#455 – Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2024
⏱️ 219 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep455-sc
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EPISODE LINKS:
Adam's Website: https://adamfrankscience.com
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Adam's Instagram: https://instagram.com/adamfrankscience
Adam's Books:
The Little Book of Aliens: https://amzn.to/3OTX1rP
Light of the Stars: https://amzn.to/4iMKC6C
The Blind Spot: https://amzn.to/4gOCe4K
The Constant Fire: https://amzn.to/3ZVnxX4
SPONSORS:
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OUTLINE:
(00:00) - Introduction
(14:22) - Planet formation
(19:32) - Plate tectonics
(26:54) - Extinction events
(31:04) - Biosphere
(34:02) - Technosphere
(38:17) - Emergence of intelligence
(44:29) - Drake equation
(48:43) - Exoplanets
(51:28) - Habitable zones
(54:30) - Fermi Paradox
(1:03:28) - Alien civilizations
(1:12:55) - Colonizing Mars
(1:25:11) - Search for aliens
(1:41:37) - Alien megastructures
(1:47:43) - Kardashev scale
(1:52:56) - Detecting aliens
(1:59:38) - Warp drives
(2:05:45) - Cryogenics
(2:09:03) - What aliens look like
(2:17:48) - Alien contact
(2:28:53) - UFO sightings
(2:40:38) - Physics of life
(3:06:29) - Nature of time
(3:22:53) - Cognition
(3:27:16) - Mortality
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Adam Frank, an astrophysicist interested in the evolution |
| 0:05.9 | of star systems and the search for alien civilizations in our universe. |
| 0:12.4 | And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. |
| 0:17.5 | It's the best way to support this podcast. Let me say as a side note that I had to put a bunch of |
| 0:22.0 | podcast episodes on hold to focus deeply on preparing for conversations with world leaders. So I apologize |
| 0:30.1 | to include more sponsors on this episode than usual. They really wanted me to mention them this year, |
| 0:37.4 | and I'm not sure when I'm going to do |
| 0:39.1 | another episode. We were going to do eight episodes this month, but instead I think we're doing two. |
| 0:45.8 | We'll see every single day, every single hour changes the plan, changes the situation, |
| 0:52.0 | changes my life. So please be patient with me. There are no |
| 0:56.1 | sponsor reads in the middle, so you can skip this long and beautiful list. But I do try to make |
| 1:02.7 | them interesting in case you do listen, and I hope you do. In either case, please still check out |
| 1:08.6 | the sponsors, buy their stuff. It is the best way to support this podcast. |
| 1:14.2 | The sponsors are Encore for your ML stack, |
| 1:17.6 | AIDS sleep for naps, Shopify for e-commerce, |
| 1:20.1 | NatSuite for business, better help for the mind, |
| 1:22.4 | Notion for Notes, Element for Electrolites, |
| 1:24.7 | and AG1 for nutrition. |
| 1:26.5 | If you want to get in touch with me for whatever |
| 1:28.5 | reason, go to Lexfremant.com slash contact. Perhaps you could tell from my voice on top of everything else. |
| 1:34.9 | I'm also sick. What a wonderful, beautiful, challenging life this is, and I'm grateful for every second of it. |
| 1:46.0 | All right. And now on to the full arteries. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by Encore, a platform that provides data-focused |
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