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Since I was a little kid, I've had a big question.

Where are all the aliens?

And still, as an adult, I desperately want to be alive when we actually discover extraterrestrial life.

And I don't mean all of the conspiracy theories

or the well -meaning but totally wrong science fiction or even the math that says, well, there should be someone somewhere.

No. I want to know the real science.

How are we actually going to discover aliens?

Because if we want to be alive when that happens, cosmically, we don't have that much time.

So I reached out to one of the most important scientists

in the search for intelligent life outside our solar system

and who is leading a new effort to find alien life inside our solar system too.

In this episode, we're going to show you the real science

and tech behind the incredible push happening right now to actually find aliens.

Let's go.

It's clear that step one to finding real aliens is finding their home.

So this is every exoplanet, meaning planets outside our solar system, that we have ever found.

Amazing.

Isn't this cool?

It's just incredible just how many there are, like countless, you'd say.

That is Professor Sarah Seeger.

She is arguably the most important person in the hunt to find aliens today.

She invented some of the key methods that we've already used to understand what's out there.

And she's now working on brand new ones that she's going to show us.

But what blows my mind about this map is that when I was born, it was blank.

Back then, we weren't even sure that there were planets around other stars.

And what else is really amazing is this is still nothing.

So take us back to 1995 when the first exoplanet was discovered.

It was incredibly controversial.

It was a big deal.

What did you think about that as a graduate student?

We were just simply searching for solar system copies.

That's like a Jupiter very far from the star.

And no one could really believe it.

But the reason it was controversial, the signal was incontrovertible.

So the signal was definitely real.

But whether that signal was from a planet or a different phenomenon on the star itself, that was what was in question.

And when you started your PhD and you decided to study exoplanets, you've said that people tried to dissuade you.

They tried to say it was a waste of your time.

Oh, totally.

I mean, there were many people were born to be skeptics and scientists were trained to kind of build on that skepticism.

Like you want proof.

Many people would say, well, you should talk to my advisor.

He'll tell you why.

It's not a planet.

So there's just this like constant pushback from most people.

When we look at something like this, I want to explain to people how we got from nothing to this

and then how we're going to get far beyond this, as you said.

Okay.

Here's our star.

What are the different methods for filling in the map already?

And then we'll get to the ones that we are going to use next.

Well, the most popular method used today is called the transit method.

And if this is our star, and this is a planet orbiting that star, for some systems, we're just lucky.

The planet happens to orbit the star right along our line of sight, so the planet goes in front of the star,

as seen from our telescope.

You have to understand that it's all random, so some may be orbiting the star like this with respect to our viewpoint.

But for the ones that go in front of the star,

as seen from us, the starlight drops by a tiny amount every time the planet goes in front.

Yeah.

And then it goes back to normal brightness and then drops again.

And the biggest drop could be one or two percent, for example.

Fascinating.

Yeah, the smallest drops are like many decimal places over.

Or the star itself could be wobbling.

Technically speaking, the planet and star are orbiting the common center of mass.

So as the planet goes around, like when the planet's here, the star is wobbled a bit this way.

And it just kind of keeps wobbling as the planet's orbiting

because it's kind of moving its own orbit around its common center of mass.

And we detect in the point of light.

We detect the line of sight motion moving towards you, moving away from you.

I mean, it's crazy, right?

So that's the Doppler method.

Yes.

And you know, with the Doppler method, astronomers can measure velocities down to like 10 tens of centimeters a second.

Think about that for a moment.

Incredibly precise.

Okay, so we've got transit, we've got Doppler.

What's direct imaging?

Direct imaging is where we can see the planet directly.

So if this were here, and it were big enough and bright enough compared to its star, we could see light directly from this planet.

Yes.

And that is really hard to do because stars are incredibly bright.

In fact, the definition of a star is that it has fusion and is creating its own energy.

Planets don't do that.

They never create energy.

Energy just passes through them or reflects off of them.

So they're going to be much, much fainter.

And so this would be reflected light?

In the best case of direct imaging.

It could be.

It could be reflected light.

It could be absorbed energy that's re -emitted as heat.

Got it.

Okay, so we've got transit, we've got Doppler, and we've got direct imaging.

Am I missing anything else?

Well, there are other methods, they're just not as popular right now.

There's also motion on the plane of the sky itself, and that is called astrometry.

It's measuring very precise positions of stars.

And again, all stars are moving, like with respect to us, but they're kind of moving in a straight line.

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But if there's a planet around it, it kind of is doing like a loop -de -loop,

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because the planet is causing it to move in three dimensions, the wobbles in three dimensions.

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And then one more method that honestly never gets airtime, because it's very complicated to describe, but it's incredibly powerful, and it is called gravitational microlensing.

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When we monitor stars, bright stars, very far away, and in between us and that far away star,

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an unseen star on planet just happened to drift by perfectly between us and that background star.

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And from Einstein, we know mass -bend space.

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Light rays that would normally go off into outer directions, they get bent around to us.

