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“Sample of One” with Chris Impey
Episode 121
Today we are joined by Dr. Chris Impey to talk about exoplanets, the search for life in space, and the search for meaning on Earth.
Dr Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, won its Education Prize, has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World, and eight popular science books: The Living Cosmos, How It Ends, Talking About Life, How It Began, Dreams of Other Worlds, Humble Before the Void, Beyond: The Future of Space Travel, and Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes.
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jackson
music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
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Transcript (AI Generated)
ian (01:16.703)
Our guest today is a university distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He's won 11 teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He's a past vice president of the American Astronomical Society,
has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council's Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology, and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World and eight popular science books. I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Chris Impey to the podcast today.
chris_impey (02:07.898)
Yeah, delighted to be with you.
zack_jackson (02:09.75)
Welcome. That's quite an introduction. Ha ha ha. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (02:12.983)
Yeah. Obviously, I shortened down what you sent us, and it was tough for me to do that, Chris, because you've done a lot. You know, obviously, I was at fellow academic. I understand the need to do peer-reviewed research and those types of things in our field, but I was really impressed with how much writing you've done for the general public, both articles and also your books. You've written a novel. You've been on several podcasts.
Can you kind of tell us a little bit about your background, what is you do, and then how you also got into that part of your profession of making sure you communicate with the general public as well?
chris_impey (02:53.298)
Sure, you won't hear it in my voice, my accent, but I was born into Edinburgh, I'm a Scott. I had a little transatlantic childhood that sort of wiped out the Scottish borough, but if you feed me single malt whiskey it would come back. And of course, I'm sure you noticed if you've gone to Britain that you look up and there are not many stars visible there. So once I decided to do astronomy I knew I was going to leave, so I did my undergrad work in London.
zack_jackson (03:04.15)
Thank you. Bye.
Ha ha ha!
chris_impey (03:22.938)
and never look back and I'm a dual citizen now. So astronomy is big in Arizona. I've not looked elsewhere. The grass is never greener anywhere else. We're building the biggest telescopes in the world and we have five observatories within an hour's drive. So this is the perfect place to do observational astronomy. So I'm very happy. But then as people's careers evolve, you know, the writing research papers is important. It's the sort of stocking trade of the academic.
But it's also, you know, the texture of the average research article is that of a three-day old bologna sandwich. It's almost designed to be indigestible writing. The constraints of an academic discourse make that happen. So I was always interested in more popular writing, so I segued into textbooks. And then I realized the problem with them is that you've written a textbook and that's a nice challenge. But then the publisher just wants you to update it every year or so.
It's like, okay, that's not so exciting. I think I'm not going to do this anymore. And then I think more broadly, apart from just liking education and being very committed to teaching and mentoring students, you know, I've just seen the, well, even before the sort of large waves of misinformation and the assault on facts in our culture, it's, I viewed it as an obligation of a professional scientist to communicate to a larger audience because, well, to be blunt, we're paid by the taxpayer.
zack_jackson (04:26.05)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (04:44.15)
Hmm.
chris_impey (04:54.118)
And also, there's a lot of misinformation out there, and science is often misperceived or characterized in wrong and inappropriate ways. And so I think all scientists should not just stay in their little lane doing research, but they should, if they can, some better than others. And not everyone can be Neil deGrasse Tyson. That's fine. But I think there's an obligation to communicate to larger audiences. And once I got into it and got practiced and better at it, then I now understand that
I mean, it's like I couldn't imagine not doing it.
chris_impey (05:32.018)
And the books just, okay. And so books just flow out of that because writing popular articles is just a sort of lighter version of writing a technical article. And then, you know, you want a meaty subject. You do a book-length version. So I've been writing about cosmology and astrobiology. And I've started about 10 years ago I say, I think this is my ninth book, Exoplanets. So books are fun. They're more challenging.
ian (05:32.543)
I almost had to sneeze. Sorry, go ahead. Ha ha ha.
chris_impey (06:01.958)
to take on a big subject and distill it down and make it, you gotta make it, have a resonance for a person with no, maybe with no background in astronomy or maybe just a little background and you're taking them through what could be a very esoteric subject. So that, I like the challenge of that. Although the books are exhausting. Once I've done a book, I don't wanna, I almost don't wanna look at a book or read a book or write a book for a while.
zack_jackson (06:28.65)
do people ask you like when's the next one coming out? Like right after you finish. It's like having a baby. I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
chris_impey (06:31.898)
Of course. Yeah, they are. Yeah, it's like I'm not going to go there about the having a baby because my wife would my wife would give me a hard time. There's nothing like having a baby. You can't even imagine, you know, and and and she and yeah, and she's right. But like having a baby, you know, women may feel that and then they do it again, you know, so I write the book, have have a slight, you know, trauma afterwards or just let down. It's a little bit of a let down sometimes.
zack_jackson (06:43.89)
That is a good man. Good job.
ian (06:45.766)
Yes.
chris_impey (07:01.918)
you finished any big-ish thing. But I do like writing, so I'm committed to it.
zack_jackson (07:02.094)
Hmm.
ian (07:09.303)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (07:10.05)
So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot
chris_impey (07:15.718)
Yeah, it's a super hot field with the number has up to 5,300 last time I checked on NASA's website. And remember, you know, 1995, the number was zero. So this is all, this is all the last few decades and it's just growing gangbusters. And now it's a slightly unfortunate because I have, we have students here who are working on exoplanets or astrobiology. And, you know, there was a time when if you discovered one cool Earth-like planet or water world,
ian (07:27.244)
I remember that.
chris_impey (07:45.818)
about it. Well now you know you'd have to find a hundred interesting things to write a paper. So the bar has been raised just by the success of the field. But the interesting thing is that it's moving to a new phase. So the most of what's known about those 5300 exoplanets is not much at all. They're basically is either a mass or a size or maybe both and you get a density and know it's a gas planet or a rocky planet. And that's it. We can't characterize
zack_jackson (07:46.792)
Hmm.
zack_jackson (07:54.15)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (08:04.316)
Hmm.
chris_impey (08:15.698)
thousands of exoplanets. So the next stage of the game, everyone's taking a deep breath in the research field is to try and characterize the atmospheres and the geology and of course find life. And that's just a very hard experiment. It's just much harder than detecting an exoplanet in the first place. So there's sort of excitement in the air because if I were betting, I would say that within five to seven years, we will have done the experiment of looking for life
or Earth planets that are nearest to us and will either know the answer. Either there will be microbes on those planets that have altered their atmospheres or there won't be and that will be an amazing experiment to have done. So it's really on the horizon. But it's daunting because it's a very difficult experiment. Earth-like planets are a billion times fainter than the stars they orbit. So you have to, and they're far away so they appear very close to their star. So you have to isolate the planet from the star, blot out the billion times brighter
and then smear the feeble reflected light from the exoplanet into a spectrum and look for molecules that indicate life like oxygen, ozone, methane, water vapor and so on.
ian (09:26.503)
But the molecules you're looking for are always in the atmosphere itself, right? Like you wouldn't, and I understand that, and I think we all do, but, you know, some people listening may not realize that that's, that's what you're looking at. When you're talking about with the spectrum is that makeup of the atmosphere, nothing about like if there's, if it's a rocky planet, what's on the ground, I guess.
zack_jackson (09:26.614)
Now.
chris_impey (09:30.458)
there.
chris_impey (09:45.358)
Right, right. And it's important for people to realize that the characterizing the exoplanets is done in that indirect way. For instance, of those 5,300, only 150 have ever had an image made of them. You know, seeing is believing. It's nice to have images of exoplanets. That's a hard thing. And those images are, you know, they're pathetic, a few pixels. They're just pale blue dots in a far away. So there's no, and if you ask this,
ian (10:02.488)
Right.
zack_jackson (10:03.35)
Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (10:15.678)
The question of when will we be able to make an image of an exoplanet to be able to see continents and oceans? The answer is maybe never. The answer is decades or a very long time because it's just too hard to make images that sharp of things that far away, even with space telescopes. So astronomers have to be a little more indirect and the clever method that's on the table now and will be done, James Webb is doing some of this but was never built to do this experiment, it will actually be better done with the huge...
set of ground-based telescopes under construction. So the experiment is you use the star to backlight the exoplanet when it crosses in front of it, and the backlit, the light from the star filters through the atmosphere of the exoplanet and imprints absorption from these relevant molecules called biosignatures. So that's the experiment you're doing. And it's still hard. And it's also not clear you'll get an unambiguous answer. You know, obviously,
and its cousin ozone are the prime biomarkers because on Earth, the oxygen we breathe, one part and five of our air, was put there by microbes billions of years ago. So the reverse logic is if you see oxygen on an exoplanet or in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it must have been put there by life because oxygen is so reactive, so volatile that it disappears. If there's not life to sustain it, say the biosphere of the Earth shut down overnight, the entire biosphere just shut down.
ian (11:41.803)
Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (11:45.458)
just imagine the thought experiment. Within five to seven billion, a million years, so very short time in geological terms, the oxygen, that one part in five we breathe, would be gone. It would rust things, it would dissolve in seawater, it would oxidize with rocks, and it would be gone. So if it were not put there originally by life and then sustained by photosynthesis and other life processes, it would disappear. So the logic, therefore, is if you see it elsewhere, bang, it's got to be microbes putting it there and causing it
to be there.
ian (12:16.845)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (12:16.95)
Hmm, unless there's some hitherto unknown non-living process by which these things happen.
chris_impey (12:24.058)
Right. So that's a good point. And there is a debate there because the data that's going to come in, well, first of all, it'll be noisy. It won't be beautiful, perfect spectra. So they'll be ambiguous to interpret. And then when you see it, what is the, where's, does the bar set for being enough? And the geologists have weighed in on this. And so whereas the sort of simplistic view as well, if you see any significant level of oxygen, certainly 18% like on the earth, what's got to be biology.
zack_jackson (12:41.694)
Yeah.
chris_impey (12:54.218)
That's pretty much true, but geologists have figured out ways where without biology, just with geochemical reactions, if you conjure up a geochemistry, you can get 6%, 5%, 7% oxygen. That's quite a lot, more than most people would have expected. So the geologists are saying, well, hold on. Yes, a lot of oxygen is probably a biomarker, but you would have to know more about the planet to be sure that it didn't have some weird chemistry and geology going on.
for any of the other biomarkers. Methane is a biomarker too because it's produced on earth, you know, mostly by life, a good fraction of that, cow farts I think. But so it's the same argument. So these wonderful and difficult to obtain spectra are going to be, everyone's going to jump all over them and hope they give an unambiguous answer, but they might not. Science is not always as cut and dried as that at the frontier, which is where we are. But it's the
zack_jackson (13:34.511)
Hmm. Sure.
chris_impey (13:53.958)
exciting experiment and it will be done fairly soon.
ian (13:58.804)
Okay.
chris_impey (14:01.358)
And then a sort of related issue is that it's not just microbes. I mean, that's just looking for life as we know it on the earth. You could also look with the same technique, and this is an interesting possibility, for what are called techno signatures. So biosignatures is just evidence of life, typically microbes, because we think most life in the universe is going to be microbial, even if it's not exactly like our form of biology. But you could also look for things
technology like chlorofluorocarbons, which you know, were responsible for almost killing the ozone layer for a few decades until we sort of ruled them out of refrigeration units. And there are other chemicals that are produced by industrial activity in a civilization, which would normally be very trace ingredients in an atmosphere, barely, you know, not present at all really. And if you could detect them in an atmosphere, it would be indirect evidence of a technological or industrial civilization.
Realization on that planet and that will be very exciting. So that's the same method being used to ask a very different question But it's a more challenging experiment because these are trace ingredients. I'll give you an example I mean, we're all aware of climate change global warming and we've seen the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere Increased by 30% roughly in the last few decades. That's quite a lot. It's obviously concerning and we know the implications But if you step back and look at the earth from afar
and say, well, shouldn't that just be obvious? Shouldn't some other alien civilization look at the Earth and say, oh, those people are really screwing up. They're killing their atmosphere with climate change and fossil fuel burning? The answer is probably not because carbon dioxide is a trace ingredient of our atmosphere, and 30% increase on a trace ingredient would actually be very hard to detect from a distance. So even that dramatic thing that we are all anxious about on our planet
industrial activity and fossil fuels is not dramatically obvious from a distance. So these are quite difficult experiments. The techno-signature experiment is much harder than the biosignature experiment.
zack_jackson (16:13.592)
Hmm.
ian (16:14.165)
Interesting.
rachael (16:17.101)
One of the things that you had said when looking at these exoplanets was, you know, we look at them and we want to see them and what's going on with them. And then you added the line, and of course, detect life. And that's where our conversation has gone for the last couple of minutes. But I'm wondering, you added that phrase that seems to think that finding life is part,
entire reason for studying exoplanets. And I'm wondering, A, why you think that? And B, what that says about, you know, making it very narcissistic and Earth-centered, what that says about us.
chris_impey (16:54.799)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (17:02.778)
Right. Okay. So good question. I can unpack that in parts. I mean, yes, if I were a geologist or a planetary scientist, I'd be just pleased as punch and happy as a pig in a poke to just study exoplanets. That's all that I'm happy. I've got 5300 new, new geological worlds to study. Whereas the solar system only has a handful. Oh, yeah. So depending on your discipline, you might be totally
zack_jackson (17:16.049)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
rachael (17:19.507)
Right!
chris_impey (17:32.718)
properties. But astrobiology, I mean astrobiology writ large is the study of life in the universe, and the context for that search for life in the universe is the fact that we only know of one example of life, and that's on this planet. And everything in astronomy and the history of astronomy, and the Copernicus onwards, has told us we're not special, has told us there's nothing singular
zack_jackson (17:59.891)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (18:02.718)
about our solar system, about our galaxy, or our position in the galaxy, and so on. In space and time, we are not special. And so, you know, for biology to be unique to this planet, when the ingredients are widespread, we've detected carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, the biogenic elements out to distances of 12, 13 billion light years, almost to the birth of the universe. Water is one of the, you might think it's special. Earth is a water world. Well, actually, some of the exoplanets have 10 to 30 times more water.
water than the Earth. So it's not, the Earth isn't really a water world even, pale blue dot, it's not that special. And water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe too. So all the ingredients, the table is set for life in the universe. And as the universe is evolved and is quite old, more and more of those biogenic elements are made by stars and spat out into space to become part of new star systems and planets. And so in an old mature universe with a lot of heavy elements, and with many habitable locations now, we
the best guess is 20 billion Earth-like habitable worlds just in our galaxy, then it just, whether or not it's central to astrobiology, it absolutely begs the question, is biology unique to this planet? Because it really shouldn't be statistically. However, logically, you know, to be correct and scientific, it's possible that there were a unique set of accidents and flukes that led to life on Earth, and it is unique. It would still
chris_impey (19:33.038)
It's historical science to wonder how life on earth developed and nobody's ever built a cell from scratch in the lab people have done various parts of that experiment and They can't connect all the dots, but they've done some very interesting experiments that certainly suggest It's not a fluke that the whole thing happened. You need time. You need the possibilities of Chemicals bumping into each other and getting more complex, but that tends to happen It happens if you do it in a computer
it in a lab as well as you can. And so the context of the ingredients for life being so widespread and there not seeming to be any sort of bizarre, flukish occurrence in the development of at least replicating molecules that could store information, if not a full cell, would certainly lead you to anticipate life elsewhere.
