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 add free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

This episode is brought to you by Brilliant.

As natural disasters go, exploding stars are to a volcano or a volcano is to a housefire.

As weapons go, they are to a hydrogen bomb when a hydrogen bomb is to a hand grenade,

and none of which you want to be near when they go off.

Or do you? When the largest of stars explode, for a brief moment that supernova will outshine

every star in their galaxy combined, unleashing energies that will shred their orbiting

planets and might

sterilize thousands of neighboring solar systems.

Today we're going to be examining how future stellar empires might avoid, mitigate,

or prevent such disasters, and also how they might intentionally create them as a weapon.

But more than that, we will look at how they might be used to run those empires, how the

stars that cause them might be the most valuable in the galaxy, and how even the supernova

itself might be harnessed for our ends to run engines of breathtaking scale.

If you're new to the channel, welcome to SFIA, where explosions that can decimate whole

worlds are under contemplation as engines

of creation, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button if you want to learn when more

such videos come out.

Of course, supernovae are already an engine of creation, and are well known for their

...