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The Privileged Planet | movie | 2004 | Official Trailer
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2/10/2024
This 60-minute video documentary explores the conditions on Earth that allow for intelligent life and also make it a str | dG1fOG9odUczVmpfNDg
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🎥
Short film
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:28
A lot of things went right on Earth
00:30
to have yielded complex life, absolutely.
00:33
The number of factors that have been postulated has grown.
00:39
Currently, the typical number you would see in a typical list
00:42
would have something like 20.
00:46
We find that we need to be at the right location
00:48
in the galaxy, that we're inside the circumstellar habitable
00:51
zone of a star, that we're in a planetary system
00:54
with giant planets that can shield the inner planets
00:56
from too many comet impacts, that we're
00:58
orbiting the right kind of star that's not too cool or not
01:01
too hot, that we're on a planet that
01:04
has a moon that can stabilize the tilt of its axis,
01:08
that we're on a planet that's a terrestrial planet, a planet
01:11
that has a crust that's just thick enough that it can
01:14
maintain plate tectonic activity,
01:16
that it has enough heat in its interior
01:18
that it's still circulating its liquid iron cores
01:20
so it can generate a magnetic field,
01:22
that it has an atmosphere that has enough oxygen to allow
01:26
for complex organisms to survive,
01:29
that it has enough water and enough continents
01:32
to allow for the diversity of life or an active biosphere
01:35
that you need to support complex creatures such as ourselves.
01:39
All these factors have to be met at one place and time
01:43
in the galaxy if you're going to have a planet as
01:46
habitable as the Earth, which you
01:48
need for complex and even technological life.
01:52
In an attempt to estimate the probability of attaining
01:55
this combination of factors simultaneously,
01:59
some researchers have developed equations
02:01
assigning a conservative 1 in 10 value
02:05
to each factor deemed necessary for advanced life.
02:09
If every element has to be there at the same time,
02:12
you have to multiply the probabilities.
02:14
And that's what makes the probability at the end so
02:16
small.
02:16
You've got 10% of this and 10% of that.
02:19
And these things rapidly multiply
02:21
to exceedingly small numbers, numbers
02:23
on the order of 10 to minus 15, which is 1/1000th of 1/1 trillion.
02:27
And it's a number like that that you
02:29
have to compare to the 100 billion stars that
02:31
are in the galaxy.
02:32
100 billion is a very large number,
02:34
but 1/1000th of a trillion is much, much smaller.
02:38
On their face value, these probabilities are speaking.
02:42
What they're telling us is this can't happen,
02:45
or this is very unlikely to happen in the galaxy.
02:48
And that's where the evidence is pushing us.
02:51
There are many probabilistic resources in the galaxy,
02:54
but on the other side of the coin
02:56
are all these factors that you need.
02:59
You have to get just right in order
03:01
to have just one habitable planet like the Earth.
03:04
And that leads me to conclude that, yes, we're
03:07
rare in the galaxy.
03:09
[MUSIC PLAYING]
03:13
[MUSIC PLAYING]
03:17
[MUSIC PLAYING]
03:20
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