EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 22,302 words- 0:00 – 2:27
Intro
- CWChris Williamson
Hi, friends. Are you ready to blast off into outer space? (laughs) Because this week is nothing short of mind-blowing. Professor Adam Frank is an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester, an author, and a founder of the NPR blog Thirteen Points Seven: Cosmos and Culture. Now, you may have heard him recently on Joe Rogan's podcast, and that's where I fell in love with the material that he works on. In short, today, we're going to find out, are we alone in the universe? Or at least, what's the likelihood that we're alone in the universe? This episode honestly ranks as my favorite one that I've recorded so far. It felt like every two minutes, there was some insane new statistic that I'd never heard of or a insight that I'd never thought of before. From how humans could colonize the galaxy in as little as 700,000 years to where the future descendants of the human race are heading, and the implications of global warming, with an awful lot more thrown in. This episode really is jam-packed. Hopefully, you'll love this episode as much as me, and if you do, I'm going to ask a favor for the first time since I started the podcast. If you enjoy it, please share it with a friend. One friend, two friends, fire it in a group chat, screenshot the Apple Podcasts image, or copy the link to listen from Spotify. However you do it, I don't mind. But sharing this podcast and increasing the number of exposures that we get is a real key for me over the coming months, and if you could help me in that way, it would be really appreciated. Coming up soon, we have the long awaited Life Hacks 105. Me, Jonny, and Yusuf back in the hot seat again to give you our favorite tips for a productive and efficient life, along with some slightly more useless tips as well. (laughs) But we'll leave that for you to make your own mind up about. In the meantime, it's Adam Frank's turn to take the microphone. Here we go.
- 2:27 – 5:24
Are We Alone In The Universe
- CWChris Williamson
Professor Adam Frank, how are you?
- AFAdam Frank
It's great to be here. Thanks for having- giving me the opportunity.
- CWChris Williamson
No worries at all. Where in the world are you at the moment?
- AFAdam Frank
I'm currently in my office at the University of Rochester in beautiful Upstate New York.
- CWChris Williamson
That sounds lovely. And tomorrow's your birthday, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Tomorrow's my birthday. Gonna party like it's my birthday.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
Which at 56 means I'll probably just, like, chill out and play video games.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, well, you know, 56-
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
56 or sif- 16, it could be exactly the same thing.
- AFAdam Frank
Exactly. Yeah, for me, it's no diff.
- CWChris Williamson
Fantastic. Right, let's get into it. So-
- AFAdam Frank
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... what- what- what is the likelihood that we're the only instance of life in the universe?
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah, well, so that is a, uh, that's a $50 million question. And, you know, depending on how you wanna argue it, uh, you can get, you know, different kinds of opinions. But what we did, uh, my collaborator and I did a couple years ago, is we used, uh, uh, the actual empirical data from the Kepler, um, uh, uh, uh, results. The, you know, the basically our studies of exoplanets, we now recognize that, uh, there are exoplanets everywhere. Pretty much every star you see in the sky has a world, uh, at least one world going around it. And so, what we did is we used that data to at least set a limit on the kind of answer you want to give. And so, here's... You know, with science often, the most important thing is to, what question can you answer with the data you have?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
So with all of that exoplanet data, the question we could ask was, how, um, how bad does the probability per planet have to be for us to be alone? Like, deeply and truly alone. Um, and it turns out that given what we now know, the only way that we are the first... The only time it's ever happened in, uh, civilization has happened in cosmic history is if the probability per planet of making a civilization is one in 10 billion trillion.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a pretty big number.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. Well, well, I mean, it's a, well, it's a, the, the, the big number is the number of planets, the number of... But it's a pretty small number for in terms of-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... yeah, the odds of us being alone.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
So 10 billion, right? As you said, that, your- your right to point out that really what's important here is how many, um, habitable zone planets there are. How many planets there are where life has had the chance to run the experiment, right, of, of forming life and then the life going on to become intelligent and a civilization forming. And that, that, yeah, that number is 10 billion trillion. There are 10 billion trillion planets in the cosmos that are in the right place for life to form. So the only way that it hasn't happened before is if on every one of those 10 billion trillion planets, somehow the experiment failed. And, you know, I think those numbers now are so... They're so large that it really falls to the pessimists to tell us, to explain to us how could nature run the experiment so many times and what's happened here never happen, uh, anywhere else.
- 5:24 – 7:15
The Pessimism Line
- AFAdam Frank
- CWChris Williamson
I understand. Am I right in thinking that, uh, uh, an observation effect occurs with this though, that the odds could be actually an awful lot, uh, less likely than one in 10 billion trillion, and we would still be the only, uh, potential viewer to see it? It could actually be in the other direction, right? As well as it could be more likely, it could actually be less likely, 'cause as far as we can see, there's only one instance.
