Are We Alone In The Universe? | Adam Frank

Chris Williamson 0:04 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.

Chris Williamson 2:28 Professor Adam Frank, how are you?

Adam Frank 2:31 It's great to be here. Thanks for having- giving me the opportunity.

Chris Williamson 2:34 No worries at all. Where in the world are you at the moment?

Adam Frank 2:37 I'm currently in my office at the University of Rochester in beautiful Upstate New York.

Chris Williamson 2:42 That sounds lovely. And tomorrow's your birthday, right?

Adam Frank 2:45 Tomorrow's my birthday. Gonna party like it's my birthday.

Chris Williamson 2:48 (laughs)

Adam Frank 2:49 Which at 56 means I'll probably just, like, chill out and play video games.

Chris Williamson 2:53 Yeah, well, you know, 56-

Adam Frank 2:55 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:55 56 or sif- 16, it could be exactly the same thing.

Adam Frank 2:58 Exactly. Yeah, for me, it's no diff.

Chris Williamson 2:59 Fantastic. Right, let's get into it. So-

Adam Frank 3:02 Okay.

Chris Williamson 3:03 ... what- what- what is the likelihood that we're the only instance of life in the universe?

Adam Frank 3:08 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?

Chris Williamson 3:53 Yeah.

Adam Frank 3:53 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.

Chris Williamson 4:24 That's a pretty big number.

Adam Frank 4:25 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-

Chris Williamson 4:32 Yeah.

Adam Frank 4:33 ... yeah, the odds of us being alone.

Chris Williamson 4:34 Yeah.

Adam Frank 4:35 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.

Chris Williamson 5:24 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.

Adam Frank 5:56 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-

Chris Williamson 6:09 Yeah.

Adam Frank 6:09 ... 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-

Chris Williamson 6:17 Yeah.

Adam Frank 6:17 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 6:43 (laughs)

Adam Frank 6:43 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-

Chris Williamson 6:57 Yeah.

Adam Frank 6:58 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 7:15 Okay.

Adam Frank 7:15 Right?

Chris Williamson 7:15 So it's running, nature's running the experiment an awful lot of times.

Adam Frank 7:19 Right. Right. And ...

Chris Williamson 7:20 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?

Adam Frank 7:32 Right. That's a great, uh, that's a great question. So that's, like, that's the Fermi paradox, right?

Chris Williamson 7:36 Yes.

Adam Frank 7:36 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?

Chris Williamson 8:07 (laughs)

Adam Frank 8:08 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-

Chris Williamson 8:56 Yeah.

Adam Frank 8:56 ... radio frequencies. If that's the ocean, all we've looked at is a thimble full of water.

Chris Williamson 9:01 (laughs) Is that, does that seem like a, an appropriate analogy as well?

Adam Frank 9:04 Uh, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know-

Chris Williamson 9:06 Wow.

Adam Frank 9:06 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 9:39 Yeah.

Adam Frank 9:39 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

Adam Frank 9:58 out there.

Chris Williamson 9:58 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?

Adam Frank 10:26 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.

Chris Williamson 10:53 I was gonna say the 50s, the 50s are shit hot for, um, getting some, searching some aliens, right?

Adam Frank 10:59 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-

Chris Williamson 12:27 Yeah.

Adam Frank 12:27 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 12:54 Wow. Okay. So it actually provided a framework for you to-

Adam Frank 12:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:57 ... move forward from. That's really interesting.

Adam Frank 13:00 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-

Chris Williamson 13:05 Yeah.

Adam Frank 13:05 ... it turned out to be enormously potent.

Chris Williamson 13:08 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.

Adam Frank 13:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:31 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?

Adam Frank 13:52 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.

Chris Williamson 14:10 Okay. So, you know, why, why have we not seen that?

Adam Frank 14:14 Yeah. That's a really interesting que- and we're working on a paper on this right now. Well, here's-

Chris Williamson 14:17 You're working on a lot of papers at the moment.

Adam Frank 14:19 Uh, yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 14:19 I mean, you're- you're- you're- you're putting work into this to the bone.

Adam Frank 14:23 (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.

Chris Williamson 15:03 Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Frank 15:04 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?

Chris Williamson 15:53 No.

Adam Frank 15:54 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.

