Script.

Title of the video

Extraterrestrial life. Aliens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTvU9j3og5k

Hook

In 1938, October 30. American actor Orsen Welles pranked American public by making
announcements on CBS national radio about the invasion of aliens from mars that would
end our civilization. Marsian spaceships were landed in New jersey Grover’s Mill . People
instantly started to panic. According to newspapers they started to evacuate and some of
them reported to have seen flashes of light and smell poison.

Introduction

The existence of aliens or extraterrestrial life was contemplated by number of thinkers

throughout the history. The contemplation about extraterrestrials dates back to the birth of
philosophy as such. Pre-Socratic thinkers in ancient Greece like Anaximander and Thales
were writing about the possibility of the existence of other populated planets. However this
thought was abandoned as Geocentric model of the universe was prevalent at that time.
But, the idea of extraterrestrial life emerged again in Europe at the time of the birth of
Heliocentrism.

Giordano Bruno who was burned on stake by inquisition along with other crimes was guilty
for believing that there were other forms of life in the universe. So, after the discovery of
the fact that the earth is not in the center of the universe but rather as Carl Sagan puts it a
pale blue dot in the periphery of the milky way galaxy which is also one galaxy out of 100
Billion the topic of aliens gained popularity again.

The “cosmic pluralism” was a popular theory after the victory of heliocentrism over Geo
Centrism which stated that life was distributed throughout the universe. The proponents of
this theory were thinkers like philosopher Immanuel Kant, astronomer William Hershel and
the founding father of America Benjamin Franklin.
Scientific Approach.

Chemistry

Although we never observed or discovered the existence of aliens, we do know how what
life is like or how it evolved on earth. From that we can speculate what type of chemistry
biology and physics is required to accommodate the emergence of life on planets.

The science that deals with extraterrestrial life is called Astrobiology and there are different
ideas about the way an extraterrestrial life could exist elsewhere in the universe. There are
mostly two theories one suggesting that life could emerge in different regions of the
universe independently, whereas according to “exogenesis” it was formed in one region and
was distributed throughout the universe. however, it is possible that both of them could be
true.

But, before thinking about how exotic aliens might look like. We have to define what we
mean by life. As there might be simple forms like bacteria or as complex and intelligent as
we humans are.

Within biology life is mostly defined as being a self-replicating entity, which means that in
order for you to get something that resembles creatures on earth they should undergo
evolution. When famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was asked whether he
believed something in the absence of evidence he replied that if there could be a life form
somewhere in the universe it must evolve by Darwinian natural selection.

In order for life to emerge there should be something like DNA that would carry information
for subsequent generations. But what are the conditions that are necessary for the
emergence of such biological entities.

Well the first and for most it’s water. The mantra of astronomers is that you have to follow
water. Water is the major foundation for habitable environment and the emergence of life.
The most important feature of water is that it is a universal solvent. That means that it can
mix and create incredibly complex molecules. Life on earth wouldn’t emerge without water
as water is necessary for the existence of cells outer shell – a membrane that separates one
cell from another. Furthermore, water in its solid form i.e. ice is less dense than in liquid
which prevents the gradual freezing of the oceans. Plus, water is great climate stabilizer as it
absorbs energy while evaporating and releases it during condensation. This helps to
absorbs heat in tropics thus decreasing the temperature, while warming air in polar regions.

Now the second most important chemical unit for life is carbon. We humans and other life
forms on earth are carbon based.
Carbon has the remarkable ability to make 4 bonds with other elements thus creating long
and complex molecules. Carbon bonds with other essential elements like oxygen hydrogen
and nitrogen. When water and carbon dioxide work together to transform and store energy
from sun in form of sugar and glucose. When the latter is broken it releases energy that help
to drive other biochemical processes.

However there is also an idea that life could be based on silicon, which like carbon can also
make four bonds with other elements. This type of organisms unlike us would have crystal
like physical appearance and could live on planets where temperature is very high.

But getting back to carbon which by making a bond with water creates hydrocarbons. This
is a major source of chemicals for producing life. Considering that they create essential
structural elements which are present in DNA and RNA.

Although there is no consensus on how self-replicating entity like DNA emerged we have
experiments that show how you can get amino acids from organic chemistry. In a famous
experiment of Miller and Urey, scientists took molecules like methane, ammonia and other
toxic chemicals that were thought to be prevalent in early earth. They put them In the flask
and exposed it to a small electrical current. We now know that original experiments were
able to produce over 20 different amino acids that are the building blocks of protein.

Generally humans are not special creatures in terms of chemistry. The most abundant
elements that make up our body are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen
which are also the most abundant elements throughout the universe.

So if you give something enough time there is a high chance that life might spontaneously
form as a byproduct of carbon chemistry. If you buy a lottery card there is a low chance of
you winning in your lifetime but if you do the same every day for millions of years you would
most certainly win the lottery multiple times.

Where are they. Location

Well apart from biochemical accommodation for life, physical location of the planet where
life could evolve is foundationally more crucial.
A goldilocks zone is referred to a distance from the sun or a star that is just right for life.
If Earth were closer to the sun, however, the oceans would boil away. If it were farther
away, the oceans would freeze
Moreover there are three important things that might be necessary for the existence of life.

a strong magnetic field that would protect a planet’s atmosphere from solar wind that
would make life impossible
a moderate speed of planet’s rotation, if earth rotated slowly than the side facing the sun
would be extremely hot, while the side that did not would freeze, while if it rotated faster
than monster winds and catastrophic climate would make life highly improbable.
Location that is the right distance from the center of the galaxy. Too close to the center
extreme radiation would be a pain in the ass, if it were further away than earth is than it
would not have higher elements to produce DNA and other crucial biological entities.
Also, if you ever wondered how Jupiter might help our planet, well if it were not for Jupiter
we would not be here,

because the existence of such a huge planet in a given system helps to deflect comets and
passing meteorites, thus cleaning the solar system from dangerous rocks that could destroy
earth and thus acting as a planetary shield.

However there are suggestions that life could emerge outside the goldilocks zone. Like on
Jupiter’s moon Europa. As Europa revolves around the planet Jupiter’s strong gravitational
attraction squeezes Europa, so that the friction that is created within the core of the moon
could melt the ice cover, thus producing a permanent liquid ocean.

What do they look like?

When we think about aliens we already picture them the way Hollywood has ingrained us
their images – a childlike, bug eyed creatures. However science can help us explore how
they might actually look like. First, we have to distinguish the universal and. parochial
physical features that extraterrestrial life might have. Universal traits are the ones that have
evolved independently several times in different species. Those include limbs and vision in
animals, flight in birds and photosynthesis in plants.

Well , talking about eyes they are of different form in insects, fish and mammals, but
they serve the same function – the vision. However, if we are searching for intelligent
life we should think that they would possess stereovision which would be bilateral like
our predators have. Hollywood depicts aliens as carnivores and predators, which is not
unreasonable after all. Predators are generally smarter than their prey. In order for
predators to hunt prey they have to develop complex behavioral abilities like planning,
stalking, hiding and ambushing. Because of these predators must have 3d stereo
vision in order to lock on their prey. However, prey just has to know how to run and
therefore their eyes are located on the sides of their face, so that they can afford 360
vision to detect predators. Although alien predators are probably not dangerous for us
because they must be built on entirely different DNA and protein molecules and
therefore would never want to eat us.

Another important feature for evolution of intelligent life forms is what’s called an
“arms race”. Humans possess more capabilities rather than just survival hunting
preying and scavenging in the forest. We can master mathematics, quantum physics,
poetry engineering etc. why do we have such an excess brainpower? other animals
like cheetah and antelope also possess skills that are beyond their survival
requirements, but evolutionarily there was an arms race between them, that yielded
such complex abilities. And the same applies for humans that had to arms race with
other species of homo and apparently in order for them to conquer the world they had
to cooperate and integrate in bigger societies using abilities like developing myths and
stories under which big groups of homo sapiens would unite.

