Hello, SFIA audio listeners, in this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

On Friday, February 28th of 2020, visionary physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson passed away

at the age of 96.

For regular viewers of our show, it will come as no surprise that Dyson was one of the greatest,

if not the greatest, inspiration for

SFIA, so it seemed right and proper that we celebrate the man and his work.

While he is best known, especially here, for the megastructure and stellar engine bearing

his name, the Dyson sphere or Dysonarm, a way of potentially allowing our solar system

to support a billion times its current population and comfort, his work both on theory

and practical applications is almost impossible to fully catalog.

However, for the Dyson Sphere alone, he will surely be remembered long ahead in time.

There is more to a man than his work, but I wanted to discuss that work today as we honor

him, and there is a very great deal of it, some of which we've looked at more in other episodes

and will mention those as we go if you want to learn more about those ideas and see why

so many of us view him as a legend.

Dyson was born in England in 1923 on December 15th, his parents a composer and a social

worker.

He won a scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge at age 15, where he studied mathematics,

then he worked in the Royal Air Force Operational Resource Section

...