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And it acts like a lens, hence the word microlens, and magnifies the background star.

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Sometimes to several times.

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So enough that we could see some kind of difference or spot that we couldn't see before.

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All of these methods together are how we've been able, in my lifetime, to fill in over 6 ,000 exoplanets.

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But, um, what is that?

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See this weird cone -like shape?

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Yeah, what is...

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It's not just so bizarre.

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Like, let me ask you, do you think there are more planets in that direction?

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Or is it just that's the direction we have sampled?

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I have to say, no. I have to say, that has to be the direction that we have just pointed at the telescope.

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Yeah, it wouldn't make any sense if only planets formed along there.

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This must be the direction where the Kepler Space Telescope stared for three years.

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Three plus years, right?

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I mean, that is insane.

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So NASA launched the Kepler Space Telescope in 2009.

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And if you look inside it, you can see exactly this grid shape.

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It used the transit method to find all of these planets.

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But that means that if we pointed Kepler or another telescope like it in a different direction,

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it would find another cone -shaped chunk of these exoplanets.

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Just think about what's out there.

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This is just a small, tiny, tiny sample and it's everywhere.

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Yeah.

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Okay, so that's Kepler.

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What's that one?

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Oh my gosh, this is so cool.

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This has to be microlensing.

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Awesome.

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Because microlensing requires really, really bright stars in the bulge really far away to be the source star.

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Awesome.

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So in just the last few decades, we've gone from not knowing if there were planets around other stars to knowing that they are everywhere.

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But now, once we know a planet is there, the next step is to figure out what it's like.

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What's its atmosphere like?

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Who theoretically could be living there depending on what signatures are in that atmosphere?

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Because at the end of the day, what we want to know is, is anyone out there?

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You developed a way to do that.

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And it was totally groundbreaking at the time.

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And then you were proven right.

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And now it's being used in so many different ways.

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Could you explain to me how transit transmission spectroscopy helps us see in the atmospheres of exoplanets?

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Well, when the planet goes in front of the star, some of the starlight shines through the atmosphere if the planet has an atmosphere.

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But not all of the light makes it through.

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Like, imagine shining a flashlight through a fog.

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Some light makes it through, some doesn't.

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So we can take a spectrum of the star by itself and then take a spectrum during transit.

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And the difference in those two essentially tells us what's in the planet atmosphere,

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because the planet atmosphere is blocking some of the starlight at very specific wavelengths.

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You wrote a paper that explained how to do this with one of the early exoplanets that we discovered.

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One of the early stars.

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The first one.

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The first one.

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So this is HD 209458B.

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And then they actually did it and you were proven right.

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Correct.

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I was taken aside and told that they couldn't include me on the team because I was too young.

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You're like, but here's the method of exactly what you should do.

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And then when they went out and tried it, It worked.

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You have to understand just how early the days were.

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It wasn't like we could now race out and observe a whole bunch of other planets.

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There literally weren't any.

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There were maybe two or three transient planets, maybe two.

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And instead, I just got this giant pushback because at the time I was applying to become a professor.

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And people would just be, well, it's interesting, but it's a one object, one method success.

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Meaning that it's cute, but...

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we're never going to have enough transiting planets. But

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because I had been working in this race to find transiting planets by just looking at tons of stars at one time,

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I actually knew how close we were.

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It's very, very satisfying when nature behaves how you think it should behave.

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Yeah.

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You know, if you want to think about it, think about like a ball of gas at chemical equilibrium with the radiation hitting it.

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And you could then be, well, what are the elements that are there?

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And then you can kind of go down that list of elements and say, which one is a strong absorber?

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And so it's just very, I just feel happy that nature agrees.

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This is crazy to me because I have always heard

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that our atmosphere is like the skin of an apple on an apple.

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Like it's just incredible.

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We think of it as so thick, it's incredibly thin.

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But you're telling me that we can look at a star that's a tiny point of light.

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We can see when something changes in that point of light

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and we can see the light passing through basically the skin part of the apple on its way to us.

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Yes, we can.

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However, not for all kinds of planets.

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Right now, it doesn't work for an Earth -Sun twin.

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Because our Sun, that backdrop star, is so big and so bright.

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And our Earth's atmosphere is so tiny.

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Do none of the methods work for Earth -like planets?

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Not yet.

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So that whole map that we just looked at, none of those are really like Earth?

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None of them are Earth twins.

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So any headline that we've ever seen about Earth -like planets being discovered has been using a really,

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really broad, not super scientific definition of what that means.

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Those ones are either the right size, but they're around much smaller stars, which changes what could be alive there.

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Or actually way, way bigger than Earth.

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We can't find an Earth twin yet.

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We're trying.

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And we're trying because we think maybe that's the best shot at finding life, or at least life that we can recognize.

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For finding Earth twins, why is it so hard?

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It's so hard because planets are so small, so low mass, and so dim compared to the adjacent host star.

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Our Earth is hundreds of thousands of times less massive than our sun.

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But our Earth is 10 billion b, billion times fainter than our sun in reflected light.

