How to Win an Interstellar War
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Could aliens destroy us from light years away? Another day at Kurzgesagt Labs, where we answer the most important questions with science.
Today: how might civilizations wage war across light years? What kind of devastating weapons could they use and what would they look like?
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hello!
War
Not first but not last
Comment: 15 minutes ago Video: 3 minutes ago Wut
War 0:00
Thank you Kurzgesagt, I was planning to wage an interstellar war soon, this will surely be helpful
Bro is goin to do it
ok who we fightin
İm ready
Stellaris moment.
@@barrettm.w7031me of course 😉
I love how instead of deciding to help humanity build the weapon, kurzgesagt instead decided to help the aliens
Yeah what is the name of that very alien you mentioned? Oh yeah Israel
@@aliyawahid2342 cry to your dictator
Atleast we were not the villains
It's because they know creating existential dread gets clicks.
@@aliyawahid2342 cope
"planning a hyper-space bypass through our solar system" I see a Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy reference, and I like it!
my first association as well
+1 !
and the laser takes 42 years to reach earth :D
now how about the Star Wars reference? (you can see Boba Fett's Slave 1 flying off of an asteroid when the first weapon was firing)
that series was too confusing for a Harvard law grad to comprehend
“The bigger it is, the longer its range.” *Didn’t think I would be able to take a kurzgesagt audio bit out of context.*
Naaaah 💀
Imagine waiting 84 years just to hear that your intergalactic weapon hit a random planet that was in the way.
Or your math was slightly wrong and you miss
I can see the book cover: "The Most Consequential 1 in History"@@doriandavies5140
The stars are moving so you need do some serious math to predict where the planet of that star will be 42 years into the future. What if the star decreases it's speed for some reason? Even if it's a minor decrease, 42 years with that reduction and the distance in extremely far from the original one.
@@uafc1 if you can build any one of these weapons im pretty sure you have the capability to do the math
@@uafc1You can’t even calculate exactly where three point masses that are gravitational attracted in an isolated system will be in the future. You need to take it step by step, and the further out you go the more inaccurate. Imperceptible changes in the initial state will lead to a totally different outcome.
Absolutely loving how with the Electron Beam you can _hear_ the narrator carefully counting each '9'
The three body problem is the greatest series of novels I have ever read to do with alien invasion. Read this series and instantly double your perceived imagination of space. It's that mind blowing. I highly recommend it.
Where can I read that Please
@@historicallegends3702 Nowhere. You need to buy the books or e book
@@historicallegends3702Goodreads. Netflix just released season 1 of the show re-created on the original novel.
@@historicallegends3702it's now on Netflix
@@historicallegends3702Netflix made three body problem TV series, the first season is out
If the aliens sent a message like "Surrender within 24 hours or face destruction" we could send a message back "Is that 24 hours in your time or our time?". Considering the distance involved, we could gain millions of years of extra time just by trying to sort that out.
Funny, imagine the aliens just say "....I don't like this species' tongue, activate the electron beam."
uhhh, that dont make sense really, how do they check what our reply to their demand is, whether its a yes or a no, it would still take millions of years, so it cant be 24 hours, or alternatively it sometype of rocket that gets averted or stops when we reply, in which case, assuming it has enough intelligence and human knowledge to send us the threating message, then it would also reply to our question very quickly. wtf am i doing this is probably some 13 year old, i should go back to work
That still makes no sense bc our surrender message would still take millions of years to reach, obviously this time limited threat would imply they were close to us, not millions of light years away
There’s a movie about this
As any Jujutsu Kaisen fan will tell you, "you do NOT want to get cheeky with Sukuna".
So fascinating to learn that humanity is completely defenseless to advanced hostile aliens in at least three different ways!
yep it is just a proof that if there are advanced aliens out there we are nothing but primates to them... in a face on fight we could find opportunitys for strikes... like finding a weakpoint in a system like in independence day where when they shoot their laser they are also vulnerable...
Fortunately there are none
@@user-dt7px5xp6zit takes decades to get from 1 galaxy to another at the speed of light and there’s thousands of galaxies, saying there is none with absolute certainty is idiotic
@@user-dt7px5xp6z how can you be so sure
@@user-dt7px5xp6zthat we know of
Love how you's went full "3 Body Problem" in this video 👌🏽
If you sent a pebble fast enough you’d be able to destroy an entire planet
Presumably, a pebble would burn up in the atmosphere of a planet before destroying it
@@GlidusFlowers A pebble might, but a single grain of sand likely wouldn't.
@@sgtrogers and how do you figure that?
@GlidusFlowers maybe not enough surface area to heat up
@@Connor011 but less surface area means that it would take less energy to break it down
Fun Fact: if there are aliens watching us from around 78 light years away, they're watching WW2, if it's 65 million light years away, they're watching dinosaurs.
RAWR! XD
It would be so insanely creepy if there were a technological species that close to us without us noticing.
