has mostly covered in water, would not look anything like

a bipedal humanoid. Uh. Carl Sagan made that same argument. In fact, he said that uh. Intelligence species may live on the land or in the sea or the air. They may have unimaginable chemistries, shapes, sizes, colors, appendages, and opinions. We are not requiring that they follow the particular route that led the evolution led to the evolution of humans. There may be many different evolutionary pathways, each unlikely, but the sum of the number of pathways to intelligence may

nevertheless be quite substantial. I think those are good points. I do want to stick up for one sort of strange take on bipedalism, which is that I think I would favor bipedalism, or say quadrupedalism over tripedalism if you see, like, well that not the organisms themselves in war the worlds, but the sort of the rovers they use are legged things. But I just realized this is really interesting. According to a two thousand eleven paper, Um, they're about eight point

seven million distinct eukaryotic species on Earth. That was their estimate. Not one of these species. And this isn't from the paper. This is just that was for that number, not one of those eight point seven million species that we know about. It's tripedal No three legged organisms. There's like, there's like a fish that sometimes props itself up on two fins and a tail, you know, it's something like that, But

there's nothing with three legs. Well, life as we know it on on Earth evolved from hypothetically a common ancestor or maybe a few common ancestors independently across the globe, depending on which theory you want to prescribe to, but it would only follow that all life on our planet

would follow the same basic design. Well, I mean, I think there is certainly convergent evolution, which is this idea that you get to the same basic kind of of body types and even behavioral types in different parts of the world, even when the species that are concerned have no actual contact genetic link until you get back to that ancient, ancient, ancient ancient ancestor, right, And I think

so there's there's two sides to this story. Also, I think convergent evolution is interesting in that it shows that different animals in different environments can involve the same characteristics, which is one thing that might give us a reason to think, well, okay, maybe aliens could look like humans. But also they're starting with the same biochemistry. And here this leads us into another interesting question, um about what

this alien life could look like. Should we expect that it's basically going to have the same chemical basis as life on Earth? And I've heard good arguments on both sides of this um that that basically, if there's going to be something as organized and complex as as life as we know it, it needs to be carbon based. Well, and that argument is hard to make, right because we

live on a carbon rich planet. So if you were if we were from some other planet that was silicon rich and we were silicon based, we would be making that same argument. Perhaps we may be saying, well, clearly, any intelligent life out there would be silicon based, because look at us and look at how these things developed. Uh, and it's because we don't have anything we can point

to right now. It's very I I would not go so far as to say it's likely that whatever life we do encounter, assuming that we one day encounter it, and I imagine that one day we will if we haven't wiped ourselves out, then I'm pretty sure it will happen. Um. Uh. Then you know, I don't know if how likely it is one way or versus the other. I think it

all depends upon well, it depends upon many things. Depends upon the the actual physical properties of the planet that life was originally from, or asteroid or whatever it happens to be that supports that life, the moon whatever, that not our moon, but a moon. I don't expect us to find any life on our moon. But uh, yeah, it's just I think it's gonna be one of those

things where the circumstances will really dictate it. And what what also is interesting is not just what you know, what how chemically they are are based, like whether it's carbon based, silicon based, or something else, but also how they pass on information. When the way we understand life

is that it's this process where we have this. Even this gets a little tricky because we talk about things like viruses, but you know, basic life, we talk about cells passing on information and that's the process of life we have. If the cells did not pass on information, you would not have any sort of cohesion or evolution. You have to have this progression for cells to pass information along so that descendants will continue to develop beyond

their ancestors. In humans, that's proteins amino acids that are that are storing and transmitting this this data. But that doesn't necessarily need to be what would do that? Well, yeah, I mean it is according to us. Yeah, we think of it as DNA because that's pretty much how almost all everything we call life passes on information. Viruses are a little bit different. Uh, And again there's an argument about whether or not viruses count as being alive or not.