And then game on, because the big question then is, so there are two almost binary questions you're trying to answer, which is why the field is so exciting. Is there life beyond Earth, yes or no? And then if yes, is it like our life? Is it biology? Because everything on Earth, from a fungal spore to a butterfly to a blue whale, is the same biological experiment. They seem like very diverse things, but that's one genetic code.
experiment that led to that diversity after a long time, after four billion years of evolution. And there's no reason to expect, even if the ingredients for life and the basis for biology exist far beyond Earth and in many locations, there's no real reason to expect that it would play out the same way elsewhere. And so that second question, is it like Earth life, is a very big question.
rachael (21:27.201)
Just as a curiosity, when did, if you know, when did microbes appear on Earth?
chris_impey (21:39.158)
So the earliest, the indications of life on Earth, the history of that is really tricky, because as you know, the Earth is a restless planet, and we weren't there, it's historical science, and it's possible you may never answer the question, but the big problem is the restless Earth. It's very hard, there's only a handful of places on Earth, Western Australia, Greenland, somewhere in South Africa, where you can find four billion year old rocks. They just don't exist. I mean, everything's been churned by geology and eroded
rachael (21:46.661)
We weren't there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
rachael (21:56.104)
Right.
chris_impey (22:09.338)
Weathered and so on so just even and that's about when we think life started So you're dealing with you know a crime scene where the evidence has been trampled many times and the crowds have just Obliterated the evidence so that's a hard thing and then the second hard thing is that the incipient Traces of life as you get to cells are very indirect They're sort of just you they're biochemical tracers or sorry there. They're chemical imbalances isotopic imbalances of
versus normal carbon and so on. Because you're not looking for fully fossilized cells. So if you're just looking at what would be called chemical tracers of life, they're pretty good, but argumentative, this field is not resolved, traces that go back about 3.8 billion years. If you're asking when do you have the first fossil life forms, fossilized microbes, single cells,
rachael (23:00.421)
Okay.
chris_impey (23:09.238)
to 3.4, 3.5 billion years, and that's people then stop arguing about it. I think they believe that evidence. And then there's this enormous long time between that and multi-celled organisms. That step in the evolution of life seems to have taken a long time. You could infer that that means it's difficult or doesn't happen very often, but that's a dangerous inference from data of one. All the inferences, hazardous. So astrobiologists have to keep pinching themselves and saying, it's a sample of one. It's a sample of one.
rachael (23:30.921)
Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (23:32.75)
Thank you. Bye.
rachael (23:39.721)
One does not make a line. One day to... That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.
chris_impey (23:41.139)
Don't draw too many conclusions. So, yeah, the cell formation, the evolution of the first cells and microbes seem to have taken 300 or 400 million years from the first chemical traces of life. But those chemical traces, we don't know. There's that Zircon that was found in Western Australia, 4.404 billion years accurately measured by radioactive dating.
chris_impey (24:09.378)
environment and so there's evidence really soon after the earth formed when it was just a hellhole of a place you know impacts and craters and geological activity that the earth surface was almost tacky like magma and yet there were there were any ingredients for life there so nobody would rule out life going back very close to the formation of the earth but then but tracing all these evolutionary paths is really hard I mean we have stromatolites which are
modern descendants of the first microbial colonies. You can go to Western Australia, Shark's Bay, I've been there and it's great, they're stromatolites. These were just the same as they were now three billion years ago, it's really cool. One of the things you can't see behind me is my stromatolite collection.
rachael (24:53.985)
Yeah.
rachael (24:59.962)
One of the reasons, yeah, that's fascinating. It makes a collector about that. It makes a collector. Um. Yeah.
zack_jackson (25:00.071)
kind of a few collections
chris_impey (25:01.578)
Yeah. Oh, well, three. Does that make a collection?
ian (25:05.749)
It's good enough.
chris_impey (25:07.958)
Well, yes. It's like primitive counting systems, one, two, many. So I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many.
rachael (25:13.941)
That's right.
zack_jackson (25:15.016)
Ha!
rachael (25:19.021)
One of the reasons I was asking that question about Earth, because you were talking about these very far away planets and looking for microbial, likely microbial life, then showing up in the atmosphere by its various products. And so my question was stemming from how far back are these planets that we're looking at?
a really long time to create its microbes, then perhaps, since we're looking so far back in time, that maybe those microbes exist now, but when we're looking at them, they didn't exist. Right, that lovely time, space question.
chris_impey (25:51.579)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (26:02.098)
Right. So in that context, it's important to say that the exoplanets we're finding are in our backyard. So Kepler, NASA's Kepler mission is really responsible for almost half the exoplanets, even though it stopped operating a few years ago. And so the most exoplanets we know of are within 100 to 1,000 light years. And that's our backyard. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across.
rachael (26:12.785)
Okay.
rachael (26:28.064)
Oh, close. Yeah.
chris_impey (26:32.398)
And of course, logically, therefore, we're only seeing them as they were a century or millennium ago, which is no time geologically. So we can't see that far back. So we're not really looking at ancient history. However, the more important point, having mentioned that carbon nitrogen, oxygen, and water have been around in the universe for a long time, is that we now can very confidently say, even if we can't locate such objects, that an earth clone,
rachael (26:32.606)
Okay.
rachael (26:38.901)
Yeah, it's no time at all. Yeah.
chris_impey (27:02.098)
something as close to Earth as you could imagine, could have been created within a billion years of the Big Bang. And that's seven billion years before the Earth formed. So there are potential biological experiments out there that have a seven billion year head start on us and then add the four billion four and a half billion years of evolution. And that's boggling because you know, we can't imagine what evolution and biology might come up with given 10 or 12 billion years to evolve rather
zack_jackson (27:11.75)
Hmm.
chris_impey (27:31.958)
Maybe it makes no difference at all. Maybe these things are slow and they're hard and the Earth was actually one of the fastest kids on the block rather than one of the slowest kids on the block. We don't know. Sample of one again. We'll just put that as a big asterisk over almost everything I say so I don't have to keep saying sample of one. Okay.
zack_jackson (27:32.014)
Hmm.
rachael (27:41.861)
Simple of one.
zack_jackson (27:42.808)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (27:48.834)
No.
rachael (27:49.221)
That'll just be today's episode title, right? Today's sample of one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
chris_impey (27:51.14)
Yeah, right.
zack_jackson (27:52.65)
That's Apple F1.
chris_impey (27:55.038)
Yeah, induction is a bitch when you can't do it.
zack_jackson (27:55.492)
So.
zack_jackson (28:02.51)
So we've talked a lot about the how it's possible, how we might detect it, but what do you think it might do to our sense of self and our sense of spirituality, our sense of humanity, our sense of earth? Should we start discovering life outside of, or at least biological markers in other places?
chris_impey (28:28.898)
Right. I mean, I think it sort of bifurcates if we find microbial life elsewhere and improve it, you know, it's beyond a reasonable doubt. And even if we don't know if it's our biology or not, it's just a biomarker that's irrefutable or set of biomarkers. That will be a transformative, epochal event in the history of science. It'll be dramatic. But it will make front page headlines and then fade, I would say, fairly rapidly, because it's microbes.
zack_jackson (28:44.618)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (28:58.858)
Like, that's Ponskum or stuff on your shower curtain, like, okay, who cares? So, I mean being facetious, but not too facetious, because I think the public will just be interested and science interested people will be very interested, and books will be written, and documentaries will be made, and so on. But in the public consciousness, I don't think it will permeate very far or persist very long. Of course, the counterpoint of if we decide we found intelligent life in the universe through those techno markers.
zack_jackson (29:03.391)
Ha ha ha.
chris_impey (29:28.978)
you know, the search for artificial radio or optical signals from some civilization. So they're obviously artificial and they couldn't have been produced by nature. That will be more profound, of course, because that's companionship in the universe. And that will raise all sorts of questions. So I think it really divides that way. And since the universe logically, if life exists in the universe elsewhere, there'll be many more microbes than intelligent civilizations. You know.
ian (29:29.523)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (29:58.858)
seed in that first mode. Although SETI is a side bet. I mean SETI for 65 years has been placing this little side bet. Okay, yeah, we can look for microbes and those are hard experiments and now we can almost do it. But let's always place this side bet of jumping over the evolutionary path from microbes to men or humans and look for those intelligent technological civilizations directly. And so it's worth doing. I'm not science
scientists are divided on SETI, even astronomers are divided on it, whether it's a worthwhile pursuit or not, whether it's even scientific or not. That's the strongest critique of SETI is that unlike, you know, if I wanted to go to the National Science Foundation and get a million dollar grant to study some issue of, you know, solid state physics or high energy physics, I'd have to propose an experiment and define my parameters and how I was going to control variables and say how I would interpret the data.
could refute or confirm. SETI doesn't have that kind of situation. They don't know how to define success or failure even. Well, they can define success more or less, but they can't define failure and they can't say what the probability of success is. So it's not a normal scientific pursuit. So that's the critique of SETI from scientists, but I still think it's worth doing.
ian (31:04.946)
Right.
ian (31:23.628)
Yeah.
rachael (31:24.842)
You talked about, and I think you're probably right in terms of how much people will care in the long run or in their day-to-day life or, right? Okay, so we found some microbes from, you know, a thousand light years away. I don't, that didn't reduce my student loan at all. But like, didn't, thank you. It's nice, saw the headlines. It's now three years later.
chris_impey (31:45.018)
Right.
rachael (31:54.441)
But I've noticed that you did a lot of work with the Vatican and with monks, and I think that that's a different population that might respond to and other religious figures, but specifically those I'm asking you because those are the groups that you've worked with. They might respond a little bit differently to this existence. Could you speak a little bit
ian (32:01.35)
Yeah
chris_impey (32:16.803)
Right.
rachael (32:23.726)
in this idea of how it would change.
chris_impey (32:25.658)
Sure. And maybe preface it with just the cultural comment, with independent religion, that the other issue that will arise with, I mean, if microbial life is found elsewhere and astrobiology is a real field with the subject matter, finally, yeah, it's foundational for science. And of course, it terraforms biology because, you know, if you want to poke, if physicists want to poke at biologists who say, well, you just spent your whole life studying one form of biology,
What about all the other forms? You don't have a general theory of biology like we have a standard model of particle physics because you've just been studying one thing like staring at your navel. Well, what about all that stuff out there? Okay, so so it'll be a big deal for biology for all of science but on the intelligent life or advanced life, the problem with what happens outside the scientific community is it's not a tabula rasa. It's not a blank slate. The popular culture, especially in the US
ian (32:59.524)
Hmm.
ian (33:08.503)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (33:25.718)
but almost everywhere now, is so primed for the fact that, A, it's already there and sure, and B, it's visited, and three, it's abducted some of our people, and four, it can make a list of all the conspiracy theories and wild ideas about alien life. And they're just so embedded in the popular culture that it's like that the fact of the existence of intelligent aliens has been amortized. It's sort of been, it's just already been built in.
zack_jackson (33:39.8)
Thank you.
chris_impey (33:55.698)
in to the culture. And so, you know, that would lead to a collective shrug. Well, sure, we knew that, you know, the government's been hiding this stuff from us for 70 years, since Roswell. So, you know, and now your astronomers are coming along and telling us, oh, it exists and you're all excited, really? Oh, come on, you know. So I think that's the larger cultural issue or problem or whatever, it's not a problem, it's just amusing to me. But as far as a religious reaction to this, and I'll say,
zack_jackson (34:02.271)
Hmm.
rachael (34:04.421)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (34:05.05)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (34:12.722)
Ha!
chris_impey (34:25.698)
the gate that I'm an agnostic, which my wife's a pretty hardcore atheist. And so she gives me a hard time about being agnostic. She thinks that's a kind of, it's a kind of wussy position to take. But I, and I argue with her, we argue vigorously about that one. I argue with her and I use the phrase that was attributed to Feynman. And I think he did say this in the biography of Richard Feynman, famous physicist. His biographer said,
zack_jackson (34:43.45)
Fantastic.
chris_impey (34:55.738)
Feynman believed in the primacy of doubt and that he held as a high scientific mark and doubt skepticism and doubt is a is a very high mark of a scientist. So I'm proud to wear that mantle of skepticism doubt of not being sure and being okay with not being sure. So I'm an agnostic but I do keep bad company and some of that bad company is Jesuits. Don't you know, don't don't go drinking with Jesuits. You'll you'll you'll end up in a
rachael (34:59.461)
Thank you. Bye.
ian (35:13.024)
Right.
zack_jackson (35:14.092)
Yeah.
chris_impey (35:25.798)
and a Rome gutter somewhere and they'll be they'll have got back home safely. With the Buddhists, the other group I hang out with, you don't have to worry about being drunk in a gutter because they really don't drink. They do bend the rules a bit, you know, I've seen them eat a lot of meat for people who are supposed to be vegans and vegetarians. But anyway, those are the two tribes that I've sort of affiliated myself with. And their reactions or perspectives on life in the universe is are quite different. They're interesting.
