HEADLINE: MIT Professor Explains the Discovery of Ionic Liquid, Expanding Search for Extraterrestrial Life GUEST AND TITLE: Professor Sara Seager, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show SUMMARY: Professor Sa
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
GUEST AND TITLE: Professor Sara Seager, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show
SUMMARY: Professor Sara Seager discusses the accidental lab discovery of ionic liquids, a non-evaporating liquid salt potentially sustaining life on planets without water, expanding the traditional "habitable zone" concept. She envisions future missions like a Solar Gravitational Lens Telescope. For her lifetime, Professor Seager prioritizes privately funded "Morning Star missions" to Venus, beginning with Rocket Lab in 2026, to directly study its cloud particles for signs of life in this overlooked sister planet.
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Transcript
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| 0:23.6 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. Hotel Mars, episode N. David Livingston, |
| 0:30.2 | Dr. Space himself, joins me, my colleague and co-host and co-pilot. And we're very pleased to |
| 0:36.5 | welcome Professor Sarah Seeger of the Massachusetts |
| 0:40.3 | Institute of Technology. She is the Class of 1941 Professor Chair at MIT in the Department of |
| 0:49.4 | Physics, the Department of Planetary Science, the Department of Aerospace Engineering. She's especially keen on |
| 0:55.5 | the planetary science part for what we're about to reveal, which is a discovery that I don't know |
| 1:03.2 | people we're looking for, a planet without water that is possibly an exoplanet that can sustain |
| 1:09.7 | something that we would call life. |
| 1:12.7 | Professor, wonderful to greet you and thank you for helping us on this matter. |
| 1:18.1 | When I read your piece and MIT was very generous to send out all the links, |
| 1:23.2 | I understood that this was not something you expected or if you did expect it, I didn't read it anywhere else. |
| 1:30.5 | What is it that you believe at this point is the possibility of talking about something called ionic fluid as water? |
| 1:38.9 | Good evening to you. |
| 1:40.6 | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 1:42.0 | Well, let me unpack all of this for you and say that in the laboratory setting, so it's not on a planet yet, but in the laboratory setting, we rediscovered an already known compound called an ionic liquid. |
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