Chris Williamson 16:11 Yeah.

Adam Frank 16:11 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.

Chris Williamson 16:37 Live and die and live and die, and then there would be generations-

Adam Frank 16:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:40 ... 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.

Adam Frank 16:47 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?

Chris Williamson 17:01 Absolutely. Yeah.

Adam Frank 17:02 So a lot of, a lot of great science fiction written on, on that subject.

Chris Williamson 17:05 For sure.

Adam Frank 17:05 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.

Chris Williamson 17:16 (laughs)

Adam Frank 17:16 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.

Chris Williamson 17:25 Wow.

Adam Frank 17:25 And so

Adam Frank 17:26 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.

Chris Williamson 17:48 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-

Adam Frank 18:03 I, I'm f-

Chris Williamson 18:03 Is it the great barrier of the...

Adam Frank 18:05 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.

Chris Williamson 18:20 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 18:20 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-

Chris Williamson 18:35 (laughs)

Adam Frank 18:35 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 18:56 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?

Adam Frank 19:21 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-

Chris Williamson 19:37 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 19:37 ... but the biosphere will be just fine. It's us, right?

Chris Williamson 19:41 (laughs)

Adam Frank 19:41 We're the ones-

Chris Williamson 19:41 We're going to be fucked. (laughs)

Adam Frank 19:42 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.

Chris Williamson 19:59 (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.

Adam Frank 20:08 Sure.

Chris Williamson 20:09 Do you, do you have any ideas yourself as an explanation for why the universe seems fine-tuned for life?

Adam Frank 20:17 Wow. That is, uh, that is such a powerful and profound question. And, um, I don't. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 20:27 (laughs)

Adam Frank 20:27 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-

Chris Williamson 20:41 The universal constants and such like that, right?

Adam Frank 20:44 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.

Chris Williamson 21:04 (laughs)

Adam Frank 21:05 Um, I, I think that might be it. I might score points for getting that right.

Chris Williamson 21:07 Yeah, yep, yep.

Adam Frank 21:08 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.

Chris Williamson 21:58 Yeah.

Adam Frank 21:59 So for some philosophers, this is not a problem, it's just a given. For physicists, we feel like there could have been, you know, that the, we, we tend... And this is the problem, we tend to think of the universe as being like a- a- an experiment on a table. Like, I could have run the experiment differently-

Chris Williamson 22:13 Yeah.

Adam Frank 22:13 ... so maybe I, I could have run... But maybe that's the problem, right? Maybe philo- I think this is really a problem both in physics and philosophy, because here's the question. How do you do the science of something that has only happened once?

Chris Williamson 22:28 Yeah.

Adam Frank 22:29 You know? How do you talk about the probability, how do you talk about the statistics of something that you don't have statistics for, you know? Um, and so, you know, in, in physics now, I am not, I'm not a big fan of like, things like the multiverse and string theory. I think there's real problems with that. Uh, um, and so the idea that like, oh, you know, people, some people are really very happy about the idea there's lots of universes, they are popping off all the time. And, and then, you know, the, the reason why the universe appears fine-tuned for life is we just happen to live in a mediocre universe. And, and, uh, that's the, that's the value that most of the universes have gotten.

Chris Williamson 23:02 Yeah.

Adam Frank 23:02 And I, yeah, I think that whole way of thinking, first of all, there's no data for it, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a fiction. And second of all, it comes from mistaking

Adam Frank 23:13 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-

Chris Williamson 23:21 I understand completely. Yeah.

Adam Frank 23:23 Yeah. So the big, the, you know, um, uh, um, you just ra- had, uh, Sabine Hoffenstein on your bo- show.

Chris Williamson 23:29 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-

Adam Frank 23:45 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:45 ... but they're also, they're also subject to, uh, the emotions and the, uh, s- cognitive biases that the rest of us are.

Adam Frank 23:55 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?

Chris Williamson 24:11 (laughs)

Adam Frank 24:11 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.

Chris Williamson 25:04 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.

Adam Frank 25:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:09 So, um, the Kardashev scale.

Adam Frank 25:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:13 I absolutely love this concept.

