Searching for ALIENS with Sarah Rugheimer (#381)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Remastered from our interview in October 2021. In this otherworldly edition of Into the Impossible, I talk to renowned astrophysicist and astrobiologist Dr. Sarah Rugheimer about microscopic aliens, the Fermi paradox, the origin of life, the Drake equation, and much more! Dr. Rugheimer is a Glasstone Research Fellow and a Hugh Price Fellow at Jesus College Oxford. Her research interests are modeling the atmosphere and climate of extrasolar planets with a particular focus on atmospheric biosignatures in Earth-like planets as well as modeling early Earth conditions. Her Audible Exclusive book Searching for Extraterrestrial Life reveals through 10 amazing lectures what we know about detecting life on other planets. Tune in! Key Takeaways: Intro (00:00) 00:00:46 Sarah’s thoughts on the private sector space race 00:04:18 Should we look for intelligent ET or microbial life in the Universe? 00:05:56 How did you get interested in astrobiology? 00:11:28 What would be the impact of finding microbial ET? 00:15:49 What do we do about the risk of error in science? 00:20:12 What is the possibility of alternative forms of life? (not carbon-based) 00:27:34 The future and Sarah's career 00:30:14 What do you think of Avi Loeb's theories about Oumuamua? 00:40:41 The Drake Equation (Happy 60th anniversary) 00:44:45 Outro — Additional resources: 📢 Ownership of your health starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3K2 and 5 FREE AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase 👉 https://drinkag1.com/impossible ➡️ Follow me on your favorite platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I would be really surprised if life in the universe uses DNA, but I wouldn't be surprised if it uses carbon because that's a more fundamental molecule that's very common.
0:09.6	It's a lot more common in the universe than silicon.
0:12.0	Water is likewise a very common solvent and it has some unique
0:15.5	properties. Water and carbon to me are more fundamental units than say DNA which is a lot more complicated and probably wasn't even in Earth's earliest life. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:36.0	Open the podbed doors.
0:39.0	Dr. soon to be professor Sarah Rekheimer,
0:42.0	welcome to the Into the Impossible
0:43.3	Podcast. How are you today? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. So great to
0:47.3	have you. I just absolutely devoured your book, audio book, which is an
0:51.9	audible exclusive. We're going to talk a lot about that.
0:55.2	And I want to just read a brief bio. If I read the whole bio, you're so impressive, Sarah, that it will take the whole
1:01.2	hour that you have generously and graciously and allotted me.
1:05.0	But currently your Sarah Rogheimer is an astrophysicist at Oxford working on how to detect life on an exoplanet,
1:11.0	atmospheric biosignatures. In 2020 she was selected as a Ted fellow and she has a wonderful TED Talk
1:19.2	which has been seen by almost a million people in just a couple of weeks and you can find that it's
1:24.4	called searching for microscopic aliens I'll put a link to that here maybe we'll
1:28.6	put some highlight they do a great job and your wonderful audio book is an Amazon audible original searching
1:35.4	for extraterrestrial life and I wanted to start there with Amazon because as you
1:39.6	know today it was the first voyage of the new Shepard spacecraft piloted by the proprietor of Amazon.
1:49.0	Mr Jeff Bezos and his brother and an astronaut in Wally Funk who was one of the original Mercury
1:58.0	13 I think and so there was life in space for a little bit today and actually I want to get your impression about where we should be going if you looked at aliens looking at us
2:10.1	Today they would have seen you know four people heading towards them.
	...

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