Sara Seager: A New Search For Life
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2014
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the midst of her search for life on other planets, astrophysicist Sara Seager's own world is shattered when her husband is told he has stage three cancer. Professor Sara Seager is a planetary scientist and astrophysicist. She has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun. Her ground-breaking research ranges from the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to innovative theories about life on other worlds to development of novel space mission concepts. Now, dubbed an "astronomical Indiana Jones", she on a quest after the field's holy grail, the discovery of a true Earth twin. Dr. Seager earned her PhD from Harvard University and is now the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science and Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Seager is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and was named in Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential in Space in 2012. Help keep us going! If you love the podcast, please donate here: http://www.patreon.com/thestorycollider
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.0 | It felt... |
| 0:07.0 | I felt like... |
| 0:08.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:19.0 | Hey everyone, I'm Ben Lilley, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true stories of how science has affected people's lives. |
| 0:29.6 | Our four-year anniversary show is next week, May 7th at Littlefield in Brooklyn. |
| 0:33.5 | It should be an amazing show with Ophira Eisenberg, Carl Zimmer, John Ronson, Jennifer Roulette, and Sarah Schlesinger. |
| 0:39.2 | Go to historicoliter.org for more details. |
| 0:42.3 | This week's story is from Sarah Seeger as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. |
| 0:46.9 | The story was recorded in April 2014 at the Davis Square Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts. |
| 0:59.0 | Thanks for coming out here, and I'm going to do my story, like going back to the time of. |
| 1:05.0 | So you'll follow along and you'll know where right now I'm starting. |
| 1:08.0 | It's January 2007. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm just starting my new job at MIT. I'm |
| 1:12.7 | excited to become a professor. MIT is literally the best place on earth. That's what we called it |
| 1:18.9 | MIT. And that's just for the Harvard people here in the room. You can cut that part out if you |
| 1:25.0 | podcast this, okay? So yeah, so MIT literally, I think of it even now |
| 1:29.2 | is the best place on Earth. |
| 1:30.3 | And they've hired me to help jumpstart in exoplanets. |
... |
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