Adam Frank 25:15 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:15 I think it's, it's so cool. I just think-

Adam Frank 25:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:18 ... it's such an awesome way to categorize civilizations, and it gives you a real sense of awe, and is-

Adam Frank 25:26 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 25:26 ... uh, it, it's quite grounding as well. You know, when we think-

Adam Frank 25:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:29 ... 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.

Adam Frank 25:40 (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?

Chris Williamson 25:50 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.

Adam Frank 26:34 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.

Chris Williamson 26:49 Yeah.

Adam Frank 26:49 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)

Chris Williamson 26:59 Yeah.

Adam Frank 27:00 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-

Chris Williamson 27:14 And we're about, we're about a naught .7, right? I think.

Adam Frank 27:17 A cor- Yeah, so I think it was, uh, uh, Carl Sagan who, you know, was the master of all of this, did a calculation and said, "In log, in log scale, we're at aba- uh, .7." But here's the thing, here's, uh, uh, you know, the... for me, what's really important, right? So, um, you know, my whole thesis in my book is that, um, we've been looking at climate change all wrong. We think of climate change as some kind of weird political issue or, you know, it's, it's... the question is did we or didn't we change, you know, the climate? But in fact, actually, when you look at it from, you know, a, a kind of the 10,000 light year view, we're just, uh, you know, uh... and any, any exo-civilization, any civilization on a planet will just be, uh, something that, that the, the biosphere of that planet evolves. It's just gonna... just like there were dinosaurs and grasslands, a technological civilization is going to be, uh, you know, one of the things that's possible for a biosphere to evolve.

Chris Williamson 28:10 Yeah.

Adam Frank 28:11 And when it does, that civilization is no less subject to the laws of the biosphere, to the laws of planets and how planets evolve than dinosaurs or grasslands, right?

Chris Williamson 28:26 Absolutely. Do you th- do you think that we are potentially, um, wrapped up in our own genius to a degree?

Adam Frank 28:33 That's exactly the problem. We think... this goes back to this idea of like, "Oh my God, we're going to destroy the planet." We, we just have, we just have a very large view of our... (laughs) a larger view of ourselves than we deserve, right? We're, you know... we are what the planet, what the biosphere and the planet is doing now, you know, and there's no guarantee we're what's gonna... the planet's gonna be doing 1,000 years from now. And we're not going to destroy the planet. We don't have that kind of power. The-

Chris Williamson 28:55 Yeah. I mean, the, the, the concept to say that we are going to destroy the planet, it's, it's all based on perspective of what exist and destroy are, right? Because to destroy the planet by melting the polar icecaps is probably going to be pretty good for some fish-

Adam Frank 29:11 Right.

Chris Williamson 29:11 ... but it's going to be pretty shit for us.

Adam Frank 29:13 Right. I agree, yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:13 So what I mean is that we're going to change the nature.

Adam Frank 29:18 Right. We're going to change... Right. We'll alter... we will, we will move the biosphere into a new state, which probably won't include us (laughs) anymore, right? But we're not going to destroy the biosphere. In fact, the biosphere has gone through many changes, including the only reason we're here is because of a mass extinction 65 million years ago, right? So mass extinctions from the, from the biosphere's perspective can be an opportunity to fill niches, right? So I'm... now, clearly we don't want to trigger a mass extinction now because we depend on all of that biodiversity for our own complex civilization. But the idea that like somehow

Adam Frank 29:52 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?

Chris Williamson 30:13 Got you.

Adam Frank 30:13 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-

Chris Williamson 30:20 Yeah, yes.

Adam Frank 30:20 ... 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-

Chris Williamson 30:31 It was almost as if the technology was just going to be a byproduct of, of time going by-

Adam Frank 30:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 30:35 And it was simply resource acquisition that was the only, that was going to be the only hurdle to get over.

Adam Frank 30:40 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-

Chris Williamson 31:05 What an- an- Anthropocene as in anthro- anthropology, right?

Adam Frank 31:08 Yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 31:09 Fantastic.

Adam Frank 31:10 So it's a two-

Chris Williamson 31:10 Nice etym- nice etymology of the word.

Adam Frank 31:12 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.

Chris Williamson 32:19 Yeah, yeah. It definitely seems to be so. So, regardless of how unlikely it seems that we're alone, at the moment we are-

Adam Frank 32:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:29 ... as far as we can tell.

