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Content provided by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.
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How Will We Know We're Not Alone?

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Manage episode 456394294 series 3328067
Content provided by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

We have identified thousands of planets just in our neighborhood in the Milky Way, mostly from the way they impact their host stars. Basic calculations suggest that there are countless more across the galaxy, and that billions of them could potentially support life. But what kind of life they host, and how we would be able to detect the presence of those biological processes from Earth, remain big questions in the world of exoplanets and astrobiology. What technologies might lie ahead to help us answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe? Lisa Kaltenegger, an astrophysicist and astrobiologist at Cornell University, talks to Janna Levin about that search, the atmospheric fingerprints of life, and why an advanced alien civilization might decide not to talk to us.

  continue reading

61 episodes

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How Will We Know We're Not Alone?

The Joy of Why

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Manage episode 456394294 series 3328067
Content provided by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Quanta Magazine, Steven Strogatz, and Janna Levin or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

We have identified thousands of planets just in our neighborhood in the Milky Way, mostly from the way they impact their host stars. Basic calculations suggest that there are countless more across the galaxy, and that billions of them could potentially support life. But what kind of life they host, and how we would be able to detect the presence of those biological processes from Earth, remain big questions in the world of exoplanets and astrobiology. What technologies might lie ahead to help us answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe? Lisa Kaltenegger, an astrophysicist and astrobiologist at Cornell University, talks to Janna Levin about that search, the atmospheric fingerprints of life, and why an advanced alien civilization might decide not to talk to us.

  continue reading

61 episodes

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