Aliens Now

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are closer than ever to finding aliens according to astrophysicist Adam Frank. He isn’t alone in his optimism. Over the last two decades, the tools used to search for extraterrestrials have been advancing mightily. Where we were once only monitoring with radio telescopes, we are now actively looking for bio and technosignatures on exoplanets. Find out why scientists think new technology may be a game changer in the hunt for life off Earth. Guest: Adam Frank – Astrophysicist and author of a new book “The Little Book of Aliens” Descripción en español. Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired July 1, 2024 You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:04.2	I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Safeguarding Sound Science, Evolution Edition.
0:09.6	Evolution is the unifying principle of biology, yet it still breeds controversy a century
0:15.3	and a half after Charles Darwin.
0:17.7	Join us as we meet the passionate researchers and communicators who are expanding our knowledge
0:23.0	and fighting to keep good science in our schools and politics. Subscribe to Safeguarding Sound
0:29.3	Science on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you like to listen.
0:48.8	Not long ago, the idea of alien life was relegated to science fiction.
0:54.1	If you were a scientist who wanted to hunt for extraterrestrial life, well, you were just out of luck.
0:55.1	There was no fields to go into. If you were interested in that question, there was maybe people
0:58.9	doing origin of life, study, you know, in chemistry labs. Well, that's changed. Progress in both
1:04.5	science and technology has given us the tools to possibly find the aliens. For the first time,
1:10.6	really, in human history, we have the technological capacity and the
1:15.6	knowledge that that technological capacity has given us that we know exactly where to look,
1:23.6	we know exactly how to look, and we have the technologies to do the looking.
1:29.7	Why we may be closer than ever to finding alien life. I'm Seth Shostak, and this is
1:35.7	Big Picture Science from the SETI Institute. I'm Molly Bentley. In this episode, it may not
1:41.1	have been promising to search for aliens then, but this is aliens now.
1:47.0	I have long bet listeners a cup of coffee that we will find alien life by 2035, and that is in large part because of the acceleration of technological progress.
2:07.4	NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, for example, has already returned striking images of the cosmos.
2:13.8	But it will also be used to tell us something about the atmospheres of other planets,
2:18.6	atmospheres that might contain the telltale molecules of an inhabited world.
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