Wouldn’t they be watching twice that long ago as the light has to travel back again for them to know about it? They would be watching WW2 if they were 39 light years away, right?
@@VeroTestaAh, hello there, 2007 internet
@@jozuavzWhat?
An interesting follow up video would be how a more advanced humanity might defend against such existential weapons.
Agreed, I was just thinking about that.
i was thinking ...since so many Aliens in Movies are monarchies with either a bug queen or some evil Emperor ....we may defeat them Communism ....ya know ...starting a good old french/Russian revolution and let the system destroy itself
Defenses would need to be pre emotive or in sabotaging the weapon itself. It’s not entirely feasible to intercept things moving at the speed of light as detection is impossible without ftl communications.
Unfortunately, the reality is that you can't defend yourself against attacks like these. There is no warning, and nothing you can do to stop the devastation. The only way to survive such an attack is to spread out in space, onto different planets and moons, in different stellar systems, and on artificial habitats in space. You could build a massive shield around Earth several km thick, but by that point you might as well build giant habitats in space instead. Such a shield would only reduce the damage of the electron beam, and be more of a harm than help if hit by a relativistic missile or giant laser.
@@euler4273 In this case, the best defense is the best offense. We must become Smorpian.
I love that I've grown up to Steve Taylor. He has such a calming, yet captivating voice!
Didn't expect the hitchhikers reference and was pleasantly surprised Edit: 42 years. Heh.
8:44 when you get rejected from art school...
Nein!
@@thoroughlyunoriginalnamescheiɓe
Nein!
Lmaoo
Nahhhh
Ah yes, the thing we truly need. Kurzgesagt helping aliens to obliterate us for the sake of science.
Whilst in reality currently being suffocated by climate and bio collapse, and enduring a war of disinformation and genocide denial 🔻🇵🇸
Doug Demuro's Hips are extremely wide
Or giving humanity pointers on how to purge xeno races.
@@nathanpangilinan4397 nothing new here hahah
It’s official, Kurzgesagt is on the CIA watchlist
Once again the music is amazing, and the recalls to older themes are super satisfying
Love this long form video. I know it probably doesn’t do great with the algorithm but I really appreciate this One and Would love to see more!
8:49, that's my German grandfather after the Berlin wall divide
Lol
Nein
💀
An ''invasion'' or ''war'' probably only works if the two civilizations have roughly the same kind of technology. In all other cases, one will simply take over or destroy the other before they are aware of it.
My thought exactly. The idea of aliens destroying us is potentially possible but not realistic because they would have already done it if they had the weapons for it.
A minimum 42-year travel time almost definitely means the invaders will have outdated technology upon arrival.
Two civilizations could have vastly disparate technology and the less advanced one could still kill the more advanced. They just have to by chance discover the advanced one first (or the more advanced one decides to ignore them) and be just technologically capable enough to build a weapon that takes out the other side in one shot.
@@wasd____ Good suggestion! In fact it reminds me of a series of science fiction novels written by Harry Turtledove. Central point: During WW2 an alien colony/invasion fleet arrives on Earth. By their own expectations, taking over Earth should be easy, an automated probe made pictures of Earth and its inhabitants during the Middle Ages. However the humans have technologically advanced since that time and they have other ideas....
The Dark Forest Theory!
Love these ideas, they are fascinating! The animation is beautiful, super-high quality and I love all the little references as always! Even the “mean” aliens are adorable!
I love how there is a random ash ketchum in a Kurzgesagt vid
8:44 The cute german girl’s reaction to me asking her out
nien means yes.
@@asdfkljlkjdfkg2290it‘s nein Not nien
@@asdfkljlkjdfkg2290he won and he even know
nien mean yes nein means no@@asdfkljlkjdfkg2290
@@asdfkljlkjdfkg2290no, nein is no. Ja is yes
That last one is actually pretty scary and these are just the things we can imagine today. Imagine the kinds of things an advanced civilization can create that we can’t even comprehend today.
Yup! It's like someone from the middle ages imagining a country-sized trebuchet to attack other countries, they would be unable to picture modern rockets and nuclear weapons.
That's where 'The Law of the Jungle' comes in. You don't know if an alien civilization is friendly, and it takes too long to find out. Therefore, the moment you learn about it, you'd better attack first. Otherwise, there will be no time for you to fight back.
@@caesural I dont know. They might have thought of rockets or explosions. Think about it. Lightning existed, and it made things explode, with fire and shit. So im sure some might have though about harnassing lightning or fire in throwable bombs or whatnot
Check out the Three Body Problem series, the concepts are insane
@@manynukes11 Was just thinking the end of the video flirted with the dark forest theory.
Yes, i definetly need this advise.
Thanks for the tutorial man.
"When you attack, your grandchildren will be the ones to find out if you won." That is, unless the species that makes up a particular interstellar civilization happens to have a large lifespan.
Or even more likely, they actually changed their biological makeup into something that is a little more stable then a measly 100 years.