- AFAdam Frank
Right, but we haven't real- So, so let me, yeah, so let me just address that question. So what we really were able to do, the thing that we could put a, a, a data-driven limit on...... was how bad would the probability have to be-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... in order for us to be alone? So, so, like, the actual probability per habitable zone planet is something you'd have to go out and do observations and-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... and, and you, you have to see real data in terms of observations to figure it out, right? So nature has that. Like, nature over the course of cosmic history, um, has actually established for each planet how... You know, it's all about the processes of evolution and then sociology, if you want to get into civilization. So we don't know what those are. We don't know what nature actually did. What we could do is we could set a limit, and we called it the pessimism line.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
And it's as long as nature is not this pessimistic, as long as nature hasn't set up her rules of chemistry and physics and evolution such that the odds are less than one in 10 billion trillion-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... then, then it's happened before. And one in 10 and billion trillion is so small that it seems like you don't... Nature doesn't have to do much to get it above that. And if it's above that, even if it's a little bit above that, it means this has happened before. This meaning a technological civilization, and that is mind-blowing to me.
- 7:15 – 9:58
The Fermi Paradox
- AFAdam Frank
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- AFAdam Frank
Right?
- CWChris Williamson
So it's running, nature's running the experiment an awful lot of times.
- AFAdam Frank
Right. Right. And ...
- CWChris Williamson
So if, if that's the case, then rolling it forward, why is it likely or why does it seem likely that we haven't seen any galaxy-conquering civilizations?
- AFAdam Frank
Right. That's a great, uh, that's a great question. So that's, like, that's the Fermi paradox, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- AFAdam Frank
Um, and so the Fermi para- paradox actually breaks down into two parts. So when Fermi, you know... Fermi's famous question that he blurted over, uh, lunch in 1950 was... 'Cause it's, you know, they'd been talking about, uh, aliens and he said, "Well, where are they all," right? And so that question eventually by people, scientists like Hart and Tipler eventually became what we now think of as the Fermi paradox. But really there's two ways to think about it. One is, why aren't they here now, right? Why haven't we... As you said, why haven't they landed on the White House lawn?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
But the other part is, why haven't we seen them in our observations, right? And so the, the second part, people often talk about the silence of the stars, about, you know, what... Why are there stars? Why haven't, you know, we seen alien intelligence and since, you know, signals and since that we haven't seen it yet, that we must be alone in the universe. But what they really don't realize is that, um, we've hardly looked, right? Uh, I think most people have this idea that scientists have been scanning the skies for alien signals for, you know, 50 years. And really, you know, there's no money for it. Nobody's doing that. So the number, you know... The, the amount of actual searching we've done is minuscule. As Jill Tarter says, um, if the, you know... If the ocean is the amount of, uh, space, parameter space too, you know, actual stars that we have to look at-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... radio frequencies. If that's the ocean, all we've looked at is a thimble full of water.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Is that, does that seem like a, an appropriate analogy as well?
- AFAdam Frank
Uh, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- AFAdam Frank
... you can't look at a thimble and say, "Oh, I didn't find any life in the thimble," and go, "Well, there you go, the whole ocean's dead." So, you know, w- so people need to understand that really, we have just... We've barely begun to actually search for evidence in, among the stars, telescopic evidence of, uh, of alien, of, of s- other civilizations. But when it comes to the Earth, you know, them visiting the Earth, that is actually... 'Cause we're working on a paper on that one. That is a bit more of a problem, but there's kind of lots of ways around that. Like maybe, maybe interstellar travel is really, really, really hard.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Right? And, and it's so hard that nobody gets to do it very much. And actually that's kind of, um, um, on my opinion. So, so, you know, the first part of the Fermi paradox I worry less about, and the second part of the, uh, part of the Fermi paradox is not even a paradox 'cause we haven't even looked yet. So I would say the question is completely open about whether or not there are other civilizations
- 9:58 – 13:08
The Drake Equation
- AFAdam Frank
out there.
- CWChris Williamson
So in terms of the Fermi paradox still being used as a basis for inquiry, it seems like the, uh, the current field has moved forward a little bit and that the questions have now evolved a little bit more. So with that in mind, your, um, recent research, how accurate or how, um, important is it to still consider the Drake equation for... As a basis for inquiry, and could you briefly explain what the Drake equation is for the listeners at home?
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. The, the Drake equation has a f- really amazing history. So Frank Drake was a radio astronomer who, uh, in the 19... 1959, he was the first guy to ever point a radio telescope at a star and actually look for a signal from, you know, for, you know, an intelligent signal, some kind of signal that could be interpreted as being from civilizations. And that was really the beginnings both... So both Fermi and Drake in the... This is all happening in the '50s.
