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Climate And Other Worlds

The crescent moon and, to its left, planet Venus.
Y. Beletsky
/
ESO
The crescent moon and, to its left, planet Venus.

The news this week that 2014 was the warmest year in recorded history puts climate change back on the front page (not that it ever really left).

A few years ago, as part of my own thinking about human beings and their planet, I began working on a project to think about any technological species on any planet. Some of the thinking about this work has appeared in various ways on this blog. And this opinion piece in this weekend's New York Times Sunday Review gives an overview of the idea.

I will be writing much more about the fruits of our research in this area on 13.7 in the coming weeks. But, for now, I thought our community might find the Times piece useful. You can also find some reporting on our work here, here and here.


Adam Frank is a co-founder of the 13.7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a self-described "evangelist of science." You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Adam Frank was a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. A professor at the University of Rochester, Frank is a theoretical/computational astrophysicist and currently heads a research group developing supercomputer code to study the formation and death of stars. Frank's research has also explored the evolution of newly born planets and the structure of clouds in the interstellar medium. Recently, he has begun work in the fields of astrobiology and network theory/data science. Frank also holds a joint appointment at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, a Department of Energy fusion lab.

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