Or,if the species have a super small lifespan,it could be their grandgrandgrandchildren to find it out
@@psielementalor even more likely, they're post-biological. Either as a facsimile continuation of the original species or the AI system that replaced them.
And your great great grandchildren will be the ones who eat the retaliatory strike from that now long-dead system and the automated RKKV launch system your great grandpappy triggered.
@@Lucaaaaaaaaaaaas A species with a super small lifespan would most likely be too focused on reproducing to be able to make any significant advancements.
Lesson 1: don't attack from your home base. Use another star as your attack base. If anyone retaliates, they attack right into your honeypot, revealing themselves. Welcome to interstellar war. Interstellar assassination with rockets: You don't have to go relativistic from your home base. Use light sails at the outskirts of your home star's corona to accelerate to 0.1c and go for a somewhat nearby white dwarf (not too near). Use the flight time to assemble the rockets underway. This should be possible totally unseen and costs just a couple of years more. That's totally unimportant since nobody knows about you anyway. At the white dwarf use an Obert maneuver going relativistic. The direction of attack is changed because of the gravity of the white dwarf (that's one of the reason's for the Obert maneuver, the other is the masking of the drive's radiation), masking the true origin of the attack and since the Obert maneuver is happening very near to the surface of the white dwarf everybody thinks this is a normal astronomical event on the surface of the white dwarf. You don't have a cooling problem because of the vicinity of the white dwarf since you have the technology to cool your rocket from the immense radiation of your drive which should be very much higher than the radiation coming from the white dwarf, so that's not a problem. If necessary you could even fake a real astronomical event using your antimatter. Nothing points to your home base. If anyone figures out anything it should be clear to them that the home base couldn't be have been the white dwarf and they remain silent.
*Rechnerstrom: The Art of Interstellar War*
Write a book fr
Promote this man to Humanity Chancellor
You might be the first person writing about the strategies behind interstellar war and deception. You should add an edition on diplomacy. Perhaps a species might lie about their origin to hide their true location when making initial contact?
When I read comments like this, the Zoo hypothesis seems real. Like damn humans.....chill
After finishing ‘The Dark Forest’ by Cixin Liu, every science video suddenly feels different. I’m seeing the universe in a way I never did before.
Kurzgesagt: "Better stay relatively quiet" Meanwhile NASA: send naked human picture into space
There is a great Polish novel called "The Oldness of the Axolotl". The Earth was suddenly attacked by something similar to weapon number 3. Few thousand of peoples managed to survive by transfering their minds to electronic media (only half of the planet was destroyed in the first second, so some had up to 12 hours to prepare). The story takes place over hundreds of years and presents attempts to rebuild civilization and life while the main character slowly descends into madness.
The Old Axolotl, by Jacek Dukaj - Thrilling story
And the netflix loosely adaptation "Into the Night" Edit: It is another netflix garbage, betrayed everything from the original source.
Aww yis! I love his books, but didn't read this one
@@fansyuriilham8557 I thought the idea sounded familiar! You're right though, Into the Night was.. not great.
There’s also a somewhat similar weapon utilized by what are referred to as “The Others” in _The Bobiverse_ series. Although, I don’t think it uses electrons, just gamma radiation and it’s not as long range.
The book "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman is an allegory for the Vietnam War but set in the distant future. The theme of "future shock" is a big part of the story. Humanity encounters an alien species who are basically in the "Old West" phase of weaponry and wipe the floor with them. A few hundred years later, relativistically only a couple years for the protagonist, the alien race has advanced way beyond humanity's capabilities and humans resort to a trench style warfare where they shelter under an energy shield and fight hand to hand.
Great book!
Okay, have to find myself a copy of this now because I have read quiet a number of comments about it for months or a year now probably.
@@johnlucas6683 There are two "sequels", Forever Free and Forever Peace.
Great book indeed
Awesome book! I was thinking of it during this too. How each time the protagonist re-enter the fight society goes through all these changes because it's decades from one fight to the next
The best is the star laser because it’s the easiest to build if they already have a Dyson sphere. But it’s the one that most tell everyone around the galaxy there location.
Thanks for the advice, I was planning to fight an intergalactic war over the weekend with the kids, this'll be helpful.
Kurzgesagt is the channel that just answers questions no one asks, but still enjoy getting the answer to
They are billionaire funded and compromised. Ideologically they serve billionaire interests at the peril of our own planet, just like billionaires themselves
You are telling me you never wanted to know how to wage an interstellar war ?
@@achourfreepalestineBlasphemy!
For anyone interested, the bookseries of "Trisolaris" briefly, and "The Forever War" more intensely deal with the concepts of interstellar warfare.
You mean "remembrance of Earth's past?"
@@gomshom67iscool23 You're right! Trisolaris seems to be the name for it where I'm from, but not the actual name of the series.
Charles Pellegrino's "The Killing Star" is also worth a read. Several of the ideas in the Remembrance of Earth's Past series came from that novel.
