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

we're asking 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.

This episode is sponsored by Auduble.

We estimate there are trillions of planets in this galaxy alone.

On those worlds and their moons, across countless galaxies, a near infinite number of environments

might exist.

What strange lands might we see under Alien Suns?

Welcome back to another sci-fi Sunday here on SFIA, where we take a concept from science fiction and

look at it through the lens of science to see if it works or how it would work, and today

we will be looking at the concept of alien environments, a topic that is probably too big

for a single episode, but that's a good starting place and maybe we'll expand on it in

future episodes. This episode itself got

origin in our Alien Refugees episode from back in the summer, where we looked at the idea

of aliens coming to us for aid and for new homes, and I realized that I didn't spend

much time talking about how we would simulate their living conditions. I ended up doing

a nebula extended edition of that episode, exploring

the idea for another 10 minutes or so, but even as I started working on that, I knew

we needed a whole episode for it, or maybe even a series.

Of course that's true for every topic we do. My usual joke when folks ask me if I'm

ever worried about running out of topics for episodes

...