"the following is a conversation with Alex filipenko an astrophysicist and professor of astronomy from Berkeley he was a member of both the Supernova cosmology project and the high Supernova search tea..."

"filipenko let's start by talking about the biggest possible thing the universe sure will the universe expand forever or collapse on itself well you know that's a great question that's one of the big q..."

"mentioned Dark Energy do we have any understanding of of what the heck that thing is well not really but we're getting progressively better observational constraints so you know different theories of ..."

"the mindset of somebody that or majority of the scientific Community or majority of people believe that the Earth everything rotates around Earth how do you put yourself in that mindset and then take ..."

"would you do if it seemed like in a matter of months that there is some nonzero prob ility maybe a high probability that there will be a collision so from a scientific perspective from an engineering ..."

"worry about the sun getting brighter on that time scale I mean there's the possibility that a star will explode near us in the next couple of billion years but over the course of the history of life o..."

"so we're kind of there's this beautiful dance between um we've been talking about a astronomy that astronomy the Stars like inspires everybody and at the same time there's this pragmatic aspect that w..."

"we're looking for a new apartment to move into so let's look outside the solar system do you think you've you've spoken about exoplanets as well do you think there's um possible homes out there for us..."

"really if we want to move to other planets outside our solar system I think realistically that's a much better option than thinking that humans will actually make these gigantic Journeys and you know ..."

"multiply right well let's let's talk about the big Galactic things and how we might be able to leverage them to travel fast I know this is a little bit science fiction but you know know uh ideas of wo..."

"us going somewhere what about one of the things that inspires a lot of folks including myself is the possibility that there's other that this this conversation is happening and another planet in diffe..."

"the fairy Paradox if they're common where the hell are they you know yeah not withstanding the various UFO reports in Roswell and all that they just don't don't meet the bar they don't clear the bar o..."

"of the really exciting scientific things is that that particular Point U is something that we might be able to discover Even in our lifetimes that find life elsewhere like Europa or yeah be able to se..."

"threat so this is a good place to bring up a difficult topic you mentioned um they're they might they would be paying attention to us to see if we come up with any crazy technology there's folks who h..."

"know this might be a fun question asked to kind of explore the idea of the expanding Universe yeah so the the radius of the observable universe is 45.7 billion light years yeah and the age of the univ..."

"about the big bang a little bit sure yeah yeah what uh so like the entirety of it the universe yeah was very small right but it was not a point it was not a point because if if we live in what's calle..."

"out there cuz what what what what happened before that well we don't know so this is where it gets into a lot of speculation and let's go I mean let's go there okay sure so you know nobody can prove w..."

"speaking of uh young whipper snappers Roger Penrose yeah uh so he kind of has a you know idea that we there may be some information that travels from whatever the heck happened before the Big Bang yea..."

"example was the the accelerating universe you know when we found it evidence for it in 1998 with supern noi with exploding Stars it was great that there were two teams that lent some credibility to th..."

"maybe taking a step back we talked about the Nobel Prize for the accelerating universe but uh your work and the ideas uh around Supernova were important uh in detecting this accelerating universe can ..."

"Greatest Story Ever Told right I try to I teach this introductory astronomy course at at Berkeley and I tell them there's only five or six things that I I want them to really understand and remember a..."

"story I saw that you got a chance uh to call Richard Fineman a mentor of yours when you were at Caltech yeah uh do you have any fond memories of Fineman any lessons that stick with you oh yeah he was ..."

"me ask uh what is the meaning of life the meaning of life you know from a cosmologist perspective or from a human perspective or from my personal you know life is what you make of it really right it's..."

"the world I'm going to be the one who everyone remembers type thing right in the context of The Greatest Story Ever Told like the fact that we came from stars and now we're two Apes asking about the m..."

"it Alex it's a huge honor one of my favorite conversations I've had in this podcast thank you thank so much for talking for for the honor of of having been asked to do this thanks for listening to thi..."