Each the Buddhists that I've been with and I've read behind this of course and read some of their More you know the scholarly articles written about this It is completely unexceptional in their tradition to contemplate a universe filled with life That could be more advanced It could be human like or it could be more advanced or different from humans in also a vast universe with cycles of time and birth and
and death of the universe and rebirth of other universes. So the Byzantine possibilities of life in the universe are pretty standard stuff for them and would not surprise them at all. They do get into more tricky issues when they come to define life itself, which biologists of course have trouble with, or sentience, which is also a tricky issue. But on the larger issue of the existence of life in the universe far beyond Earth, that's just non-controversial.
zack_jackson (36:48.35)
Hmm.
chris_impey (36:55.898)
to them and when I say that's what we anticipate and that's what scientists expect it's like okay sure and the Jesuits are in a different slightly different space they're of course in an unusual space as we know within the Catholic Church because they're you know they're the scholarly branch you know they're they're devoted to scholarship they from Gregory and the calendar reform they were liberated to measure
ian (37:17.944)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (37:25.678)
the heavens and then eventually that just segwayed smoothly into doing astronomy research. The Jesuits have been doing pretty straight up astronomical research since certainly the early 19th century, so quite a long time. And they have that sort of intellectual independence of being able to pursue those ideas. All the Jesuit astronomers I know, there are I think 11 or 12 in the Vatican Observatory and they all live the double life. They're all PhD astronomers.
rachael (37:37.221)
Thank you.
chris_impey (37:55.798)
with parishes. So it's not a problem. Whoever else, whoever elsewhere might think there's a conflict between science and religion, they don't see it. They don't feel it. And if you ask... Yeah. Yeah.
ian (38:05.145)
Mm-hmm.
zack_jackson (38:06.03)
No. And if anyone out there wants to hear more about that, they can listen to episode episode 113 with brother guy, the, uh, the director. Yeah.
ian (38:10.246)
We have an episode.
chris_impey (38:13.821)
Right.
ian (38:15.343)
Director of the Vatican Observatory.
chris_impey (38:16.418)
Sure, sure. So I've known guys since, well, since he was a grad student actually, and a long time. And yes, and so they, they're pursuing it from a scholarly direction. And for them, it's also uncontroversial that there would be life elsewhere. Now, what is the, you know, what does that do to God's creation when you imagine that Earth and humans are no longer the centerpiece of it? That's a more interesting question.
zack_jackson (38:22.034)
Wow.
chris_impey (38:46.298)
I've had debates about that. And I heard Jose Funes, who was the previous director of the Vatican Observatory and Argentinian astronomer, in a press conference actually in the Vatican City State when we had a conference on astrobiology. In response to a question about astrobiology, because that was what the conference was about, he gave a very interesting answer. He said he gave a parable of Christ in the flock of sheep and how there was the sheep that was lost.
you know, you had to gather back to the rest of the flock. And he didn't complete the story, he just left it hanging there. And so you were left wondering, are we the lost sheep, you know, and the other, and all the intelligent aliens out there are the rest of the flock? And what's the message, you know? So he sort of almost muddied the waters with his little parable. But in the manner of how they view the universe,
zack_jackson (39:27.914)
Hmm.
rachael (39:28.621)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (39:33.792)
Hmm.
chris_impey (39:46.398)
the rules of physics. I used to teach a team graduate cosmology with Bill Staker, who is one of their tribe. Sadly, he died a few years ago. We teach cosmology and he's a relativist. He works on general relativity and the Big Bang and all that. And if I was just wanting to pull his leg at breakfast, we had breakfast before we taught us to organize ourselves. I could do one of two things. I could say, oh, Bill, physics, we got you with physics.
is squeezed back to the first 10 to the minus 43 seconds. Got to the gaps, there it is, that's a little gap. And then physics owns the rest, you know. And then if I was really feeling frisky, I'd sort of, since he was a Catholic, I'd tease him about the three impossible things he has to believe every morning before breakfast. Virgin birth, resurrection, et cetera, you know. So I don't know how all those circles are squared truly because we've had, you know, I've had conversations.
zack_jackson (40:22.572)
Hmm.
zack_jackson (40:26.32)
Hehehehehe
zack_jackson (40:35.05)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (40:46.798)
But I know that it's not a conflict or a tension or even a problem to imagine life in the universe and even intelligent life. So for neither of those two very different religious tribes, does it seem to be an issue?
ian (41:06.443)
So can you talk more about, especially how you got involved? Cause I think that science for the monks and nuns program was really interesting. And, you know, one, how you got involved, but you know, reading your book Humble Before the Void was just very interesting to kind of see about your experience from there. And you told us before we started recording that you wrote that after your first time going and that you've been there eight or nine times now. What has all of this been like for you? How has it had an impact on your work and also your personal life?
if yes and what ways.
chris_impey (41:38.798)
Yeah, it was a sort of profound, it's been a profound experience since 2008, I guess, so it's almost 15 years and eight trips. So the first time was one of those great things of you come across the transom professionally. Sometimes I got a call from a colleague that I didn't know that well, who he knew I had an education, a good reputation as an educator. And he just called me, he's a postdoc at Berkeley actually, an environmental science postdoc.
He said, how'd you like to go and teach the Dalai Lama's monks cosmology? And it's not a question you ruminate over or look at your skit, look at, oh, I'll check my calendar. Let me get back to you. No, you just say yes, and then you make it happen. So I said yes, and then it happened. And I was savvy enough in hindsight to take my 17-year-old Paul with me on that trip. And he'd never been anywhere out, he'd been to Europe a couple of times, but he'd never been to Asia or anywhere exotic.
zack_jackson (42:14.65)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
rachael (42:17.821)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
zack_jackson (42:23.05)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (42:38.738)
if you like. And so that was a profound trip in that sense. It was a bonding with your 17-year-old and you know, we were a little more adventurous together than either of us might have been on our own. And so the context was that invitation. And then I learned that his holiness the Dalai Lama, who famously has said in his autobiography that if he hadn't been selected at age four to be the
of compassion would have been an engineer. Fine, that's an interesting statement to make. But, and it meant that when he was a child in Eastern Tibet, in a pretty primitive village, you know, he would just infuriate his parents by taking apart their clocks and mechanical devices and never quite putting them together again. So he had this analytic and mechanical and engineering and scientific mindset even as a child. And then of course his future was cast into the role he had
zack_jackson (43:11.134)
Hmm.
zack_jackson (43:25.992)
Hmm.
chris_impey (43:38.798)
he took. But he's always had that strong interest in science. So he looked around 20 or so years ago and realized that the monastic tradition, his, the Gelug tradition, of course, or other traditions in Buddhism, was sort of outdated. You know, the monastic training was extremely rigorous. They take years and years of rhetoric and philosophy and theology and comparative religion and all sorts of things. But there's very little science, very little math. And in the schools, there's
zack_jackson (43:39.972)
Bye.
chris_impey (44:08.718)
very little science and very little math. And he just thought that was unacceptable. He said, my monks and nuns, the nun part actually did come later. And that was a good part of his work to make the level of playing field for monastic training to include nuns. But he just said, these my monastics cannot be prepared for life in the 21st century if they don't have science and math. And so in the manner that he does these things, he just looked around and waved his arm and said, make this happen, you know, and I've now
zack_jackson (44:19.05)
Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (44:30.035)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (44:37.45)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
chris_impey (44:38.798)
heard from proximity to people in his orbit that his holiness, the Dalai Lama says a lot of things. He has great ideas. He's very activist. He's very visionary. And he says all sorts of things. And people scurry around and sometimes they just ignore him. Sometimes nothing happens. But this one, they decided to make it happen. And what happened was they looked around Dharamsala
chris_impey (45:08.658)
the blue, who was an educator and a scientist, a young scientist. And they just glommed on to him and they said, Hey, can you help us with this? Can you set something up? And so he set up the science for monks program, then science for monks and nuns. When the nuns came on board and I was one of the early people he called. And so the model was to bring three to four Western teachers in different subjects. The Dalai Lama's core interest.
it doesn't mirror a bit his interests, which are evolutionary biology, neuroscience, physics, math, and then environmental sciences come on board too. So it's not every field of science. So these, we would come out as Western teachers and there'd be cohorts of monks and then monks and nuns, about 24 in a group. And we do three week intensive workshops and they're very intense, you know, we're in the classroom six, seven hours a day and then our evening sessions or observing
zack_jackson (45:50.671)
Hmm.
chris_impey (46:08.658)
telescopes. So it's kind of grueling actually, but it's inspiring as well. And eventually, the idea is that enough of the monks and nuns will be trained to be educators themselves, and you won't need to depend on Westerners to come out and do this. And they're not really there yet, but they could get there. I don't want them to get there, because then I won't get invited out. So it was a singular experience. And the book I wrote, of course, was fresh,
zack_jackson (46:24.494)
Hmm.
chris_impey (46:38.738)
I was really, I wrote it not long after the first trip. And to your question of did it affect me or change me? Well, yes, in many ways, some of which I probably haven't fully appreciated. I mean, first of all, it was a deep embedding in a culture, in a way that I'd never done. I was pretty experienced world traveler, but in that sort of slightly superficial way of someone who goes to Asia and tries to hang out and go to a bar in a local restaurant and see the sights, but you don't really get to know the people
ian (47:05.228)
Mm-hmm
chris_impey (47:08.838)
you're moving around. So being three weeks, sometimes four weeks, and then traveling with them afterwards or during, you know, really you get to learn the culture. You also see in these northern Indian towns, most of the workshops are in northern India, there's now in southern India, Bidtabhatta, Nepal for this too. They're mixing very well. India has a, you know, kind of black mark on it right now with its current government of sort of sectarian strife and
Most recently with the Sikhs, but also obviously with Muslims But in those little northern Indian villages where there are sometimes 50 percent Buddhist 50 percent Hindus They really get on pretty well. I mean that they're just they're sort of under the radar the geopolitics or the What the Modi government is doing at the time so? It works pretty well, and it's nice to see that So I learned that I saw the culture up close. I would be part of their rituals and go, you know and
ian (47:50.666)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (48:08.758)
see everything they saw and listen to their prayers and talk to their scholars. And so it was a pretty deep embedding. And then as far as my own life, when I come back, rather than just view it as, you know, amazing experience, I got some beautiful photos. I had these great memories. Um, it did sort of make me reflect a little, uh, because of their, the ethos they had. And their ethos is, is of course very, um, very different from
most of a Western ethos. It's a Buddhist are all about compassion and suffering, suffering and compassion. They do go together. They're almost bedfellows. So I got the message, I think very early on, when I was walking towards the lecture hall and it was at one of these Tibetan children villages and they're very poignant places. They're about 11 or maybe now 14 Tibetan children villages in the northern part of India. And that's where the refugees go.
ian (48:46.008)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (49:09.158)
that escaped. So almost all the monks in my early workshops left Tibet when they were teenagers even younger, brought across the ice fields by family members at great risk. Some didn't make it, others lost toes and fingers from frostbite. They had to go in the winter because the Chinese troops would intercept them and even even then did in the winter. So they were orphans,
And they grow up and go to these Tibetan children villages, sort of orphanages, really. And so I was walking towards the lecture hall, which is situated in one of these villages. And there was a hard, scrabble, packed dirt soccer pitch. You know, it looked really uncomfortable for falling. I am enough of a Brit to have experienced playing football soccer on really nice grass, because England does have good grass, you know. And I was thinking, the first thing I thought, damn, I don't want to play football.
rachael (50:04.321)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ian (50:04.525)
Right.
zack_jackson (50:05.412)
Hmm
chris_impey (50:08.918)
on that field. That would be brutal. So there was this football field and there was a 10-foot wall behind it running the length of the football field, painted white, and on top of it in 10-foot high letters was a slogan of the school, others before self. And I was just thinking, I wonder how many American high schools would have that as their slogan. How would that go down with the, you know, social media, me generation, whatever.
rachael (50:10.621)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ian (50:31.167)
Right.
rachael (50:31.321)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
zack_jackson (50:32.25)
Hmm
ian (50:34.845)
Yeah.
chris_impey (50:38.918)
So that was one thing. And then a series of those little messages sort of sink in about how they do operate differently from us or me. And so one thing it made me reflect on when I went back home was I immediately embedded back in my academic life and hustling the next grant and writing the next paper and talking to my collaborators. And I just realized how really how intensely pressured.
rachael (50:40.763)
Wow.
chris_impey (51:08.658)
Darwinian that science, Western science system is, it's kind of, you know, it kind of grinds you down. I mean, I've been hustling for grants from funding agencies for 40 years and I kind of burned out on it, you know, it's hard. It doesn't get any easier because there's younger whippersnappers that are very smart and, you know, they're going to get your grant. So it definitely made me reflect on the sort of hyper competitive nature of some parts of
zack_jackson (51:21.042)
Hmm.
ian (51:21.047)
Mm-hmm.
rachael (51:28.721)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (51:39.719)
and just reflect on what is important. Is it important to know something, or to teach something, or to give something, or to what is important? And how does that work when you're a scientist and educator? And that's it. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (51:56.043)
Yeah. Well, it's just interesting reading the book and I told you before we're recording. I've not been on to finish it yet, but I look forward to finish it just because, you know, one, you know, as I've already said, you're a fantastic writer for the lay audience, the general public, which is not something, you know, I've, I've worked with many scientists as a science educator and many of the ones I've worked with have said they struggle with that. Right. So I always applaud that. Um, but then just the, the personal experiences you shared and.
chris_impey (51:59.833)
I'm
ian (52:26.163)
humble before the void was just very interesting to me, especially someone who I have embraced meditation and mindfulness over the past three or four years and gotten really into it. And so, you know, first when I, when you shared that book with us and saw that the Dalai Lama wrote, you know, the preface for it and everything, I just was immediately fascinated because I find him to be absolutely fascinating in his perspective on things. So
chris_impey (52:47.298)
Yeah, I mean, I was, I mean, I've been privileged to meet him a couple of times. And, uh, and it's always, uh, a singular experience. Uh, the first time was that first trip out actually. And, and it was in that same Tibetan children village. And that was, this was in the winter. I was a January is a very, um, very difficult time to be there. It's in the foothills of the Himalayas. Quite high up. Dharamsala has trivial factoid that a Brit will appreciate like me. Um,
It has the world's highest cricket stadium. And so drum solo, there you go. Now you know, when you get asked that, now you know. So we were in this auditorium, this cold auditorium, very cold, and they'd given the Westerners blankets, put over their legs, and even a few little heaters around. But it was brutal. And he was going to give an opening address. And everyone was full of excitement and anticipation. It was probably 2,000 people. But it was a cold, it was an unadorned Spartan auditorium
ian (53:20.331)
Oh.
zack_jackson (53:20.594)
Hmm.
