Adam Frank
Astrophysicist at the University of Rochester; works on the search for life elsewhere and wrote The Little Book of Aliens and Light of the Stars.
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What they believe
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The 2,500-year-old argument about whether planets are common is settled: every star in the night sky has planets.
In which case, those kinds of collisions are so rare that you would expect one in a trillion stars to have planets. Instead, every star in the night sky has planets.
youtube.comSaid 22 Dec 2024This on korrents
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 24 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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Recent
The 2,500-year-old argument about whether planets are common is settled: every star in the night sky has planets.
In which case, those kinds of collisions are so rare that you would expect one in a trillion stars to have planets. Instead, every star in the night sky has planets.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The universe has run ten billion trillion habitable-zone experiments, so we are the first technological civilisation only if every single one of them failed.
And so, what we found was basically that there have been 10 billion trillion habitable zone planets in the universe. And what that means is that those are 10 billion trillion experiments that have been run. And the only way that we're this whole process from a biogenesis to a civilization has occurred is if every one of those experiments failed.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The burden of proof about alien civilisations has shifted: it is now on the pessimists.
But I felt like what this paper showed was that the burden of proof is now on the pessimists. So, that's why we called it the pessimism line. Throughout history, there's been alien pessimists and alien optimists, and they've been yelling at each other, that's all they had to go with.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
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There is no Fermi paradox from the great silence: nobody has looked, for the entirely mundane reason that nobody funded the search.
So, we'll call that the indirect Fermi paradox and there absolutely is no indirect Fermi paradox for the most mundane of reasons, which is money. There's never been any money to look.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Every SETI search ever conducted adds up to sampling a hot tub's worth of an ocean, so finding nothing tells us nothing.
And what they found was if that search space, if the sky is an ocean and you're looking for fish, how much of the ocean have we looked at, and it turns out to be a hot tub. That's how much of the ocean that we've looked up. We've dragged a hot tub's worth of ocean water up and there was no fish in it
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The hard steps model of intelligent life is suspect: none of the steps it names turn out to be hard.
But what we actually found was that none of those are actually hard. The whole idea of hard steps, that there are hard steps, is actually suspect. What's amazing about this model is it shows how important it is to actually work with people who are in the field.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Life does not happen on a planet, it happens to a planet: the fate of a world and the fate of its life are inextricable.
Life and the Earth co-evolve. That's what Brandon Carter didn't see is that actually, the fate of the Earth the fate of life are inextricably combined. This is really important for astrobiology, too. Life doesn't happen on a planet, it happens to a planet.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Our technosphere is immature: it is currently destroying the conditions it needs in order to sustain itself.
What we were arguing in that paper is that it's an immature technosphere. Because right now, with climate change and all the other things we're doing, the technosphere right now is destroying the conditions under which it needs to maintain itself.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The Earth does not need saving — the biosphere will outlast us; what is actually at risk is the narrow band of conditions humanity needs.
The biosphere is not going away. There's nothing we could do. The idea that we have to save the Earth is a little ridiculous. The Earth is not a furry little bunny that we need to protect. But it's the conditions for us.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
A Mars base is not a backup plan for climate change or nuclear war, because self-sufficiency there is centuries away.
So, trying to establish a base on Mars it's going to be so hard that it is not even going to be close to being self-sufficient for a couple a century at least. So, it's not like a backup plan now, we have to solve the problem of climate change, we have to deal with that.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Life is going to be common in the universe; the genuinely open question is how long technological civilisations last.
Intelligent life and how long intelligent, technological civilizations, I think there's a big question about how long those last. And I'm hopeful, but in terms of just, I think life is absolutely going to be common, pretty common in the universe.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The Kardashev ladder ignores the second law: harvesting a planet's worth of energy produces waste heat that changes the planet's climate.
There's the first law of thermodynamics, which is just about the different forms of energy. Then there's the second law, which is about when you use that energy, Kardashev wasn't thinking about the second law. If you get all that energy and you use it, there is waste heat. You don't get to use it all.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Every technological civilisation probably triggers its own planetary climate crisis.