Alternatively, the Dune series... if you want the really weird, perverted answer. The answer is not in "the Spice." It's in the theoretical "Golden Path" which is essentially "spread far across the universe, mutate, evolve, and get so weird that even humanity as it exists can't predict what you might do."
I want to do a skibid toilet episode
0:58 lovely little nod to hitchhiker’s guide 😂
Love the animations and the vids!
It is crazy to think that the Death Star, which to all of us seemed like the most insane weapon even for a universe with Light Speed travel, is actually the most reallistic weapon for an interstellar war.
John 1:5 NKJV - And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
@@YeshuaLovesYou.bruh 💀
@@menacingrock750 2 Corinthians 5:13-19 NLT - If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.
@@YeshuaLovesYou.take your meds
We'll a more complex version but I get what you mean like these things have to be the size of 7 earth's
The interesting part is, that the moment you fire your flashy weapon, everyone who sees you doesn’t only know exactly where you are, but that you’re capable and willing to destroy them. So it’s likely that you might never find out if your weapon has hit, because you get destroyed by the people who witnessed you firing it…
Thats actually not true for the relativistic missile! If you shoot it out into interstellar space first many lightyears from the starting system and only then launch it at full speed towards the target nobody will be able to know for sure where it originally came from.
Already happened, i shot an Antimatter Missile at earth 127 years ago from a 183 light years of distance, then another civilization destroyed my planet, and made me reincarnate on earth so I will get destroyed by my own weapon
@@barnabasigari3109 they can by tracking its trajectory
@@barnabasigari3109I’m sure the calculations could be made to track its trajectory, especially considering that the method you listed would be the logical precaution and so would be accounted for, though it would take a while
@@user-ud6ru4gu4e You can't track where it came from as long as multiple different small burns are used before igniting the antimatter drive, because it is possible to get to the same location in space from different starting points
字幕つけてくれた人ありがとー！天才すぎる
on the ultrarelativistic electron beam, kinda hard to picture electrons that energetic not lighting things up when hitting molecules in the atmosphere, and on the surface of the earth Their braking acceleration alone (when hitting stuff) should radiate, even when not exciting chemical bonds, or even atomic nuclei
Yes it would probably punch through atoms and ionize the entire atmosphere turning it into plasma.
I'm not so sure about that, basically for the same reason as sheltering in a bunker wouldn't help: at ultra-relativistic speeds, the probability of an interaction within a given volume becomes low. The accelerated electrons are likely to just pass straight through matter, and would need to get much closer to other particles than normal to interact in any meaningful way. Braking radiation is most likely to be gamma rays and x-rays, which will probably do most of the damage, and that passes straight through air too.
This is an amazing idea for a story in a movie/video game, where an alien species fires a weapon that takes so long that the ones who originally fired it are gone. And when humanity reaches the culprits, it's just someone else, completely innocent species, who doesn't even know what there predecessors did, and then it's the question of "is revenge even possible or relevant anymore"
Very interesting point
Three Body Problem
That's just the "Fear of the Dark" origin in Stellaris.
@@hedgehog3180 that is I think based on the Sci fi trilogy Three body problem which brings the dark forest and intergalactic warfare to its most disturbing and hauntingly plausible conclusion
@@anguspangusapparently movies and videogames are the only way to tell stories anymore 😢
I always liked Bob's solution of slamming a gas giant into the enemy star at relativistic speed to make it go supernova
We really need more of those books. I can't wait for the next one.
Wasn't it 2 planetoids, one at each pole? I don't think bill got the mover plates efficient enough to move a gas giant. Especially not before they got the Casimir tech from the Other's wreck.
Bobiverse was the best Scifi book series I have ever read!!!
Could also just use a tiny amount of mass with even higher relativistic momentum to gravitationally destabilize the star and force a catastrophic outburst of solar material. That's what Mass Dots/Photoids from the Remembrance of Earth's Past (a.k.a. the Three Body Problem) trilogy do, and I suspect getting a tiny amount of mass up to that speed would probably be much easier than moving a planet-sized object around intact.
@@BooPuLoo Not planetoids but planets/moons. It were Eta Eridani 1 and one moon of the gas giant EE3
Coming back to this for some research on how to best the automatons in helldivers, thanks Kurzgesagt!
3:44 literal Death Star laser. Oh and the actual Star Wars reference inserted there is clever, and funny
With how big the universe is, the aliens would really need to go out of their way to do something like this.
In a universe of millions of intergalactic civilizations it only takes a small fraction of them to be genocidal to be kind of a problem, so I guess it depends on how many are out there.
That is kind of the point of the video, actually. I mean, imagine the entire electrical grid of the US being used for 24 hours to power a laser aimed at Russia, with 24 hours of planned blackouts across the country to power it. It's only one day of disruption, but it's one day of a LOT of disruption. Now multiply that by a million. And also, in order to USE that energy, you have to build something practically the size of jupiter. Yeah, they're going out of their way to do it. Fair estimate. Considering how much wild excess the US currently puts into its military spending, though... Is it really that unbelievable to imagine a larger civilization using a proportionately similar amount of resources?