- CWChris Williamson
I was gonna say the 50s, the 50s are shit hot for, um, getting some, searching some aliens, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Well, it was the beginning really of us thinking scientifically about EXO civilizations, right? People have been asking this question as long as there's been people. You know, do the stars... Are we the only ones, the only intelligent species in the universe? And people have been asking that question, you can see it back to the Greeks. But Fermi and Drake were the beginning of people starting to ask this question scientifically, trying to ask a question that you could actually formulate in a way that you could build a research program from. So Drake really, he's the first one to ever actually look, you know, 'cause now we actually had telescopes that could do it. And then, um, two years after or a year after he does this, you know, the search, people found out about it, you know, it went... You know, it was big news. And then the United States government asked him to hold a meeting on interstellar communications, and he invited... You know, there's maybe 10 people at the meeting, Carl Sagan, um, you know, s- other people. And, uh, he... In order to set up the meeting, he wanted a way to sort of frame the agenda and so he came up with this equation which was basically, uh, was an eq- equation for the number of civilizations that, that we could contact in the galaxy, like how many are out there. And his equation had seven individual terms in it, and each term in the equation was really a sub-question. So he asked, um, how many-... uh, how many stars are there in the galaxy, how many galaxies are there, or sorry, how many planets, what fraction of those stars have planets, uh, the number of, of planets in the habitable zone, the right place for life to form-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... around those planets, etc., etc. And so, uh, but that, that way of formulating it, of breaking the problem of how many civilizations are there into a bunch of sub-problems, that's what's enduring. And his, that formulation has become so powerful for us in terms of thinking about what you need to get a civilization. And that's what we used in our own research. We modified the Drake equation to get that one in 10 billion trillion number.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. Okay. So it actually provided a framework for you to-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... move forward from. That's really interesting.
- AFAdam Frank
And it does, still does. I think it, you know, for, for what was really just supposed to be an agenda, (laughs) you know, for a meeting-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... it turned out to be enormously potent.
- 13:08 – 17:26
Von Neumann Probes
- AFAdam Frank
- CWChris Williamson
That's awesome. Um, so does still, i- if the chance of life only occurring once appears to be pretty low, it- it seems like it should've happened from both the recent research that you've done and the Drake equation, we should've seen something by now, right? The, you, I've s- I've read an awful lot about, uh, von Neumann, von Neumann probes.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And there's some crazy fast, uh, colonization statistics that are cited for being able to take over a galaxy. For the listeners who don't know, von Neumann probes are self-replicating robots that go to a particular system, they suck up some of the resources, they replicate themselves, and they go again. Is that right?
- AFAdam Frank
Right. Right. Right. It's a way of settling the solar system, touching every star, every planetary system in the galaxy. And it, yeah, in about 700,000 years, you can cross the entire... Even if you're going at, like, uh, you know, a tenth of the speed of light, y- in about 700,000 years, you can pretty much touch every system in the galaxy.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So, you know, why, why have we not seen that?
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. That's a really interesting que- and we're working on a paper on this right now. Well, here's-
- CWChris Williamson
You're working on a lot of papers at the moment.
- AFAdam Frank
Uh, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, you're- you're- you're- you're putting work into this to the bone.
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs) Um, the, uh, here's the interesting question, right? The question w- the question really should be when did they visit, right? 'Cause it's enti- so there's, there's lots of ways out of this, right? But, but let me just say, let's just assume that there were colonizers, you know, that there were settlers, or there was a species that wanted to settle, um, you know, a cont- settle the, the different star systems. If they arrived three billion years ago, right? And they lasted... Every civilization's a finite lifetime, right? Nobody lasts forever. So if they were here three billion years ago, and they lasted for a million years, which would be a long time, all evidence that they ever existed is gone, at least on Earth.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Over so deeply. So, you know, you have to take both space and time into account. And so, um, that's one of the things we're looking at, like how far back could they have visited and still, you know, really left some kinda evidence? So, so, so that's one way around it. They just visited so long that it happened, but it happen- didn't happen, you know, uh, close enough for us to see evidence. Another thing is that, um, like I said, that, uh, you know, von Neumann machines assumes a certain level of being able to produce artificial intelligence. We don't know that's true. You know, that's a nice science fiction idea, but we don't know that's true. Uh, so, uh, and then, you know, if you need, if you don't have von Neumann machines and artificial intelligence, then you need actual living beings to do that. And, you know, space travel, building a world ship, are you familiar with the idea of world ships or century ships?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- AFAdam Frank
So it's the idea that if you have to, like if we want to travel from one star to the other, and we don't have some kind of super drive that can take us out, you know, first of all, the speed of light is a, is a limit. As far as we know, it's an absolute physical limit. We don't even know if a warp drive is even a physically meaningful thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
So, you know, let's just say the laws of physics that we understand hold, then you have to go at the speed of light or less than that. And to say, let's say you could manage, it would be a miracle to be able to get up to 10% of the speed of light, it would still take you hundreds of years to get to even the closest stars. So therefore, you'd have to build a ship that they call it a century ship or a generation ship, where, you know, you put people in the ship, and they'd have to live their entire lives in the ship on the way, you know, crossing over to the next star.
- CWChris Williamson
Live and die and live and die, and then there would be generations-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that would never get off it, and then finally you may be born in the generation that does actually get to see dry land, so to speak, again.
