Tim Coulson
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So I think one of the things that I was really amazed at, I didn't know, is our moon is getting further away. So with each orbit, it goes around the Earth. it gets a little bit further away.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And so when it formed, and this is another fascinating fact, when the moon formed, when the young Earth, when it was about nearly about four and a half billion years ago, it collided with another planet that's been called Theta. And that melted the surface of our young planet, it threw a huge amount of debris up into space and that accreted to form the moon.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So it came together under gravity to form the moon. But the collision also formed the first atmosphere. And without that atmosphere, life probably would never have got going. So we probably owe our... Well, we do owe our existence to a collision that formed the moon. But also, over the course of time that life's been here, there have been all sorts of great extinctions when
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
when A, the dinosaurs died, and then at the end of the Permian, nearly 300 million years ago, there was a mass extinction that killed over 85% of organisms in the sea and over 70% on land. And if these violent events hadn't happened and these great extinctions hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here and mammals wouldn't have been here. So I think that's one of the amazing things. But what's truly...
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And what's truly staggering is that science has been able to piece so much together. You know, the science is driven by imagination and curiosity. And we're all scientists at heart. Science is about finding what works and what doesn't work through trial and error, through experiments. We can all be scientists.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
You're right that there are a number of things that, if they didn't happen, we wouldn't be here. As an example, 66 million years ago, an asteroid collided with the Earth. It caused a mass extinction, and it caused the death of all dinosaurs, except birds. So birds are the few dinosaurs that survived the extinction, and they have radiated to and spread to become the birds we know and love today.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
If that hadn't happened, mammals wouldn't have got the upper hand, and mammals, we are mammals, mammals wouldn't have evolved to create us. Now, despite all of these events, these kind of events that look like luck, there are some physicists and some scientists, and they say this with very good reason, that if we were to start our universe exactly the way that it formed
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
13.8 billion years ago when we were to do the experiment where we run the experiment forward we would find that we were here we were sat here today having this conversation that exactly the same things would happen and so they argue that what what they say is the the universe is deterministic and with a big enough computer we would be able to predict the behavior of every single tiny particle
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
in the universe and how they formed atoms and how they formed planets and how they formed us. And that if we ran the clock again, we would be here. There are other scientists that say, actually, no, I don't believe that. I think we've won the cosmic lottery. There've been a large number of events that had to happen for us to be here and they were chance events and they were truly chance events.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And then the question comes, The question that they then ask is what is luck and where does chance come from? And what's really interesting at the moment, the only true source of randomness, so where luck could come from in the universe, is the behavior of tiny particles. And that's known as quantum behavior or quantum mechanics.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And it's the fact that these tiny particles behave like waves as well as particles. And I won't go into, it's quite an abstract concept. It's a very powerful theory and it's almost certainly correct. And the question is, is how does that randomness at the very, very small scale of tiny particles
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
translate to random behavior such as an asteroid colliding with earth or even the evolution of consciousness because one of the really interesting things that comes about is if the universe is deterministic then free will is an illusion that doesn't sit well with me i don't believe that um that free will is an illusion i was it was inevitable that we'd be having this wonderful conversation now at the birth of the universe but but some scientists
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
believe that it's deterministic and with and for a reason known as something as quantum entanglement and quantum entanglement is something that we don't fully understand yet and i don't believe we've quite got the right interpretation of so you had mentioned at the beginning that that there is some evidence that perhaps or there's some reason to believe anyway that that intelligent life may have been around before elsewhere
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Well, so a couple of answers to that. So first of all, there was another species, a cousin of ours. We shared a common ancestor, but it was a different branch of the tree of life called Neanderthals. Many people will have heard of them. And they lived in Europe up until about 40,000 years ago. And they had language. They had culture. They painted the first cave paintings.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So they buried their dead. So these were clearly another intelligent species on earth related to us, but not our direct ancestors or anything. So intelligent life, has evolved twice. They had brains that were about the same size as ours. Now, the second part of your question is what might happen to the earth in the future?