Adam Frank 32:30 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 32:31 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.

Adam Frank 32:48 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.

Chris Williamson 33:03 (laughs)

Adam Frank 33:03 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?

Chris Williamson 33:57 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?

Adam Frank 34:12 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?

Chris Williamson 34:23 Yeah.

Adam Frank 34:23 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.

Chris Williamson 34:36 Yeah.

Adam Frank 34:36 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?

Chris Williamson 34:47 Yeah.

Adam Frank 34:47 So in that way, what's happening with us, we're just cosmic teenagers, right?

Chris Williamson 34:51 (laughs) Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Adam Frank 34:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:53 Do you think, do you think that by framing the question in this way, that it takes global warming a little bit out of the political sphere and into the civilization shit we need to fix this sphere?

Adam Frank 35:04 I, I think it changes everything. And that's why, you know, as the book has come out, you know, it's been great that the book's gotten a lot of attention. I've had the opportunity to talk with a lot of people about this. Uh, you know, and some people are always like, "Well, what does this change?" And for me, it changes everything because, you know, the s- st- you, as I like to say, you can't solve a problem until you understand it. And you can't understand it until you can tell its story. And when it comes to climate change, we've been telling the wrong story.

Chris Williamson 35:30 (laughs)

Adam Frank 35:30 And because we've been telling the wrong story, that's one of the reasons why after 30 years of knowing about it, we haven't done shit, right? You know, the Paris Accord was a great beginning, but it wasn't even close to dealing with this, you know? And so the climate change, it seems either it, you end up with denial, people saying it's not happening, or it just seems so overwhelming that peoples', their, their heads just turn off, right?

Chris Williamson 35:54 Yeah, I, I totally understand that. You've just got this distribution at both ends of the curve. People-

Adam Frank 35:58 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 35:59 ... people think there's nothing that we can do or people think we don't need to do anything.

Adam Frank 36:02 Right, right. And then the people who are even, uh, you know, who want to do something about it, you just get locked into this thing like, "Oh my God, human beings, we just suck. We're a disease on the planet." You know, and it becomes this really negative, um, story. And with this, when you look at it from the, uh, the astrobiological perspective as I like to say, you know, from the 10,000 light year view, you see like, look, climate change is not a problem that you have to make go away. It is a, it's a transition, uh, an expected and predictable transition that is dangerous and that you have to navigate, right?

Chris Williamson 36:37 Mm-hmm.

Adam Frank 36:37 ... nobody says adolescence has to go away, right? When your kid turns 12, you're not like, "Oh my God, stop with the adolescence."

Chris Williamson 36:43 Yeah.

Adam Frank 36:44 You know, he's going to have to go through adolescence. Adolescence is a very dangerous phase, not everybody makes it through. And, you know, what you hope for is the wisdom, uh, to be able to make that transition. And when you come out on the other side, you have enormous opportunities and potential, if you make it through the other side.

Chris Williamson 37:00 Yeah. So, where do we go from here? What are the directions that we can go in from 2018?

Adam Frank 37:07 Well, I think the first thing is this beginning, you know, the begi- the recognition that as we talk about climate change is the recognition that climate change is really our Copernican Revolution, right? So, you know, you look at the Copernican Revolution and before the Copernican Revolution, everybody, you know, when they, they went outside and they saw th- the- the sun over the eastern horizon, they said, "Oh, you know, the Earth is the center of the universe and the sun is orbiting the Earth." And then after the Copernican Revolution, everyone was like, "No, the Earth is just another planet orbiting the sun." Like the whole universe changed, everything, and it had huge consequences for politics and philosophy and religion. And, you know, it was a fundamental transition in how human beings saw themselves in the world.

Chris Williamson 37:50 Yeah.

Adam Frank 37:50 And that's what climate change is. It's the moment when we, uh, are forced, like many other

Adam Frank 37:55 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.

Chris Williamson 38:28 (laughs)

Adam Frank 38:28 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.

Chris Williamson 38:41 I think that's-

Adam Frank 38:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:42 ... 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.

Adam Frank 38:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:58 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.

Adam Frank 39:09 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?

Chris Williamson 40:18 Yeah.

Adam Frank 40:18 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.

