Journey to Alpha Centauri (Narration Only)
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Isaac Arthur
4.9 • 781 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alpha Centauri may be the closest star system to us, but reaching it will be the voyage of a lifetime.
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Credits:
Journey to Alpha Centauri
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 383, February 23, 2023
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Briana Brownell
Darius Said
David McFarlane
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, SFIA audio listeners. |
| 0:02.5 | In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory, we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge. |
| 0:10.5 | 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. |
| 0:20.5 | The Alpha Centauri star system may be the closest star to us after our own sun. |
| 0:25.4 | Nevertheless, the journey there will require covering a longer distance than every human voyage |
| 0:30.7 | ever made before, combined. |
| 0:33.7 | To achieve such a mission, to travel to another star, we will need to harness the power of stars |
| 0:39.8 | to drive our ships. |
| 0:44.0 | Welcome back to Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, and today we'll be looking at how |
| 0:48.8 | we will get to our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, what sort of ships |
| 0:53.3 | and technologies might get us there, |
| 0:55.2 | and some of the misconceptions we often have on this topic from science fiction and even real, |
| 1:00.2 | modern space flights. |
| 1:02.3 | Some years back we did an episode on colonizing Alpha Centauri, and it went on to be one of our |
| 1:07.1 | most popular episodes, and one of our longer ones too. |
| 1:10.5 | We had to cut a lot |
| 1:11.4 | of material to get down to a reasonable length for one episode, one of the things we left |
| 1:15.5 | out was the trip there, focusing instead on what we would do when we arrived. We have recently |
| 1:21.2 | been looking at interstellar colonization strategies, and there I emphasize that we were contemplating |
| 1:25.8 | later scenarios, strategies we would use |
| 1:28.4 | as we colonize the billions of systems in this galaxy, not the first one. |
| 1:33.9 | There is a big difference between the journey Magellan and other explorers took to try to circumnavigate |
... |
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