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So I don't know if you've come across anything where you have to go to 10

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or more decimal places to get the job done.

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Never in my life.

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It's tough.

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There's no way to sugarcoat how hard it is to find an Earth twin.

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So what could we do about that?

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What we want to do, and this idea has been around for decades, is to go to space above the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere

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and to be able to block out the starlight so we can see the planet light directly.

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Like putting my thumb against the sun?

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Sure, it could be like putting your thumb against the sun.

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How do we do that?

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So it turns out, crazily enough, but in the 1920s, a French optical physicist named Leo,

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he actually invented a device called the coronagraph about our sun.

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Have you ever seen a total solar eclipse?

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Yeah.

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When you block out the bright part of the sun, you can see the fainter but hot plasma in the corona.

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So he invented something called a coronagraph where anytime you want, you can block out the sunlight and see the corona.

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People had that idea.

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Well, why don't we use this device inside the telescope?

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We can block out starlight and separate out the planet light.

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It's tricky.

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Let's imagine you brought me some banana bread and I say, thank you so much, Cleo.

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I forgot to mention, I don't eat cinnamon.

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Meanwhile, you put cinnamon in and there's a lot of flour.

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There's say 10 billion parts flour and one part cinnamon.

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And can you please take that cinnamon out?

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Yes, absolutely.

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No, no, I think the answer is no. So that's tough.

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Give me a hundred thousand years.

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What if I said, I knew you're coming to visit me

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and that you had been trying to make this banana bread a hundred times better.

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I'd say I know you're trying to make this great banana bread please bring the cinnamon in a separate dish

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so if the others want they can put it on top I don't eat cinnamon

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so now remember the cinnamon is representing the planet light

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and the banana bread

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and all the flour is representing the star light there's way more flour than cinnamon now they're separate

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they never get mixed

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and it's very easy to keep them separated so we need a technology

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that separates the planet light so that a telescope can analyze either just

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that light or just the stars light but not like to do

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that because the problem is when they're mixed up it's just hard to separate them again

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and inside the telescope the light bounces around

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and you have to make the telescope very stable

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so I love the way where we always keep them separated

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how do we do it we do it with something called star shade awesome can I go grab

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that again you can be careful be careful the edges are very sharp

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I've wanted to play with this ever since I got in this office Starshade is a giant, specially shaped screen.

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This is a 1 % scale model.

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So this is huge.

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Well, imagine if it's 100 times bigger.

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Awesome.

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Starshade would have its own spacecraft, and it would formation fly with a space telescope.

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So they'll both be operating in space, far away from Earth's gravity, because they have to line up extremely precisely.

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And Starshade would be blocking out a known star to search for planets around that star.

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The starlight will be blocked and only the planet light will enter the telescope.

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And why is it shaped like this?

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Well, that's a great question.

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You know, if you were to put a circular screen or a square screen in space and block out a star, you would have rings, ripples.

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Because light can act like a wave.

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Yeah.

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And it actually bends around the edges of a giant circular screen.

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And it will create ripples, just like dropping a pebble in a pond.

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And those ripples are light ripples, and the light ripples are way brighter than any planet you're looking for.

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Spitzer invented this special shape in the 1960s.

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and what he realized was

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that this shape what it enables is the starlight still acts like a wave

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and bends around but it interacts with itself

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so cleo do you see this black thing behind me do you want to guess what it is i think

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that should be a full size version of just this little piece

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it is it is just a single petal just that correct cool

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and it's it gives you a sense of just how giant

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this this screen could be what's the status of it right now like would starshade be something

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that could see starshade you know it was invented in the 1960s

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and every decade it has been revived and shelved

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and we had a real heyday since about 2013

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when starshade has been moving forward very rapidly we had directed funding

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we solved a lot of hard problems we have large radio deployables in space

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that we have heritage for to build how starshade will still and deploy but unfortunately right now, the Starshade funding is on hold.

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And so we're trying to keep Starshade alive.

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Right now, NASA has plans to build the Habitable Worlds Observatory using the coronagraph on the inside.

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And that's the one where it's possible, but it's hard to separate out the cinnamon.

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Very hard to separate the cinnamon.

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And the coronagraph still has a ways to go for lab demo.

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Starshade has been demonstrated to work to the contrast needed.

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And big picture to remind people of why,

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if this show is all about participating in those features and caring about them to try and make them happen,

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the reason to care about starshade is if we can separate out the star's light, we have a chance at detecting more

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Earth -like planets.

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So let's assume that some of these methods happen and we are looking at Earth -like planets around sun -like stars.

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What are we looking for?

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That's a great question.

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And to be frankly as honest as possible, we are still working on that.

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Awesome.

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What are the options?

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Well, one option is the Earth twin.

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Literally carbon dioxide and...

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Yeah, tiny bit of carbon dioxide, a lot of water vapor on Earth.

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Oxygen is made by plants and photosynthetic bacteria.

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It's highly reactive.

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It wouldn't be in our atmosphere unless it's continually produced.

