Ep 215: Charley Lineweaver

A conversation with physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, polyglot and polymath - Charley Lineweaver.

00:00 - My introduction

08:57 - Charley’s fascinating early years

12:14 - From an English/History degree to physics

13:53 - Charley’s historic work on the Cosmic Microwave Background

17:34 - Methods of probing deep space

19:51 - Our accelerating universe

22:15 - Dark Matter Candidates

23:20 - The Fermi Problem and the “Planet of the Apes” Hypothesis

28:37 - Natural experiments in the evolution of intelligence

33:38: What can the early appearance of life on Earth tell us about aliens?

37:31: Non-intelligent alien life.

38:06: Deep homology and misconceptions about convergent biological evolution

44:31 The Shadow Biosphere

48:53 The significance of extremophiles

50:23 Does life arise from non-life easily or not? What do we know?

53:32 What is life?

55:56 A “debate” about people?

1:10:20 - The Potato Radius

1:15:00 - What Charley is working on now