#1130 - Adam Frank

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Five, four, three, two, one.

Adam Frank (0:07)

Boom.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

Boom. Adam, what's up, man? How are you doing?

Adam Frank (0:10)

It's good to be here today.

Joe Rogan (0:11)

It's good to be here, too, with you and to talk.

I'm already knocking ____ over. Can't be trusted. Your book, Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth.

Adam Frank (0:26)

All about it.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

That's deep ____, man. And just the title alone, you're like, whoa.

Adam Frank (0:31)

I love aliens. Everybody loves aliens.

Joe Rogan (0:33)

Everybody does, but what are your thoughts on actual aliens and whether or not they've ever visited here?

Adam Frank (0:39)

Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, sort of two things. So first of all...

Joe Rogan (0:44)

We should tell everybody you have a background in science.

Adam Frank (0:46)

I do. I'm an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester. I run a research group that studies like stars and planets.

Joe Rogan (0:52)

So you're not a crazy person I brought on here.

Adam Frank (0:54)

No, no, no. I'm a card-carrying scientist. I got my card and everything.

So I've been doing research on astronomy, astrophysics for a long time. But I also do all this popular writing, like for NPR, New York Times.

And the genesis of this book came, A, because I love science fiction. I've been reading science fiction since I was a kid. But also I do a lot of work on climate change. And so I deal with a lot of climate change denial. And what I realized was that there's this way we talk about it that completely forgets about the fact that we're probably not the first.

And that led me to a whole bunch of research that eventually led to this book, including one paper that we did that showed that the odds that we're the only time it's ever happened, the only civilization in the entire history of the universe, the only way that that could be true is if the odds per planet are one in 10 billion trillion, right? That's pretty low, right? So the odds of anything being one in 10 billion trillion, that's pretty freaking low. So it's probably happened before, you know? There's been other civilizations before ours. And once you realize that, man, that is like, you know, it changes everything about how we think about ourselves, you know, and what's happening to us right now.

Joe Rogan (2:02)

So other civilizations before ours that have fucked things up.

Adam Frank (2:07)

Well, that's kind of the premise, right? So that's what, you know, when you look at climate change, right? Basically, what it is, is civilizations are giant machines for turning energy into work, right? You know, New York City, right? You sit over and you look at Manhattan, you're like, holy shit, right? There's all this energy flowing into it. And then there's all this work being done, you know, to keep everything moving.

And you know, there's no way not to have an impact. If you build a world girdling civilization, which, you know, that's what a civilization is, there's going to be impact. So the whole point of my doing this book was to start looking at ourselves as just one of, you know, we're not alone, not the only time this has ever happened. Doesn't mean anybody's around now. Like that's a different question.

But the idea that like it's never happened before. It meaning like, you know, you know, civilization, what's happening around us, like this machinery and everything that, you know, that just in the new world of what we understand about planets and shit, that is just like, you know, it's not tenable anymore. We got to wake up.

Joe Rogan (3:00)

The idea that some civilization has to be the first one. That's that's what the only the only way you could ever think that we're the only ones is that some civilization has to be the first one, even in a universe that's infinite.

Yeah, it has to happen one time, right? But the idea is, are the conditions ideal in, you know, a trillion different spots all over the the infinite spans of the universe?

Adam Frank (3:27)

Yeah, and that's the thing, right? So what we've learned, so, you know, one of my trips right now is like, this is not your grandfather SETI anymore, right? Our understanding. We went through this major revolution in our understanding of planets about 20 years ago. So you look back at the Greeks, right? And you can see them arguing about when he whether whether any other stars had planets other than, you know, the sun.