Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

- Season 8

(2022)

Project Orion contemplated using Nuclear Bombs to power spaceships to new worlds and stars. More than half a century later, new technologies may see this concept reintroduced bigger, better, and safer.

One explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that aliens may be undetected because they slumber, quietly hidden away in the galaxy. But how and why might such Extraterrestrial Empires hibernate?

Telepathy and other psychic abilities have often been investigated by science, but could the future offer humanity such talents, and is science they key to unlocking or creating them?

Solar power has been promised for decades as bringing us a bright future, and at last is beginning to see widespread use. What new innovations and opportunities await Solar in the decade to come?

Getting into space is difficult, but it may be that other worlds have even harder times at it than we do, imprisoned by orbital debris, high gravity, or even being quarantined by alien civilizations.

In the future humanity will look to build new lives out among the stars, forging new worlds and mega-structures for us to live on. But what about deep sea ecologies and aquatic life? What sort of habitats might we design for them?

In order to build a future able to stretch across millions of years, we may need to be able to build machines able to endure the brutal erosion of deep time.

Clandestine conspiracies and covert alien activity are popular theories involving UFO and UAP sightings as well as in science fiction, but what would covert alien activity look like?

The future may see advancements in claytronics, memory metals, and catoms to allow shape-shifting materials that can take on any form and perform any job - possibly even taking on human form itself.

Interstellar civilizations home to hundreds of peacefully cooperating alien species are a common theme in science fiction, but are such civilizations likely or would we instead see conquest and xenocide?

Many don't realize that most of our satellites and space stations aren't intended to be far from Earth, but rather, as close as we can get them and still maintain a stable orbit. How much lower can we go in the future?

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We conclude our journey begun in Interstellar Probes by exploring an alien world and asking what life will be like as a Planetary Explorer.