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That's life as we know it on Earth.

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But alien planets could work completely differently.

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So we're also trying to get better at understanding what life could be like that's really different from us.

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Life as we don't know it.

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Let's imagine for a moment there's a Clio and there's a Professor Seeger on an alien world and they don't have oxygen.

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And they're talking about the same conversation and they're saying, what kind of planet do you think could support life?

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They might even say, well, we found this planet has a lot of oxygen.

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It's terrible.

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It has so much oxygen.

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How could anyone live there?

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It would have large regional fires at any time.

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We'll find a bunch of things.

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We'll be like, wow, this has oxygen, or this has this gas, or this has another gas.

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But we won't be sure because there will always be the opposing view.

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A lot of people have their favorites.

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One of my favorite gases is phosphine.

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It has a unique spectral signature

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that doesn't overlap with any other major gases like carbon dioxide

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or methane or anything on earth it shouldn't exist because it takes energy to make it.

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Yet on earth it does exist, but it's only associated with life.

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Okay, so those could be signs of microbes.

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But what about intelligent life?

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When we search for intelligent life, are we searching for different things?

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Are we searching for the same biosignatures?

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And when we say intelligent, what do we actually mean?

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Like Oh my God, intelligent life.

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This is incredible.

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Yeah.

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Like imagine if you found a dog on an alien planet.

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This is my dog, Thor.

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He's a 10 pound mini Australian Shepherd.

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He's a big fan of Hill's Pet Nutrition and he's 12 years old, but I think he still looks like a puppy.

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Thor has been my guy since long before I started huge.

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Oh, and he's been with me every step of making this show.

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But this show also means that I need to leave him sometimes.

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The longest was a trip to Antarctica for three weeks.

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I feel so guilty when I'm gone.

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Like, he's 12 years old.

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I want every moment with him.

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And I want to try to give him the best of everything that I possibly can.

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The big one is his food.

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Thor really likes this one from Hills, which is why I'm so excited to partner with them.

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What he likes is the taste.

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What I like is the science.

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Because Thor's gut is home to trillions of microbes that help digest his food and support his immune system.

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And prebiotic fiber is food for the good ones.

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So Hills uses two kinds that work in different parts of his gut.

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So when those bacteria break the fiber down, they make helpful compounds that support his organs like his heart and his kidneys.

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And every time Thor turns food into energy, he makes free radicals, which are these unstable molecules that can damage his cells.

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Antioxidants are the cleanup crew.

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Vitamins C and E help neutralize those free radicals before they do harm.

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The older Thor gets, the more free radicals his body makes, so the antioxidants in his food matter more.

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No food is magic.

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But giving his body the right building blocks backed by real research, that's something I can do.

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I want the science to help him live longer so that I can have more time to love him.

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Discover the science behind a long, healthy life for your pet at hillspet .com slash science does more.

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Okay, back to intelligent aliens.

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Are we talking about any kind of sentience?

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Are we talking about little green men?

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Like, how does the field think about the range from microbial life to intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations?

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When it comes to gases, of course, we humans give off gas.

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We're breathing out carbon dioxide.

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We have cows giving off methane.

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There are gases that intelligent life does produce, but we can't separate out with basic gases, whether it's microbes or intelligent life.

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And when it does come to gases, though, there is a category called technosignature gases.

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We produce some complicated gases, like we produce chlorofluorocarbons.

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And there are some gases, it's going to sound a bit obscure, Sf6, sulfur tetrafluoride, and NF3.

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We have some gases that are only used industrially that life never makes.

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And then people love techno signatures in general, like purposeful radio communications or crazy large structures aliens may have built.

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So there's sort of the full range out there of what people think about.

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But it's hard, really hard.

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Like from afar, aliens with telescopes more sophisticated than ours,

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like just more like what we're trying to build like starshade they would see oxygen they might infer those oceans

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and continents would they see city lights

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or pollution no would they see the great wall of china no

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so it's like a whole other level to find techno signatures yeah

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so we're not going to see dogs

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we're not going to see humanoids unfortunately right now that's way beyond what we can do.

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I have a question from someone who I have previously interviewed on this show, Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir.

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He wrote a story about one of my favorite aliens of all time.

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His name is Rocky.

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Hi, Grace.

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He asks, Earth converted sunlight into fossil fuels for millions of years.

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Would that energy discrepancy be detectable comparing a planet's energy radiation to its presumed energy absorption of the star?

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Or would it be lost in the noise of normal variants?

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I think he's asking, could some alien civilization very far away see

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that we are giving off more energy than we should be currently absorbing from the sun, therefore we are here?

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Well, that's a good question.

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Right now, we can't detect that.

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You have to think about it.

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We can, it sounds like grand and incredible, all the things we can do.

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But if you wanted to really analyze that, like under a microscope, so to speak, we can barely do anything.

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So, you know, how our planet's heating up and we have forest fires and we have climate change, we couldn't detect that from afar.