It all depends upon whom you ask. But uh, you know, there was a lot of debate for a very long time, and in fact there's still debate about is this the only way that cells as we understand them could pass along information. What's interesting is that there's work by a fellow by the name of Philip Hollager of the MRC

Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, the United Kingdom. That's why I said laboratory, because you know, respective or friends across the pond um and he experimented with molecules to see if it was possible to create a mechanism for passing genetic information from one cell to another, but not

use DNA or RNA. To create something new, and he actually started to experiment with x in A, which stands for zeno nucleic acids, using different sugars than the ones you would actually find a DNA or RNA, and discovered that you could actually create a mechanism for passing along information from one cell to another using this completely separate mechanism. I mean it it worked on a similar principle as

DNA and RNA, but a totally different structure. And so now there's an interesting debate about, well, now that we understand that there are other ways of having this happened, why did DNA and RNA become the way that it happens with life on Earth? Does that mean that it is the best way of passing this information? Was there perhaps at some time life on Earth that used this other method and in fact that just die out because

it was not advantageous to have that and survive. Or was it just a thing about what sugars happened to be available at the same time that life itself was forming. So these are questions that are are fascinating and we do not have answers for them, but people are working very hard to study it now because now there are these other possibilities out there, where before we didn't even

know these possibilities existed. It's also interesting because it points out the fact that there is the possibility that that some alien race has a different methodology for passing along information at whatever basic level uh they would require for their kind of life. And really what gets interesting is when we start looking at the possibility that life in an alien world would look so different to us than the way we consider life here that we wouldn't even

recognize it as life. Yeah, all of the options we've talked about so far and that we'll probably continue to talk about are are basically corporeal in a way. We recognize that they it's basically a body with some kind of brain type organ that exists in the three dimensions as we understand them. Oh, you bring up dimensions. So I've got a really question a question about this. Okay. So I'm a big fan of Buck Ruban's Eye and

the alien ionized that. I'm okay. Now, the aliens in uh from the movie that Peter Weller movie, the Buck Rubansi movie, John Lithgo movie, Yeah exactly. Um alas Areadi was the best character, the best Yeah. Um so the aliens like Dr Lizardo and uh and John Smallberries. Yeah, they claim to be not from another planet but from another dimension. Right, I've actually heard about this in all kinds of old sci fi. This is there aliens from another dimension. But what I'm wondering is is this concept

even coherent? Does this make sense? Could there actually be aliens from another dimension? Or is that just some kind of like babble that they put into sci fi? Whether or not the concept is coherent, I think you could argue that the movie certainly isn't it amazing? I love it? But coherent that movie aside for a second, Lauren, do

anything about extra dimensional aliens? All right? So so the thing the thing with us is that futurists like like Michokku have pointed out that our existence is very much like um, like carp swimming in a pond, and what we see around us, the world as we can perceive it is limited by our our senses and and how we how we use them, you know, like evolutionarily speaking, it was worthwhile for us to develop site because tigers could could run at us, you um, but tigers can't

move through time. Aside from that, you know, basic linear way that we all do. So learning to to visualize something like the fourth dimension was never it was never an evolutionary a good thing, right, yes? Um? So if we're all carps and ponds, right and in a single pond, Yeah, let's say, and all we know is the water and the lilies, and anything beyond the lilies, you know, we can't even conceive of. Yeah, as carp scientists were looking, we're looking at that ceiling and going like that is

the edge of our universe. If a hand reaches down in to that pond and plucks a carp out, what's that carp going to think about that? It's going to think this is a god, this is an incredible interdimensional experience that I'm having, And rapidly thereafter I can't breathe, and you know, it's it's kind of similar to the to the flat land example, Oh yeah, right right, and which which basically says that if that, if if there was a two dimensional creature that we could we could

look in on and reach down to. And I imagine you're a square, not a cube, a square, and and and a human hand reaches into your square universe and starts poking around on your insides because we as humans can see in three dimensions and recognize that this outline of the square is not a skin, but but rather an outline. How does that square cope with with something that has three dimensions? It can't, It doesn't understand them.

So this is where we lead into with a weird fiction as well, So not just science, but weird fiction has looked into this sort of stuff like Lovecraft and the non Euclidean geometry and the idea that even to look upon these other dimensional beings would be to invite insanity because our brains cannot process that kind of information. He was a big fan of people going mad, wouldn't He kind of was that was sort of a that

was a yeah yah kind of thing. Um. But you know, but things like like string theory predict that the universe does in fact have more dimensions beyond the four that we know how to perceive, Um ten or eleven or some other. It all depends upon which one. It's usually eleven is the one I hear the most frequently. That's one of my favorite lines from a certain television show, which is that at least in my universe, I don't need eleven dimensions to make the math come out right.

