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00:00The search for alien life really has revved up in recent times.
00:04Thanks to high-profile whistleblowers, UAP hearings, leaked videos,
00:09and thanks to massive strides taken in astronomical research,
00:13what was once a fringe and controversial topic has truly been thrust into the mainstream.
00:19But still, the fact remains that we remain alone.
00:23Extraterrestrials are statistically likely, but they're nowhere to be found.
00:28As a result, there's now a growing number of theories to suggest
00:32that the reason humankind hasn't discovered aliens yet
00:35is because it might be physically impossible for us to do so.
00:40The truth could be that aliens are all around usā¦
00:44it's just that we can't, and may never, see them.
00:52The problem with identifying aliens is that we only have one example of life to base our observations on.
00:57Every living creature that we know is carbon-based and lives on Earth,
01:01adapted to survive under this particular planet's conditions.
01:04But, in all likelihood, if true aliens exist,
01:07then they won't follow the science-fiction stereotype we're typically shownā¦
01:10often tall, usually green, and also humanoid creatures.
01:14What's more probable is that they'll look nothing like us,
01:17so much so that we could potentially fail to recognize them as living beings were we to meet them.
01:21Perhaps their bodies would have a totally different composition,
01:24something non-carbon-based, or maybe they wouldn't even have bodies in the first placeā¦
01:29at least, not as we understand them.
01:31Historically speaking, we've already had enough trouble trying to define the earthly life that we can at least comprehend.
01:36Aristotle said that life constituted beings that consume nutrients and reproduce.
01:41But contemporary scientists and philosophers now appreciate single-celled, asexual organisms as wellā¦
01:47which are, in fact, far more abundant than the more complex lifeforms like us, animals and insects.
01:52Should we ever encounter extraterrestrial beings, then,
01:55our definition of what life is would need to dramatically change once again.
01:59And yet, depending on who you ask, aliens seem to be close by.
02:03In the 1950s and 60s, Project Blue Book saw the US government keep record of more than 12,000 UFO sightings,
02:10with a reported 701 of those remaining unexplained.
02:14And while the mid-20th century was a particularly busy period for UFO sightings,
02:19the idea, or fear, that aliens may have already landed on Earth has remained.
02:23Say just one of those sightings, or any reported since, has truth to itā¦
02:27then what happened next?
02:29Space is big.
02:30Far too big, you'd think, for an extraterrestrial to successfully journey all the way to Earth,
02:34only to make a couple of crop circles, or whatever else it is that theorists say they do, and go home.
02:40So, if aliens were to be visiting us frequently, or if they were to have never left,
02:44then they'd have to have evaded detection for decades by now.
02:47But, how?
02:48If aliens are hiding in plain sight, then we can see them without really seeing them.
02:53In what could be a perfect strategy, they'd blend in just enough so that we unknowingly look right past them.
02:58And while this is a purely hypothetical prospect, some scientists have suggested that it could be possibleā¦
03:04pointing towards one of the most mysterious phenomena we know of,
03:07but this time as a potential habitat for alien lifeā¦ dark matter.
03:11Dark matter contains most of the mass in the universe,
03:14as all of the visible matter that we see only accounts for around 4% of the total that there is.
03:19Because of this, there's a somewhat controversial theory that dark matter could actually be, or include, a form of alien lifeā¦
03:26so strange that we can't appreciate or even notice it.
03:29Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall builds on the idea, too,
03:33proposing that dark matter might be composed of particles that spawn life, but also stars and planetsā¦
03:38all beyond our perception.
03:40To go further still, and to add in the similarly hypothetical multiverse theory,
03:44perhaps dark matter is what another intelligent life besides our own ascended to by unlocking other dimensions.
03:50After all, with roles reversed, everything we've ever known, our observable matter, would only make up 4% of their reality.
03:57We'd be a scattered curiosity to them, but they'd be an ever-present higher power to us.
04:02Perhaps the idea of other dimensions existing is the key, though.
