YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=F0lpN6dU5qs
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View count:488,149
Likes:20,117
Comments:5,298
Duration:03:53
Uploaded:2011-08-30
Last sync:2024-02-28 01:00

Citation

Citation formatting is not guaranteed to be accurate.
MLA Full: "A Letter to the Aliens." YouTube, uploaded by vlogbrothers, 30 August 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0lpN6dU5qs.
MLA Inline: (vlogbrothers, 2011)
APA Full: vlogbrothers. (2011, August 30). A Letter to the Aliens [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=F0lpN6dU5qs
APA Inline: (vlogbrothers, 2011)
Chicago Full: vlogbrothers, "A Letter to the Aliens.", August 30, 2011, YouTube, 03:53,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=F0lpN6dU5qs.
In which Hank puts together some thoughts for the intelligent life forms that almost certainly isn't listening. But if you know any aliens, please do forward this video to them.


HERE ARE A LOT OF LINKS TO NERDFIGHTASTIC THINGS:

Shirts and Stuff: http://dftba.com/artist/30/Vlogbrothers
Hank's Music: http://dftba.com/artist/15/Hank-Green
John's Books: http://amzn.to/j3LYqo

======================

Hank's Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hankgreen
Hank's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hankimon
Hank's tumblr: http://edwardspoonhands.tumblr.com

John's Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/realjohngreen
John's Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/johngreenfans
John's tumblr: http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com

======================

Other Channels
Crash Course: http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse
SciShow: http://www.youtube.com/scishow
Gaming: http://www.youtube.com/hankgames
VidCon: http://www.youtube.com/vidcon
Hank's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/hankschannel
Truth or Fail: http://www.youtube.com/truthorfail

======================

Nerdfighteria
http://effyeahnerdfighters.com/
http://effyeahnerdfighters.com/nftumblrs
http://reddit.com/r/nerdfighters
http://nerdfighteria.info/

A Bunny
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Good morning, John. I hope you don't mind this video today is not for you, it is for the aliens. Good morning, aliens. I'm sure that your alien life and all of your alien business has you very busy so I wanted to give you a really quick sort of primer on our species, so that to just to maybe save you some research time. While standing our height is roughly (3.77)*10^10*the average radius of a hydrogen atom. Assuming that hydrogen atoms are the same size where you are as they are for us. Which we think they probably should be. We move around on two lower appendages called legs. We have two upper appendages called arms. And each of those arms has five appendages on them that we use to manipulate objects. Our final appendage on the top of our body contains the majority of our sensing organs. We can detect chemicals in the air call smell. We can detect chemicals by direct contact which we call taste. We can take in and perceive a certain rage of wavelengths of light. And we can sense vibrations carried through the air. Sound, or vibrations carried through the air, is the most important way that humans communicate. We also communicate by transferring the sounds we make into symbols which we can perceive visually and understand. Our auditory forms of communication are called languages. Unfortunately many are spoken and if two people speak two different languages, those two people will find it very difficult to communicate. We get the energy necessary for continuing our life by consuming other organisms. Some of those organisms get their energy directly from our star (those are called plants), while other organisms that we consume are more like us. Production of these food organisms requires a great deal of the land, area, and fresh water on our planet. While our bodies are fueled by the consumption of other organisms, our society is currently fueled mostly by hydrocarbon compounds that we find inside of our planet. These compounds are burned to create the energy necessary to heat and cool our dwellings, produce light, produce goods, communicate with each other, and move stuff, including ourselves, around our planet. We are mortal; all of us die, and so we must reproduce in order to pass our genetic information to the next generation. Two humans are required for this process, a male and a female. The male deposits his genetic material inside of the female, where it is mixed together and becomes a new human. This is one of our very favorite things to do. We enjoy this process a great deal. Human pairs will often bond for life, though they're not always male/female couples: many times they are female/female or male/male. Humanity also very much likes to bond together into groups. These groups are very much like organisms in themselves. They pass different ideas and worldviews among themselves and between generations. Some of these group live together in geographically defined areas, those areas are known as countries. Countries contain people who are all led by the same government. Countries will also occasionally go to war together. Which means that they will systematically attempt to kill humans inside of another country in order to bring down that government. The most common reasons for this are: to spread an ideology or to protect the citizens of your own country or to gain control of natural resources such as the hydrocarbon compounds that I mentioned. War in our world is almost universally recognized as a brutality — yet we continue to practice. And it's worth knowing that war has been a key factor in the continuing technological development of our civilization. People also organize themselves into groups based on what deity they believe in. If you don't know what a deity is, they are divine, all-powerful leaders who control everything but don't let themselves be known, except indirectly. Not all humans believe in deities, but most do. Our society functions largely on the trading of goods. We use something called money to facilitate this trading. Money is represented by pieces of paper, sometimes metal disks and, more and more commonly, money is just a series of numbers that is kept track of in our global network. Without money it's difficult to acquire our food and shelter and other basic needs, and there are still people in our world who regularly die because of their lack of money. Most of us continue to find this very troubling, but our attempts to find better solutions have not been entirely successful. We're running low on fresh water. We're also running low on the hydrocarbons that power our planet. Alternatives, such as directly converting sunlight into energy and using the power locked within atoms are either dangerous or not feasible. We have some experience with the problems of population being solved by starvation or disease or wars, but humans find this extremely distasteful. If you have any guidance for us, please, send along any ideas that you have for our culture to make it through to the next stage of development. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your time. And have a nice day... however you measure... days. John, I'll see you on Wednesday. [Postscript] John, Nerdfighters: In comments below, or possibly in a video response, I would like to know what you would say to the aliens if you had a chance to talk to them, because I found that a really interesting exercise.