#455 – Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
Transcript preview
Preview only
The following is a conversation with Adam Frank, an astrophysicist interested in the evolution of star systems and the search for alien civilizations in our universe.
And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. Let me say as a side note that I had to put a bunch of podcast episodes on hold to focus deeply on preparing for conversations with world leaders. So I apologize to, include more sponsors on this episode than usual. They really wanted me to mention them this year, and I'm not sure when I'm going to do another episode. We were going to do 8 episodes this month, but instead, I think we're doing 2. We'll see every single day, every single hour changes the plan, changes
This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now dear friends, here's Adam Frank. You wrote a book about aliens. So the big question, how many alien civilizations are out there?
Yeah. That's the question. Right? The amazing thing is that after two and a half millennia of, you know, people yelling at each other or setting each other on fire occasionally over the answer, we now actually have the capacity to answer that question. So in the next 10, 20, 30 years, we're gonna have data relevant to the answer to that question. We're gonna have hard data finally that will one way or the other. You know, even if we don't find anything immediately, we will have gone through a number of planets. We'll be able to start putting limits on how common life is. The one answer I can t
So one of the things you've done is, simulated the formation of stars. How difficult do you think it is to simulate the formation of planets? Like, simulate your solar system. The through the entire evolution of
the solar system. This is
kind of a a numerical simulation sneaking up to the question of how many planets are there. That
actually we're able to do now. There is you can run simulations of the formation of planetary system. So if you run the simulation, really where you wanna start is a cloud of gas, these giant interstellar clouds of gas that may have, you know, a 1000000 times the mass of the sun in them. And so you run a simulation of that. It's turbulent. The gas is roiling and tumbling. And every now and then, you get a place where the, the gas is dense enough that gravity gets hold of it and it can pull it downward. So you'll start to form a protostar. And a protostar is basically the young star of, you kno
And all of them have, different chemical compositions, different temperatures?
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.