Ha ha ha.
ian (53:25.403)
Exactly.
zack_jackson (53:34.892)
Hmm.
chris_impey (53:47.498)
on a below freezing day in the Himalayas. And along that football field outside, which is the way his little, he has the equivalent of a pokemobile, he has the DL mobile or whatever that he comes into a place with, that he was gonna come along the edge of the field. And I'd seen walking in that the school children were starting to assemble in a long row along the side of the football field along the place his vehicle would come. And we were waiting
zack_jackson (54:01.775)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (54:17.258)
He was late and it was so cold and it was quiet. People were murmuring, nothing was happening. And then suddenly we heard this sound, this wave of singing. So they were singing him in as his vehicle arrived. And I was like, wow, that was so cool. Just the sound of that. And then he came and he just radiates when he's in a room. And he's a little frail. He had trouble getting up the three steps onto the stage. But his grin is just... Oh, it's just...
anyone who remelt the hardest heart. He's just so... and his comments are always, you know, they're always kind of offhand and insightful and, you know, he has a very interesting and sensibility. So that's been a remarkable thing. But the monks all had their own insights and I learned a lot from them. I mean, I was teaching them but I was learning a lot from them. And they gave me, you know, when you teach, well, the other thing I didn't say about the
ian (55:12.667)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (55:17.418)
experience there, which was also restorative for me, is, you know, I depend on my high tech gadgets and my PowerPoints and my whatever. And I was pretty much warned. I said, you're going to be pretty much off the grid. And it was almost like that. And there were a couple of workshops where, you know, if the cold water, if the water was hot, you were lucky. If the power stayed on all day in the classroom, you were lucky. There was hardly any equipment. We make these, these runs
rachael (55:25.325)
Hmm.
chris_impey (55:47.278)
These equipment runs down to the local bazaar, and we buy matchsticks and cloth and cardboard and foil and just super primitive ingredients to make experiments back in the classroom, rather than bring stuff out from the West. So you had to improvise, and it was good to do that. It was good to have to lecture and talk and use simple analogies and simple equipment. And so they informed me about that, too, because I wondered how they understood
zack_jackson (56:02.75)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (56:17.278)
these very abstract things of physics and cosmology. And I think the first striking little insight I had, because I was always reaching for a good analogy. And then, so I sort of turned the tables on one of the monks. I said, well, you have this idea of deep time, which is very interesting. You have a kalpa, which is a day in the life of Brahma. And it's been annotated in some text to be 4.32 billion years, quite a specific number. Happens to be within 10% of the age of the earth.
ian (56:45.207)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (56:47.258)
go figure. And then there's a great Calpa, which is the lifetime of Brahma. And that's about a trillion years, which to a cosmologist is a very interesting number because that's the stellariferous age of the universe. That's the time into the future for which stars will shine after that the universe goes dark forever. And so it's a very interesting coincidence that two coincidences that the age of the earth is a Calpa and a great Calpa is the
rachael (56:48.682)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (57:07.05)
Hmm.
ian (57:09.566)
huh
chris_impey (57:17.258)
universe before it truly goes dark forever. So that was interesting. But then I was asking, following up that knowledge, which was interesting, because most religious traditions do not encompass crisp, precise numbers of that scale. I said, well, what does it mean to you? How do you understand a kalpa? Just a kalpa, the 4.3 billion years. And the monk I was talking to said, well, we imagine, we, so this is a collective analogy that people use, not just him.
zack_jackson (57:31.992)
Yeah.
chris_impey (57:47.678)
We imagine a mountain made of granite that's a kilometer high and a kilometer at the base and We imagine a dove that flies by this mountain and brushes it with its wing once a day And it's granite so it only dislodges a few particles and a Calpa is how long it takes the dove to erode the mountain to nothing and I thought wow I get it I got it I got it in my gut and for a scientist analogies are meaningful and metaphors to
zack_jackson (58:16.737)
Mm-mm.
chris_impey (58:17.618)
when they get you somewhere other than your head, when they get you in a deeper place, a more visceral place. And so that was just one example, but in the end I heard a number of ways that they conceptualized or analogized or explained really quite difficult concepts in their tradition, or there were scientific concepts very differently than a Western scientist would, but how interesting was that? So I always was captivated by that.
zack_jackson (58:45.492)
Hmm.
ian (58:46.003)
Yeah, that is interesting. Well, we are getting close to the end of our time together. And I feel like I could just keep talking to you about all these different experiences, because it just sounds so fascinating, all the different things you've done. Um, is there anything else that we should have asked you about that we just didn't yet? I mean, does you want to share?
rachael (58:50.621)
That is a beautiful.
zack_jackson (58:57.062)
Yeah.
chris_impey (59:07.558)
No, I mean, I could talk a little bit more about the Jesuits because I, you know, I haven't talked about them so much and I know them very well. And I also know the history. I've had the luck to be there and, you know, teach at their summer schools and so on. So they, they do, they do this very nice thing. They started by George Coyne, the long-term director of the Vatican conservatory almost 30 years, who I've known since I was a postdoc. And he's, he facilitated these summer schools where.
ian (59:22.665)
Oh wow.
chris_impey (59:37.518)
They get 24 students, first year grads or last year undergrads from around the world, mostly they're majority women, majority developing countries. And they have this, you know, summer school for a month. I've taught at three of them. It's a really great experience. It's on a par with teaching in the Buddhist monks and nuns. Because these people, these kids have often not left their own country. And so suddenly they're in Rome or Castigandolfo outside Rome.
you know, in the heart of Europe, they get field trips to Florence, they go and they see all the sites in that month. I mean, it's just a fire hose of cultural experience while they're getting this boot camp on astronomy and some topic in astrophysics. So it's just an amazing experience. And those students now numbering over 400 because they've been going for 30 years are now really senior in astronomy and some of them are directing observatories and it's really cool to watch them
zack_jackson (01:00:12.95)
Thank you. Thank you.
ian (01:00:30.203)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (01:00:37.658)
And that's an amazing thing that the Vatican Observatory has done. And I think what it's done also, of course, has been an emblem of rebuttal for the people who say that science and religion cannot coexist. Because like I said, all all those Jesuits, I know, live the double life and they don't seem to be schizophrenic in any way about that. And also, you know, there's, you know, the Vatican and the Catholic Church did have some, you know,
rachael (01:00:52.165)
Hahaha
ian (01:00:52.467)
Right.
chris_impey (01:01:07.518)
do because, you know, they gave Gallio a very hard time. I mean, I've been to the place where he was on house arrest, his villa with the Villa Gioia, it's a jewel villa outside Florence. It's a pretty, it's got its own vineyard, it's on a hillside, outside Florence. It's a pretty nice place if you're going to be holed up under house arrest, I could think of worse places, but he was blind and it was miserable and he had, he, so, so that was his fate to avoid the torture and the full wrath of the Inquisition.
zack_jackson (01:01:09.15)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
ian (01:01:12.003)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (01:01:21.15)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
rachael (01:01:25.521)
Thank you. Bye.
ian (01:01:30.888)
Right.
chris_impey (01:01:37.938)
So they had a lot to do to scramble from that it took two century, you know The the church moves slowly so it was good two centuries before they took his book from the band book list and then JP to John Paul II in 1992 got around to sort of exonerating him You know, I would not call it a fulsome apology at that point But it was you know, it was a certain level of me a culpa that they treated him badly The Bruno thing is off to the side because
zack_jackson (01:01:56.494)
Hmm.
chris_impey (01:02:07.458)
because there's a lot of misinterpretation of that. Bruno was burned at the stake as, I think the quote is, an impenitent and pertinacious heretic. So it was heresy that got him in trouble, not his astronomy belief. So he's making him a martyr to science that think is very inappropriate. That's not historically correct. An impenitent and pertinacious heretic.
rachael (01:02:21.921)
Mm-hmm.
ian (01:02:25.103)
Mm-hmm.
zack_jackson (01:02:30.75)
Can you say that phrase again?
zack_jackson (01:02:35.971)
Oh my goodness.
chris_impey (01:02:37.598)
the rap sheet. I mean, if you ever get arrested, just hope that isn't... Yeah. So that's the context, of course. But then we know that going back to calendar reform and so on, this church has also incubated this pretty interesting scientific activity that doesn't hedge the science at all. They just do the science. There are scholars and they are
zack_jackson (01:02:41.15)
I need that on my business card. That's fantastic.
ian (01:02:43.125)
Eheheh
chris_impey (01:03:07.498)
to follow our ideas. So, you know, I've always appreciated that. And it's not always been a guarantee. So the Vatican politics of that I've also seen up close. And under Benedict, they almost were put out of existence. So Benedict was not, John Paul II was a good supporter. So he was very friendly to science. He was very conservative socially, of course, but on science issues, he was supportive. And he started the
ian (01:03:12.567)
Hmm.
chris_impey (01:03:37.478)
Academy sponsoring conferences right there in the heart of the church. They'd have scientific conferences and John Paul supported that and would give the opening speech. It occasionally got twitchy, like when Stephen Hawking went to one of them and he relegated God to a boundary condition of the universe. So there are a few awkward moments, but generally it worked. So they had these conferences and I think it was a very good sign of the
rachael (01:03:58.321)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (01:04:07.518)
of liberal thinking about science in that regard. Benedict was not so sympathetic and Benedict was beholden to Opus Dei and Opus Dei have always wanted to put astronomers out of business, shut them down. Like why are we doing this? Why are they here? Let's get rid of it. And so the Vatican Observatory, this is not public knowledge, so maybe I shouldn't even be saying this, but they had a near-death experience under Benedict. And then Francis came along and, oh, sidebar, I'm just boasting a little bit here. I'm up to three popes,
rachael (01:04:37.464)
Who?
chris_impey (01:04:37.839)
I met, I met, I met those three.
ian (01:04:39.172)
that is actually pretty cool.
zack_jackson (01:04:41.13)
I'm up to three pups, especially for an agnostic. That's good.
chris_impey (01:04:43.938)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm I'm an I'm an agnostic but but the first John Paul So that was going back in ways and I had my kids there and one of my kids was very little and My ex-wife was a catholic a lapsed catholic, but her family were very catholic And so they got all excited when they heard we were going to have an audience with the pope And so I was there and I was holding my younger kid in my arms and their photos of this
rachael (01:04:44.122)
You're collecting them.
ian (01:04:45.623)
It is pretty good. Three posts in the Dalai Lama, you know? That's... That's...
chris_impey (01:05:14.158)
you know tries to kuchiku him or whatever and and and my kid and you know Who is this? Who is the who is this scary dude in this white thing? You know, I don't want to so I have this picture of him grimacing and recoiling and and then my ex-mother-in-law who is very Catholic She was chagrin because in one of the photos. It's clear that he's touseling my kids hair and my ex-mother-in-law gave us a
zack_jackson (01:05:19.57)
Ha ha ha ha!
rachael (01:05:23.121)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (01:05:23.75)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
chris_impey (01:05:44.038)
time because we didn't preserve that lock. We didn't make it a relic. It should have been a relic. Anyway, so Benedict was anti and the knives were out and Opus Dei was ascending. And then Francis comes in and it's all wonderful and copacetic now because of course Francis is the first Jesuit Pope and he supports science and he's definitely liberal on that issue and it's
ian (01:05:47.414)
Oh.
zack_jackson (01:05:48.231)
Oh, as a relic. Ugh!
Yeah.
ian (01:05:53.403)
interesting.
zack_jackson (01:06:03.772)
Hehehehehe
chris_impey (01:06:13.878)
doing the astronomy. And I even have a nice little story about that, because Jose Funes, who I mentioned earlier was a previous Vatican observatory director before Guy Consomagno. Funes is an Argentinian, as Francis is. And back in the day, Jose Funes, the Vatican, to be Vatican observatory director for 10 years, was a seminary student in Buenos Aires in the seminary school.
Hope was then the bishop of that diocese. And Jose told this great story. He was a seminary student and his mom would come and bring him a little carrot, a basket of goodies and baked things and whatever every Sunday. And so she had arrived and she was walking in one of the portals of the seminary school and she looked off to the side and it was the laundry room. And she noticed and recognized the bishop, now Pope Francis,
washing the seminarians clothes underwear whatever and She was very shy and modest woman But she was so shocked by this that she rushed over and said no no you know no you shouldn't do this This is inappropriate and he just laughed and waved her off So the humility is real. I mean that was just a great a great little story about Francis before he became a pope
ian (01:07:32.945)
Yeah.
ian (01:07:37.783)
Wow. Yeah. Oh yeah. All right. Well, I think, yeah. One final question. We have gone a little over time, but there's something that Zach started doing when we started interviewing the Sinai Snapsys fellows, which is where we all met. It's a great question to end with. And so I always like using it is, what do you wish that everyone knew? Like if you were able to beam information into
zack_jackson (01:07:38.755)
fan.
ian (01:08:07.925)
around the world. What would it be?
chris_impey (01:08:10.458)
Hmm. I mean, as in a science factoid or just about whatever. Well, I guess, okay, I guess, uh, since I'm so into exoplanets, there's going to have to be something about that that most people don't know. So what I would want everyone to know is that in the universe, there are more planets than stars, which means there are 10,000 billion billion planets in the universe. I want people to know.
ian (01:08:14.084)
It's whatever you want.
ian (01:08:38.703)
Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (01:08:39.77)
That's wild.
ian (01:08:42.043)
Yeah, I think I got to the part of your book where you mentioned something about you're more stars than grains of salt, right? Or no, more planets and grains of sand. Right. And it was just, yeah, it's just amazing. Okay. Well, thank you, Chris. Yeah, for joining us today. This was an outstanding conversation.
chris_impey (01:08:49.759)
Right, right, yeah.
zack_jackson (01:08:52.271)
Hmm.
Well, thank you so much.
chris_impey (01:08:57.498)
Yeah, no, it's fine. I enjoyed it too. Good, great questions.
View all episodes
By Down the Wormhole
4.8
3131 ratings
Episode 121
Today we are joined by Dr. Chris Impey to talk about exoplanets, the search for life in space, and the search for meaning on Earth.
