Seager's unique upbringing—a distrustful home with her stepfather and an open-minded one with her father—created the perfect mindset for innovation: the ability to challenge established norms while exploring radical new concepts.
Astrophysicist Sara Seager reframes the Fermi Paradox, suggesting advanced civilizations might not contact us for the same reason we don't talk to ants. We are simply not interesting enough to warrant their attention or energy, even if they are studying us from a distance.
Contrary to popular belief, AI’s primary contribution to exoplanet research is not making novel discoveries. AI is mainly used for supervised learning to perform existing human tasks more quickly and uniformly, rather than uncovering new methods or insights humans couldn't.
Astrophysicist Sara Seager finds comfort, not despair, in humanity's smallness. She uses the vastness of the universe as a mental tool for self-distancing. Confronting our own tragedies against a cosmic scale makes personal problems feel smaller and more manageable.
Astrophysicist Sara Seager justifies funding for "pure science" as a critical tool for inspiration. Astronomy's wonders attract young minds to STEM, creating the talent pool needed to develop practical technologies like GPS, lasers, and medical imaging.
The debate over broadcasting messages to aliens is moot. Astrophysicist Sara Seager argues any civilization capable of interstellar travel would first detect the oxygen in our atmosphere—a highly reactive gas that signals life—making our attempts at hiding irrelevant.
While the sheer number of exoplanets suggests alien life is probable, astrophysicist Sara Seager explains why biologists are skeptical. Since we don't understand the mechanism of how life originated on Earth, we cannot accurately assess the probability of it occurring elsewhere.