04:06While humans can really only perceive three or four dimensions, length, width and depth, and maybe time,
04:12there are various ideas on how many more there could be, with as many as 26 according to Bosonic String Theory.
04:19Standard String Theory scales it down to an only slightly more manageable ten.
04:23However, at least six of which are beyond our reach.
04:26But, perhaps they're not beyond the reach of mysterious other beings.
04:30Carl Sagan explained this idea via the writer Edwin Abbott Abbott's creation, Flatland,
04:35a hypothetical world where all living things exist in only two dimensions.
04:39They see forward and back, left and right, but not up and down.
04:43If a three-dimensional being like us were to step into Flatland and speak,
04:47the creatures there would hear our voice as though coming from inside their own bodies.
04:51It's a fun thought experiment, but if other dimensions did exist and aliens did inhabit them,
04:56then they, too, would be completely unknowable to us.
04:59In this way, there could be aliens right in front of our facesā¦
05:02but we'd really never receive even a hint that they were there because we could never understand their dimensional make-up.
05:07On a smaller, slightly less mind-bending scale,
05:10we already know that human perception is both limited and prone to being deceived.
05:14Human beings see only a very small percentage of the total electromagnetic spectrum,
05:19leaving everything else from gamma rays to radio waves imperceptible to us.
05:23True, in some cases we've developed machines to detect what we otherwise couldn't,
05:27but if aliens were to somehow exist in any of the bands beyond the comprehension of the human eyeball,
05:31then they would be invisible to us,
05:33appearing only as perhaps a mysterious anomaly on a computer screen somewhere.
05:37What's an even weirder prospect, though,
05:39is the idea that aliens might also see reality via a different part of the spectrum,
05:43in which case they also wouldn't be aware of us.
05:46But, wait, maybe it doesn't need to be quite so weird.
05:49Forget that potential aliens could have access to different dimensions
05:53or lurk across unseen regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
05:56Perhaps, instead, they're actually masquerading as something everyone on Earth could recognize,
06:00the octopus.
06:02It's a creature that's long been used for sci-fi comparisons
06:05thanks to its unusual appearance and some extraordinary skills,
06:08like the ability to shapeshift and camouflage itself.
06:11But one of the strangest aspects of the octopus, and what's left many a scientist stumped,
06:15is that its unique mix of traits have seemingly come from nowhere.
06:19A 2018 paper, worked on by 33 scientists from around the world,
06:23notes that the octopus's large brain, camera-like eyes and flexible body
06:27appear very suddenly on the evolutionary tree of life,
06:30and, allegedly, without precedent.
06:32That is, there's no agreed-upon line of evolution for them.
06:35Octopuses appear so foreign to Earth, in fact,
06:38that the paper even suggests that they could've originally arrived here as alien life.
06:42So, the theory goes, octopuses could be the product of panspermia,
06:46with the building blocks for their existence brought to Earth on an asteroid or something else from space.
06:51When you consider that a staggering majority of the Earth's oceans are actually unexplored by humans as well,
06:56could more secrets to extraterrestrial life already be with us, just hidden deep in the ocean?
07:01It's arguably one of the most far-fetched alien theories out there,
07:04and easily one of the most controversial in the scientific community,
07:07but the uniqueness of the octopus is beyond doubt.
07:10If nothing else, the possibilities show that when searching for evidence of extraterrestrials,
07:14we need to be willing to stretch even what we believe is physically possible.
07:18From odd but recognisable creatures to totally unreachable other realms,
07:22if we only look out for what we know, then we could end up missing out on a lot.
07:26The universe holds plenty of unanswered questions,
07:29the solutions to which could open our eyes to alien life.
07:32Or, maybe it really is just us alone in the cosmos,
07:35hoping and expecting that some other lifeform will reveal itself when, really, it'll never come.
07:40Until we have conclusive proof one way or the other, it's a debate that'll keep on running.
07:44But that's why aliens could be hiding in plain sight.
07:48What do you think? Is there anything we missed?
07:50Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled,
07:53and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.