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Like, there's no way they could, if they're lucky, they could see we have carbon dioxide at all,

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let alone that it's going up parts per million every year.

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Thinking about that map and thinking about now we're in a world where we've filled it even more in,

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where do you think we're most likely to find intelligent alien life?

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First we ask, Are there exoplanets?

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Check.

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Are there rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone where they might host life?

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Check.

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Now we're on to, is there going to be water vapor or liquids where life could exist?

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We're still working on that.

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It sounds like you're outlining popularly the Drake equation.

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Those are the variables in what I understand to be the Drake equation, but I also know you have the Seeger equation.

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Yes, yes.

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And I, by the way, what are the differences?

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Drake's equation is broken down into terms.

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The search for extraterrestrial intelligence by way of radio communication.

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How many stars are being born each year?

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What fraction of them have planets in the habitable zone?

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What fraction have intelligent life?

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How long do civilizations last?

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And I took the Drake equation and recast it for the search for not intelligent life, but any life by way of biosignature gases.

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And I did this considering a few different cases, but one case was what we talked about,

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transmission spectra and I said if you have a certain number of stars here are the factors that are important.

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We have to get really lucky in the time boxed period of when they're alive.

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Yeah but one concept I do love I've really glommed on to it's a really scary concept.

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Okay.

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Do you want to hear it?

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Yes I'm ready.

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Well AI is starting to pervade our life.

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Yes.

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And we only have a glimpse of where it's heading.

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Yes.

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And there's a big fear rightly so that a few generations from now

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or sooner or sooner right it could be 10 years could be a generation or two

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AI is our boss and it kind of has taken over.

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We also in parallel have data farms being considered for space.

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Have you heard of those?

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Yeah.

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This would ruin our night sky.

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So it's very depressing for astronomy.

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But imagine for a moment that you have AI in space.

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So they're getting solar energy and they're giving off heat to space, but they also have the ability to reproduce

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because on earth are a lot of big startups with big money about robotic self -driven AI.

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Have you heard of that self -driven labs rather

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so now let's put all

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that together the ice taking over it's in space

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it can self -reproduce it's getting energy from the sun it has intelligence it wants more energy

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where's it going to go the sun okay it'll orbit our sun maybe

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that's what we should be looking for yeah intelligent ai yeah maybe it's not just our sun

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and i can't take claim for for this idea

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and maybe now it's moving to a local black hole where there's more energy maybe

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now it's moving to our galactic black hole.

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I mean, there's a lot of ideas out there, but if you want to think about how long we've been here,

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really just the blink of an eye and the sort of exponential we're on for AI, you know, maybe that's what we should be looking for.

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What are your, I want to know what your thoughts are.

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I just outlined a scenario.

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I didn't say whether I totally buy into it, but what are your thoughts?

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I am less scared of that than I thought I was going to be.

458

I would not assume in either direction about the way that AI is either constrained here on earth or treats us.

459

So within that hypothetical, there are still a lot of options where humanity is happy or supported by the AI.

460

And yes, the AI is self -replicating and going toward the black holes and maybe on behalf of humanity, looking for other contact with other AIs.

461

I absolutely buy that we've only been around for a short period of time.

462

We're trying to find civilizations that are either just below us

463

or way above us because we assume

464

that we've only started being able to detect or being able to emit ways that they could detect fairly recently.

465

So we need to find somebody older than us, basically.

466

Right, right.

467

And if that's the case, then it seems to me plausible that the first thing

468

that we would encounter are their forms of technology that they have created somehow.

469

Maybe.

470

I buy that.

471

What are your thoughts on it?

472

Well, I think we should definitely add it to the list of something we're looking for.

473

Yeah.

474

Because that could be a sign of intelligent life.

475

And you know, do you know what I'm saying?

476

Like they might not send us a radio signal.

477

Maybe they don't want to or can't.

478

But I easily see it as not too far of a leap from where we're heading.

479

We've only been talking about exoplanets so far.

480

Right, right.

481

It seems to me that it's still possible to find microbial life somewhere in our solar system.

482

Why not?

483

You're working on a way to do this.

484

I definitely am.

485

But not on the planet that most people think.

486

People know about Mars.

487

Venus sometimes gets called Earth's evil twin.

488

How did it get that nickname?

489

Well, Venus itself is about Earth's size and about Earth's mass.

490

And many people think it was born like

491

Earth with water oceans, maybe it had continents and like a nice atmosphere.

492

But Venus is just that much closer to the sun.

493

And it had volcanoes and it's hotter and it had a greenhouse atmosphere and eventually it just got too hot.

494

Venus went through a tipping point and got too hot for water to be sustainable.

495

So then that carbon dioxide that supposedly was dissolved in the ocean came back to the atmosphere and made it even hotter.

496

And eventually it's just way too hot on the surface anyway for any kind of life we could imagine.

497

In the 70s and early 80s, over a dozen former

498

Soviet Union missions went to Venus.

499

NASA sent Pioneer Venus.

500

So where could there possibly be life on Venus?

501

Well, not on the surface, which is too hot.

