The Doomsday Argument

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/spacetime Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ Since the dawn of humanity around 100 billion people have lived. How many will live in the future of our species? We might hope for a trillion times that if we colonize the galaxy. But a simple statistical argument tells us that the doom of our species is much, much closer. Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer & Adriano Leal Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRl6-nb4iOnsij-vnpAjp0Q In some recent episodes we’ve explored the anthropic principle and seen how it can be used to explain the fact that both our planet and our universe seem very finely tuned to allow the development of life. Our planet and/or universe can be rare and unlikely as long as there are enough other planets and/or universes to stack the odds in favour of our existence. We touched on both the potential power and potential misuse of this principle. Today we’re going to push our luck, and see how this controversial idea can be used to predict the physics of our universe, and also to predict the imminent demise of the human race. Special Thanks to Our Patreon Sponsors BIg Bang Andrew & Brenna Alexander Tamas Craig Stonaha David Barnholdt David Nicklas Fabrice Eap John S Juan Benet Morgan Hough Quasar Mark Heising Vinnie Falco Hypernova chuck zegar Danton Spivey Donal Botkin Edmund Fokschaner Hank S John Hofmann John Pollock John R. Slavik Jordan Young Joseph Salomone Julian Tyacke Justin Ash Mathew Matthew O'Connor Syed Ansar Gamma Ray Burst A G Adrian Hatch Adrien Molyneux AlecZero Andreas Nautsch Angela Prigge Bradley Jenkins Brandon labonte Dan Warren Daniel Lyons David Bethala DFaulk Eric Kiebler Frederic Simon Geoffrey Short Graydon Goss Greg Smith James Flowers Jamie Frederick John Funai John Griffith John Robinson Jonathan Nesfeder Joseph Dillman Josh Thomas Kevin Lee Kevin Warne Kyle Hofer Malte Ubl Michael Conroy Nick Virtue Nick Wright Paul Rose Robert Ilardi Scott Gossett Sean Warniaha Sipke Schoorstra Steve Bradshaw Tatiana Vorovchenko Tim Stephani Tonyface Yurii Konovaliuk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices