Lex Fridman Podcast
#455 – Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
Sun, 22 Dec 2024
Adam Frank is an astrophysicist studying star systems and the search for extraterrestrial life and alien civilizations. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep455-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/adam-frank-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Adam's Website: https://adamfrankscience.com Adam's X: https://x.com/adamfrank4 Adam's Instagram: https://instagram.com/adamfrankscience Adam's Books: The Little Book of Aliens: https://amzn.to/3OTX1rP Light of the Stars: https://amzn.to/4iMKC6C The Blind Spot: https://amzn.to/4gOCe4K The Constant Fire: https://amzn.to/3ZVnxX4 SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Encord: AI tooling for annotation & data management. Go to https://encord.com/lex Eight Sleep: Temp-controlled smart mattress cover. Go to https://eightsleep.com/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex NetSuite: Business management software. Go to http://netsuite.com/lex BetterHelp: Online therapy and counseling. Go to https://betterhelp.com/lex Notion: Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to https://notion.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (14:22) - Planet formation (19:32) - Plate tectonics (26:54) - Extinction events (31:04) - Biosphere (34:02) - Technosphere (38:17) - Emergence of intelligence (44:29) - Drake equation (48:43) - Exoplanets (51:28) - Habitable zones (54:30) - Fermi Paradox (1:03:28) - Alien civilizations (1:12:55) - Colonizing Mars (1:25:11) - Search for aliens (1:41:37) - Alien megastructures (1:47:43) - Kardashev scale (1:52:56) - Detecting aliens (1:59:38) - Warp drives (2:05:45) - Cryogenics (2:09:03) - What aliens look like (2:17:48) - Alien contact (2:28:53) - UFO sightings (2:40:38) - Physics of life (3:06:29) - Nature of time (3:22:53) - Cognition (3:27:16) - Mortality
Full Episode
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 eight episodes this month, but instead I think we're doing two. We'll see. Every single day, every single hour changes the plan, changes the situation, changes my life. So please be patient with me. There are no sponsor reads in the middle, so you can skip this long and beautiful list. But I do try to make them interesting in case you do listen, and I hope you do.
In either case, please still check out the sponsors. Buy their stuff. It is the best way to support this podcast. The sponsors are Uncord for your ML stack, Eight Sleep for naps, Shopify for e-commerce, NetSuite for business, BetterHelp for the mind, Notion for notes, Element for electrolytes, and AG1 for nutrition.
If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfreeman.com contact. Perhaps you could tell from my voice, on top of everything else, I'm also sick. What a wonderful, beautiful, challenging life this is, and I'm grateful for every second of it. All right, and now on to the full arteries. Let's go.
This episode is brought to you by Encord, a platform that provides data-focused AI tooling for data annotation, curation, and management, and for model evaluation. For example, if you are an independent private or government agency that is running
the drones that is flying all over New Jersey and the tri-state area, you might be doing the same kind of data annotation and collection, curation and management that Encore excels at. Also, if you're an extraterrestrial species performing the same, I wonder what kind of computation tools alien civilizations have.
At the physics level, computation is fundamentally a part of the fabric of the universe. So every advanced civilization would or surely would discover how to leverage that computation, how to organize that computation, how to access and communicate with that computation.
Anyway, think of it, if you have a swarm of drones and you are the ruler of an alien civilization and want to collect some data about New Jersey, you are going to have to do some great machine learning. And great machine learning is not just about the algorithms. It is so much more about the data.
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