Sara Seager is a planetary scientist at MIT, known for her work on the search for exoplanets.

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Episode links:

Sara’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/profsaraseager (https://twitter.com/profsaraseager)

Sara’s Website: https://www.saraseager.com/ (https://www.saraseager.com/)

The Smallest Lights in the Universe (book): https://amzn.to/3g3LfHA (https://amzn.to/3g3LfHA)

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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:

00:00 – Introduction

05:32 – Falling in love with the stars

09:55 – Are we alone in the universe?

15:27 – Seager equation for number of habitable planets

27:48 – Exoplanets

34:44 – Earth-like exoplanets

40:43 – Intelligent life

52:34 – Number of planets per star

55:09 – Space exploration

57:36 – Traveling to Proxima Centauri

1:00:52 – Starshade

1:07:34 – Using the sun as a gravitational lens

1:09:44 – Starshot

1:12:45 – Rogue planets

1:15:44 – The Smallest Lights in the Universe

1:30:15 – Book recommendations

1:37:48 – Advice for a young person

1:39:29 – Meaning of life