And and you know, and and futurists and theoretical physicists I think would argue about the string theory that you know, that the math does work. The math that we know, you know, like like Einstein's gravity equations or Maxwell's eight electromagnetic equations can in fact predict the existence of these other dimensions, and just that we are literally incapable of conceiving of a being that exists across them because we can't even detect them other than using math to say, well,

if they exist, then this math makes sense. Right, So there's no way that we can physically observe them or measure them in any way. We can only uh I even hesitate to say theorize it's more like a hypothesis because there's no way of testing it. There's no way to observe it. So and we're gonna we have string theory as a potential topic that we'll talk about in the future where we're really going to dive into this.

But yeah, I mean, that's that's the real difficult thing when we're talking about these, uh, this concept of extra dimensional beings, because uh, we are limited in our perception. We do not have the capability of perceiving things. If these dimensions do in fact exist, we don't know how we would ever see them unless they presented themselves to us like the que continuum doing in Star Trek, the

Next Generation and and and future series. Other than that where wherein you know, these are basically at least four or five dimensional creatures who happen to sometimes show up looking like a person. In order to not break our brains, they can appear as if they were of our dimension and look like John de Lancy, specifically like John de Lancy. Okay, so I'm getting it. So basically it is a coherent concept. It is maybe possible, but we just don't know. We

we by definition do not know. We cannot know, at least not right now. Maybe one day we can know. We can. We may not be able to ever observe it directly, but it'll be like something that's outside our visual spectrum, where we can design something that can interpret that and then translate it into something we can see. Okay, So imagine that the aliens that we encounter somewhere out there in the galaxy are um, they're basically like us physically, you know, not that they are shaped like us, but

they're three dimensional, have corporeal bodies. Um, I guess that's a redundancy. They are corporeal. They're not like some sort of mist or energy that is otherwise something that would be difficult for us to interact with electro magnetic waves. What are some ways that they might look Oh, that's a good question. Well, well again, and heavily I think

would depend upon the environment that came from. Right. So, one thing that I think is really interesting is to think about because everything we tend to think about animals as water based and land based. And we can talk about those options in a minute if you want, But I think one really interesting option is the idea of a creature that evolves to live on within the atmosphere

of a gas planet. Got you okay? If you imagine it, so like a creature that um that never needs to set foot or I don't know, tentacle whatever on a on a tense environment, so like the water or ground, but exists in flotation. Sure. I mean keeping in mind that planets come in all shapes, sizes, densities, right. You know, you've got and a lot of the planets out there obviously going to be gas planets, right sure, And there's there's gonna be plants out there. They will have incredibly

dense atmospheres. So when we think of an atmosphere, of course,

we're thinking about Earth's atmosphere. And even if you've done something like you know, gone mountain climbing, and you've felt the experience of being in a thinner atmosphere, it's hard to imagine being someplace where you have a really, really thick atmosphere to the point where you could imagine a being that could support itself through that atmosphere, because you know, atmosphere essentially is a fluid right where it's gas moves, has fluid properties. It's obviously not a liquid, but it

does move like it is. It has fluid I movement, So dynamics are basically yeah, exactly, fault. It'll fill up a container and assume the shape of the container. That kind of thing. Um, So you I can imagine a being that could exist in such a place, assuming of course, that the the atmosphere is thick enough to support such a thing. I mean, it's an interesting question to wonder about how complex such a life form could become, and depending again upon the density of the atmosphere. I don't

know that there's necessarily an upper limit to that. I could picture something kind of amba, like on a on a larger scale, existing in an atmosphere like that, yeah, or I mean, you could potentially imagine a creature that that suspends itself by ballooning sure by like taking in and really in gases um that may be survived by photosynthesis or chemosynthesis of the atmosphere. Um. I think it's really interesting because there as far as I can tell,

there's really no reason a creature like that shouldn't exist. Well, yeah, especially when you start looking at some of the really odd creatures on Earth that we've discovered in extreme environments, like in the fissures in the Earth underwater, where you would imagine normally that no life could exist there due to extreme temperatures and very lack of sunlight, lack of sunlight,

extreme toxic toxicity of certain chemicals. But turns out that there are life forms that can exist and thrive in those environments, right, sure, Well, I mean they're they're bacteria that can that can split hydrogen sulfide from the water to feed themselves, which then feed giant mutant tube worms, which then feed all kinds of other who needs the sun.

Which is interesting because you know, go to heck. But if you go back, but if you go back a few decades, you would have reached you would have taught to a biologist, and biologists would say that ultimately all life comes from the sun. And if you were to point at these, uh, these examples, you know, bring that biologist into the modern era and show those examples to him. Right, these are all discoveries from the past thirty years, forty years, so you have to go back, you know, a few decades.

But once you did that and you brought them forward, they probably run from the room screaming. Yeah. I mean, oh no, no no, no, I was gonna add one of my other favorite bacteria, because I have favorite bacteria. Can can can exist in uh in springs where the temperature exceeds the point of boiling water. And those springs would be hot springs, yes, not the technical technical term is ouch. Those springs are exceedingly hot. Uh well, and you know

there was all go ahead. I'm sorry, Well, I'm just saying, yeah. The bacteria like these are what we would call extremophiles, survive in extreme environments. And typically these days, if you talk to an astrobiologist, what a lot of them will say as well, when we're looking at what alien life might look like, a good place to start is looking at extremophiles, because they can survive in environments that are

uh far more hostile. Yeah. Um, so you imagine like a very cold or a very hot planet, or something with you know, a corrosive chemical environment, or or even that kind of thing. I mean, you know, I think that the development of life as we know it in a situation like that would be certainly difficult. But if you look at one of one of my other favorite bacteria is um via. Lauren's favorite bacteria is a clstradian Baculinum.

That's what causes batuli um and and and and this is one of many bacteria that is intolerant of oxygen, which there is quite a lot of um really on the planet Earth, but um. But when it is in an oxygen rich environment, it creates this kind of spore around itself that lets it hibernate until it gets into say, your gut and uh and and and lacks that oxygen and can breed again. And it's you know, life, life

is impressive. It does weird stuff. I was also going to mention the fact that you know, on Earth we have we have a few luxuries on Earth that really make life possible, at least life as we know it. Um. The oxygen in our atmosphere is one of them. The distance we have from our sun is another. That goldilocks sound No, it's funny, just to point out real quickly we adapted to oxygen because the Earth wasn't always an oxygen rich environment. That was created by the by the

explosion of plant life. So originally oxygen was a it's a corrosive element, you know, and it's natural state, it can be sort of poisonous and not great for complex molecules. So but but but as life as we know it, for the kind of life forms that we evolved into. Uh. There's certain things about Earth that make it that make it what it is, makes it. Yeah, it gives us that. And another one is the magnetosphere. So the magnetosphere is the magnetic field around the Earth. Uh, and it ends

up protecting us from being bombarded by tiny, little subatomic particles. Essentially, we're talking about radiation here, but in this case, we're talking about the radiation of particles, not necessarily energy beams or or raise or anything like that. If you go to a planet without a magnetosphere, you're probably going to

be a hurt. And guess that's where the kaiju come from. Yeah, all right, okay, So anyway, so ionized radiation, So we got these ionized these ions, these particles, subotomic particles that are very high energy that can collide with stuff, and if it collides with something like a person, then it has the potential chold to do some damage on at least on the cellular level. If it's intense enough, it

can do some serious damage. But even a mild exposure to this kind of stuff can lead to things like developing cancer because it can mutate the cells even through the magnetosphere. We we, I mean, you know, it's it's recommended that you wear some sun block kids. You know, it's pretty powerful. Of course, ultra violet radiation is an electro magnetic radiation, not the particles, but but same sort

of idea. So the magnetosphere it repels these particles. It protects the atmosphere and the magneto sphere together protect us a lot from radiation, like you said, Lauren, not all radiation, because some of the does get through, but it protects us from a lot of it, which is why life, Yeah, life as possible. We pointed out in our episode about a Mars colony that we wouldn't have the luxury of

that magnetosphere on Mars. Mars does not have a magnetosphere, so we would have to make allowances for that, and that's why the Martian colony that's been proposed would largely be underground because the soil would end up being a protective barrier from that radiation. Um, the reason why the Earth has a magnetosphere is that we have we have a the core of Earth. We've got the inner core in the outer core, right, Joe and I had this

discussion already. But but but iner, the inter core, like Joe pointed out, the intercore is solid iron, so that that would by itself would not create a magnetosphere. In fact, there are a lot of planets out there that we suspect have solid cores. But our planet has an outer core that is molten, and it's molten mixture of metals, and through convection this movement due to heat and pressure, we have these fluctuating magnetic fields and then we create that we the Earth has a sphere, and we don't

have someone down there. It's like better get on that magnetos sphare or else everyone's gonna be burning up. Jules Burn was lying to us, So there are there's a very good possibility that we might discover life on a planet that does not have a magnetosphere, which means that the animals, assuming that their life forms are similar to the ones that have evolved here on Earth, would have

to have some measure of protection against this kind of radiation. Oh, that's really interesting because I've never heard of an organism that is immune to radiation. To such an organism exists, you know, it's an excellent question that we use a blast of radiation to say like clear packaged food product of all living organisms inside. Yeah, I would imagine that

