The Fermi Paradox & the Aurora Effect
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Isaac Arthur
4.9 • 781 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2019
⏱️ 25 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, SFIA audio listeners. |
| 0:02.5 | In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory, |
| 0:05.2 | we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare |
| 0:08.0 | is because most aliens are huge. |
| 0:10.5 | To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, |
| 0:13.3 | plus hours of bonus content, |
| 0:15.1 | check out go.nebula.tv slash Isaac Arthur, |
| 0:17.6 | and use my code, Isaac Arthur. |
| 0:31.6 | Thank you. slash Isaac Arthur and use my code Isaac Arthur. Welcome to a short in-between episodes episode. The reason I'm releasing this now is there was a draft paper |
| 0:38.2 | released recently titled The Phumy Paradox and the Aurora Effect, Exo-Civilization |
| 0:44.0 | settlement, expansion, and steady states. And it started getting discussed and I had several |
| 0:50.1 | requests to do a video explaining it, so I thought we'd go through it and then |
| 0:54.3 | get into some of the pros and cons for the theory. |
| 0:58.0 | Let's start with the title. |
| 0:59.7 | If you're watching this episode, odds are you already know what the Fermi paradox is, |
| 1:05.0 | which is the apparent contradiction between how empty of life the universe appears to be and |
| 1:10.0 | just how huge, ancient, and filled |
| 1:12.4 | with potentially habitable plants it is, or basically where are all the alien civilizations? |
| 1:19.4 | But the Aurora effect is probably unfamiliar unless you've read Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, |
| 1:25.6 | author of the Mars trilogy. We'll use the definition from the paper that good worlds are hard to find, which is to say, |
| 1:33.3 | just because you might find a planet you could settle in terraform doesn't mean it's really |
| 1:38.3 | one you'd invest effort into, or for that matter, be able to transplant a civilization there that could successfully |
... |
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