Dr Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, won its Education Prize, has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World, and eight popular science books: The Living Cosmos, How It Ends, Talking About Life, How It Began, Dreams of Other Worlds, Humble Before the Void, Beyond: The Future of Space Travel, and Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes.
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
produced by Zack Jackson
music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
9bi2pvCS8hJHF73c6ylI
Transcript (AI Generated)
ian (01:16.703)
Our guest today is a university distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He's won 11 teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He's a past vice president of the American Astronomical Society,
has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council's Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology, and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World and eight popular science books. I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Chris Impey to the podcast today.
chris_impey (02:07.898)
Yeah, delighted to be with you.
zack_jackson (02:09.75)
Welcome. That's quite an introduction. Ha ha ha. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (02:12.983)
Yeah. Obviously, I shortened down what you sent us, and it was tough for me to do that, Chris, because you've done a lot. You know, obviously, I was at fellow academic. I understand the need to do peer-reviewed research and those types of things in our field, but I was really impressed with how much writing you've done for the general public, both articles and also your books. You've written a novel. You've been on several podcasts.
Can you kind of tell us a little bit about your background, what is you do, and then how you also got into that part of your profession of making sure you communicate with the general public as well?
chris_impey (02:53.298)
Sure, you won't hear it in my voice, my accent, but I was born into Edinburgh, I'm a Scott. I had a little transatlantic childhood that sort of wiped out the Scottish borough, but if you feed me single malt whiskey it would come back. And of course, I'm sure you noticed if you've gone to Britain that you look up and there are not many stars visible there. So once I decided to do astronomy I knew I was going to leave, so I did my undergrad work in London.
zack_jackson (03:04.15)
Thank you. Bye.
Ha ha ha!
chris_impey (03:22.938)
and never look back and I'm a dual citizen now. So astronomy is big in Arizona. I've not looked elsewhere. The grass is never greener anywhere else. We're building the biggest telescopes in the world and we have five observatories within an hour's drive. So this is the perfect place to do observational astronomy. So I'm very happy. But then as people's careers evolve, you know, the writing research papers is important. It's the sort of stocking trade of the academic.
But it's also, you know, the texture of the average research article is that of a three-day old bologna sandwich. It's almost designed to be indigestible writing. The constraints of an academic discourse make that happen. So I was always interested in more popular writing, so I segued into textbooks. And then I realized the problem with them is that you've written a textbook and that's a nice challenge. But then the publisher just wants you to update it every year or so.
It's like, okay, that's not so exciting. I think I'm not going to do this anymore. And then I think more broadly, apart from just liking education and being very committed to teaching and mentoring students, you know, I've just seen the, well, even before the sort of large waves of misinformation and the assault on facts in our culture, it's, I viewed it as an obligation of a professional scientist to communicate to a larger audience because, well, to be blunt, we're paid by the taxpayer.
zack_jackson (04:26.05)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (04:44.15)
Hmm.
chris_impey (04:54.118)
And also, there's a lot of misinformation out there, and science is often misperceived or characterized in wrong and inappropriate ways. And so I think all scientists should not just stay in their little lane doing research, but they should, if they can, some better than others. And not everyone can be Neil deGrasse Tyson. That's fine. But I think there's an obligation to communicate to larger audiences. And once I got into it and got practiced and better at it, then I now understand that
I mean, it's like I couldn't imagine not doing it.
chris_impey (05:32.018)
And the books just, okay. And so books just flow out of that because writing popular articles is just a sort of lighter version of writing a technical article. And then, you know, you want a meaty subject. You do a book-length version. So I've been writing about cosmology and astrobiology. And I've started about 10 years ago I say, I think this is my ninth book, Exoplanets. So books are fun. They're more challenging.
ian (05:32.543)
I almost had to sneeze. Sorry, go ahead. Ha ha ha.
chris_impey (06:01.958)
to take on a big subject and distill it down and make it, you gotta make it, have a resonance for a person with no, maybe with no background in astronomy or maybe just a little background and you're taking them through what could be a very esoteric subject. So that, I like the challenge of that. Although the books are exhausting. Once I've done a book, I don't wanna, I almost don't wanna look at a book or read a book or write a book for a while.
zack_jackson (06:28.65)
do people ask you like when's the next one coming out? Like right after you finish. It's like having a baby. I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
chris_impey (06:31.898)
Of course. Yeah, they are. Yeah, it's like I'm not going to go there about the having a baby because my wife would my wife would give me a hard time. There's nothing like having a baby. You can't even imagine, you know, and and and she and yeah, and she's right. But like having a baby, you know, women may feel that and then they do it again, you know, so I write the book, have have a slight, you know, trauma afterwards or just let down. It's a little bit of a let down sometimes.
zack_jackson (06:43.89)
That is a good man. Good job.
ian (06:45.766)
Yes.
chris_impey (07:01.918)
you finished any big-ish thing. But I do like writing, so I'm committed to it.
zack_jackson (07:02.094)
Hmm.
ian (07:09.303)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (07:10.05)
So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot about exoplanets these days. So you're writing and thinking and studying a lot
chris_impey (07:15.718)
Yeah, it's a super hot field with the number has up to 5,300 last time I checked on NASA's website. And remember, you know, 1995, the number was zero. So this is all, this is all the last few decades and it's just growing gangbusters. And now it's a slightly unfortunate because I have, we have students here who are working on exoplanets or astrobiology. And, you know, there was a time when if you discovered one cool Earth-like planet or water world,
ian (07:27.244)
I remember that.
chris_impey (07:45.818)
about it. Well now you know you'd have to find a hundred interesting things to write a paper. So the bar has been raised just by the success of the field. But the interesting thing is that it's moving to a new phase. So the most of what's known about those 5300 exoplanets is not much at all. They're basically is either a mass or a size or maybe both and you get a density and know it's a gas planet or a rocky planet. And that's it. We can't characterize
zack_jackson (07:46.792)
Hmm.
zack_jackson (07:54.15)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (08:04.316)
Hmm.
chris_impey (08:15.698)
thousands of exoplanets. So the next stage of the game, everyone's taking a deep breath in the research field is to try and characterize the atmospheres and the geology and of course find life. And that's just a very hard experiment. It's just much harder than detecting an exoplanet in the first place. So there's sort of excitement in the air because if I were betting, I would say that within five to seven years, we will have done the experiment of looking for life
or Earth planets that are nearest to us and will either know the answer. Either there will be microbes on those planets that have altered their atmospheres or there won't be and that will be an amazing experiment to have done. So it's really on the horizon. But it's daunting because it's a very difficult experiment. Earth-like planets are a billion times fainter than the stars they orbit. So you have to, and they're far away so they appear very close to their star. So you have to isolate the planet from the star, blot out the billion times brighter
and then smear the feeble reflected light from the exoplanet into a spectrum and look for molecules that indicate life like oxygen, ozone, methane, water vapor and so on.
ian (09:26.503)
But the molecules you're looking for are always in the atmosphere itself, right? Like you wouldn't, and I understand that, and I think we all do, but, you know, some people listening may not realize that that's, that's what you're looking at. When you're talking about with the spectrum is that makeup of the atmosphere, nothing about like if there's, if it's a rocky planet, what's on the ground, I guess.
zack_jackson (09:26.614)
Now.
chris_impey (09:30.458)
there.
chris_impey (09:45.358)
Right, right. And it's important for people to realize that the characterizing the exoplanets is done in that indirect way. For instance, of those 5,300, only 150 have ever had an image made of them. You know, seeing is believing. It's nice to have images of exoplanets. That's a hard thing. And those images are, you know, they're pathetic, a few pixels. They're just pale blue dots in a far away. So there's no, and if you ask this,
ian (10:02.488)
Right.
zack_jackson (10:03.35)
Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (10:15.678)
The question of when will we be able to make an image of an exoplanet to be able to see continents and oceans? The answer is maybe never. The answer is decades or a very long time because it's just too hard to make images that sharp of things that far away, even with space telescopes. So astronomers have to be a little more indirect and the clever method that's on the table now and will be done, James Webb is doing some of this but was never built to do this experiment, it will actually be better done with the huge...
set of ground-based telescopes under construction. So the experiment is you use the star to backlight the exoplanet when it crosses in front of it, and the backlit, the light from the star filters through the atmosphere of the exoplanet and imprints absorption from these relevant molecules called biosignatures. So that's the experiment you're doing. And it's still hard. And it's also not clear you'll get an unambiguous answer. You know, obviously,
and its cousin ozone are the prime biomarkers because on Earth, the oxygen we breathe, one part and five of our air, was put there by microbes billions of years ago. So the reverse logic is if you see oxygen on an exoplanet or in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it must have been put there by life because oxygen is so reactive, so volatile that it disappears. If there's not life to sustain it, say the biosphere of the Earth shut down overnight, the entire biosphere just shut down.
ian (11:41.803)
Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (11:45.458)
just imagine the thought experiment. Within five to seven billion, a million years, so very short time in geological terms, the oxygen, that one part in five we breathe, would be gone. It would rust things, it would dissolve in seawater, it would oxidize with rocks, and it would be gone. So if it were not put there originally by life and then sustained by photosynthesis and other life processes, it would disappear. So the logic, therefore, is if you see it elsewhere, bang, it's got to be microbes putting it there and causing it
to be there.
ian (12:16.845)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (12:16.95)
Hmm, unless there's some hitherto unknown non-living process by which these things happen.
chris_impey (12:24.058)
Right. So that's a good point. And there is a debate there because the data that's going to come in, well, first of all, it'll be noisy. It won't be beautiful, perfect spectra. So they'll be ambiguous to interpret. And then when you see it, what is the, where's, does the bar set for being enough? And the geologists have weighed in on this. And so whereas the sort of simplistic view as well, if you see any significant level of oxygen, certainly 18% like on the earth, what's got to be biology.
zack_jackson (12:41.694)
Yeah.
chris_impey (12:54.218)
That's pretty much true, but geologists have figured out ways where without biology, just with geochemical reactions, if you conjure up a geochemistry, you can get 6%, 5%, 7% oxygen. That's quite a lot, more than most people would have expected. So the geologists are saying, well, hold on. Yes, a lot of oxygen is probably a biomarker, but you would have to know more about the planet to be sure that it didn't have some weird chemistry and geology going on.
for any of the other biomarkers. Methane is a biomarker too because it's produced on earth, you know, mostly by life, a good fraction of that, cow farts I think. But so it's the same argument. So these wonderful and difficult to obtain spectra are going to be, everyone's going to jump all over them and hope they give an unambiguous answer, but they might not. Science is not always as cut and dried as that at the frontier, which is where we are. But it's the
zack_jackson (13:34.511)
Hmm. Sure.
chris_impey (13:53.958)
exciting experiment and it will be done fairly soon.
ian (13:58.804)
Okay.
chris_impey (14:01.358)
And then a sort of related issue is that it's not just microbes. I mean, that's just looking for life as we know it on the earth. You could also look with the same technique, and this is an interesting possibility, for what are called techno signatures. So biosignatures is just evidence of life, typically microbes, because we think most life in the universe is going to be microbial, even if it's not exactly like our form of biology. But you could also look for things
technology like chlorofluorocarbons, which you know, were responsible for almost killing the ozone layer for a few decades until we sort of ruled them out of refrigeration units. And there are other chemicals that are produced by industrial activity in a civilization, which would normally be very trace ingredients in an atmosphere, barely, you know, not present at all really. And if you could detect them in an atmosphere, it would be indirect evidence of a technological or industrial civilization.
Realization on that planet and that will be very exciting. So that's the same method being used to ask a very different question But it's a more challenging experiment because these are trace ingredients. I'll give you an example I mean, we're all aware of climate change global warming and we've seen the carbon dioxide content of our atmosphere Increased by 30% roughly in the last few decades. That's quite a lot. It's obviously concerning and we know the implications But if you step back and look at the earth from afar
and say, well, shouldn't that just be obvious? Shouldn't some other alien civilization look at the Earth and say, oh, those people are really screwing up. They're killing their atmosphere with climate change and fossil fuel burning? The answer is probably not because carbon dioxide is a trace ingredient of our atmosphere, and 30% increase on a trace ingredient would actually be very hard to detect from a distance. So even that dramatic thing that we are all anxious about on our planet
industrial activity and fossil fuels is not dramatically obvious from a distance. So these are quite difficult experiments. The techno-signature experiment is much harder than the biosignature experiment.
zack_jackson (16:13.592)
Hmm.
ian (16:14.165)
Interesting.
rachael (16:17.101)
One of the things that you had said when looking at these exoplanets was, you know, we look at them and we want to see them and what's going on with them. And then you added the line, and of course, detect life. And that's where our conversation has gone for the last couple of minutes. But I'm wondering, you added that phrase that seems to think that finding life is part,
entire reason for studying exoplanets. And I'm wondering, A, why you think that? And B, what that says about, you know, making it very narcissistic and Earth-centered, what that says about us.
chris_impey (16:54.799)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (17:02.778)
Right. Okay. So good question. I can unpack that in parts. I mean, yes, if I were a geologist or a planetary scientist, I'd be just pleased as punch and happy as a pig in a poke to just study exoplanets. That's all that I'm happy. I've got 5300 new, new geological worlds to study. Whereas the solar system only has a handful. Oh, yeah. So depending on your discipline, you might be totally
zack_jackson (17:16.049)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
rachael (17:19.507)
Right!
chris_impey (17:32.718)
properties. But astrobiology, I mean astrobiology writ large is the study of life in the universe, and the context for that search for life in the universe is the fact that we only know of one example of life, and that's on this planet. And everything in astronomy and the history of astronomy, and the Copernicus onwards, has told us we're not special, has told us there's nothing singular
zack_jackson (17:59.891)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (18:02.718)
about our solar system, about our galaxy, or our position in the galaxy, and so on. In space and time, we are not special. And so, you know, for biology to be unique to this planet, when the ingredients are widespread, we've detected carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, the biogenic elements out to distances of 12, 13 billion light years, almost to the birth of the universe. Water is one of the, you might think it's special. Earth is a water world. Well, actually, some of the exoplanets have 10 to 30 times more water.
water than the Earth. So it's not, the Earth isn't really a water world even, pale blue dot, it's not that special. And water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe too. So all the ingredients, the table is set for life in the universe. And as the universe is evolved and is quite old, more and more of those biogenic elements are made by stars and spat out into space to become part of new star systems and planets. And so in an old mature universe with a lot of heavy elements, and with many habitable locations now, we
the best guess is 20 billion Earth-like habitable worlds just in our galaxy, then it just, whether or not it's central to astrobiology, it absolutely begs the question, is biology unique to this planet? Because it really shouldn't be statistically. However, logically, you know, to be correct and scientific, it's possible that there were a unique set of accidents and flukes that led to life on Earth, and it is unique. It would still
chris_impey (19:33.038)
It's historical science to wonder how life on earth developed and nobody's ever built a cell from scratch in the lab people have done various parts of that experiment and They can't connect all the dots, but they've done some very interesting experiments that certainly suggest It's not a fluke that the whole thing happened. You need time. You need the possibilities of Chemicals bumping into each other and getting more complex, but that tends to happen It happens if you do it in a computer
it in a lab as well as you can. And so the context of the ingredients for life being so widespread and there not seeming to be any sort of bizarre, flukish occurrence in the development of at least replicating molecules that could store information, if not a full cell, would certainly lead you to anticipate life elsewhere.
