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.

In order to forge new worlds and or aliens, we'll need to be both patient and clever,

but billions and billions of planets could be made into new homes for humanity if we can

master our terraforming strategies.

We recently were looking at strategies we might use for interstellar colonization,

and that was such a big topic, we decided to say discussing what we did when we arrived

in a solar system for a second installment, and today we'll be talking about how an interstellar

colony arriving in another solar system might go about making

it a new home.

As of today, we know of no life on other planets, and while there may well be many habitable

worlds out there in the galaxy, the odds aren't good any of them will be fully compatible

with us in our own terrestrial flora and fauna.

Even if the perfect new planet were out there,

it might not be wise or ethical to colonize such a world, just considering how damaging

invasive species can be here on Earth just from one continent to another.

Terraforming a rocky planet to be like Earth is not the only option our colonists will have,

as we will discuss today. Indeed, doing something like this will likely be a later operation.

Once your ship or fleet has arrived in a new solar system, your first goal must be resupply.

You've probably been traveling through space for decades or even centuries without a pit stop,

...