502

But just like on Earth, when you go in the airplane or you hike up a mountain, it gets colder and colder.

503

And that also happens on Venus, on most planets actually.

504

On Venus, about 50, 50 kilometers above the surface, it's the right temperature for life.

505

So there could be life in the clouds of the Earth.

506

There could be life in the clouds.

507

And this by no means was my idea.

508

Carl Sagan, we think, was the first one to propose this.

509

I remember.

510

It is just possible that the hot region exists at a high altitude in the ionosphere of Venus.

511

The surface temperature could then be almost

512

Earth -like, and life as we know it could exist there.

513

So how are we going to find out?

514

I know about missions to Mars.

515

You're leading a mission called the Morningstar mission.

516

Yes, I can tell you about that.

517

So we want to go to Venus.

518

It's still too crazy.

519

It's too taboo for NASA and large government agencies.

520

So we're trying to do a series of missions.

521

Each builds on the one before that are largely privately funded.

522

And we call ourselves the Morningstar missions to Venus.

523

We're also trying to get this message across of like a new dawn is rising for space missions.

524

Instead of waiting over four decades to go back to the atmosphere of Venus or a planet, let's shift gears.

525

Let's complement the NASA missions and have small, very, very focused missions that just have like a single goal.

526

So the goal would be of the Morningstar missions?

527

Well, the eventual goal, eventually, in time, is a sample return.

528

Awesome.

529

is that the pieces that we should talk about yes why don't we talk about

530

that yeah let's bring that over okay this is all right thank you

531

so this is a 3d printed model of the actual size

532

of morning star's first mission to venus called the rocket lab mission to venus it's beautiful

533

and this first mission is like a small cheap mission

534

so this is the entry capsule but it's also the probe shell

535

so normally the entry capsule like opens up but this is just going to be it it's just this

536

it'll just get dropped off it'll slow down based on its own drag

537

and it will have five minutes in the clouds to perform its job

538

and it'll keep going and slow down

539

and eventually it will crash land on the surface will it send back enough data for us to understand well

540

it has to

541

so it's kind of like all like a puzzle

542

you have to make sure it's all tied together properly would you like to open it yeah i didn't know

543

that was an option yeah it's right here just put your hand like in the and see what's inside.

544

And this is a 3D printed model.

545

Cool!

546

You have the best choice.

547

Would you like to take it out?

548

Yes.

549

And this, you know, kind of looks like a little alien.

550

Doesn't it look kind of like an R2 -D2?

551

Yeah, look.

552

Yep.

553

It's not.

554

Isn't it cute?

555

Inside would be like the computer, the radio, the batteries.

556

You know, inside would be like the mission itself.

557

So what we're going to do is we have a laser that we're going to be shining through this window.

558

And not shown on here, but one of these will have a hole one of these side things will have a hole.

559

So the laser will shine out and it will hit the cloud particles.

560

And so from the information that it sends back, we'll find out more about what's hidden in those clouds.

561

This is part one of the Morningstar missions.

562

Part one.

563

I think in latter parts, you're going to use this.

564

What is this?

565

Okay, I want you to know that when you build things for space, there's like 100 steps.

566

Yeah.

567

So this would be about step, say, three out of 100.

568

Okay.

569

Maybe step five.

570

Okay.

571

Well, what we'd like to do eventually is capture the cloud particles of Venus

572

and have like literally liquid to analyze in the atmosphere.

573

And so the first step in doing that, we call it our cloud catcher.

574

You know how when you're in a foggy environment and the fog collects on your jacket?

575

It's like that.

576

Only there are these wire mesh layers.

577

But there's still a big problem with these clouds.

578

The clouds aren't made of water.

579

That's the problem.

580

What are they made of?

581

Acid.

582

Concentrated sulfuric acid.

583

Can life survive in concentrated sulfuric acid our life cannot survive it just cannot there's no way it can

584

so one thing my lab does is we study molecules in concentrated sulfuric acid

585

and so while our life can never survive our dna is completely unstable it turns out

586

that some molecules are stable like our amino acids stable in

587

sulfuric acid huh our nucleic acid bases stable small peptides stable lipids stable we put a lot of molecules in sulfuric acid.

588

We study other non -water solvents, but it's actually pretty remarkable that you can just do this in the lab and find out amazing things.

589

We're trying to find a DNA -like molecule that's stable and concentrated sulfuric acid, and we have a big milestone in that direction already.

590

Can you tell us what the milestone is?

591

Sure.

592

We have found that a molecule like DNA, it's not DNA itself.

593

Oddly, it's called PNA, peptide nucleic acid.

594

It's different from DNA.

595

It has the same latter part, but a different backbone.

596

And we have demonstrated that up to about 50 degrees Celsius, it's stable in like pure concentrated sulfuric acid.

597

So this would tell me on the clouds of Venus, for example, that there could be built using similar building blocks,

598

building different things, not DNA, but other things.

599

That's right.

600

Life made out of those things there.

601

Right.

602

Cool.