And then game on, because the big question then is, so there are two almost binary questions you're trying to answer, which is why the field is so exciting. Is there life beyond Earth, yes or no? And then if yes, is it like our life? Is it biology? Because everything on Earth, from a fungal spore to a butterfly to a blue whale, is the same biological experiment. They seem like very diverse things, but that's one genetic code.
experiment that led to that diversity after a long time, after four billion years of evolution. And there's no reason to expect, even if the ingredients for life and the basis for biology exist far beyond Earth and in many locations, there's no real reason to expect that it would play out the same way elsewhere. And so that second question, is it like Earth life, is a very big question.
rachael (21:27.201)
Just as a curiosity, when did, if you know, when did microbes appear on Earth?
chris_impey (21:39.158)
So the earliest, the indications of life on Earth, the history of that is really tricky, because as you know, the Earth is a restless planet, and we weren't there, it's historical science, and it's possible you may never answer the question, but the big problem is the restless Earth. It's very hard, there's only a handful of places on Earth, Western Australia, Greenland, somewhere in South Africa, where you can find four billion year old rocks. They just don't exist. I mean, everything's been churned by geology and eroded
rachael (21:46.661)
We weren't there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
rachael (21:56.104)
Right.
chris_impey (22:09.338)
Weathered and so on so just even and that's about when we think life started So you're dealing with you know a crime scene where the evidence has been trampled many times and the crowds have just Obliterated the evidence so that's a hard thing and then the second hard thing is that the incipient Traces of life as you get to cells are very indirect They're sort of just you they're biochemical tracers or sorry there. They're chemical imbalances isotopic imbalances of
versus normal carbon and so on. Because you're not looking for fully fossilized cells. So if you're just looking at what would be called chemical tracers of life, they're pretty good, but argumentative, this field is not resolved, traces that go back about 3.8 billion years. If you're asking when do you have the first fossil life forms, fossilized microbes, single cells,
rachael (23:00.421)
Okay.
chris_impey (23:09.238)
to 3.4, 3.5 billion years, and that's people then stop arguing about it. I think they believe that evidence. And then there's this enormous long time between that and multi-celled organisms. That step in the evolution of life seems to have taken a long time. You could infer that that means it's difficult or doesn't happen very often, but that's a dangerous inference from data of one. All the inferences, hazardous. So astrobiologists have to keep pinching themselves and saying, it's a sample of one. It's a sample of one.
rachael (23:30.921)
Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (23:32.75)
Thank you. Bye.
rachael (23:39.721)
One does not make a line. One day to... That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.
chris_impey (23:41.139)
Don't draw too many conclusions. So, yeah, the cell formation, the evolution of the first cells and microbes seem to have taken 300 or 400 million years from the first chemical traces of life. But those chemical traces, we don't know. There's that Zircon that was found in Western Australia, 4.404 billion years accurately measured by radioactive dating.
chris_impey (24:09.378)
environment and so there's evidence really soon after the earth formed when it was just a hellhole of a place you know impacts and craters and geological activity that the earth surface was almost tacky like magma and yet there were there were any ingredients for life there so nobody would rule out life going back very close to the formation of the earth but then but tracing all these evolutionary paths is really hard I mean we have stromatolites which are
modern descendants of the first microbial colonies. You can go to Western Australia, Shark's Bay, I've been there and it's great, they're stromatolites. These were just the same as they were now three billion years ago, it's really cool. One of the things you can't see behind me is my stromatolite collection.
rachael (24:53.985)
Yeah.
rachael (24:59.962)
One of the reasons, yeah, that's fascinating. It makes a collector about that. It makes a collector. Um. Yeah.
zack_jackson (25:00.071)
kind of a few collections
chris_impey (25:01.578)
Yeah. Oh, well, three. Does that make a collection?
ian (25:05.749)
It's good enough.
chris_impey (25:07.958)
Well, yes. It's like primitive counting systems, one, two, many. So I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many. I have many.
rachael (25:13.941)
That's right.
zack_jackson (25:15.016)
Ha!
rachael (25:19.021)
One of the reasons I was asking that question about Earth, because you were talking about these very far away planets and looking for microbial, likely microbial life, then showing up in the atmosphere by its various products. And so my question was stemming from how far back are these planets that we're looking at?
a really long time to create its microbes, then perhaps, since we're looking so far back in time, that maybe those microbes exist now, but when we're looking at them, they didn't exist. Right, that lovely time, space question.
chris_impey (25:51.579)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (26:02.098)
Right. So in that context, it's important to say that the exoplanets we're finding are in our backyard. So Kepler, NASA's Kepler mission is really responsible for almost half the exoplanets, even though it stopped operating a few years ago. And so the most exoplanets we know of are within 100 to 1,000 light years. And that's our backyard. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across.
rachael (26:12.785)
Okay.
rachael (26:28.064)
Oh, close. Yeah.
chris_impey (26:32.398)
And of course, logically, therefore, we're only seeing them as they were a century or millennium ago, which is no time geologically. So we can't see that far back. So we're not really looking at ancient history. However, the more important point, having mentioned that carbon nitrogen, oxygen, and water have been around in the universe for a long time, is that we now can very confidently say, even if we can't locate such objects, that an earth clone,
rachael (26:32.606)
Okay.
rachael (26:38.901)
Yeah, it's no time at all. Yeah.
chris_impey (27:02.098)
something as close to Earth as you could imagine, could have been created within a billion years of the Big Bang. And that's seven billion years before the Earth formed. So there are potential biological experiments out there that have a seven billion year head start on us and then add the four billion four and a half billion years of evolution. And that's boggling because you know, we can't imagine what evolution and biology might come up with given 10 or 12 billion years to evolve rather
zack_jackson (27:11.75)
Hmm.
chris_impey (27:31.958)
Maybe it makes no difference at all. Maybe these things are slow and they're hard and the Earth was actually one of the fastest kids on the block rather than one of the slowest kids on the block. We don't know. Sample of one again. We'll just put that as a big asterisk over almost everything I say so I don't have to keep saying sample of one. Okay.
zack_jackson (27:32.014)
Hmm.
rachael (27:41.861)
Simple of one.
zack_jackson (27:42.808)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (27:48.834)
No.
rachael (27:49.221)
That'll just be today's episode title, right? Today's sample of one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
chris_impey (27:51.14)
Yeah, right.
zack_jackson (27:52.65)
That's Apple F1.
chris_impey (27:55.038)
Yeah, induction is a bitch when you can't do it.
zack_jackson (27:55.492)
So.
zack_jackson (28:02.51)
So we've talked a lot about the how it's possible, how we might detect it, but what do you think it might do to our sense of self and our sense of spirituality, our sense of humanity, our sense of earth? Should we start discovering life outside of, or at least biological markers in other places?
chris_impey (28:28.898)
Right. I mean, I think it sort of bifurcates if we find microbial life elsewhere and improve it, you know, it's beyond a reasonable doubt. And even if we don't know if it's our biology or not, it's just a biomarker that's irrefutable or set of biomarkers. That will be a transformative, epochal event in the history of science. It'll be dramatic. But it will make front page headlines and then fade, I would say, fairly rapidly, because it's microbes.
zack_jackson (28:44.618)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (28:58.858)
Like, that's Ponskum or stuff on your shower curtain, like, okay, who cares? So, I mean being facetious, but not too facetious, because I think the public will just be interested and science interested people will be very interested, and books will be written, and documentaries will be made, and so on. But in the public consciousness, I don't think it will permeate very far or persist very long. Of course, the counterpoint of if we decide we found intelligent life in the universe through those techno markers.
zack_jackson (29:03.391)
Ha ha ha.
chris_impey (29:28.978)
you know, the search for artificial radio or optical signals from some civilization. So they're obviously artificial and they couldn't have been produced by nature. That will be more profound, of course, because that's companionship in the universe. And that will raise all sorts of questions. So I think it really divides that way. And since the universe logically, if life exists in the universe elsewhere, there'll be many more microbes than intelligent civilizations. You know.
ian (29:29.523)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (29:58.858)
seed in that first mode. Although SETI is a side bet. I mean SETI for 65 years has been placing this little side bet. Okay, yeah, we can look for microbes and those are hard experiments and now we can almost do it. But let's always place this side bet of jumping over the evolutionary path from microbes to men or humans and look for those intelligent technological civilizations directly. And so it's worth doing. I'm not science
scientists are divided on SETI, even astronomers are divided on it, whether it's a worthwhile pursuit or not, whether it's even scientific or not. That's the strongest critique of SETI is that unlike, you know, if I wanted to go to the National Science Foundation and get a million dollar grant to study some issue of, you know, solid state physics or high energy physics, I'd have to propose an experiment and define my parameters and how I was going to control variables and say how I would interpret the data.
could refute or confirm. SETI doesn't have that kind of situation. They don't know how to define success or failure even. Well, they can define success more or less, but they can't define failure and they can't say what the probability of success is. So it's not a normal scientific pursuit. So that's the critique of SETI from scientists, but I still think it's worth doing.
ian (31:04.946)
Right.
ian (31:23.628)
Yeah.
rachael (31:24.842)
You talked about, and I think you're probably right in terms of how much people will care in the long run or in their day-to-day life or, right? Okay, so we found some microbes from, you know, a thousand light years away. I don't, that didn't reduce my student loan at all. But like, didn't, thank you. It's nice, saw the headlines. It's now three years later.
chris_impey (31:45.018)
Right.
rachael (31:54.441)
But I've noticed that you did a lot of work with the Vatican and with monks, and I think that that's a different population that might respond to and other religious figures, but specifically those I'm asking you because those are the groups that you've worked with. They might respond a little bit differently to this existence. Could you speak a little bit
ian (32:01.35)
Yeah
chris_impey (32:16.803)
Right.
rachael (32:23.726)
in this idea of how it would change.
chris_impey (32:25.658)
Sure. And maybe preface it with just the cultural comment, with independent religion, that the other issue that will arise with, I mean, if microbial life is found elsewhere and astrobiology is a real field with the subject matter, finally, yeah, it's foundational for science. And of course, it terraforms biology because, you know, if you want to poke, if physicists want to poke at biologists who say, well, you just spent your whole life studying one form of biology,
What about all the other forms? You don't have a general theory of biology like we have a standard model of particle physics because you've just been studying one thing like staring at your navel. Well, what about all that stuff out there? Okay, so so it'll be a big deal for biology for all of science but on the intelligent life or advanced life, the problem with what happens outside the scientific community is it's not a tabula rasa. It's not a blank slate. The popular culture, especially in the US
ian (32:59.524)
Hmm.
ian (33:08.503)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (33:25.718)
but almost everywhere now, is so primed for the fact that, A, it's already there and sure, and B, it's visited, and three, it's abducted some of our people, and four, it can make a list of all the conspiracy theories and wild ideas about alien life. And they're just so embedded in the popular culture that it's like that the fact of the existence of intelligent aliens has been amortized. It's sort of been, it's just already been built in.
zack_jackson (33:39.8)
Thank you.
chris_impey (33:55.698)
in to the culture. And so, you know, that would lead to a collective shrug. Well, sure, we knew that, you know, the government's been hiding this stuff from us for 70 years, since Roswell. So, you know, and now your astronomers are coming along and telling us, oh, it exists and you're all excited, really? Oh, come on, you know. So I think that's the larger cultural issue or problem or whatever, it's not a problem, it's just amusing to me. But as far as a religious reaction to this, and I'll say,
zack_jackson (34:02.271)
Hmm.
rachael (34:04.421)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (34:05.05)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (34:12.722)
Ha!
chris_impey (34:25.698)
the gate that I'm an agnostic, which my wife's a pretty hardcore atheist. And so she gives me a hard time about being agnostic. She thinks that's a kind of, it's a kind of wussy position to take. But I, and I argue with her, we argue vigorously about that one. I argue with her and I use the phrase that was attributed to Feynman. And I think he did say this in the biography of Richard Feynman, famous physicist. His biographer said,
zack_jackson (34:43.45)
Fantastic.
chris_impey (34:55.738)
Feynman believed in the primacy of doubt and that he held as a high scientific mark and doubt skepticism and doubt is a is a very high mark of a scientist. So I'm proud to wear that mantle of skepticism doubt of not being sure and being okay with not being sure. So I'm an agnostic but I do keep bad company and some of that bad company is Jesuits. Don't you know, don't don't go drinking with Jesuits. You'll you'll you'll end up in a
rachael (34:59.461)
Thank you. Bye.
ian (35:13.024)
Right.
zack_jackson (35:14.092)
Yeah.
chris_impey (35:25.798)
and a Rome gutter somewhere and they'll be they'll have got back home safely. With the Buddhists, the other group I hang out with, you don't have to worry about being drunk in a gutter because they really don't drink. They do bend the rules a bit, you know, I've seen them eat a lot of meat for people who are supposed to be vegans and vegetarians. But anyway, those are the two tribes that I've sort of affiliated myself with. And their reactions or perspectives on life in the universe is are quite different. They're interesting.
