Adam Frank
Astrophysicist
Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and a leading expert on the final stages of evolution for stars like the sun. Frank's computational research group at the University of Rochester has developed advanced supercomputer tools for studying how stars form and how they die. A self-described “evangelist of science," he is the author of four books and the co-founder of 13.8, where he explores the beauty and power of science in culture with physicist Marcelo Gleiser.
It is humanity's biggest step yet into the Solar System.
You are trapped in time. You never live in the world as it is but only as you experience it as it was.
Thanks to a couple of rovers, we know Mars was once blue.
The “scientific Buddha” and the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism with regard to science are modern creations.
"Even with my training, I still got insights from the book’s descriptions. That’s how good Carroll is at explaining physics."
Einstein always loses in the quantum realm.
A variety of living and non-living things exhibit behavioral synchronization. Why?
Since our arrival, humans have driven a seven-fold drop in the mass of wild land mammals.
One book will gather all topics on the search for life in the Cosmos.
Oxygen isn't strictly necessary for combustion, but it is ideal. Any advanced (alien) civilization probably uses oxygen to burn things.
Could anyone still meet the Theoretical Minimum?
Reframing life in terms of death reveals some of the biggest philosophical problems with how we think about living systems.
What we call "basic research" is actually the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.
Lasers are all around you. This ubiquitous technology came from our understanding of quantum physics.
Like humans, stars die. The James Webb Space Telescope's early images already give us a lot of information about how this happens.
Science and the sacred both allow us to retain our sense of wonder, even as disaster seems to swirl around us.
Quite a lot, actually, even though it has no identifiable value as a scientific concept.
Any alien civilization that grows to span an entire planet would spark the same effects that we have. So, what do we do about it?
What if intelligence can thrive without consciousness?
Do the laws of physics place a hard limit on how far technology can advance, or can we re-write those laws?
Astronomers in 2017 caught an image of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy far, far away. Doing it in our own galaxy is a huge milestone.
Every timekeeping device works via a version of a pendulum — even the atomic clocks that are accurate to nanoseconds.
Realism in science cannot be completely unmoored from human experience. Otherwise, realism ends up tortured with unreal paradoxes.
A new paper combines two concepts from the edges of astrophysics: Dyson Spheres and black holes. A Type III civilization could combine them.