Chris Williamson 40:48 Yeah, definitely. The evolutionary cajones to keep on, (laughs) to keep on going.

Adam Frank 40:53 Exactly. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah, right?

Chris Williamson 40:55 (laughs)

Adam Frank 40:55 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?

Chris Williamson 41:10 Conceptually, what, what can you, what can you think of? What can you conceive of that would get them through it?

Adam Frank 41:16 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.

Chris Williamson 42:07 Yeah.

Adam Frank 42:08 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-

Chris Williamson 42:24 Yeah.

Adam Frank 42:24 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 43:05 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?

Adam Frank 43:24 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.

Chris Williamson 43:33 Yeah.

Adam Frank 43:33 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-

Chris Williamson 44:42 It's mi- minimum effective dose, right?

Adam Frank 44:44 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.

Chris Williamson 45:09 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?

Adam Frank 45:29 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?

Chris Williamson 45:50 (laughs)

Adam Frank 45:50 Like, you know, dumping your crap in the river 'cause you just felt like it.

Chris Williamson 45:53 I've got, I've got LED bulbs in, in the house, so, you know.

Adam Frank 45:56 Yeah, yeah. But, but, you know, in the long run, you, you know, our individual actions mean less than... 'cause this is really an infrastructure problem, right? And it's, it's, on some level it's not much more than that, right? And so, you know, you and I can't control

Adam Frank 46:10 what kind of energy comes into my house.

Chris Williamson 46:13 Yeah.

Adam Frank 46:13 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-

Chris Williamson 46:48 That's your, that's your number one low-hanging fruit.

Adam Frank 46:50 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.

Chris Williamson 47:45 Yeah.

Adam Frank 47:45 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.

Chris Williamson 48:03 We overcome stuff, right?

Adam Frank 48:04 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-

Chris Williamson 48:22 (laughs) I left the light on. Yeah.

Adam Frank 48:24 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.

Chris Williamson 49:13 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.

Adam Frank 49:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 49:25 Taking it out of the political sphere to a degree, making it less of a emotionally charged and passionate, um, issue, passionate topic.

Adam Frank 49:36 Right.

Chris Williamson 49:36 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."

Adam Frank 49:43 Right, exactly. That's really the thing. And we should have ... It's happening because it was supposed to happen.

Chris Williamson 49:47 Yeah.

Adam Frank 49:48 Right? That's really the thing. Of course this happened, right? What-

Chris Williamson 49:50 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-

Adam Frank 49:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:58 ... necessarily what you want.

Adam Frank 50:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:00 A byproduct of us developing as a civilization was this effect on the biosphere.

Adam Frank 50:04 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 50:05 It ... We didn't mean for it to happen.

Adam Frank 50:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 50:07 Now how do we, now how do we move forward?

Adam Frank 50:09 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.

Chris Williamson 50:23 Yep.

Adam Frank 50:23 You know?

Chris Williamson 50:24 100%.

Adam Frank 50:24 It's not that big a deal. The people ... Right? The problem is, you know, because of climate denial, because there are people who stand to lose a lot of money, you know, uh, if we make this change, they've sort of, they've kept us from changing the light bulbs, right?

Chris Williamson 50:37 Yeah.

Adam Frank 50:38 I, I ... You know, the analogy I like to use is, look, you know, when I was, when I was a young man, we had this thing called typewriters, you know? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 50:44 (laughs)

Adam Frank 50:44 And they were the, they were these big machines that you'd push buttons on and you could write, you know, you'd write things. And then, of course, you know, when the computers came around, you know, came in, in nine- mid-'80s, the typewriters all went away, right? That business just went away. If you, if you owned a typewriter company, I'm sorry, you're screwed.

Chris Williamson 50:58 Unlucky.

Adam Frank 50:59 Right? Right. And now what's happening is it's as if the typewriter companies somehow convinced the government to not allow computers to ever be developed.

Chris Williamson 51:07 Yeah.

Adam Frank 51:07 Right? "Oh, computers, man, they're all a bunch of tree huggers."

Chris Williamson 51:10 (laughs)

Adam Frank 51:11 You know? "They're bad. They're anti-democratic." You know? And it's like, "No, man, it's just a new technology. I'm sorry you're gonna lose money, but, like, that's capitalism, pal. Sorry."