Does every technological civilization trigger its own planetary crisis, its own climate Anthropocene crisis? And the answer we actually came up from doing models was like, yeah, probably.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
We should not be broadcasting powerful, easily detectable messages into interstellar space, because we have no idea who would receive them.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to have your head below the grass. The people who advocate like, "Oh yeah, we should be sending powerful messages that are easily detectable into interstellar space." I'm like, "Why would you?" Because we just don't know, I'm not going to say they are warlike. I'm not going to say they're not warlike, I have no idea.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
No UFO or UAP data comes anywhere near the standard of evidence required to claim non-human technology.
I am all in favor of an open, agnostic, transparent, scientific investigation of UFOs and UAPs. But the idea that there's any data that we have that links UFOs and UAPs to non-human technology, I just think the standards, none of what is claimed to be the data lives up to the standards of evidence.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The visiting-aliens story is incoherent: a civilisation with the technology to stay hidden would not keep being spotted.
Like, okay, there's an advanced civilization that is visiting Earth regularly. They don't want to be detected. They've got super powerful technology, but they really suck at using it because we keep seeing them, we keep seeing them, but then they disappear. I mean, explain to me what rational world that works under.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Every faster-than-light proposal depends on exotic matter, which does not exist and was invented to make the equations behave.
But here's the problem with all of those proposals is they all need something. The thing you added, the little fictional term you added into the equations is something called exotic matter and it doesn't exist. It's really just something we dreamed up to make the equation to do what we wanted them to do.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Expecting technology to keep accelerating is a bias of our particular moment; for most of human history the tools did not change at all.
So, we could be fooled into thinking like, "Oh, technology's going to go on forever, we're always going to find new advances." As opposed to sometimes things just flatten out for a long time. So, you have to be careful about that bias that we have living in this time of great acceleration.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Alien life should converge on things like legs and wings, but the humanoid body plan is a random accident nobody should expect to see repeated.
And this is important, so yes, you should expect legs or jointed sticks, how many joints they're going to be? Anybody's guess. Do you expect humanoids, things with a sensing apparatus on top of a shoulder with two arms and two legs? That's probably a pretty random set of occurrences that led to that.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The true unit of life is not DNA and not the cell but the biosphere — the whole community.
Because the bacteria, even though they're individual examples of life, and I believe this the true unit of life, it's not DNA, it's not a cell, it's the biosphere. It's the whole community.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Large language models will not get to real agency, because a mind has to be embedded in a world through a body.
But they said, "Look, in the end, actually the only way to actually get a real brain in the VAT is actually to have a brain in a body." And it could be a robot body, but you still need a brain in the body. So I don't think LLMs will get there because they can't. You really need to be embedded in a world, at least that's the E-four idea.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The most important question in physics is what life is — what makes a cell different from a rock, and how agency arises at all.
And what I've come to now is the most important question for physics is, what is life? What the hell is the difference between a rock and a cell, fundamentally? And what I really mean by this, this is where I'm going to go non-traditional, is that really the fundamental question that is agency.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
Science has come to treat its formal systems as more real than the experience they were abstracted from: 60 degrees as more real than hot and cold.
And then we end up at the bottom of that with this idea of everyday I wake up and I check my phone and I'm like, oh, it's going to be 60 degrees out. Great. And we start thinking that 60 degrees is more real than hot and cold. That thermodynamics, the whole formal structure of thermodynamics is more real than the basic experience of hot and cold that it came from.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
The many-worlds interpretation invents infinitely many unobservable universes to avoid what quantum mechanics is plainly saying: that measurement matters.
Many of them try to pretend the measurement problem isn't there. Go to enormous lengths like the many-worlds interpretation, literally inventing an infinite number of unobservable parallel universes to avoid the thing that quantum mechanics is telling them, which is that measurements matter.