Each the Buddhists that I've been with and I've read behind this of course and read some of their More you know the scholarly articles written about this It is completely unexceptional in their tradition to contemplate a universe filled with life That could be more advanced It could be human like or it could be more advanced or different from humans in also a vast universe with cycles of time and birth and
and death of the universe and rebirth of other universes. So the Byzantine possibilities of life in the universe are pretty standard stuff for them and would not surprise them at all. They do get into more tricky issues when they come to define life itself, which biologists of course have trouble with, or sentience, which is also a tricky issue. But on the larger issue of the existence of life in the universe far beyond Earth, that's just non-controversial.
zack_jackson (36:48.35)
Hmm.
chris_impey (36:55.898)
to them and when I say that's what we anticipate and that's what scientists expect it's like okay sure and the Jesuits are in a different slightly different space they're of course in an unusual space as we know within the Catholic Church because they're you know they're the scholarly branch you know they're they're devoted to scholarship they from Gregory and the calendar reform they were liberated to measure
ian (37:17.944)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (37:25.678)
the heavens and then eventually that just segwayed smoothly into doing astronomy research. The Jesuits have been doing pretty straight up astronomical research since certainly the early 19th century, so quite a long time. And they have that sort of intellectual independence of being able to pursue those ideas. All the Jesuit astronomers I know, there are I think 11 or 12 in the Vatican Observatory and they all live the double life. They're all PhD astronomers.
rachael (37:37.221)
Thank you.
chris_impey (37:55.798)
with parishes. So it's not a problem. Whoever else, whoever elsewhere might think there's a conflict between science and religion, they don't see it. They don't feel it. And if you ask... Yeah. Yeah.
ian (38:05.145)
Mm-hmm.
zack_jackson (38:06.03)
No. And if anyone out there wants to hear more about that, they can listen to episode episode 113 with brother guy, the, uh, the director. Yeah.
ian (38:10.246)
We have an episode.
chris_impey (38:13.821)
Right.
ian (38:15.343)
Director of the Vatican Observatory.
chris_impey (38:16.418)
Sure, sure. So I've known guys since, well, since he was a grad student actually, and a long time. And yes, and so they, they're pursuing it from a scholarly direction. And for them, it's also uncontroversial that there would be life elsewhere. Now, what is the, you know, what does that do to God's creation when you imagine that Earth and humans are no longer the centerpiece of it? That's a more interesting question.
zack_jackson (38:22.034)
Wow.
chris_impey (38:46.298)
I've had debates about that. And I heard Jose Funes, who was the previous director of the Vatican Observatory and Argentinian astronomer, in a press conference actually in the Vatican City State when we had a conference on astrobiology. In response to a question about astrobiology, because that was what the conference was about, he gave a very interesting answer. He said he gave a parable of Christ in the flock of sheep and how there was the sheep that was lost.
you know, you had to gather back to the rest of the flock. And he didn't complete the story, he just left it hanging there. And so you were left wondering, are we the lost sheep, you know, and the other, and all the intelligent aliens out there are the rest of the flock? And what's the message, you know? So he sort of almost muddied the waters with his little parable. But in the manner of how they view the universe,
zack_jackson (39:27.914)
Hmm.
rachael (39:28.621)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (39:33.792)
Hmm.
chris_impey (39:46.398)
the rules of physics. I used to teach a team graduate cosmology with Bill Staker, who is one of their tribe. Sadly, he died a few years ago. We teach cosmology and he's a relativist. He works on general relativity and the Big Bang and all that. And if I was just wanting to pull his leg at breakfast, we had breakfast before we taught us to organize ourselves. I could do one of two things. I could say, oh, Bill, physics, we got you with physics.
is squeezed back to the first 10 to the minus 43 seconds. Got to the gaps, there it is, that's a little gap. And then physics owns the rest, you know. And then if I was really feeling frisky, I'd sort of, since he was a Catholic, I'd tease him about the three impossible things he has to believe every morning before breakfast. Virgin birth, resurrection, et cetera, you know. So I don't know how all those circles are squared truly because we've had, you know, I've had conversations.
zack_jackson (40:22.572)
Hmm.
zack_jackson (40:26.32)
Hehehehehe
zack_jackson (40:35.05)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (40:46.798)
But I know that it's not a conflict or a tension or even a problem to imagine life in the universe and even intelligent life. So for neither of those two very different religious tribes, does it seem to be an issue?
ian (41:06.443)
So can you talk more about, especially how you got involved? Cause I think that science for the monks and nuns program was really interesting. And, you know, one, how you got involved, but you know, reading your book Humble Before the Void was just very interesting to kind of see about your experience from there. And you told us before we started recording that you wrote that after your first time going and that you've been there eight or nine times now. What has all of this been like for you? How has it had an impact on your work and also your personal life?
if yes and what ways.
chris_impey (41:38.798)
Yeah, it was a sort of profound, it's been a profound experience since 2008, I guess, so it's almost 15 years and eight trips. So the first time was one of those great things of you come across the transom professionally. Sometimes I got a call from a colleague that I didn't know that well, who he knew I had an education, a good reputation as an educator. And he just called me, he's a postdoc at Berkeley actually, an environmental science postdoc.
He said, how'd you like to go and teach the Dalai Lama's monks cosmology? And it's not a question you ruminate over or look at your skit, look at, oh, I'll check my calendar. Let me get back to you. No, you just say yes, and then you make it happen. So I said yes, and then it happened. And I was savvy enough in hindsight to take my 17-year-old Paul with me on that trip. And he'd never been anywhere out, he'd been to Europe a couple of times, but he'd never been to Asia or anywhere exotic.
zack_jackson (42:14.65)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
rachael (42:17.821)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
zack_jackson (42:23.05)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (42:38.738)
if you like. And so that was a profound trip in that sense. It was a bonding with your 17-year-old and you know, we were a little more adventurous together than either of us might have been on our own. And so the context was that invitation. And then I learned that his holiness the Dalai Lama, who famously has said in his autobiography that if he hadn't been selected at age four to be the
of compassion would have been an engineer. Fine, that's an interesting statement to make. But, and it meant that when he was a child in Eastern Tibet, in a pretty primitive village, you know, he would just infuriate his parents by taking apart their clocks and mechanical devices and never quite putting them together again. So he had this analytic and mechanical and engineering and scientific mindset even as a child. And then of course his future was cast into the role he had
zack_jackson (43:11.134)
Hmm.
zack_jackson (43:25.992)
Hmm.
chris_impey (43:38.798)
he took. But he's always had that strong interest in science. So he looked around 20 or so years ago and realized that the monastic tradition, his, the Gelug tradition, of course, or other traditions in Buddhism, was sort of outdated. You know, the monastic training was extremely rigorous. They take years and years of rhetoric and philosophy and theology and comparative religion and all sorts of things. But there's very little science, very little math. And in the schools, there's
zack_jackson (43:39.972)
Bye.
chris_impey (44:08.718)
very little science and very little math. And he just thought that was unacceptable. He said, my monks and nuns, the nun part actually did come later. And that was a good part of his work to make the level of playing field for monastic training to include nuns. But he just said, these my monastics cannot be prepared for life in the 21st century if they don't have science and math. And so in the manner that he does these things, he just looked around and waved his arm and said, make this happen, you know, and I've now
zack_jackson (44:19.05)
Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (44:30.035)
Yeah.
zack_jackson (44:37.45)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
chris_impey (44:38.798)
heard from proximity to people in his orbit that his holiness, the Dalai Lama says a lot of things. He has great ideas. He's very activist. He's very visionary. And he says all sorts of things. And people scurry around and sometimes they just ignore him. Sometimes nothing happens. But this one, they decided to make it happen. And what happened was they looked around Dharamsala
chris_impey (45:08.658)
the blue, who was an educator and a scientist, a young scientist. And they just glommed on to him and they said, Hey, can you help us with this? Can you set something up? And so he set up the science for monks program, then science for monks and nuns. When the nuns came on board and I was one of the early people he called. And so the model was to bring three to four Western teachers in different subjects. The Dalai Lama's core interest.
it doesn't mirror a bit his interests, which are evolutionary biology, neuroscience, physics, math, and then environmental sciences come on board too. So it's not every field of science. So these, we would come out as Western teachers and there'd be cohorts of monks and then monks and nuns, about 24 in a group. And we do three week intensive workshops and they're very intense, you know, we're in the classroom six, seven hours a day and then our evening sessions or observing
zack_jackson (45:50.671)
Hmm.
chris_impey (46:08.658)
telescopes. So it's kind of grueling actually, but it's inspiring as well. And eventually, the idea is that enough of the monks and nuns will be trained to be educators themselves, and you won't need to depend on Westerners to come out and do this. And they're not really there yet, but they could get there. I don't want them to get there, because then I won't get invited out. So it was a singular experience. And the book I wrote, of course, was fresh,
zack_jackson (46:24.494)
Hmm.
chris_impey (46:38.738)
I was really, I wrote it not long after the first trip. And to your question of did it affect me or change me? Well, yes, in many ways, some of which I probably haven't fully appreciated. I mean, first of all, it was a deep embedding in a culture, in a way that I'd never done. I was pretty experienced world traveler, but in that sort of slightly superficial way of someone who goes to Asia and tries to hang out and go to a bar in a local restaurant and see the sights, but you don't really get to know the people
ian (47:05.228)
Mm-hmm
chris_impey (47:08.838)
you're moving around. So being three weeks, sometimes four weeks, and then traveling with them afterwards or during, you know, really you get to learn the culture. You also see in these northern Indian towns, most of the workshops are in northern India, there's now in southern India, Bidtabhatta, Nepal for this too. They're mixing very well. India has a, you know, kind of black mark on it right now with its current government of sort of sectarian strife and
Most recently with the Sikhs, but also obviously with Muslims But in those little northern Indian villages where there are sometimes 50 percent Buddhist 50 percent Hindus They really get on pretty well. I mean that they're just they're sort of under the radar the geopolitics or the What the Modi government is doing at the time so? It works pretty well, and it's nice to see that So I learned that I saw the culture up close. I would be part of their rituals and go, you know and
ian (47:50.666)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (48:08.758)
see everything they saw and listen to their prayers and talk to their scholars. And so it was a pretty deep embedding. And then as far as my own life, when I come back, rather than just view it as, you know, amazing experience, I got some beautiful photos. I had these great memories. Um, it did sort of make me reflect a little, uh, because of their, the ethos they had. And their ethos is, is of course very, um, very different from
most of a Western ethos. It's a Buddhist are all about compassion and suffering, suffering and compassion. They do go together. They're almost bedfellows. So I got the message, I think very early on, when I was walking towards the lecture hall and it was at one of these Tibetan children villages and they're very poignant places. They're about 11 or maybe now 14 Tibetan children villages in the northern part of India. And that's where the refugees go.
ian (48:46.008)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (49:09.158)
that escaped. So almost all the monks in my early workshops left Tibet when they were teenagers even younger, brought across the ice fields by family members at great risk. Some didn't make it, others lost toes and fingers from frostbite. They had to go in the winter because the Chinese troops would intercept them and even even then did in the winter. So they were orphans,
And they grow up and go to these Tibetan children villages, sort of orphanages, really. And so I was walking towards the lecture hall, which is situated in one of these villages. And there was a hard, scrabble, packed dirt soccer pitch. You know, it looked really uncomfortable for falling. I am enough of a Brit to have experienced playing football soccer on really nice grass, because England does have good grass, you know. And I was thinking, the first thing I thought, damn, I don't want to play football.
rachael (50:04.321)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ian (50:04.525)
Right.
zack_jackson (50:05.412)
Hmm
chris_impey (50:08.918)
on that field. That would be brutal. So there was this football field and there was a 10-foot wall behind it running the length of the football field, painted white, and on top of it in 10-foot high letters was a slogan of the school, others before self. And I was just thinking, I wonder how many American high schools would have that as their slogan. How would that go down with the, you know, social media, me generation, whatever.
rachael (50:10.621)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
ian (50:31.167)
Right.
rachael (50:31.321)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
zack_jackson (50:32.25)
Hmm
ian (50:34.845)
Yeah.
chris_impey (50:38.918)
So that was one thing. And then a series of those little messages sort of sink in about how they do operate differently from us or me. And so one thing it made me reflect on when I went back home was I immediately embedded back in my academic life and hustling the next grant and writing the next paper and talking to my collaborators. And I just realized how really how intensely pressured.
rachael (50:40.763)
Wow.
chris_impey (51:08.658)
Darwinian that science, Western science system is, it's kind of, you know, it kind of grinds you down. I mean, I've been hustling for grants from funding agencies for 40 years and I kind of burned out on it, you know, it's hard. It doesn't get any easier because there's younger whippersnappers that are very smart and, you know, they're going to get your grant. So it definitely made me reflect on the sort of hyper competitive nature of some parts of
zack_jackson (51:21.042)
Hmm.
ian (51:21.047)
Mm-hmm.
rachael (51:28.721)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (51:39.719)
and just reflect on what is important. Is it important to know something, or to teach something, or to give something, or to what is important? And how does that work when you're a scientist and educator? And that's it. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (51:56.043)
Yeah. Well, it's just interesting reading the book and I told you before we're recording. I've not been on to finish it yet, but I look forward to finish it just because, you know, one, you know, as I've already said, you're a fantastic writer for the lay audience, the general public, which is not something, you know, I've, I've worked with many scientists as a science educator and many of the ones I've worked with have said they struggle with that. Right. So I always applaud that. Um, but then just the, the personal experiences you shared and.
chris_impey (51:59.833)
I'm
ian (52:26.163)
humble before the void was just very interesting to me, especially someone who I have embraced meditation and mindfulness over the past three or four years and gotten really into it. And so, you know, first when I, when you shared that book with us and saw that the Dalai Lama wrote, you know, the preface for it and everything, I just was immediately fascinated because I find him to be absolutely fascinating in his perspective on things. So
chris_impey (52:47.298)
Yeah, I mean, I was, I mean, I've been privileged to meet him a couple of times. And, uh, and it's always, uh, a singular experience. Uh, the first time was that first trip out actually. And, and it was in that same Tibetan children village. And that was, this was in the winter. I was a January is a very, um, very difficult time to be there. It's in the foothills of the Himalayas. Quite high up. Dharamsala has trivial factoid that a Brit will appreciate like me. Um,
It has the world's highest cricket stadium. And so drum solo, there you go. Now you know, when you get asked that, now you know. So we were in this auditorium, this cold auditorium, very cold, and they'd given the Westerners blankets, put over their legs, and even a few little heaters around. But it was brutal. And he was going to give an opening address. And everyone was full of excitement and anticipation. It was probably 2,000 people. But it was a cold, it was an unadorned Spartan auditorium
ian (53:20.331)
Oh.
zack_jackson (53:20.594)
Hmm.
