This week, I sat down with Dr. Rebecca Charbonneau, a science historian and a Karl Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). We talked about the history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the significance of Project Ozma, the Arecibo Message, and the enduring legacy of the late Dr. Frank Drake – the creator of the Drake Equation and someone Dr. Charbonneau knew personally!

As a historian of science (a rare but awesome thing!), Charbonneau is in a rare position to appreciate how the field of SETI has evolved and how it has impacted (and reflected) our history. Have a listen as we talk about what the history of SETI has meant for our species so far and how the future of this field could revolutionize our existence!

Where to Listen:

• Simplecast
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

This latest installment is a bit of a double-whammy. When the first installment aired, I foolish forgot to post about it! Lucky for me, such negligence allowed me to announce both parts of the episode together. And it is only together that they can be appreciated fully. Long story short, in this and last week’s episode, I delved into how human perceptions of the cosmos (aka. cosmology) and our place within it have changed over time.

To say these changes have been drastic would be an understatement of cosmic (sorry!) proportions. If anything, they have been seismic, mind-shattering, and exponential. With every new revolution in our understanding, the Universe as we know it has grown by orders of magnitude. The way we perceive the sum total of everything and how that’s changed goes a little something like this:

• Ancient World: our locale, the Sun, the Moon, the “moving stars,” and the celestial sphere
• Classical Antiquity: Earth orbited by the five planets, the Sun, and the Moon
• Scientific Revolution: Earth and the five planets (and Moon) orbiting the Sun
• 18th/19th Century: Our Solar System adrift in the galaxy
• 20th Century: Our galaxy is one among millions (or more)
• Mid-to-late 20th Century: Our galaxy is one among billions in the “Cosmic Web”
• 21st Century: Our galaxy is one of trillions, maybe one of countless Universes as well

As for sizes and scales, that has also been an exponential adjustment. In the past century alone, the expanse of the Universe (in space and time) has grown by several orders of magnitude. Check this out:

• 1919: 300,000 light-years (infinite)
• 1929: 280 million light-years (2 billion years)
• 1955: 4 billion light-years (6 billion years)
• 1965: 25 billion light-years (10-25 billion years)
• 1993: 30 billion light-years (12-20 billion years)
• 2006: 94 billion light-years (13.7 billion years)

Get it? And at every juncture, our understanding of cosmic forces has also taken great leaps. Between the ancient world and the Renaissance, people went from believing that nature was composed of four or five elements (wood, water, fire, air, metal) to reconsidering atomic theory. By the 19th century, scientists had a pretty good idea of what atoms looked like and had a unified system of determining motion, velocity, and gravity (Newtonian Physics).

Then came the 20th century, with Einstein’s Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Hawking Radiation, the Higgs Boson, String Theory, Supersymmetry, and the Theory of Everything. As my history of science teacher once said, “science is like an onion, constantly shedding its skin.” But when it comes to cosmology, it’s more like a creature that molts in order to accommodate its insane growth. Check out the episode by following the links below:

Where to Listen:

• Simplecast – Part I, II
• Apple Podcasts – Part I, II
• Spotify – Part I, II
• Amazon Music – Part I, II

The Great Migration continues! The next stop: the Main Asteroid Belt! The idea that humans could someday settle among the many, many rocks and planetoids that sit between Mars and Jupiter has been explored extensively in science fiction and scientific literature. Beyond the larger bodies, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea, pinwheel stations or cylinders could be established that could accommodate millions of people in environments that mimic Earth’s biospheres. There are also countless smaller rocks that could be hollowed out and spun up to simulate gravity.

The benefits of settling the Main Belt are also innumerable. Foremost among them, there’s the potential for becoming a post-scarcity species thanks to the incredible abundance of minerals, ores, precious metals, and rare Earth elements. There are also opportunities for scientific research since asteroids are essentially material left over from the formation of the Solar System. On top of that, there’s the opportunities for socio-political experiments. With so many habitats available, countless new cultures and societies could form.

Before long, a thriving economy and a new segment of humanity known as “Belters” could emerge. Check out the episode below:

Where to Listen:

• Simplecast
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

In this week’s episode, I returned to the well of the Fermi Paradox to address another of my favorite resolutions. While this one is not an official hypothesis, it encapsulates elements from several proposals and asks the big question – is intelligent life doomed? If humanity is any indication, intelligent creatures may eventually outgrow their resource base, ruin their natural environment, and build weapons of mass destruction that they may eventually use. This raises a key parameter of the Drake Equation, the thought experiment created by astronomer and SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake:

N = R^* x f_p x n_e x f_l x f_i x f_c x L

For those who are unfamiliar, the equation basically states that the number of intelligent species (N) in our galaxy that humanity could communicate with comes down to a series of parameters (planets per star, habitable planets per system, those that have life, etc.,) multiplied by the length of time (L) a species is likely to transmit signals to space. If intelligent life is prone to destructive behavior or has a limited life expectancy, then L is the key parameter for finding evidence of it out there.

Basically, the transmission will begin when a species achieves an advanced state of development and will end when they succumb to their fate. If our antennas are not set to the right frequencies, and we don’t manage to detect their transmissions within this window, then we will never hear from them. There’s also the possibility that intelligent life undergoes a seismic shift at some point, which borrows from the Transcension Hypothesis and the concept of the “Technological Singularity.”

The idea here is that intelligent life will eventually transcend its physical biology and become something radically different. At this point, species may not be likely to communicate via radiowaves but with something radically advanced – like neutrinos or gravitational waves – or may not be interested in communicating at all. Once again, the window will have closed. But in this case, it will be due to a pattern in the evolutionary development of intelligent life. Check it out by following the links below:

Where to Listen:

• Simplecast
• Apple Podcast
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

This week, I sat down with Julia Brodsky, astrophysicist, educator, former NASA astronaut trainer, founder and CEO of the Art of Inquiry, and researcher with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. She’s also a co-founder of Earthlings Hub, an education and outreach organization that conducts astronomy and STEM education programs for orphans, refugee children, and families in Ukraine.

Continue reading “Episode 43 – The Gift of Hope Through Astronomy: Earthlings Hub with Julia Brodsky” →

The series continues with the latest stop in the Solar System: Mercury! Hold up, that can’t be right! And yet, it is. Contrary to popular opinion, humans could actually live on Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun. Granted, it won’t exactly be a cakewalk. In addition to being an airless body (i.e., no atmosphere to speak of), Mercury is exposed to almost seven times as much radiation as Earth.

And because of its slow rotation and rapid orbit, surface temperatures range from hot enough to melt lead to cryogenically freezing! But with the right know-how, technology, and strategies, we could build a thriving outpost of civilization and economy on Mrcury based on the export of mineral wealth and energy, as well as art and ideas!

The idea has been explored in science fiction and scientific literature alike. And assuming there are enough people adventurous enough to settle there, there’d be a new branch of humanity known as “Hermeans.” Follow the links below to learn more.

Where to Listen:

• Simplecast
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Amazon Music