@@SubtleHawkNot really. If the universe was made up of millions of civilizations and only a fraction of them were genocidal then the hundred or so non genocidal ones nearby to singular genocidal one would likely keep them in check some how. Unless the genocidal one was leagues ahead in technology but if that was the case then none of the others would be around them. If they were genocidal they likely wouldn't even bother to invade. Just one day earth would be hit by a relativistic weapon and it would be over for us. They wouldn't even have to know we were here. They could have just detected signs of life from when the dinosaurs were around and launched their weapons millions of years ago. Course if it was relativistic it would likely have been reached sooner but that still means they could detect and kill earth at any point in the distant past. The fact that earth is still around is a good sign that there are no genocidal aliens anywhere remotely close by.
The universe could actually be really small to something we don't know about. Things like physics and distance could also be completely arbitrary values that can change on a whim. We might wake up one day and find that interstellar travel is suddenly easy and never know why things changed.
I mean we pave through forest to build highways when we could go around
There is something truly terrifying about the realistic possibility of getting instantly annihilated by an annoyed something we wouldn’t even know exists.
At least the pain will be over in an instant
Enter: humans, toward every "pest" on Earth.
@@imsorryyourewelcome yes, cause we are superior
@@ege8240that technically means that the aliens would be in right if they existed because technically they would be superior technology
Really? I find the possibility of getting a tax audit much more terrifying
Kurzgesagt is the kind channel to say something is not possible just to prove themselves wrong
love your vids
I just love the moment at 07:00 when you see the old general from the nuclear war video and the scientists explaining the president what's happening with a toy rocket. This lasts about 2 seconds but it definitely made my day !
ok
ok
Turns out it wasn't a nuclear attack after all.
Yeah! It's real cool :D!
It's minute 7:10, not 7:00
10:30 - "The Smorpians don't really exist." That sounds like something a Smorpian would want us to believe!
Thanks for the stellaris guide
So many reference in one video: Pokémon, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, Star Trek. And that's only 3 ways, for sure there's more way they can use with that kind of technology achievement
8:56 first time heard Steve tired
Is that his real name?
@@nattananchunbunluesook8474yes the narrators name is Steve Taylor
@@aforkinsoupi want to see a face reveal of Steve Taylor please???
@@Osvaldinhogaucho-ds2lv if you look on the fandom page for kurzgesagt there’s a page dedicated to him with his face in a picture.
@@Osvaldinhogaucho-ds2lvwhy are you asking them?
This would honestly be such a great idea for a show
Wow
👍
three body problem
A great show would be one where the aliens realize that there are an infinite number of planets and resources so no need for intergalactic war
@@jelybrd That just leads to "how do we exploit the people to get the biggest share of an infinite resource?" Just because something is infinite doesn't mean it won't be commodified and people will (as always) be exploited to bring that commodity to market.
Hey Kurgesagt, it is very kind of you a lot to help me
thank you tutorial was good and worked👍
I just love how these guys never fail to strike fear into the validity of our existence every upload 💀💀 Keep up the good work guys 😂😂
Fear is an unvaluable assets to rule over the masses.
@@BresciGaetano It keeps humanity alive , being wary of its surroundings
Just remember, every weapon of existential dread in this video was dreamed up in a human brain. We're all just sitting around dreaming about how we might someday kill the alien life we havent even met yet. We are the existential threat. HFY.
At least they always manage to entertain us, so...yeah, let them continue
True but this just means that peace with alien life is a pipe dream. Better to genocide first and just take the whole universe(or as much as we can) for humanity ask questions later.
You guys should do a video on interplanetary warfare; like if there turned out to be an underground civilization on Mars all along, or if a fleet of Venusians emerged from the clouds. The distances are still vast, sure, but not as vast as interstellar space, so there'd be room for more "standard" weapons (kinetic strikes, EMPs, invasion fleets, etc.).
Bump for the algorithm
Read The Expanse series if you haven't! It's mostly what you describe!. Also Red Rising, but it's more soft sci fi for sure.
We've sent vehicles to Mars, I imagine just modifying them to dispense nukes would be effective enough. And simple!
Or more likely, if, in 500 years, the human population on Mars goes to war with humanity on Earth.
Red Facation frfr
1:00 Nice Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy reference.
The electron beam is such a scary concept, just everyone and everything alive suddenly dying. Perfect for the aliens as well as it preserves the planet for the most part
Yeah, the planet suddenly getting 'microwaved' but remaining intact, but literally everything alive gets super-cancer (or partially liquifies) and dies is a frightening thought.
The 'Three body problem' trilogy is a great book series on this and tackles the time problem of Interstellar war really well
Dunkler Wald!
most horrifying piece of fiction I've ever read
It is a great trilogy for sure!
