Steve Beckwith and Brian Cox on Life

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Uploaded by on Sep 3, 2008

Prof Steve Beckwith and Prof Brian Cox discuss the probability of other intelligent life in the Universe. Watch the whole film on BBC2 in the UK on Tuesday 2nd December at 2100hrs.

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Science & Technology

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  • now im watching Brian Cox videos!

  • @HabloIrlandes thats exactly what i think even a million year headstart and look how far we'll be

  • @Darwin42ME Thanks for the reply, by saying "guestimate" I meant "Approximate", but that's me trying to infuse a little humour into the comment, What titles would you recommend from "Steven Jay Gould"?

  • @HabloIrlandes Don't know why you refer to the approximate age of the universe of 13.7 billion years as a "guestimate". It is nothing of the sort, rather it is known to a very specific value of error. Also, take care not to think of evolution as leading towards something, or necessarily heading towards ever increasing complexity. Reading a little Steven Jay Gould should hamper this tendancy. Quips like "more evolved" are misleading at best.

  • We know that the first planets and stars were formed about 400 million years after the big bang, so about 13.3 billion years ago. So potentially there could be life forms out there over 3 times more evolved than us. Them looking at us, would be like us looking at single cell organisms. No wonder we havent had any contact yet.

  • Ok, so we 'guestimate' that the Universe is ~13.7 billion years old, Earth ~4.7. Life has taken ~4 billion years to produce us. Knowing this, could we make a very crude calculation as to what the chances are that there are life forms in the Universe more evolved than us?

    What % of the planets/moons in the Universe have an environment that can sustain life? What % of those planets have had life evolving for more than 4 billion years? A lot.

  • huh?what

  • that's actually the most interesting argument i've heard as to why there might not be life elsewhere

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