An astrophysicist thoughts on Project Hail Mary

1. 0:00 – 0:25

   Adam Grant asks about reading Project Hail Mary and Andy Weir’s worldbuilding

   1. AGAdam Grant0:00

      Did you read Project Hail Mary?

   2. SSSara Seager0:01

      I did. Yes, I did read it.

   3. AGAdam Grant0:03

      So Andy Weir was on the, the show and we had such an interesting conversation about his creative process around, you know, imagining what, what would a different origin of life look like and what kind of planet it-- would they come from? I'm sure you daydream a lot about these kinds of questions. If you imagine us finding life out there, like where do you, where do you envision it? What does it look like? [chuckles] What, what are your images?

2. 0:25 – 0:36

   Seager on how astrophysicists usually approach alien life (less daydreaming than people expect)

   1. SSSara Seager0:25

      Well, believe it or not, we don't do that [chuckles] very often unless we're asked like by science fiction people. So we do sometimes think about it, but not in that sense.

   2. AGAdam Grant0:36

      Mm-hmm.

3. 0:36 – 1:06

   Speculative biology example: high-gravity worlds and how animals might adapt

   1. SSSara Seager0:36

      So for example, we have thought about this. I mean, one kind of one is that if a planet has like a higher surface gravity than Earth, you know, we expect animals like close to the ground with like big, huge legs so they can, they can defy gravity, right? It's like the opposite of when you're in the swimming pool and you know how you can lift something really heavy in the pool 'cause the water buoyantly is like helping you hold it up. The opposite of that, a high gravity planet where you can barely drag yourself around. Or we've imagined planets with like very unscientific, this is just like dreaming, but some of these

4. 1:06 – 1:22

   Dream scenario: thick atmospheres, dark surfaces, and photosynthetic ‘leaf-wing’ flyers

   1. SSSara Seager1:06

      planets, um, have massive atmospheres and they're probably really dark at the surface, extremely dark and gloomy. Maybe there's birds with giant wings that fly high up where the wings are like plant leaves, you know? They have photosynthesis ability like to get energy from their sun like-

   2. AGAdam Grant1:22

      Wow

5. 1:22 – 1:31

   Boundary between fun speculation and current scientific practice

   1. SSSara Seager1:22

      ... while they're flying. We can easily put a bunch of things together, but it's never really in the context, it's never in the context of like actual scientific work right now.

Episode duration: 1:31