@@higztv1166can confirm. I've never read a book that I had to put down to contemplate my existence for a few days. The amount of dread chixin liu can create with just words is seriously underrated
@@higztv1166why? What's it about?
I've always thought that there's nothing to fear about hostile more advanced aliens. If they strike we won't even see them coming
Good
There's also no reason to be quiet like kurzgesagt keeps suggesting. Any being advanced enough to harm us from dozens of lightyears away is already aware that we exist and has been for a while. We are already almost able to see the atmospheric composition of exoplanets so imagine what such an advanced civilization could tell when turning their telescopes on us.
@@illudianyep, so even less reason to be afraid
@@illudianactually not really, our influence is so weak that our activity isn’t noticeable
@@Randomguy-nr6qrthey could see our atmosphere, analyze its chemicals and infer our presence
Thank you so much for the ideas of these weapons! My brother didn’t stand a chance.
What they talk about at the end is also known as the Dark Forest Hypothesis. Quinn on KZhead talks about the novels by Liu Cixin that deal with this, and it is bleak and very interesting.
I was losing this interstellar war against the empire but because of this video we did what the rebels couldn't.
death star
Funny how all top comments are bots Are we just that stupid, or are the bots farming the likes to the top? I miss old youtube where top comments always had a bunch of comments smh and it wasn't a popularity contest. People just say what garners likes, and the fact that people that watch this channel think we will ever be an intergalactic species is hilarious 😂
@@joebowl8315 the comment is eerily human, it's a silly joke, ai has gone far, hasn't it.
Hi
Spambot
I’m actually a Smorpian sympathizer/spy and you guys just gave us all the intel we need. Thanks, Kurzgesagt! Long live Smorpia! 🖖👽🖖
I'd smorp that❤
🖖
Intruder alert! Smorpian spy in the base!
Do y’all have free healthcare
All hail the Smorpian Queen
this reality will face my wrath in my adventure of conquest in this never ending void of despair, regret, and sadness to achieve intergalactic control. Thank you, Kurzgesagt
One of my favorite soundtracks
10:35 In addition to revealing their location, actively aggressive civilizations also *prove* to everyone else that they are an existential threat.
Fun fact: The background's audio of Kurzgesat's videos can tell you the whole story by itself! So much quality!
Yeah it is a remix of one of their older tracks
Yep it's the remix of the audio from the Dyson sphere video, really awesome track!
The space/interstellar war scenes in The Bobiverse are great examples of the difference of strategy between conventional Earth conflicts and space ones. Recommend the books!
Great Video,as always!
For those you didn't catch it: The hyperspeed bypass is a Hitchhiker's Guide through the galaxy reference
Also Alf, Boba Fett, and at least one other I'm blanking on right now.
I was wondering if anyone else noticed...
@@darrennew8211buzz lightyear?
I would give my like but you have 42
I noticed that too.
The math on the star laser and electron beam would have to be insanely accurate, because you need to shoot it exactly where the Earth will be in the galaxy when it arrives, not to mention however the laser will bend if it goes near any intense spacetime curvature like black holes and neutron stars. Even the smallest bit off course, especially in the the first half of its trip, and it’ll totally miss us by the time it arrives. I’m not sure it’s actually feasible, even for an advanced civilization. The relativistic rocket, which could constantly be recalculating and making extremely slight adjustments, would probably be the only way to have a chance at hitting the target.
exactly! i immediately thought of how it would be impossible to pull-off that laser thingy
Also, missing with a weapon like that broadcasts your position to anything and everything capable of detecting planet-killer weapons. And none of these are weapons that get you left alone.
As he said at the end; that if we see interstellar warfare we better stay out of it. This is most likely the scenario for other alien species too so it's probably a very slim chance others would intervene or try to be on the safe side by attacking the attacker, they themselves could in turn become a target aswell.
It gets even better for relativistic kinetic kill missiles: even if you were able to detect them before they hit and destroyed them before they reach your planet...you'll have potentially thousands, if not millions of near-light speed debris pummelling you in a shotgun blast pattern.
@@nil981If their technology is operating within so called interstellar space, I assure you that they would most definitely have a force repulsion capability
Thanks for the tutorial.
Kurgesagt never disappoints to amaze me!
1:06 "planning a hyperspace bypass through our solar system." ...and 42....... *appreciative nod* Love the H2G2 reference!! ; )
i get 42 which was the answer of all questions kinda joke from a book but what is h2g2?
@@berdigylychrejepbayev7503Perhaps a misspelling of “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?”
@@RebelsSpiteyeah, yes it is. Though itd make more sense to say HGttG
I love that reference
If they can build a hyperspace bypass, why not just send the weapon through hyperspace? Like Rodney McKay said in SGA when encountering an ancient warship travelling between the voids of our galaxies traveling at .999 the speed of light: While an incredible feat of technology, it's not very useful.