- AFAdam Frank
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. Right? So that could be like, yeah, it could be your great-great-grandchildren who actually get there. And that has all kinds of issues, moral issues, like what does it mean to condemn, you know, your future generations to live in a, in a tin can their entire lives, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely. Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
So a lot of, a lot of great science fiction written on, on that subject.
- CWChris Williamson
For sure.
- AFAdam Frank
But I, I just recently read a paper where, um, the, this scientist estimated the size of the economy that you would need to be able to build one of those things.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
And, and it would basically, you would need on the order of like a thousand Earth economies, you know, in order to have the resources to build a machine of that scale.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow.
- AFAdam Frank
And so
- 17:26 – 23:13
Most Likely Hurdles
- AFAdam Frank
he... Right. Right. And I was really surprised by that, and it just sort of speaks to the fact that, you know, we always have these science fiction ideas like, "Oh, technology's gonna progress endlessly." But, you know, we don't really know if that's true. There may real- be real limits that we can't get around. Um, and so, you know, it's quite possible that it's just so expensive and hard to travel between the stars that you rarely do it, you know.
- CWChris Williamson
I was gonna say, so what, what can you see as being the most likely hurdles for civilizations to get over before they can colonize the galaxy? Is it, is it a pandemic? Is it resource exhaustion? Is it malignant AI? Is it a combination of the few? I think, uh, there's a great-
- AFAdam Frank
I, I'm f-
- CWChris Williamson
Is it the great barrier of the...
- AFAdam Frank
Climate change. I think climate change is, is the first major hurdle. Because the difference between climate change and say nuclear war or pandemics, well, but maybe not pan- but it could, you know, uh, you know, arti- AI... A, we don't even know if AI is possible.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AFAdam Frank
Um, nuclear war, you know, there could be some species that are like, "I'm not building those things. That's crazy," you know? But climate change, you know, this is the thesis of the book, everybody hits climate change. If you build a world-girdling civilization, as I like to say-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
... um, there's no way, there's almost no way around climate change, because at least triggering it-... because if you're using that much energy to build a large-scale civilization, the planet, which is a giant thermodynamic system, has got to notice. So, you know, triggering climate change, I think, is universal. Uh, and the question is whether or not you're smart enough to make it through.
- CWChris Williamson
Or fast enough to negate the effects, I guess, before it makes it uninhabitable for you, because by its very nature, evolution has allowed us to, uh, evolve on a planet which is, we are fine-tuned for it rather than it being fine-tuned for us. And as we begin to make amends to that climate, we can actually make it ins- inhospitable for ourselves to exist on, right?
- AFAdam Frank
That's exactly it. You know, people often talk about climate change as being like, "Oh, we've got to save the Earth." You know, as if the Earth was like a furry little bunny. And it's, you know, the Earth is going to be just fine. You know, there's, there's literally nothing we could do to destroy the biosphere. We'll change the biosphere, we'll set it on a new path-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AFAdam Frank
... but the biosphere will be just fine. It's us, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
We're the ones-
- CWChris Williamson
We're going to be fucked. (laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah, right, as you said. Uh, you put it exac- you put it beautifully. It's, you know, the Earth, we're fine-tuned to the planet, not the other way around. And so if we push the climate hard enough and it drifts off into a new state, as it has many times before, you know, the- this complex technological society is the thing that probably won't make it.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah. Wow. Um, you've touched on a, a term there that I did want to, I did actually want to get your thoughts on. It's a little bit of a segue.
- AFAdam Frank
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you, do you have any ideas yourself as an explanation for why the universe seems fine-tuned for life?
- AFAdam Frank
Wow. That is, uh, that is such a powerful and profound question. And, um, I don't. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
The problem is, because no, no, that problem speaks to s- now we're, we're doing a, you know, we're heading off into a slightly different territory, but it's fun territory, so we should talk about it. Um, you know, the laws of physics, right? We, there's, there's a lot of questions about why the laws of physics look the way they do. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
The universal constants and such like that, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Yes. Yeah, exactly, right? You know, so there's, there's, you know, anybody who's taken high school physics remembers Newton's Laws of Gravity, and there's that G sitting in there. There's this number that just sits there and you're like, "Well, where'd that come from?" It's like, well, the universe just gave it to us. You know, the value of it, right? 6.67 times 10 to the minus 11 newton kilogram meter squared.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
Um, I, I think that might be it. I might score points for getting that right.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yep, yep.
