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.

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plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur,

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Einstein once said that reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

And if that's the case, can we alter this reality or access a greater one?

I said, one. I sometimes think of reality as a mysterious tapestry woven from threads of existence and dreams that dances along the precipice of perception and truth, a riddle whispered by the cosmos, or perhaps a shimmering mirage in the desert

of our senses, our oasis in a greater realm of chaos and madness, a realm where tangible

meets the intangible, the apparent reality around us is a jigsaw puzzle to be solved,

a breathtaking mosaic of wonder inviting

us to explore the secrets hidden beneath the surface of the everyday, which is probably poetic

but not very scientific, and as a physicist my job is fundamentally to help us find out about our

universe and how it works, what reality truly is and how that

extends beyond our normal human experience.

Long before I was ever born, greater minds than mine had already helped us realize that

the tiniest objects we could see were in truth huge landscapes of breathtaking complexity

in detail, from the cell down to the

molecule, atom, nucleus, or quark, and perhaps even beneath that.

...