One thing not mentioned (but possibly implied) is that you cannot aim directly at the planet. All heavenly bodies are zooming through space, not stationary. Instead you would have to calculate the target's location at the expected time of impact and aim for that. It's extremely unlikely, but you would also have to ensure no planets/stars move into the path of the weapon before impact.
You only have to account for relative moment of the target planet in it's orbit. Since both solar systems are essentially neighbours in the same galaxy, all other motion (aka, rotation of the galaxy, traversal of the galaxy through space, etc) would be identical, and therefore not affect the projectiles trajectory (even if it's a beam without physical matter). Though now that makes me wonder whether that 'mutual lateral movement' might end up messing with the estimated % of lightspeed... because for every x km/s you are travelling sideways in parallel to your target, you have y km/s less maximum velocity towards your target, since the vector of your total movement cannot exceed c. Or can it, because you're still travelling at
its true that its hard to aim but you have literally "infinite ammo" and can shoot over a large area for a long time and rotate your laser on a grand-sacle. Maybe 1 Month of moving the mirrors arround. You will definetly make a hit.
@@Alblaka The mutual lateral movement does not mess with the speed, it's to be completely out of the equation, the only thing that matters is the relative velocity between the two bodies, if both are travelling at the same speed through space, that's not an issue Keep in mind that the speed of light is a measure in which the units are meters per seconds, which is space divided by time, both of which are relative to our frame of reference already, so while the light will always appear to be going away or towards you at the same rate in any frame of reference, distance and time are relative to the motion between the two observers
this is true, but a much easier option is to fire a weapon at the star instead. For example, a missile going at the speed of light striking into the Sun would likely cause a devastating solar flare or radiation emission that could destroy Earth. It is much easier to detect the location and movement of a star
Or you just calibrate the weapon to be drawn to the gravitational pull of the planet as a “compass”
42 light years away? They must be hitchhikers...
I want more like this please 🙌
The quallity of the animation has increased a lot! I love this! And the way Kurzgesagt explain things to us!
it's a team of professionals
@@aufoslab My point still stands!
You couldn’t have made me any happier than when you said “planning a hyperspace bypass through our solar system.”
But they could've mentioned the outcome of another interstellar conflict from _A hitchhikers guide to the galaxy,_ due to a miscalculation of scale the entire invading space fleet was inadvertently swallowed by a small dog.
@@jmw1500 It's almost as if you didn't understand the reference but felt left out so you just had to comment something.
42!
@@jess53nz Well done, google is your friend.
And 42 light years
I love these videos! If I had more than one lifetime available to me, I'd definitely study and work to build and trial something like these! So great! Pick a planet, point and shoot! :)
Thanks! You guys should make a kurzgesagt board game!
Liu Cixin has a great book/audiobook series about this, I highly reccomendations it. Spoilers: a major theme of the books is the "dark forest" concept, where all you have to do is broadcast the coordinates of a star out into space, and it will be destroyed. This is because his solution to the fermi paradox: as soon as life in the universe reveals itself, the most powerful and reclusive aliens will destroy it as soon as possible in order to survive. Since there is always going to be a social and technological barrier between any 2 alien worlds, the only way a species can thrive is to eliminate any other form of life before it surpasses them in technology. Perfectly transparent communication of intention is always impossible, so each species must assume the worst and take steps to eradicate each other. Like another comment said, the ultimate moral is that each party must take a leap of faith (against all logic and reason) to trust each other. Otherwise the universe continues to be an endless arms race untill its complete and total collapse.
So it's like interstellar "SWATting".
yeah, read that too. very possible and terrifying
Thank goodness we aren't a very logical or reasonable species, then!
Kurzgezagt already did a video on The Dark Forest concept.
Its always nice to see another fan of the third body problem series ❤
The funky thing about interstellar warfare is that if you want to eradicate all life and plan to send troops, you have to accelerate and then decelerate large vessels to near relativistic speeds Not sending any troops means you can send a way smaller object and there is no need to decelerate at all.
To be fair, the same holds true on earth as well. A missile attack is certainly landing faster in location X than any type of troop transporter. Granted regular communication is much easier here on earth, aka the conflict might be avoided.
@@peterpan4038the similarities break when you consider that troop transport is not using rocket engines
Nobody is going to bother bringing troops over to invade. There is nothing precious enough on larger planetary bodies, you won't find easier accessible in asteroids or moons.
Not to mention how troops have to be kept alive and stuff meaning the stuff you send has to be bigger, air tight, have radiation shielding, etc.
What if you are just a really advanced civilization that can traverse space-time with the ability to accurately model evolution over a couple million years and you send a biological weapon in the form of a single cell filled asteroid to destroy the native life and spawn a creature that invades and spreads across the entire planet while destroying the habitat and atmosphere with poisonous gas and radiation?
Please make a series of videos on Electreogen and Electreofusionplexia weapons
Brilliant! Now onto building an actual Club for us to hang out at! If Aliens showed up tomorrow, where would they go?