- AFAdam Frank
You know. Um, so, uh, you know, why did nature choose that value of the constant and not a little bit different? And then there's all these other constants that go along with the laws that we understand, and it seems like if any of those laws were just slightly different, then life as we know it couldn't have formed. Um, and this has been, you know, a major question for physics. Why did the universe choose that? Now, some philosophers look at that problem and they're like, "Look, it's not a big deal. It's just the ones you ended up with," right? There's not, you know, I mean, if I go outside and it's raining today, you know, it, that's, that's the day you found that it was raining. It's not, you know, there, it's, it's not some strange, uh, uh, uh, something that needs to be explained. You know, there's, there's past history, et cetera. But of course, with the universe, if there's only one universe, then, you know, at some point you run into, you know, you run out of past history.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 23:13 – 29:52
The Problem With Physics
- AFAdam Frank
this one time thing, which is the universe, uh, for, uh, you know, something that's reproducible, that, that you could, that- that's like an experiment on a table. So-
- CWChris Williamson
I understand completely. Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. So the big, the, you know, um, uh, um, you just ra- had, uh, Sabine Hoffenstein on your bo- show.
- CWChris Williamson
I very, uh, very recently did. Yeah. She, uh, she had a lot, a lot to say about the dogma and the ideology, which appears to be really, really prevalent in physics. I was very interested and shocked to find out that not only are physicists humans-
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... but they're also, they're also subject to, uh, the emotions and the, uh, s- cognitive biases that the rest of us are.
- AFAdam Frank
Right. Right. Well, the problem is, and so I, I really, I, I agree with a lot of things she has to say. And the problem, it's not all physics, it's just this what we might call the frontiers, like the absolute frontiers of space and time and cosmology, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
And the problem for them is p- particularly when it comes to particle physics, is that there's, there's no data. That they've run, that we're kind of, we've run to the edge of where we can get data. And, you know, science has got to have data. And if you run out of data, then you become subject to all of the cognitive biases, et cetera. So, um...... you know, things like the multiverse and such to me are, are, uh, enigmatic of the fact that those branches of physics, as exciting as they are, have kind of reached their limit of what... of having data. And so we got to go back really now and think much more deeply and philosophically. We have to real- I think addressing philo- these philosophical... I'm a big fan of philosophy, and I think it's very important in science when you run into these boundaries. Um, so yeah, so fine-tuning presents a real challenge, um, but I think, you know, there's going to be scientific answers to it, but it may take us in really exotic and interesting places.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a, it's as big of a question as you, as we can get to, right? So let's get, let's get back onto the core tenets.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So, um, the Kardashev scale.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I absolutely love this concept.
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I think it's, it's so cool. I just think-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's such an awesome way to categorize civilizations, and it gives you a real sense of awe, and is-
- AFAdam Frank
Right. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, it, it's quite grounding as well. You know, when we think-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... we look back at 1,000 years ago, even 100 years ago, or you think, "How far have we come?" And you realize just how much further there is to go.
- AFAdam Frank
(laughs) But it's also... and yeah, and also built into it is an assumption that I think we have also st- uh, we've, we've realized how wrong that assumption is. So let's just go through what the Kardashev scale is, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, so, so everybody's on the same page. Okay, so, um, just as Frank Drake was writing down the Drake equation, there were... uh, Kardashev was a, a astronomer in Russia who was also interested in extraterrestrial, uh, civilizations. And he came up with this idea... because he was actually thinking about what you should look for. And he s- came up with this idea that civilizations would naturally progress through three different categorizable stages or types, and the ti- and it was all based on energy. And type one civilization would be a civilization that could harness all of the energy available to its home planet. And that's basically solar energy or stellar energy, or they can... oh, they can harvest all the energy falling on the planet from the star. Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
And then a type two would be a civilization that could harvest all the energy that came from the star itself by, say, you know, wrapping a giant sphere around the star with solar panels on the inside and harvesting, you know, the entire energy output of the star.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
And then a type three was where a civilization could harvest all the energy coming from their home galaxy with its 400 billion stars. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Right? So, um, so that is like... you know, that, that idea has also been, you know, both for science fiction and for people thinking about extraterrestrial intelligence, that has become, you know, a kind of a keystone idea that a lot of people have worked with and developed. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
And we're about, we're about a naught .7, right? I think.
- 29:52 – 37:55
The Anthropocene
- AFAdam Frank
what we're gonna do is going to destroy the biosphere is just insane. And that goes to the, the, the mistake in Kardashev scale, because the Kardashev scale was all about energy use, right? And it was a very kind of 1960s, you know, shiny future kind of science fiction idea, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Got you.
- AFAdam Frank
So in the 1960s, you know, um, we had all the... you know, you look at the movies of then, everybody's flying around in gleaming perfect spaceships and-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yes.
- AFAdam Frank
... you know, uh... and so, uh, there was the idea that if you just could, you know, marshal enough energy, if you had enough energy, you could bring a planet to heel.... you know, you could-
- CWChris Williamson
It was almost as if the technology was just going to be a byproduct of, of time going by-
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And it was simply resource acquisition that was the only, that was going to be the only hurdle to get over.
- AFAdam Frank
Right, right. And, and the lesson of tri- climate change and what we call the Anthropocene, so I talk a lot in the book about the, the idea of the Anthropocene, which is this new, uh, geologic era that we've triggered, the human-dominated era. So, in the last 10,000 years, we've been in what we call the Holocene, the last in, the interglacial period, and now we've pushed the Earth out of the Holocene, or we're doing it. We're pushing it into a new era which people call the Anthropocene. And unless-
- CWChris Williamson
What an- an- Anthropocene as in anthro- anthropology, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Yes, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Fantastic.