I would. Well, here, I'll never say never, I am not aware of such an organism, but I'm not saying that one doesn't exist, because there clearly could be one that I'm not aware of. But thinking assuming that most life forms would have to have some protection because that you're talking about on a on a molecular level. You know, the d n A within a cell can be altered by this type of radiation. Means you could create mutations that could potentially kill a creature. You'd have to have

some sort of protection against that. Yeah, you'd have to think that it would have to be based on some sort of robust chemistry that was that could withstand having sub atomic particles knocked out of place every Now, you would have to have some sort of genetic modifying, genetic evolutionary advantage that would allow it to address cellular mutation to adapt so quickly or to be able to replace

damage cells very quickly. Uh. It also would likely there's there's been a lot of suggestion that it would likely have some sort of either shell that would protect it, you know, either an exoskeleton or some other form that would protect it from radiation. Or perhaps it would live underground, so again using the ground of the planet itself to protect it from radiation, or it could be a combination of the two, or if it admits its own radiation that cancels out the waves. So it's nice. So the

animals are reverse seeing the polarity. Yes, h yeah, you either reverse the polarity. Are you divide by zero? Um? That's another interesting point though. What about what about artificial life? What about but something I wanted to talk about. Um, what if it's the case where when we encounter alien intelligence, we don't encounter the life itself. Maybe it's totally extinct or maybe it's very far away, but all we're going

to have access to is its technology. Well here's that's again bringing us right back to the beginning of this episode where we talked about the voyager, right, and the likelihood of an alien encountering the Voyager is incredibly small. I mean we're talking you know, space is big, really big. You might think it's jowned down to the chemist, but that's just big nuts compared to space. Um yeah, it's

it's space is enormous. So the likelihood of any alien race, intelligent or otherwise, coming into contact with the Voyager is incredibly tiny. But when you think about it using robots to explore, to send those out and to gather information and to bring it back, that that makes a lot of sense to us. So there is the potential that that can make sense to other alien civilizations that also

have attained that level of technological expertise. So it's possible that the Voyager is going to go reb elbows with a alien version of the Voyager or that, or that the first encounter we ever have happens to be with some sort of improbe exactly uh hopefully would not be highly likely to me more likely than encountering an intelligent

alien species. Well, I think in a spaceship that knows how to blow up specifically like the White House, because I know it's important right now again some Independence Day stuff in here. You know what I'd have to say, is that for my money? I think st He's probably got it right in that if we're going to encounter a first sign of an alien species, I think it's very likely that it would be some kind of signal

on the electromagnet expected. Yeah, because again you think, cause the electromatic like radio, isn't just arbitrary, like the electromagnetic spectrum is like fundamental to the physics of the universe as we understand them. Yeah, and it's still going to exist, you know, at the other side of this galaxy. Yeah. Well, and also the idea that unless the alien race has discovered some means of traveling towards you know, near or

at or greater than the speed of light. Uh, you know, unless they happen to be really close neighbors and we've just been really bad about detecting them, it would take thousands and thousands of years for them to ever get to a point where we would be able to interact with them in a meaningful way. And that's one of those things that people who believe in in in extra

dimensional being start talking about. You know it, if if a civilization achieves either the ability to to move through other dimensions, or if they exist in them to begin with, um that we're more likely hypothetically to run into those because of the speed of communication. If they can just pop by because time is meaningless to them, then well in space would be too. We're talking about the factors

that define our perception of reality. Wouldn't matter to them necessarily. Well, I wouldn't say meaningless, but it would be more easily navigable, right, Yeah, Well, time as we know it would be meaningless if it's as easy for them to navigate time as it is for us to go forwards and backwards. And then the tartest just shows up and yeah, right, and then we run because everyone knows when the doctor shows up stuff

about to go down, especially at Christmas. If it's Christmas and the doctor shows up, just just go inside, don't go back out. And and unless you're you're a particularly attractive young lady, um, in which case you become a companion for the next season. Yeah, and then things don't turn out well for you anyway. Okay, So now that we've talked about these, uh, these different plausibilities, I want

to come back to the sci fi visions. What do we now think are the most plausible if we just had to go with our gut, as Carl Sagan said he would not if you say cone heads, I'm gonna slick it. Probably cone heads. I think it's gotta beigger. Well what do you imagine? Now? I respect it was Carl Sagan right who said that he didn't want to guess, like he didn't want to think with his gut whether or not there was alien life out there. But we're gonna we're gonna go against that now and use our