Adam Frank: Alien Civilizations and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #455 Said 22 Dec 2024
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Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 6 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Liked Eon
This is the plot actually of a great science fiction book called Eon by Greg Baer
lexfridman.com 22 Dec 2024
Liked Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Harris's book shows us there are really interesting conversations to be had in this new territory where you're not forced to choose between spirituality and science.
npr.org 31 Dec 2014
What others say about Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion →
Loved The Snow Leopard
Since then I have been slowly working through this life-changing work told in prose as sharp and clear as the mountain vistas it describes.
npr.org 1 Jul 2014
Show 3 more
Loved The Expanse series
Together with a few novellas, these books explore one of the most fully fleshed out science fiction universes I have ever encountered.
npr.org 1 Jul 2014
Loved Cibola Burn
#2. Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey. OMG, I am so excited! The next installment of The Expanse series has just been published.
npr.org 1 Jul 2014
Loved The Martian
#1. The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir. This book is a complete surprise.
npr.org 1 Jul 2014
Where they publish
Site adamfrankscience.com His site: the books, essays and research.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026.
x.com @AdamFrank4 Their X account.
Recent
- LANTERNS was sooooooooo good. And I usually hate DC. 16 Oct 2026
- Talking to @CNN yesterday about life on Mars and getting that damn rock back to the US! 13 Oct 2026
- Very happy to see a peer reviewed paper on this. Will read with interest. 13 Oct 2026
Show 16 more
- Let this be inscribed on the walls everywhere. 9 Oct 2026
- For a guy who wasn't very philosophically sophisticated to begin, with this shouldn't come as much of a surprise. 9 Oct 2026
- Mathematics exists entirely within a domain governed by the formal rules of logic. It was always going to be susceptible to machines good at application of formal rules. But the rest of science lives in the very real, very messy very physical world. 9 Oct 2026 everymansuniverse.com
- Going on @WXXIrochester connections with @evandawson to talk about AI, Life and Minds (and why extinction is stupid). Noon ET today 5 Oct 2026 wxxinews.org
- This nails it to a degree 5 Oct 2026
- Was listening to Kashmir yesterday. It’s kind of a religious experience. 🍩🍩🍩 4 Oct 2026
- “Any attempt to understand or explain the causes of an organism’s behavior is doomed to fail if it takes a purely instantaneous view of the physical system... We must also understand why the system is configured such that it behaves in that way—the ‘structuring causes.’” 4 Oct 2026
- Re-upping this becuase I believe it's important. We should go into every deeper interaction with AI with attention to what's at play. 4 Oct 2026
- face palm! You are absolutely right! its the high action limit. Don’t know how we missed that but thank you. Will change and reupload. 4 Oct 2026
- 1) Phenomenology’s insight. Consider first an ordinary case, before any physics. I look across the street at a house. What meets my eye is a façade—one face, at one distance, in this light; but what I see, in the full sense, is a house, and a house is not a façade... 4 Oct 2026
- Don’t give in. We have to stand our ground against the machine overlords. 3 Oct 2026
- You are absolutely correct! Thank you for reminding us about Berghofer. The potential for using phenomenology as a philosophical underpinning for modern physics is uncharted and untapped territory. 3 Oct 2026
- These have 3 rules have been really helpful in keeping me grounded in working with AI. Remember that these companies feed off your unconscious engagement. Learn to be conscious. 2 Oct 2026
- As promised here is a discussion on Everyman's Universe about the recent detection of a magnetic field from an exoplanet. 2 Oct 2026 everymansuniverse.com
- I'm not sure when it will be coming out. Probably next year. Here is another piece from the volume by Harald Wiltsche (who is leading the charge on science and phenomenology). 2 Oct 2026 scirate.com
- How many more orders of magnitude of people does one reach via spot on CNN, NBC etc vs writing a long form piece (and I do write those kinds of things). You have to reach people where they are or you are just kind of talking to yourself and your friends (which is also fine). 2 Oct 2026
Link verified 23 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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