However even if we look at earth, life forms are quite bizarre and wildly different.
Crustaceans, squishy tentacled jellyfish, hermaphroditic worms and slime molds.

On the other hand, when it comes to forms of communication, there is a consideration

that such abilities might be parochial. On earth mammals communicate by producing
sound through their respiratory system, however insects like cicada talk by vibrating
their wings. Also, it is believed that any type of complex life must have some type of
thumb tentacle or claw that could be used for grabbing things.

So it is absolutely possible that alien forms of life could evolve different type of
commination that would be inaccessible for us. They could possess forms of
communication like infrasound, or some kind of sign language.

Furthermore. It is thought that the ability to lay eggs like our birds and reptiles do
could be universal, however mammalian reproduction – bearing an offspring must
be a parochial feature.

The size of extraterrestrial life.

it is believed the one of the necessary feature of an organism that might be
relatively big must have skeleton. So if life evolved on a planet that has more or
less the same gravitational force the evolution of skeleton like system should be
inevitable. However, the question is how big would aliens be.

Well, there are number of wild suggestions that should be addressed. First, the idea that
alien life form can be gigantic seems unrealistic. The first thing is that a gigantic life form like
king kong should probably evolve on a planet that is gigantic itself as it would need a lot of
space to hold tons of other life species that would constitute an incredibly big amount of
calories for such species. However, the more massive a planet the bigger it’s gravity. Which
means that it would not let a species to be such tall and gigantic. Furthermore, if king Kong
really existed on earth it would break it’ legs and crumble the moment he took a single step.

This is because, if you increase the size of a creature like ape 10 times, he would be only
100 times stronger, but it’s volume would increase and become 1000 times heavier, Thus
the ape's weight increases much more rapidly than its strength as we increase its size. He
would be, relatively speaking, 10 times weaker than a normal ape. And that is why his legs
would break. That means, that apes weight increases more rapidly than its strength. So a
king Kong would be ten times weaker than a normal ape.

Also we can predict the shape of an extraterrestrial life. The heat emitted by an organism
increases proportionally to the surface area. However, the bigger an organism is the more
heat it can preserve. That’s why in wintertime our fingers and ears freeze first as they have
relatively small surface area, also small people get colder faster than large people. That
explains why newspapers burn quickly because of their large surface area while wood logs
do not.

We know that people in arctic and whales have rounder shape. That’s because a sphere has
the smallest possible surface area and thus oriented to preserve heat. From that, we can
speculate that if aliens live in colder whether they might have odd round shapes. However
insects in warmer climates can afford spindly shape as they do not need to hold as much
heat within their bodies.

But, is it possible to have an intelligent life form that would have a microscopical size. That’s
also improbable. Scale law tells us that as we go deeper the laws of physics change. That
fact solely debunks the idea that there could be universes and world within atoms. The
physics of quantum world can not afford an evolution of life forms. Atom themselves do not
resemble galaxies. In atoms all subatomic particles are identical to each other, while planets
are vastly different. Plus, electrons can only orbit the nucleus in discrete orbits and not at
any distance. Furthermore, quantum theory tells us that electrons exhibit behavior like
superposition by being in two places at the same time and being a wave and a particle at the
simultaneously.

Summary

Arthur C Clarke Quote. Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not.
Both are equally terrifying.

We know that in our universe there are 100 billion galaxies. 100 billion stars in our milky
way and 100 billion planets. Now imagine how many other stars and planets are there in
different galaxies throughout the universe. but the interesting question is what is the
universe itself. Well, generally when people use the word universe they mean everything
that has existed everything that exists and everything that will exist. However, for modern
science universe is just our local big bang that could be a drop in the ocean of infinite
universes and bubbles.

Even on earth 99.6 percent of the species that has ever existed have gone extinct and it was
nearly us when the number of homo sapiens at one point was miniscule. That suggests that
universe is not here to accommodate life solely for us and it might be the case that there are
countless number of aliens intelligent simple bizarre that are looking right in the direction
where you are looking at night, which solely is a very poetic thing to consider.