guts because our guts did did? Do you have it? Wow? Uh, this is such a tough question because I do want to couch everything in the idea that because we're working from just one sample, it is really, you know, ridiculous to try and draw conclusions. But I'm gonna say that the most likely physical appearance of any alien would be go weaving. That's my answer. Um, I don't have anything

less sarcastic to say. I was. I was going to say, like like crying from teenage mutant ninja turtles, but that's yeah, we're too afraid. I mean, you know, seriously, something like the alien xenomorphs wouldn't really shock me. Um, you know, something something shame over I agree actually to some extent because of the insectoid sort of characteristics, and look at the the way insects just kind of like dominate on Earth. Yeah. I can't think of anything more alien looking to me

on on on our planet than an insect. So it follows, well, it's just the basic, the basic insect body type, you know, the the exoskeleton, the way it shaped. It's clearly an extremely successful efficient in this environment. We don't know about others, but it works like a charm here on Earth. To be more serious than my Hugo weaving, I think jellyfish actually would not be too far jelly I say jellyfish, I mean jellies. Don't don't correct me. I know the

I know the terminology. No, I think I've I've read somebody saying that. Yeah, jellies I think would be uh not incredibly surprising. Although whether they would be on the macro scale or be kind of like a microscopic version of that, that's another thing. I mean the discussion. I mean, I think that absolutely life does exist. Um, whether other life exists on the macro scale that we will ever encounter is more to but um, here, here's one other thing that I do think is is pretty interesting and

I also think kind of plausible. Um, if you all played the games in the Half Life series, I'm playing Portal, are you familiar are with the concept of the combine? No, Joe, please tell me what is the combine? Well, okay, so villains in let's say, like Half Life two, UM are not just one species, but it's sort of a federation of species. And you can't necessarily tell if they're different species that are sort of allied or some have conquered others.

But basically, the Earth is invaded by UM, by a an army of lots of different types of alien creatures. It's sort of like an in in Halo, but with UM a little bit more um insectoid in in basic anatomy, I would say, Whereas, whereas the creatures in Halo, are those those bipedole Yeah Halo, but yeah, the Covenant in Halo, that what you're talking about. I haven't played Halo, so I don't know. But um, so she'll translate for me.

But basically, what flood the flood are? Sorry, go ahead, Well, just basically what I'm trying to say is that not necessarily any of the specific anatomical design of any of those aliens. But the idea that it's not just one species from one planet, but it's a sort of federation of different life forms that have banded together. And I do think that's an interesting thing to consider because most

of the time it's always just one species that invades. Now, I will say, because this this brought to mind something else, the idea of the alien species landing on Earth and then immediately dying because of our Earth germs is kind of ridiculous because you're talking about completely independently evolved life form. So the compatibility between any sort of virus or bacteria on Earth and an alien uh physiology is it's it's astronomical right. If my dog can't catch my cold, then

why would an alien? Right, So it's yeah, the odds of that. In fact, I had a discussion with this with someone who specializes in biology and talked about this because I was talking about the computer virus level because we talked about Independence Day, right, So computer virus from Earth being able to infect an alien technology is ridiculous because that assumes that both are working under the same principle.

Aliens and Independence Day used max right, or just binary computer science, like that it's using the same basic computer science that we use. That's that's a huge assumption. Same sort of thing with physical virus, like actual bacteria and viruses. Uh so I wouldn't expect that to happen. Now, that's not to say that alien life wouldn't somehow otherwise be deadly to us. It could be that it's toxic, you know.

It could be that whatever chemical compounds make up this particular alien life form are hazardous to us, but they exhaled sulfuric acid, or that they you know that just that maybe they wouldn't even be able to live or to come to Earth in any way because their version of atmosphere would be totally different from ours. Or maybe they're terribly allergic to water. Yeah, well, then they shouldn't invade an earth that is mostly made of the stuff. Okay,

Well we've reached signs. So I think that means it's a scient Yeah, I believe, I agree wholeheartedly. Well, this wraps up our speculative episode of forward thinking. We will be doing more of these in the future. We've got a whole list of episodes that we've kind of brainstormed, and uh, We're very much excited to bring some of them to life in the next coming weeks and months, so I hope you guys stay tuned. Meanwhile, if you want to join in on all the fun, go to

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