- AFAdam Frank
So it's a two-
- CWChris Williamson
Nice etym- nice etymology of the word.
- AFAdam Frank
Right, right. So it's a, you know, it's the, it's the, it's gonna be an era where human effects dominate. Even if we're gone, we will have already pushed the planet into that era by the, uh, our activity, um, up to now. So, so what, uh, the lesson of the Anthropocene which goes against what Kardashev was saying, was that it's not just energy. It's not just how much energy you have available to you. You know, you've already got a planet and a biosphere which is incredibly powerful and it's got its own rules, you know? And those rules are more, are just as much about entropy and the second law of thermodynamics as they are about just harvesting energy. So, um, you know, Kardashev, Kardashev doesn't take into account that by using all of that energy, you feed back on the planet in ways that could end your civilization. So, you know, I, I, I think it's, I mean, I love Kardashev scale, but I think it's really important to notice that we've gone now beyond Kardashev scale to recognize that it's more complicated. The, the, the transition for civilizations, at least planetary civilizations, is more complex than just harvesting energy.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. It definitely seems to be so. So, regardless of how unlikely it seems that we're alone, at the moment we are-
- AFAdam Frank
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... as far as we can tell.
- AFAdam Frank
Right, right.
- CWChris Williamson
And if we are on our own, what implications does this have f- for our behavior, both personally and globally a- a- and environmentally? The, it sounds to me, it seems to me an awful like like the stakes have been raised for everybody.
- AFAdam Frank
Well, you know, I s- okay, I'll think about this in two ways. So on one level, right, we're not, there's no other planet for us to go to. You know, Mars, I'm, I'm a big fan of, you know, uh, settling the solar system and I kind of think of it as the prize we get for making it through climate change.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
But, you know, Mars, there, there's, we're not gonna be going to Mar-, we're not gonna get enough people to Mars any time soon to, you know, to make, you know, uh, living on Earth easier. So that's out of the picture. But I do think, I, from my perspective, we now know so much about planets because of the, we visited every kind of planet, uh, in the solar system, and we also now know that there's all these other planets, and we also know an amazing amount about Earth's 4.5 billion year history, that even if we don't, even if we haven't found ex- uh, exo-civilizations, as I like to say, we now have, you know, we have good arguments for why they should've ex- existed, you know, that they're, they're probab- what I would say is they probably have existed in the past, doesn't mean there's anybody around now. But, but we know enough now to ask ourselves what is the generic consequence of a civilization emerging from a biosphere?
- CWChris Williamson
Are you saying, are you, would you say that it's inevitable that any civilization, unless they get something incredibly right or incredibly fortunate, that this is, this is par-, this is par for the course? This is, you're along for the ride?
- AFAdam Frank
That's exactly what I'm saying. I, I think, and I think that's, that's why it's really important to start thinking seriously about exo-civilizations, 'cause what we realize is, we're just one of many, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
And, and that b- the stage, you know, of, of, we now know there's so many planets that, you know, unless nature's insanely biased against it, this has happened before. It's probably happened a lot. And everybody's triggered climate change.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
So the question then becomes is, you know, what on average, how long on average does anybody last? And what do you have to do on average in order to make it through, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 37:55 – 46:10
Climate Change
- AFAdam Frank
civilizations across cosmic space and time, we are forced to grow up. We are forced to enter into our maturity. And so, that's the first thing to understand. And that to understand that actually it's, you know, it's very dangerous, but it also signals something, I mean, this sounds weird, but there's a way in which we could be proud of triggering climate change, right? We are, we have, with our civ- our, our collective project of civilization, we changed the atmosphere of an entire planet, right? That's not bad for a bunch of hairless monkeys.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
You know? (laughs) Um, so the real question now is, okay, we triggered climate change, we didn't do it on purpose, right? It was a, um, it was an unintended consequence of just doing what we'd been doing forever, which is using energy to build civilization.
- CWChris Williamson
I think that's-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I think that's such a good point, that, uh, you, you touched on it earlier on. People think humans suck and we're disgusting to the planet and we're mistreating it and all the rest of the things. You know, sure, there are some, uh, energy companies throughout the years that could've probably been more responsible.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But I bet that, I would wage you that none of them went out of their way and thought, "Do you know what I really fancy waking up and doing today? I really fancy fucking up the planet." Like, no one thought that.