Chris Williamson 51:19 Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Frank 51:19 You know?

Chris Williamson 51:20 Exactly.

Adam Frank 51:20 But, uh-

Chris Williamson 51:20 Get yourself on the, get yourself on the forefront of what's coming next, so to speak.

Adam Frank 51:24 Exactly. Right, right, you know? So, yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:26 I understand. So, to round up, what's your general sentiment at the moment? Obviously, you are a- as I would put it, you're dick and balls in this, uh, particular subject field at the moment.

Adam Frank 51:37 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:39 What's your, what, what's your sentiment like? Can you sometimes, do you sometimes struggle to have perspective? Can you see the wood for the trees, so to speak?

Adam Frank 51:46 Well, you know, the great thing about being an astronomer is it's all forest. You know what I mean? (laughs) You know? The, uh, you know, I mean, the great thing about being an astronomer is it gives you a superpower, and that is time, right? So, you know, it's really, you know, the idea of thinking on century timescales is just, you know, it just comes really easily, 'cause that's what I'm trained, you know, centuries of shit, millennia timescales comes easily. So, you know, in that sense, uh, you know, when I wear my astronomer hat, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen. I don't know if we're gonna make it, but it r- ... You know, on some level, it doesn't really matter, because you've got a whole universe out there. You know, our story is just one story out of a very large book of the universe. And, you know, I really feel very confident that there's other places where this is happening and, you know, maybe somebody makes it through. If I put my dad hat on, 'cause I got two kids, then I'm like, "Holy shit!"

Chris Williamson 52:30 (laughs)

Adam Frank 52:30 "We gotta do something about this." You know? So, um, I, I, I ... But I, I am generally, uh, optimistic, you know? Things are pretty bad right now, but on the other hand, human beings have an enormous capacity for resilience and optimization, or, uh, you know, or, yeah, or, or resilience and, um, uh, innovation. Excuse me. And I really feel like, you know, this is kind of the dark, the dark time before we really kick in. 'Cause, you know, I teach a lot of students, and when I talk to students, you know, Millennials and the younger generation, I find them to be pretty amazing, pretty amazing and pretty full of ideas, and, um, uh, you know, I, I think we're gonna be able to do it.

Chris Williamson 53:07 I think so as well. So, uh, Adam, would you be able to tell the listeners at home where they can find you online, please? I'll make sure that Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth will be linked in the description below. I recommend everybody to go and pick the book up. Is there a- an audiobook version as well? I know a lot of listeners will-

Adam Frank 53:23 There is an audiobook version, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:25 Okay.

Adam Frank 53:25 So you can get those both on your favorite, you know, uh, website, Amazon, obviously, you know, lots of people go there. You can get the book. Um, my own, if you wanna follow my stuff, I'm on Twitter at, uh, adamfrank4, the number 4. Um, I also have a Facebook author page. Uh, I t- I tend to do most of my time on Twitter social media-wise. Um, and I also have a, a, um, website, adamfrankscience.com. And if you wanna, you know, send me a question or something, I, I'm, I'm very ... I suck at email, so it's gonna be very hard (laughs) sometimes. It may be two months before I answer.

Chris Williamson 53:56 (laughs)

Adam Frank 53:56 Uh, but there's also a place there where, you know, and I, I love it when pe- when people do, uh, you know, you know, do shoot me at least, you know, comments or things they're thinking about.

Chris Williamson 54:04 Well, at least two months isn't a cosmic timescale, eh?

Adam Frank 54:06 Exactly. Right. Yeah, right.

Chris Williamson 54:07 In the grand scheme of things, you waited a little while for a reply, but it wasn't, it wasn't millennia.

Adam Frank 54:12 That's right. It wasn't. Yeah. The Earth hadn't switched into a new climate state in that time.

Chris Williamson 54:16 Adam, thank you very much. I've really enjoyed this. I'll make sure-

Adam Frank 54:19 Oh, p-

Chris Williamson 54:19 ... that everything's linked in the show notes below, and enjoy your birthday tomorrow.

Adam Frank 54:22 Thank you very much, sir.

Chris Williamson 54:24 (laughs) Cheers. Bye-bye.

Adam Frank 54:25 Yeah, man. Bye-bye.