603

As proven by it surviving in these jars.

604

One of the things that has always struck me about this is people are just

605

so interested in the topic of finding aliens.

606

You know, the Pentagon releases UAP information.

607

And I went to Antarctica recently,

608

and you would be surprised at the number of people who genuinely told me that they thought I'd find aliens there.

609

And it feels like this subject is either taken over by theories about unproven encounters

610

or well -meaning science fiction that represents a very different world than the one

611

that we're living in and sometimes gives misimpressions about how this might happen.

612

And then there's you and scientists like you that are trying to say, here are the actual ways in which we would realistically find aliens.

613

Here's the human work that needs to go into that.

614

If you're talking to millions of people, which I hope we are on this episode, what would you encourage them to direct their attention to?

615

There's so many things scientifically.

616

Two things that are my personal favorites.

617

One is the upcoming

618

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch.

619

Because out of all those planets out there, we still don't know how common or rare our solar system is.

620

It's very hard to find.

621

We know it's rare.

622

because we found all the other systems, but we don't know how common it is, and the new telescope should answer that.

623

And by that you mean the particular kind of arrangement of planets we have?

624

Yes.

625

Got it.

626

Yeah.

627

And the other thing that I've been really intrigued with lately too is, we're not kidding.

628

The ingredients for life are found everywhere.

629

So this isn't about aliens, but honestly, the more chance for aliens to be out there is

630

if there are more chances for life to be out there.

631

All the test data, all the Kepler data, all the data made by the James Webb Space Telescope, because it's all taxpayer funded,

632

all the data is public.

633

And it's not only public, but there are different levels of data product.

634

You could be brave and like take the almost raw data, or you could take the light curve that's already made and look for unusual things.

635

You can get your hands dirty as well as learning more domain knowledge along the way.

636

In preparation for this, I read your amazing book.

637

Thank you.

638

It's called The Smallest Lights in the Universe.

639

And if you don't mind, I'm going to ask you a personal question about it.

640

We can skip right over it if you're comfortable.

641

The title of this book, I think, refers to the fact that you're a scientist who is looking at these tiny little lights made by planets.

642

And they're the smallest.

643

They're so faint.

644

And also you talk about how your husband died when both of you were very young and you had young kids.

645

And you're looking for hope in small things.

646

You're dealing with grief.

647

Could you tell me about what your personal motivation was to continue this work

648

and how you think this has personally played out for you?

649

Well, I'm really pleased you understood the title because it does have the dual meaning of personal,

650

where when you're really down in the bottom of despair, you have to hold on to those small slights of hope.

651

And in the other sense, they are the small slights of Earth.

652

They're 10 billion times stancher than the suns.

653

But what happened was this, and I'm going to try to say it for you.

654

You know, the human mind is an amazing thing we don't understand why we have consciousness

655

we don't understand why we feel the way we do

656

but i'll tell you one thing

657

when my first husband mike died it was an incredible journey you can die well

658

and it's a really special journey it's very very important as a culture

659

that we can be open minded to that

660

and after he died he had the perfect death i just want you to know yeah

661

and i was by his side and everything and after that uh life was meaningless all of a sudden

662

because that's like if you have anything in your life that's

663

so momentous what's the point of living yeah

664

and i really held on to those smallest lights

665

and decided my life was going to have purpose and

666

that purpose comes on many axes one axis is it is my dream to find another earth

667

and that is that is my purpose

668

and after he died i had a wonderful few years of discovery but it's not just finding another earth, it's finding life out there.

669

It's finding ways to get job done.

670

And it's inspiring the next generation and giving everyone permission.

671

I don't want you to have a catastrophe to like get on your big thing.

672

But the point of the story is also that we can do great things.

673

And we do have resilience.

674

And there is a path forward if you can strategize

675

and get on that path and have help from your teachers

676

and friends and hopefully parents or like others to help you get there, we all have a way to get the job done.

677

Thank you for the job that you're doing.

678

I think a lot of people are like me who feel personally inspired by you

679

and know about the work that you're doing and feel that from PhD onward,

680

you have struck this very risk -taking path on behalf of all of us that has a lot of human benefits, right?

681

I think you personally are inspiring.

682

and also I think there are lots of people who maybe until now did not know about this work

683

and now can see how you've been benefiting them all along

684

so thank you so much for your time and for your work and thank you Cleo really it's been a pleasure

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このレッスンの語彙とスピーキングのポイント

このスピーキングレッスンは、動画「The Most Likely Place to Find Aliens」を教材にしています。この動画には、シャドーイング用の文が41文、単語が7511語あります。音声の長さは38:51です。話す速さは速く、1分あたり約193語です。音のつながりや弱く発音される音が多くなります。単語の84%は英語の頻出3,000語に含まれます。残りは練習の前に確認しておきましょう。全41文のうち90文が疑問文なので、疑問文のイントネーションや短い受け答えの練習に向いています。

