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.

People often wonder what space has to offer

Earth, besides near infinite strange new worlds to seek out and explore, but it also offers us

a number of clean and abundant energy options for back here at home.

Whenever I think about the future, I try to do it in the context of imagining a civilization out there where they have the sort of energy abundance that we would have if we had an

unlimited supply of oil and no environmental negatives to burning it, where we could pump and refine

it for $10 to $20 a barrel and a gallon

of gasoline cost a buck in modern cash.

That's a civilization that has cheap transportation, cheap heating and cooling, cheap supplies

of fresh water for homes and farming, and cheap fertilizer for those farms.

It results in the dropping cost of almost everything,

while ensuring more funds are available publicly and privately for other services and projects

to benefit humanity in general and raise the standard of living for the individual and family

worldwide. This is not a pie in the sky idea, or a thing of the distant future. It's just

what happens when you don't have a dwindling supply of oil that also causes environmental

issues when we use it. There's a lot of solutions we can contemplate down here on Earth,

but the solar system is a much bigger place, and also where the sun is actually at, not here

on Earth.

And today we'll be talking about ways we can get that clean and super abundant energy we

...