- AFAdam Frank
Right, not the... at the beginning nobody knew, right? And so when we discovered, you know, when we discovered oil and coal, right, you know, all we were doing was the exact same thing we'd been doing since, you know, the birth of agriculture, where we were like, you know, we started using animals to do work for us. We started using their poop to burn, you know. And we found oil and we were like, "Oh my God, this shit is awesome." (laughs) You know? You can heat your home with it. You can build an internal combustion engine. I mean, you know, we didn't know that we were going to trigger climate change with it. We just built a great civilization with it. Once we realized that, you know, climate change was happening, a la the 1980s, you know, then the companies who knew that it was happening and purposely, you know, drove climate denial or purposely, you know, didn't do anything about it, yeah, it's that now it does get to fault. Now it does get to they, they are going to be the folly, uh, the, that will lead to you know our civilization not reaching its potential, of us potentially collapsing. Um, but you know, for most of us, right, for, for you and me, you know, we didn't purpose... It's not like we're, we're shitheads for, you know, uh, uh, coming into a world where we drive cars, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
I mean, you know, now the question is, as a collective society, can we make a transition to a different kind of energy infrastructure? So you know, it changes the, the whole way we think about this is we've got to understand that this is a transition that we should've expected, you know? And now that it's happening, you know, we've got to, uh, marshal our forces and see whether or not we've got the evolutionary, um, you know, potential to, to make the next step and, and, and have a, you know, a, a long history in front of us.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, definitely. The evolutionary cajones to keep on, (laughs) to keep on going.
- AFAdam Frank
Exactly. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AFAdam Frank
We've sort of got to step up to the plate, because you know when you think about, okay, there's all these civilizations out there, I think, that have gone through this before, and you know, lots of them have probably not made it and maybe some of them did make it. What was it that distinguished, distinguished the winners from the losers, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Conceptually, what, what can you, what can you think of? What can you conceive of that would get them through it?
- AFAdam Frank
Well, you know, so it's funny. So one of the things I talk about in the book and that, you know, is a recent paper that we just published, where we modeled, we did these sort of, uh, you know, simplified models of the interaction between a civilization and it... and a planet, and a planet as an ecosystem. And what we, we wanted to see sort of like what are the generic kinds of histories? You know, once... And what we found is there were three basic, uh, kinds of trajectory for a civilization and planet together. The first was sustainability. You actually, you know, the, the, the, the civilizations started using the planet's energy. It was... The, the population went way up because of it. The planet started to heat up because of it. But you came to a nice, stable equilibrium. You know? The, the, the planet stopped heating and the populations, uh, came to a, a, a steady state. That was good, right? And that was... Okay, and so that showed you that at least, you know, from the mathematical modeling, yeah, okay, it is possible to have sustainability.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
The other, uh, the other two classes of, of trajectory were a little bit more worrisome. One was just straight up collapse. You know? The population rose really fast, the planet heated up. The population overshot the carrying capacity of the planet and then just dropped like a stone. They basically went extinct-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
... um, as the planet just drove off into an entirely new climate state.... so that was bad. And then the other one was sort of like intermediate, where you had a huge die-off. You didn't, you know, you didn't go extinct, but you lost 70% of your population. So, you know, from those three different classes of trajectory, what it tells you is like, okay, it should be possible to have an e- you know, come to a, some kind of equilibrium, some kind of sustainability. But, you know, you're gonna have to navi- you're gonna have to be really thoughtful and navigate these treacherous waters to make sure you don't end up on one of those other kinds of trajectories. And there's, in the future, you know, we're gonna make these models more complex, more realistic, and hopefully we'll be able to see really in fine detail what distinguished the winners from the losers.
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing. So, in this particular projection, what are some of the key elements? I- i- is population control something that we need to really be, be carefully thinking about? Uh, or is energy the first port of call? Is it the greenhouse gases? You know, w- what are the, what's the low-hanging fruit, so to speak?
- AFAdam Frank
Um, yeah, you know, I mean, I, I, if I, the answer I give is gonna be, is not gonna be based on my models, because the models didn't have that kind of fine detail in them.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
But I would say, but, but, okay, what I would certainly say is it's not just population, it's energy per capita, right? So, you know, um, for example, if you look at like the energy... (laughs) So here's a, if you look at energy per person a- versus happiness or wellness, like, you know, the UN has a wellness index, and what you find is, is that, um, you know, for, for, uh, countries that use very, very little energy, uh, and are very poor, people are pretty miserable, right? But then as you ascend the amount of energy used, you find people get, you know, their wellness index goes up, people are happier. But once you get to about Italy's level of, uh, energy use, it kinda tops off. So we like, you know, an average American or Canadian uses way more energy than the average Italian, but they're really not much happier, right? So, the question is, can you find, you know, if you've got seven billion people on the planet, um, can you, you know, what's the right amount of energy that each person can get to have a fulfilling life, right? Maybe everybody doesn't get three cars, you know, but you still get, you know, you get, you get, you know, easy transportation and you get to fly around every now and then, and you get-
- CWChris Williamson
It's mi- minimum effective dose, right?
- AFAdam Frank
That's exactly what it is. And so that's what I think we really have to think about. We have to k- uh, recognize that every kind of energy we use has, has a consequence. Like even, you know, if we switch to all renewables, that doesn't mean we're not gonna have, uh, any impact on the planet. We're always gonna have an impact on the planet. The question is, how do we tu- how do we tune those impacts so that actually we're helping the biosphere rather than, you know, hindering its own, uh, flourishing.
