Astrobiologist Says We’ve Been Searching for Aliens the Wrong Way with Nathalie Cabrol [Ep. 495]

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Please join my mailing list here 👉 https://briankeating.com/list to win a meteorite 💥 What if alien life is everywhere, but we’ve been looking for it in all the wrong places? We assume life needs water, carbon, a warm little pond—just like Darwin said. But what if life doesn't care about what we assume to be necessary? Today, we’re joined by Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. Cabrol has spent her career exploring Earth’s most extreme environments—boiling lakes that freeze at night, toxic salt flats, and places where life should be impossible. And yet, it finds a way. In this episode, we talk about the intricacies of the search for extraterrestrial life and question whether Earth might be a cosmic accident after all. We explore whether civilizations out there may stay silent on purpose—and what it would take for humanity to survive its own future, based on what we know about the deep secrets of the universe. — Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:55 What is life? 00:05:17 Exploring extreme environments 00:08:51 Agnostic biosignatures 00:13:57 Judging a book by its cover 00:17:33 The shadow biosphere 00:22:27 Errors in the search for extraterrestrial life 00:37:31 The Rare Earth Hypothesis 00:40:41 Should we stop broadcasting our location? 00:52:00 The impact of discovering extraterrestrial life 01:00:06 Are we worth saving? 01:06:46 Outro — Additional resources: ➡️ Learn more about Nathalie Cabrol: 🛸 SETI Institute: https://www.seti.org/our-scientists/nathalie-cabrol 📚 The Secret Life of the Universe: https://a.co/d/dzdzcD9 ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🔔 YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📝 Join my mailing list:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/list⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ✍️ Check out my blog:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🎙️ Follow my podcast:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://briankeating.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What if alien life is everywhere, but we've been looking for it in all the wrong places?
0:06.0	We assume life needs water, carbon, a warm little pond, as Darwin said, but what if life doesn't
0:11.8	care about what we assume to be necessary? There's a scientist who spent her career exploring
0:17.5	the strangest, harshest, most brutal places on Earth, high altitude legs in Chile, that freeze solid at night and boil by day, toxic salt flats that look just like you'd expect an alien landscape to look, in environments where life should be impossible.
0:33.7	And yet, as you know, we're not afraid to go into the impossible.
0:38.1	Her name is Dr. Natalie Cabrall.
0:40.5	She's the director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, right here in Northern California.
0:45.8	And what she writes about life in the universe shattered everything I thought I knew about it.
0:51.5	How can we communicate with alien species?
0:55.2	This is not a trivial thing.
0:56.7	We're going to talk a lot about alien life and why Earth might be a cosmic accident.
1:01.7	We'll explore whether civilizations out there may stay silent on purpose.
1:06.0	And what it would take for humanity to survive its own future based on what we know about the deep secrets of the universe.
1:14.2	But first, we have to ask perhaps the hardest question in all science.
1:19.7	Natalie, thank you so much for joining us.
1:21.6	Well, thank you very much for having me.
1:23.6	I want to take this conversation in a very different place than I usually go because everybody
1:28.8	thinks they know what alien life would look like. But your work really made me rethink our
1:35.0	assumptions and then the assumption that we know what we're doing. I came out of it questioning
1:39.8	whether or not we might be completely lost. And I want to ask you today about the biggest blind spots
1:45.5	in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, how we might be missing alien life that's already
1:50.9	here on Earth and whether humanity itself is ready for first contact. And we'll get there.
	...

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