The 7 Scariest Forms Alien Life Could Actually Take

Hey guys! We’re now live on Spotify🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1c2uppn... In 1976, Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter calculated that Jupiter's clouds could hold living balloons kilometres wide, and hunters that feed on them. The list moves on to life that might exhale sand, self-copying plasma, and nuclear life on dead stars. So what waits in the top three, and why have scientists asked each other never to build one? Seven forms, ranked by how close each could come to us, in a full three-hour walk down the list, made to be heard at any pace, even as you drift off. Settle in and let this slow walk through the strangest shapes life could take keep you company tonight. Subscribe to The Cosmographer if you like the long way through the universe's biggest questions. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:31 Number Seven, the hunters in the clouds 30:41 Number Six, the life made of stone 58:16 Number Five, the living plasma 1:27:07 Number Four, nuclear life on a dead star 1:58:12 Number Three, the thing everyone is part of 2:27:40 Number Two, no one inside it 2:58:35 Number One, the other side of the glass SOURCES Sagan & Salpeter, Possible ecologies in the Jovian atmosphere (ApJS, 1976) — https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/197... Morowitz & Sagan, Life in the Clouds of Venus? (Nature, 1967) — https://www.nature.com/articles/21512... Yates et al., Atmospheric Habitable Zones in Y Dwarf Atmospheres (ApJ, 2017) — https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10... Petkowski, Bains & Seager, On the Potential of Silicon as a Building Block for Life — https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/6/84 Kan et al., Directed evolution of cytochrome c for carbon–silicon bond formation (Science, 2016) — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... Pinheiro et al., Synthetic genetic polymers capable of heredity and evolution (Science, 2012) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22517... Tsytovich et al., From plasma crystals and helical structures towards inorganic living matter — https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10... Anchordoqui & Chudnovsky, Can Self-Replicating Species Flourish in the Interior of a Star? — https://lettersinhighenergyphysics.co... University of Cambridge, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and pulsars — https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/journey... Sagan et al., A search for life on Earth from the Galileo spacecraft (Nature, 1993) — https://www.nature.com/articles/365715a0 Nakagaki, Yamada & Tóth, Maze-solving by an amoeboid organism (Nature, 2000) — https://www.nature.com/articles/35035159 Dick, Cultural evolution, the postbiological universe and SETI (2003) — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journa... Adamala et al., Confronting risks of mirror life (Science, 2024) — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... NASA, Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients — https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nas... — Disclaimer: The Cosmographer produces educational entertainment. Factual claims come from published research and official scientific institutions, and any speculation or open question is labeled as such when it appears. This channel is not a news outlet. Watch at your own discretion. #AlienLifeForms #AlternativeBiochemistry