この動画の重要語彙

動画に出てくる覚えておきたい単語15語を、発音と意味つきで紹介します。

単語	発音	意味
atmosphere 名詞	/ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/	大気, 大気圏
intelligent 形容詞	/ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/	聡明な, 賢い
telescope 名詞	/ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/	望遠鏡, テレスコープ
cloud 名詞	/ˈklaʊ̯d/	雲, 雲霞
acid 名詞	/ˈæsɪd/	酸
cinnamon 名詞	/ˈsɪnəmən/	セイロンニッケイ
stable 名詞	/ˈsteɪ.bəl/	馬小屋, 厩舎
transit 名詞	/ˈtɹæn.zɪt/	通過
twin 名詞	/twɪn/	双子
orbit 名詞	/ˈɔɹ.bɪt/	軌道
oxygen 名詞	/ˈɑksɪd͡ʒən/	酸素
detect 動詞	/dɪˈtɛkt/	検出する, 見付ける
dioxide 名詞	/daɪˈɑksaɪd/	二酸化物
molecule 名詞	/ˈmɑ.lɪ.kjul/	分子
concentrate 動詞	/ˈkɑn.sən.tɹeɪt/	集中させる

動画に出てくる句動詞

単語	意味
find out 動詞	見出す, 調べる
take over 動詞	引き受ける
slow down 動詞	遅らせる
drop off 動詞	落ちる
go down 動詞	降りる, 降下する
go up 動詞	上がる, 登る

繰り返し練習したい文

動画に出てくる短く完結した文です。日常会話でそのまま使えます。

How are we actually going to discover aliens?
Am I missing anything else?
How do we do that?
Have you ever seen a total solar eclipse?
Why don't we talk about that?

この動画の文法

話し手がよく使っている文型を、動画の実際の表現とともに紹介します。

文型	動画での表現
現在完了進行形 have/has been + -ing — 以前に始まり今も続いている動作	has been using · has been moving · We've only been talking
現在完了形 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去の出来事が今も関係している	I've had · have ever found · you've said
受動態 be + 過去分詞 — 誰がするかより、何が起きるかに焦点を当てる	was born · was discovered · were born
関係詞節 who / which + 節 — 人や物について情報を加える	Hills, which is · radicals, which are · someone who I

注意したい発音

話し手はwe're, don't, you'reなど、短縮形や弱形を151回使っています。聞こえたとおりの短い形で発音しましょう。

「th」の音: thumb /ˈθʌm/, methane /ˈmiːθeɪn/, thin /ˈθɪn/, thick /θɪk/, breathe /bɹiːð/
「sh」と「zh」の音: equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, shine /ʃaɪn/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, transmission /tɹænsˈmɪʃən/
長い単語（アクセントの位置に注意）: intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, humanity /hjuˈmænɪti/

日本語話者が苦手な音：

/r/ と /l/ の区別 — /l/ は舌先を歯茎につけ、/r/ はどこにもつけない: incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, reflect /ɹɪˈflɛkt/, radical /ˈɹædɪkəl/, controversial /ˌkɑn.tɹəˈvɝ.ʃəl/, circular /ˈsɜɹ.kjə.ləɹ/
/v/ — /b/ にならないように、上の歯を下唇に当てる: invent /ɪnˈvɛnt/, discover /dɪˈskʌvə/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, controversial /ˌkɑn.tɹəˈvɝ.ʃəl/, vapor /ˈveɪpɚ/
/f/ — 「フ」ではなく、上の歯と下唇で出す: atmosphere /ˈætməsˌfɪɹ/, flour /ˈflaʊ.ə/, faint /feɪnt/, reflect /ɹɪˈflɛkt/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/

この動画での練習方法

まず声を出さずに動画を最後まで聞き、知らない単語をメモします。
まず0.75倍速で一文ずつシャドーイングし、慣れてきたら通常の速度に戻します。
自分の声を録音して元の音声と比べます。atmosphere, intelligent, telescopeなどの単語に特に注意しましょう。

シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由

シャドーイング（Shadowing）は、もともとプロの通訳者養成プログラムで開発された言語学習法で、多言語習得者として知られるDr. Alexander Arguelles によって広く普及されました。方法はシンプルですが非常に効果的：ネイティブスピーカーの英語を聞きながら、1〜2秒の遅延で声に出してすぐに繰り返す——まるで「影（shadow）」のように話者を追いかけます。文法ドリルや受動的なリスニングと異なり、シャドーイングは脳と口の筋肉が同時にリアルタイムで英語を処理・再現することを強制します。研究により、発音精度、抑揚、リズム、連音、リスニング力、そして会話の流暢さが大幅に向上することが確認されています。IELTSスピーキング対策や自然な英語コミュニケーションを目指す方に特におすすめです。

シャドーイングのやり方: ステップ別の完全ガイドを読む →

シャドーイング練習: The Most Likely Place to Find Aliens - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

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このレッスンの語彙とスピーキングのポイント

この動画の重要語彙

動画に出てくる句動詞

繰り返し練習したい文

この動画の文法

注意したい発音

この動画での練習方法

シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由