Rafael Alves-Batista: Resilience of Life, Astrobiology and Fine-Tuning
Joining me today is Dr Rafael Alves-Batista. Rafael is a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Oxford. He received his Bachelor’s Degree and his Masters’ at the State University of Campinas in Brazil, moved to Hamburg, Germany for his PhD which he received in 2015, and then onto Oxford for his postdoctoral position. And, last year, he supervised my Masters’ project, looking into the origin of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays: so I can attest to his genius first-hand!
In this second part of the interview, we talk about his famous paper - The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events, which describes how likely it is for events in the Universe to destroy *all life* on Earth. We also talk about the potential for discovering life on other planets, some fascinating missions that are planning to do just that, and the possibility that the Universe was "Fine-Tuned" to allow human life to exist.
For more information you can follow Rafa over at @8rafael, or visit his website at www.8rafael.com where you can read his scientific papers and see the other popular media he's taken part in.