Finding intelligent life in the cosmos | Part 2
Listen now
Description
This episode is the second part of our talk with Harvard Professor Avi Loeb. We discuss ― Life In The Cosmos ― an academic textbook he co-authored with Manasvi Lingam which provides an analysis of the latest scientific methodologies for detecting life beyond our planet. It’s an updated version of an original book written in 1966 by astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky. We dive into the Kardashev Scale, a theoretical model for classifying stages the development of intelligent alien civilizations based on energy consumption, and the potential of applying a modified version, based on a more indirect but proportional scale of wasted heat or entropy production, toward today’s search for extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs). Learn more about Avi’s work with Breakthrough Starshot, a proposed flyby mission to our neighboring solar system Alpha Centauri, and how his recently funded Galileo Project will help to demystify Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Join us as we survey the latest endeavors to detect alien technosignatures, and explore whether monkeys may one day compose Shakespeare’s Hamlet on a typewriter. Professor Avi Loeb is the Director of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his PhD in plasma physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked as a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Loeb is a New York Times bestselling author, chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and founded the current Galileo Project advancing the search for extraterrestrial life. CONTENT 00:00:35 Intro 00:02:21 Kardashev scale 00:07:01 Building Noah’s Ark in Space 00:12:35 Breakthrough Starshot 00:16:36 How to Decelerate as you get to Proxima B 00:22:05 A Masterpiece: Monkeys Typing Hamlet 00:22:39 Technosignatures: detecting Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 00:26:44 The Galileo Project
More Episodes
Join us for a space forward-thinking conversation with Kara Cunzeman, systems director of Strategic Foresight at the Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy. Kara talks to us about Strategic Foresight, a holistic approach toward facing future uncertainties. Strategic...
Published 11/15/23
Published 11/15/23
Who owns what on the moon? Legally, nobody according to the United Nation’s Outer Space Treaty. With an array of space agencies and private companies destined to launch a multitude of lunar missions in the coming decades, the principles of the 1967 treaty will be put to the test. How will we...
Published 09/21/23