This video accurately describes one of the reasons why the Dark Forest theory is extremely unlikely to be correct. If any one galactic civilization attacks another with a superweapon such as this, they will pretty rapidly get dogpiled by all the others. It is in everyone's best interest to play relatively nice with others.
Unless they do it to everyone else first; nobody would know, all adversaries would be extinct as soon as they are identified,before they can react and before they can issue any warning to anyone else (and, even then, these others would have been targeted already anyways). In theory, an extremely aggressive belligerent alien civilization could be sterilising any planet with anything living or intelligent enough as soon as they detect them... And by the time anyone else is aware they'd be gone or targetted beyond reaction time already
Only for that to happen they will have to be aware of each other, they will have to be culturally the same to feel any type of remorse to another civilization perishing, both are unlikely
It's like trying to shoot a deer in the forest and getting surrounded on all sides by the military
The Dark Forest has a fuckton of issues, this is one. Another is that a civilization xenophobic enough to decide to kill an entire other planet will very likely be xenophobic enough to destroy itself. You find this in all forms of phobic governments and civilizations, they never stop finding ways to otherize people who look more and more like themselves.
@@ChristianDorettiremorse is irrelevant. It's game theory. Because these weapons have a huge lag between launch and impact, they are the ultimate mutually assured destruction - a response salvo is basically guaranteed, maybe not from the victim, but others. Its likely either a sort of Galactic Geneva Convention would form, or galactic doomsday would wipe everyone out.
This video reminds me of Cixin Liu's Three-Body Problem series. Especially at the end, where the phenomenon of launching an attack at another civilization reveals your location. This basically escalates into the situation called the 'Dark Forest', where civilizations are keeping their positions unknown, and launch species-ending attacks from remote locations at those that do due to the inability to communicate and ascertain whether they are friendly over the light-year distances. Humanity has been sending out messages to the stars for a while now.
kurzgezagt actually made a video on that exact phenomenon they actually referenced the video here
May you please stop trying projecting fiction onto reality? Do you even took note that TBP eventually written off the DF (I.E: When Bluespace got into First Contact with a "intelligent higher a dimensional fragment"), and not to mention the "Zeroers" alongside the irony that two dimensional foil contributed to DF's collapse? Oh, and Mr Liu actually don't really agreed on his DF setting's scientific probability, and not to mention his TBP Mirror Universe Shrot Story "Ode to Joy"? Gosh, almost every single TBP fans I see are a bunch of snobs...
Not even humanity, lmao. The bacterium has changed our atmosphere to have non-natural compositions 4 billion years ago. Anyone with good enough(JWST class) telescope and basic spectral analysis knowledge would've figured out about Earth a long long time ago. Dark forest isn't real.
For that reason I do not understand why doing so much effort. A golf ball with relativistic speed to the sun seems to be sufficient due to the kinetic energy
Dude, I'm at the 2nd book's beginning, I need to keep reading! :)
Saying the percentage of speed of light with that precision must've been an inside joke to Kurzgesagt, "Don't come close to Earth! Don't come close to Earth!".
Thanks Kurzgesagt, this will help me in the game spore
First a 1 hour video, then another 12 minute video, you guys are on fire, greetings from Pakistan as a fellow animator, I know how difficult it is to make animations, combined with great excecution of script and concept, you guys excel at both, Keep it up
I'm not an animator, but greetings from India~!
I'm looking forward to their one on AI. They said they were working on it back during the initial hype of GPT-4.
greetings brother@@Ray-eo4fm
Why Doug Dejewro's Hips are so wide?
imma go make one rn
I’m impressed by how much your animation skills have improved specially the 3D effect and I love how realistic in an idealistic way you guys are thank you for posting! I love this channel and I always have
ok
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I love Kurtzgesagt, I came for some cool info and cute animations, stayed for the existential crisis.
An interesting idea from the Bobiverse series of books: If you shoot a nuclear missile at relativistic speeds, after detonation the resulting EM waves get red-shifted into even more damaging gamma radiation. It still doesn't have a planetary area of effect (for that you'd need to scale up to more warheads), but it allows a single warhead to be directional and much more fatal to all life. The advantage here is that you only need to accelerate a relatively small payload, so you don't need a skyscraper-sized missile.
The waves would not be shifted, they are the result of the collision and are not created within the dillated time of the travelling object. But if you sent an emitting body, then yes that could happen and would multiply the energy of the emitted particles
@@LeAdri1du40 There would be no collision. The missile detonates before reaching its target.
Maybe I missed something but in the video we also have small payload, just 300kg. Rest is huge fuel tank so our missile get enough speed
@@damianwaluszko7607 The relativistic missile is a purely physical weapon, simply having an insane momentum due to its ridiculous speed and thus a devastating impact. This idea is more like the ultra-relativistic electron beam in that the "killer" is high-energy particles that break down DNA.
You mean blue-shifted?