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Well, eventually the sun, the sun's probably about halfway through its life. It's about four and a half, 4.6 billion years old. It's going to survive for another 4 billion years or so. And when it comes, when it burns up all its hydrogen fuel, it's going to go through periods of rapid expansion and rapid contraction.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And when it does that, if the Earth's still in the orbit around it, it's going to burn the Earth up. And any life that may have survived until then is going to be destroyed. It's going to go extinct. However, we suspect that life's going to go extinct before then.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And the reason is, over the course of Earth's history, and in some ways this is a bit ironic, given what lots of people are talking about now, is that the atmosphere of Earth has been declining in the amount of carbon dioxide in it and increasing in the amount of nitrogen in it since it formed.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And in about a billion years' time, carbon dioxide levels are going to have dropped to such a low level that photosynthesis, so the way that plants make a living, is going to cease. And when plants cease to be able to do photosynthesis and create oxygen, then animals like us that require oxygen to breathe are going to go extinct as well. So we know that life on Earth will die out.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
We know it may hopefully it's going to be a long time away. We know, you know, that we know the direction that it's going. We're not going to be here forever. Intelligent life's not going to be here forever because the Earth's not going to be here forever. Now, of course, that's still a very long way away.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And who knows, in the coming years, in the coming decades, in the coming centuries, humanity may end up finding a way to get to other planets outside of our solar system and forming colonies there. We can't do that yet. But science has brought us on a hell of a journey and it may continue to take us on a journey further.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
where as we learn more, we do realize that we are able to colonize the galaxy. But at the moment, it will take us a very long time to get to those planets.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Wonderful. Thank you very much for having me on, Mike. It's been entirely my pleasure.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
It's a pleasure to be on.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So I think so. I think over the last, say, 50 to 100 years, science has made astonishing progress in working out why it is we exist. In particular, all the things that had to happen for us to be here. I don't want to kid anyone that it has all the answers. There's still quite a lot to find out. But yeah, with each passing year, we're finding out a little bit more.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
and we have a better understanding of all the remarkable things that had to happen from the beginning of the universe 13.8 billion years ago until now.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So it's true that lots of things had to happen. And so without going through them all, but the universe first of all had to form, and it did so as a pinprick of intense energy. And some of that energy then converted into matter. So things called quarks and electrons. And over time they formed atoms and then molecules and we had stars and then the earth formed and life had to form.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And then there were various steps that had to occur for us to come about. And if one or two of those things hadn't happened, it's entirely possible we wouldn't be here. However, the universe is also so incalculably vast that if we look across the whole universe, it seems probable that intelligent life evolved at least once, or we know it evolved once, but it may have evolved many times.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Science has made astonishing progress in working out why it is we exist. With each passing year, we have a better understanding of all the remarkable things that had to happen from the beginning of the universe 13.8 billion years ago until now.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And I think what science is starting to be able to tell us is some of the likelihoods of some of these events occurring on the grand scale of the entire universe.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
We don't have any, the only intelligent life, and in fact, the only life we have found so far is on Earth. However, we have only looked in a very tiny corner of our neighborhood, very small part of the universe for evidence of life coming from elsewhere. So there are trillions and trillions of planets in the bit of the universe we can see, that's called the observable universe.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Yet we've only pointed our telescopes at about 6,000 planets. And the ones that we've pointed the telescopes at tend to be gas giants. So planets a little bit like Jupiter or Saturn that, as far as we can tell, don't have liquid water. And we think that liquid water is necessary for life.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So although we haven't found any evidence of intelligent life elsewhere, we haven't looked very far or very hard at all.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
I think it's the latter. And so one of the challenges is we don't know how long intelligent life lives in civilizations where they're capable of sending out signals for other intelligent life to detect and then respond to.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So all of the civilizations that have appeared on Earth before, so the ancient Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs, et cetera, they've only survived for a few hundred, possibly a few thousand years. Our current civilization is a few hundred years old, a couple of thousand tops, and we don't know how long it lasts for.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Now, if you think about it, the universe is 13.8 billion years, so a couple of thousand years is but a blink of an eye. And so the likelihood of two intelligent civilizations being close enough to gather, close enough to one another in the vastness of the universe to communicate, is actually quite a small probability.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
