Astrobiologist Says We’ve Been Searching for Aliens the Wrong Way with Nathalie Cabrol [Ep. 495]

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What if alien life is everywhere, but we’ve been looking for it in all the wrong places?

We assume life needs water, carbon, a warm little pond—just like Darwin said. But what if life doesn't care about what we assume to be necessary?

Today, we’re joined by Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. Cabrol has spent her career exploring Earth’s most extreme environments—boiling lakes that freeze at night, toxic salt flats, and places where life should be impossible. And yet, it finds a way.

In this episode, we talk about the intricacies of the search for extraterrestrial life and question whether Earth might be a cosmic accident after all. We explore whether civilizations out there may stay silent on purpose—and what it would take for humanity to survive its own future, based on what we know about the deep secrets of the universe.

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Key Takeaways:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:55 What is life?

00:05:17 Exploring extreme environments

00:08:51 Agnostic biosignatures

00:13:57 Judging a book by its cover

00:17:33 The shadow biosphere

00:22:27 Errors in the search for extraterrestrial life

00:37:31 The Rare Earth Hypothesis

00:40:41 Should we stop broadcasting our location?

00:52:00 The impact of discovering extraterrestrial life

01:00:06 Are we worth saving?

01:06:46 Outro

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Additional resources:

➡️ Learn more about Nathalie Cabrol:

🛸 SETI Institute: https://www.seti.org/our-scientists/nathalie-cabrol 📚 The Secret Life of the Universe: https://a.co/d/dzdzcD9

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Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known.

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