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On the Origin of the Cosmos - An Interview with Dr. Michael Strauss


Valin

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Dr. Michael Strauss is respected both in the National Laboratories where he conducts research in experimental elementary particle physics, and the university classroom where he has received many teaching awards. In this exclusive interview at UC Santa Barbara, Strauss tackles a number of provocative questions relating to the origins and design of our universe. He relates how the evidence pointing to an expanding universe and a moment of creation troubled many scientists in the 20th Century. As a result of mounting evidence for the beginning of the universe and the exquisite fine-tuning of natural laws and physical parameters necessary for life, most of these scientists have come to acknowledge a "superintellect" behind it all.

Interview Questions:

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Are We Alone in the Universe?

Ethan Siegel

May 2019

There is a common belief among astrophysicists and other scientists that studying the universe has revealed our own planet as something less than special. The reasoning is as follows: Earth, long assumed to be stationary and unmoving, is just one of many planets orbiting our sun. Our sun is nothing more than a regular, nondescript star, one of hundreds of billions found within the Milky Way. The Milky Way itself is just one of an estimated 2 trillion galaxies strewn across the expanse of our observable universe. As our own insignificant home, Earth, is teeming with life, including intelligent and technologically innovative human beings, wouldn’t it be reasonable to infer that whatever is common here is plentiful throughout the universe?

According to this default assumption, the same ingredients found here—elements, molecules, and various favorable conditions—can be found practically everywhere we look. The same physical rules that apply here are no different elsewhere in the universe. Given all the stars, planets, and chances for life that surely exist within our galaxy and beyond, we’ve mostly stopped asking whether life exists beyond Earth. Instead, we now ask how common it may be.

But for all this impressive theorizing, the best evidence hasn’t matched expectations. Despite decades of searching, we haven’t detected even a single robust signal that indicates the presence of intelligent aliens. This conundrum is commonly known as the Fermi paradox, after the famed physicist Enrico Fermi. It goes like this: If the ingredients for life are everywhere, and there are astronomically large numbers of stars and planets where it’s possible for life to have arisen, then we’d expect many instances in which intelligent aliens rose to prominence well before the advent of human life on Earth. Such beings should have had plenty of time either to have colonized the galaxy or designed a broadcasting system that would be unmistakable as a sign of intelligent life. Yet we haven’t discovered a shred of credible evidence favoring the existence of intelligent extraterrestrials. 

If the universe is teeming with life, then where is everybody?

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