But despite that, we are going to keep listening out and we're going to keep listening to see whether there's any evidence of intelligent life. But what we might find is evidence of simpler life, say bacteria, living on other planets.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And there is even some space probes that have gone out to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to look for evidence of bacterial lives on those moons, because what we do know is liquid water does exist on those moons.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So I think the way that I would answer that question is probably in a couple of parts. And so we understand what had to happen for life to get started. And there are sort of three things that need to happen. Life is just very complicated chemistry and it's chemistry that can replicate. So it's chemistry that can make copies of itself.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And there are actually quite simple reactions that can make copies of themselves. They're called autocatalytic reactions. And so we think that life started off as an autocatalytic reaction that became more and more complicated. And we have some ideas why that might happen. The second thing that life needs to get going is energy.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And the very first life on Earth was almost certainly driven by volcanic energy. It's known as chemosynthesis. So it would have relied on highly reactive molecules that were created by volcanoes. And it used that to power its replication. And then the third thing it needs are membranes to sort of keep it all together, to keep the replicating molecules together.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And those are quite easy to form as well. So given that, we think that simple life probably gets going quite frequently within the universe. There are probably not every planet by any stretch of the imagination. But I think a lot of biologists and a lot of chemists now suspect that life gets going reasonably easily. And it got going quite quickly on Earth once conditions became suitable.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
We had liquid water for that to happen. So we don't think the early Earth was so unusual that life would have got started only on this planet. We suspect it's quite commonplace. Now, if that's the case, the next question is, how long does it need to become complicated? And life has been evolving on Earth for about 4 billion years.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
And so a planet needs to remain suitable for life and enabling life to thrive for long enough for it to become complicated. And we don't know how many planets fall into that category. We just haven't studied enough other planets yet. So in terms of why we're here, do we have a purpose? Well, biologically, the purpose is to replicate, so to produce offspring. But that's a very boring purpose.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
I don't believe we've been put here. We haven't found any evidence that we've been put here with a specific mission in mind. But I think we can give ourselves a mission. And one of the things that I, so I nearly died when I was a teenager. I got malaria. And shortly after that, I decided I wanted to try and understand what science could tell us about about why we exist.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So started diving into that. So I gave my life purpose to try and understand what it was about why we existed. And I've loved every minute of it. I think it's been absolutely fantastic. And so I think we can give ourselves. So I think we're here by, by luck. I think a lot of things have happened. We have won the cosmic lottery.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
I don't think we're here for a higher purpose, but we can give ourselves a purpose and we can make our lives meaningful. And I think nearly all of us do that.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
a good question and it boils down again to the size of the universe and the universe has a maximum speed limit and that's the speed of light and even in terms of light years so that's a distance that light travels in a single year the universe is absolutely vast it's um you know it it takes uh the sun is is our closest star obviously it takes eight minutes and 20 seconds
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
for light from the Sun to reach Earth. But if you're looking out to our nearest star system, even if you're travelling at the speed of light, it's going to take you about four and a half years to get there. Now, anything that weighs anything, so anything with mass, can't get anywhere near the speed of light. So, you know, it can only get to a fraction of the speed of light.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
even if an intelligent uh species on another planet had heard us and set off it's going to take them you know decades if not hundreds or thousands of years to get here so it takes like 26 000 years to get to the center of our galaxy and that's moving at the the universe's speed limit so unless we can come up with ways of traveling around the universe perhaps you know through
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
Thinking about kind of Star Trek and kind of in science fiction here through worms hole it her wormholes in space it's going to be very difficult for organ it for Intelligent aliens and other planets to get here and we've only been sending out signals to them for 120 years which is when Marconi sent his first radio signal out so if they're listening to that and they were say there were 60 light years away They would have heard that
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
If they sent a signal back to us, we would only be receiving it about now. And they would have to be within 60 light years, so 60 to get to them and 60 to get a message back. And there's only about 3,000 stars within 60 light years of Earth, which is a tiny number compared to the stars in the universe.
Something You Should Know
Why Do We Exist? & More Than Friends: The Rise of Platonic Partners
So it's possible there's intelligent aliens making their way to us now, but they're probably not going to arrive for a while.