- CWChris Williamson
So, who does the responsibility lie with here? Is it scientists to improve the science? Is it politicians to improve the politics? Is it individual people, uh, of the, the, uh, societies to alter their usage and reduce their usage? Is it, uh, governments to better educate those people?
- AFAdam Frank
I think it falls to, I mean, you know, really what it falls to is, um, it's the level, I'd say it's the level of cities or tow- you know, really cities on up, right? Um, because, you know, I mean, you know, we should, we should recycle and we should be careful about our, you know, our impacts on the planet. We should not practice ecological hooliganism, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 46:10 – 54:35
The Zeroth Order
- AFAdam Frank
what kind of energy comes into my house.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Right? You know, plug, when I plug my thing in, you know, my, my, you know, my plug into the wall, I get electricity out of it. But, you know, there's only so much control I have over where that, how that energy was generated, right? So, um, it's really on the level of what we, you know, so, so what we really need to do is put pressure on governments from the city level on up, and companies too, to like make the sweeping infrastructure changes that we need in order to solve this problem. Like, you know, so the zeroth order, we've gotta be done with fossil fuels. Like that is the simplest thing that we could do. And it's-
- CWChris Williamson
That's your, that's your number one low-hanging fruit.
- AFAdam Frank
That's the low, that is the low hanging fruit. If we did that, we would be so far along the curve to a new kind of, you know, relationship with the biosphere. It's so simple to be done. I mean, it's, it's, you know, uh, building a new infrastructure is non-trivial, but on the other hand, you know, we've done that a lot across civilization. I like to point out that, um, here in Rochester, there's a place I can stand where I'm, um, I'm looking at the Erie Canal, which was this, you know, this canal that ran across New York State. It was a big deal when it was built in the 1830s. And then, um, that was like the main mode of creating wealth and infrastructure, mov- you know, of transportation in 1830. But then around the 1850s, 1870s, train lines came in. And I can come to, I can stand on a place where that tr- one of those train lines was put in, uh, and I can see the train line. And then a little bit further than that I can see the highway. And then above that, I can see the airplanes landing, right? So those are four different transportation infrastructures that we built in the space of, you know, 100 years.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
You know, 150 years. And they required enormous blood and, and effort and money and, but we just built them, and in some cases, we abandoned them, right? So the idea of like that, oh my God, switching from, you know, uh, uh, fossil fuels to something else is impossible, is just like, you just look at our recent history and it's like, that's what we're good at actually.
- CWChris Williamson
We overcome stuff, right?
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah, that's right. Our, our ingenuity. So, um, you know, making that switch is important and it has to happen at the higher levels. Because one, one of the problems with climate change, as we were talking about before, is people feel like every choice they make has like this overwhelming moral consequence. Like, oh my God-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I left the light on. Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah, right. I'm a horrible person. I suck. And you know what? The problem is actually bigger than you individually.So, for those of us who live in democratic societies, the real effort is not just voting once, right? Not just voting once, you know, when, you know, if we have a, an election, like in the United States, you know, once a year. We should be voting all the time. We should be showing up, you know, we gotta a- ... Uh, you know, like in America, in my town, I've got an opportunity to vote probably every week. I could go down to the city council and, you know, um, uh, push for, for responsible climate friendly energy modalities, you know. I can help choose the candidates. I should make sure that the candidate who's gonna run next year is, you know, thinking about climate change. So, that's what I say, is really, you know, the most important thing is to put pressure on the, you know, the, the systems that we're part of, um, to effect change.
- CWChris Williamson
I agree. I think what's lovely about the way that you've presented it is that you've created the foundations for reframing the, the whole concept, the whole argument.
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Taking it out of the political sphere to a degree, making it less of a emotionally charged and passionate, um, issue, passionate topic.
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And what's actually happening now is it's like, "Look, this is happening. Don't beat yourself up about it. Just work out how the fuck we can fix it."
- AFAdam Frank
Right, exactly. That's really the thing. And we should have ... It's happening because it was supposed to happen.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AFAdam Frank
Right? That's really the thing. Of course this happened, right? What-
- CWChris Williamson
The same way, the same way that you turn the light bulb, you turn a traditional light bulb on, it gives off light, which is what you want, but it also gives off heat, which is not-
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... necessarily what you want.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
A byproduct of us developing as a civilization was this effect on the biosphere.
- AFAdam Frank
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It ... We didn't mean for it to happen.
- AFAdam Frank
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Now how do we, now how do we move forward?
- AFAdam Frank
Right. That's exactly it. That's exact- ... That's a, you know, that's a really nice analogy, that idea of the light bulb, right? Yeah. So like, oh, we were using these light bulbs that did what we wanted them to do, but they had this negative side effect. Oops. Okay. Just fucking change the light bulbs, man.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
Episode duration: 54:41
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