Ha ha ha.
ian (53:25.403)
Exactly.
zack_jackson (53:34.892)
Hmm.
chris_impey (53:47.498)
on a below freezing day in the Himalayas. And along that football field outside, which is the way his little, he has the equivalent of a pokemobile, he has the DL mobile or whatever that he comes into a place with, that he was gonna come along the edge of the field. And I'd seen walking in that the school children were starting to assemble in a long row along the side of the football field along the place his vehicle would come. And we were waiting
zack_jackson (54:01.775)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (54:17.258)
He was late and it was so cold and it was quiet. People were murmuring, nothing was happening. And then suddenly we heard this sound, this wave of singing. So they were singing him in as his vehicle arrived. And I was like, wow, that was so cool. Just the sound of that. And then he came and he just radiates when he's in a room. And he's a little frail. He had trouble getting up the three steps onto the stage. But his grin is just... Oh, it's just...
anyone who remelt the hardest heart. He's just so... and his comments are always, you know, they're always kind of offhand and insightful and, you know, he has a very interesting and sensibility. So that's been a remarkable thing. But the monks all had their own insights and I learned a lot from them. I mean, I was teaching them but I was learning a lot from them. And they gave me, you know, when you teach, well, the other thing I didn't say about the
ian (55:12.667)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (55:17.418)
experience there, which was also restorative for me, is, you know, I depend on my high tech gadgets and my PowerPoints and my whatever. And I was pretty much warned. I said, you're going to be pretty much off the grid. And it was almost like that. And there were a couple of workshops where, you know, if the cold water, if the water was hot, you were lucky. If the power stayed on all day in the classroom, you were lucky. There was hardly any equipment. We make these, these runs
rachael (55:25.325)
Hmm.
chris_impey (55:47.278)
These equipment runs down to the local bazaar, and we buy matchsticks and cloth and cardboard and foil and just super primitive ingredients to make experiments back in the classroom, rather than bring stuff out from the West. So you had to improvise, and it was good to do that. It was good to have to lecture and talk and use simple analogies and simple equipment. And so they informed me about that, too, because I wondered how they understood
zack_jackson (56:02.75)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (56:17.278)
these very abstract things of physics and cosmology. And I think the first striking little insight I had, because I was always reaching for a good analogy. And then, so I sort of turned the tables on one of the monks. I said, well, you have this idea of deep time, which is very interesting. You have a kalpa, which is a day in the life of Brahma. And it's been annotated in some text to be 4.32 billion years, quite a specific number. Happens to be within 10% of the age of the earth.
ian (56:45.207)
Mm-hmm.
chris_impey (56:47.258)
go figure. And then there's a great Calpa, which is the lifetime of Brahma. And that's about a trillion years, which to a cosmologist is a very interesting number because that's the stellariferous age of the universe. That's the time into the future for which stars will shine after that the universe goes dark forever. And so it's a very interesting coincidence that two coincidences that the age of the earth is a Calpa and a great Calpa is the
rachael (56:48.682)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (57:07.05)
Hmm.
ian (57:09.566)
huh
chris_impey (57:17.258)
universe before it truly goes dark forever. So that was interesting. But then I was asking, following up that knowledge, which was interesting, because most religious traditions do not encompass crisp, precise numbers of that scale. I said, well, what does it mean to you? How do you understand a kalpa? Just a kalpa, the 4.3 billion years. And the monk I was talking to said, well, we imagine, we, so this is a collective analogy that people use, not just him.
zack_jackson (57:31.992)
Yeah.
chris_impey (57:47.678)
We imagine a mountain made of granite that's a kilometer high and a kilometer at the base and We imagine a dove that flies by this mountain and brushes it with its wing once a day And it's granite so it only dislodges a few particles and a Calpa is how long it takes the dove to erode the mountain to nothing and I thought wow I get it I got it I got it in my gut and for a scientist analogies are meaningful and metaphors to
zack_jackson (58:16.737)
Mm-mm.
chris_impey (58:17.618)
when they get you somewhere other than your head, when they get you in a deeper place, a more visceral place. And so that was just one example, but in the end I heard a number of ways that they conceptualized or analogized or explained really quite difficult concepts in their tradition, or there were scientific concepts very differently than a Western scientist would, but how interesting was that? So I always was captivated by that.
zack_jackson (58:45.492)
Hmm.
ian (58:46.003)
Yeah, that is interesting. Well, we are getting close to the end of our time together. And I feel like I could just keep talking to you about all these different experiences, because it just sounds so fascinating, all the different things you've done. Um, is there anything else that we should have asked you about that we just didn't yet? I mean, does you want to share?
rachael (58:50.621)
That is a beautiful.
zack_jackson (58:57.062)
Yeah.
chris_impey (59:07.558)
No, I mean, I could talk a little bit more about the Jesuits because I, you know, I haven't talked about them so much and I know them very well. And I also know the history. I've had the luck to be there and, you know, teach at their summer schools and so on. So they, they do, they do this very nice thing. They started by George Coyne, the long-term director of the Vatican conservatory almost 30 years, who I've known since I was a postdoc. And he's, he facilitated these summer schools where.
ian (59:22.665)
Oh wow.
chris_impey (59:37.518)
They get 24 students, first year grads or last year undergrads from around the world, mostly they're majority women, majority developing countries. And they have this, you know, summer school for a month. I've taught at three of them. It's a really great experience. It's on a par with teaching in the Buddhist monks and nuns. Because these people, these kids have often not left their own country. And so suddenly they're in Rome or Castigandolfo outside Rome.
you know, in the heart of Europe, they get field trips to Florence, they go and they see all the sites in that month. I mean, it's just a fire hose of cultural experience while they're getting this boot camp on astronomy and some topic in astrophysics. So it's just an amazing experience. And those students now numbering over 400 because they've been going for 30 years are now really senior in astronomy and some of them are directing observatories and it's really cool to watch them
zack_jackson (01:00:12.95)
Thank you. Thank you.
ian (01:00:30.203)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
chris_impey (01:00:37.658)
And that's an amazing thing that the Vatican Observatory has done. And I think what it's done also, of course, has been an emblem of rebuttal for the people who say that science and religion cannot coexist. Because like I said, all all those Jesuits, I know, live the double life and they don't seem to be schizophrenic in any way about that. And also, you know, there's, you know, the Vatican and the Catholic Church did have some, you know,
rachael (01:00:52.165)
Hahaha
ian (01:00:52.467)
Right.
chris_impey (01:01:07.518)
do because, you know, they gave Gallio a very hard time. I mean, I've been to the place where he was on house arrest, his villa with the Villa Gioia, it's a jewel villa outside Florence. It's a pretty, it's got its own vineyard, it's on a hillside, outside Florence. It's a pretty nice place if you're going to be holed up under house arrest, I could think of worse places, but he was blind and it was miserable and he had, he, so, so that was his fate to avoid the torture and the full wrath of the Inquisition.
zack_jackson (01:01:09.15)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
ian (01:01:12.003)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (01:01:21.15)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
rachael (01:01:25.521)
Thank you. Bye.
ian (01:01:30.888)
Right.
chris_impey (01:01:37.938)
So they had a lot to do to scramble from that it took two century, you know The the church moves slowly so it was good two centuries before they took his book from the band book list and then JP to John Paul II in 1992 got around to sort of exonerating him You know, I would not call it a fulsome apology at that point But it was you know, it was a certain level of me a culpa that they treated him badly The Bruno thing is off to the side because
zack_jackson (01:01:56.494)
Hmm.
chris_impey (01:02:07.458)
because there's a lot of misinterpretation of that. Bruno was burned at the stake as, I think the quote is, an impenitent and pertinacious heretic. So it was heresy that got him in trouble, not his astronomy belief. So he's making him a martyr to science that think is very inappropriate. That's not historically correct. An impenitent and pertinacious heretic.
rachael (01:02:21.921)
Mm-hmm.
ian (01:02:25.103)
Mm-hmm.
zack_jackson (01:02:30.75)
Can you say that phrase again?
zack_jackson (01:02:35.971)
Oh my goodness.
chris_impey (01:02:37.598)
the rap sheet. I mean, if you ever get arrested, just hope that isn't... Yeah. So that's the context, of course. But then we know that going back to calendar reform and so on, this church has also incubated this pretty interesting scientific activity that doesn't hedge the science at all. They just do the science. There are scholars and they are
zack_jackson (01:02:41.15)
I need that on my business card. That's fantastic.
ian (01:02:43.125)
Eheheh
chris_impey (01:03:07.498)
to follow our ideas. So, you know, I've always appreciated that. And it's not always been a guarantee. So the Vatican politics of that I've also seen up close. And under Benedict, they almost were put out of existence. So Benedict was not, John Paul II was a good supporter. So he was very friendly to science. He was very conservative socially, of course, but on science issues, he was supportive. And he started the
ian (01:03:12.567)
Hmm.
chris_impey (01:03:37.478)
Academy sponsoring conferences right there in the heart of the church. They'd have scientific conferences and John Paul supported that and would give the opening speech. It occasionally got twitchy, like when Stephen Hawking went to one of them and he relegated God to a boundary condition of the universe. So there are a few awkward moments, but generally it worked. So they had these conferences and I think it was a very good sign of the
rachael (01:03:58.321)
Thank you. Bye.
chris_impey (01:04:07.518)
of liberal thinking about science in that regard. Benedict was not so sympathetic and Benedict was beholden to Opus Dei and Opus Dei have always wanted to put astronomers out of business, shut them down. Like why are we doing this? Why are they here? Let's get rid of it. And so the Vatican Observatory, this is not public knowledge, so maybe I shouldn't even be saying this, but they had a near-death experience under Benedict. And then Francis came along and, oh, sidebar, I'm just boasting a little bit here. I'm up to three popes,
rachael (01:04:37.464)
Who?
chris_impey (01:04:37.839)
I met, I met, I met those three.
ian (01:04:39.172)
that is actually pretty cool.
zack_jackson (01:04:41.13)
I'm up to three pups, especially for an agnostic. That's good.
chris_impey (01:04:43.938)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm I'm an I'm an agnostic but but the first John Paul So that was going back in ways and I had my kids there and one of my kids was very little and My ex-wife was a catholic a lapsed catholic, but her family were very catholic And so they got all excited when they heard we were going to have an audience with the pope And so I was there and I was holding my younger kid in my arms and their photos of this
rachael (01:04:44.122)
You're collecting them.
ian (01:04:45.623)
It is pretty good. Three posts in the Dalai Lama, you know? That's... That's...
chris_impey (01:05:14.158)
you know tries to kuchiku him or whatever and and and my kid and you know Who is this? Who is the who is this scary dude in this white thing? You know, I don't want to so I have this picture of him grimacing and recoiling and and then my ex-mother-in-law who is very Catholic She was chagrin because in one of the photos. It's clear that he's touseling my kids hair and my ex-mother-in-law gave us a
zack_jackson (01:05:19.57)
Ha ha ha ha!
rachael (01:05:23.121)
Thank you. Bye.
zack_jackson (01:05:23.75)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
chris_impey (01:05:44.038)
time because we didn't preserve that lock. We didn't make it a relic. It should have been a relic. Anyway, so Benedict was anti and the knives were out and Opus Dei was ascending. And then Francis comes in and it's all wonderful and copacetic now because of course Francis is the first Jesuit Pope and he supports science and he's definitely liberal on that issue and it's
ian (01:05:47.414)
Oh.
zack_jackson (01:05:48.231)
Oh, as a relic. Ugh!
Yeah.
ian (01:05:53.403)
interesting.
zack_jackson (01:06:03.772)
Hehehehehe
chris_impey (01:06:13.878)
doing the astronomy. And I even have a nice little story about that, because Jose Funes, who I mentioned earlier was a previous Vatican observatory director before Guy Consomagno. Funes is an Argentinian, as Francis is. And back in the day, Jose Funes, the Vatican, to be Vatican observatory director for 10 years, was a seminary student in Buenos Aires in the seminary school.
Hope was then the bishop of that diocese. And Jose told this great story. He was a seminary student and his mom would come and bring him a little carrot, a basket of goodies and baked things and whatever every Sunday. And so she had arrived and she was walking in one of the portals of the seminary school and she looked off to the side and it was the laundry room. And she noticed and recognized the bishop, now Pope Francis,
washing the seminarians clothes underwear whatever and She was very shy and modest woman But she was so shocked by this that she rushed over and said no no you know no you shouldn't do this This is inappropriate and he just laughed and waved her off So the humility is real. I mean that was just a great a great little story about Francis before he became a pope
ian (01:07:32.945)
Yeah.
ian (01:07:37.783)
Wow. Yeah. Oh yeah. All right. Well, I think, yeah. One final question. We have gone a little over time, but there's something that Zach started doing when we started interviewing the Sinai Snapsys fellows, which is where we all met. It's a great question to end with. And so I always like using it is, what do you wish that everyone knew? Like if you were able to beam information into
zack_jackson (01:07:38.755)
fan.
ian (01:08:07.925)
around the world. What would it be?
chris_impey (01:08:10.458)
Hmm. I mean, as in a science factoid or just about whatever. Well, I guess, okay, I guess, uh, since I'm so into exoplanets, there's going to have to be something about that that most people don't know. So what I would want everyone to know is that in the universe, there are more planets than stars, which means there are 10,000 billion billion planets in the universe. I want people to know.
ian (01:08:14.084)
It's whatever you want.
ian (01:08:38.703)
Thank you. Thank you.
zack_jackson (01:08:39.77)
That's wild.
ian (01:08:42.043)
Yeah, I think I got to the part of your book where you mentioned something about you're more stars than grains of salt, right? Or no, more planets and grains of sand. Right. And it was just, yeah, it's just amazing. Okay. Well, thank you, Chris. Yeah, for joining us today. This was an outstanding conversation.
chris_impey (01:08:49.759)
Right, right, yeah.
zack_jackson (01:08:52.271)
Hmm.
Well, thank you so much.
chris_impey (01:08:57.498)
Yeah, no, it's fine. I enjoyed it too. Good, great questions.
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