This episode is the second part of our talk with Harvard Professor Avi Loeb. We discuss ― Life In The Cosmos ― an academic textbook he co-authored with Manasvi Lingam which provides an analysis of the latest scientific methodologies for detecting life beyond our planet. It’s an updated version of an original book written in 1966 by astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovsky. We dive into the Kardashev Scale, a theoretical model for classifying stages the development of intelligent alien civilizations based on energy consumption, and the potential of applying a modified version, based on a more indirect but proportional scale of wasted heat or entropy production, toward today’s search for extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs).

Learn more about Avi’s work with Breakthrough Starshot, a proposed flyby mission to our neighboring solar system Alpha Centauri, and how his recently funded Galileo Project will help to demystify Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Join us as we survey the latest endeavors to detect alien technosignatures, and explore whether monkeys may one day compose Shakespeare’s Hamlet on a typewriter.

Professor Avi Loeb is the Director of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his PhD in plasma physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and worked as a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. Loeb is a New York Times bestselling author, chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and founded the current Galileo Project advancing the search for extraterrestrial life.

CONTENT
00:00:35 Intro
00:02:21 Kardashev scale
00:07:01 Building Noah’s Ark in Space
00:12:35 Breakthrough Starshot
00:16:36 How to Decelerate as you get to Proxima B
00:22:05 A Masterpiece: Monkeys Typing Hamlet
00:22:39 Technosignatures: detecting Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
00:26:44 The Galileo Project