Nobel Prize Conversations

“Science takes time and you need to build up the knowledge so I don’t see why we shouldn’t start right now?”

“When people think about other worlds, they think about other life.” Nobel Prize laureate Didier Queloz was a pioneering explorer of exoplanets – planets outside our own solar system – and now he finds himself at the centre of a new endeavour, the ETH Center for the Origin & Prevalence of Life. Here, scientists from a variety of disciplines will meet to challenge their limits and hopefully make some breakthroughs. “The gaps between disciplines are exploratory places,” as Queloz puts it.

In this conversation, conducted in November 2021, Queloz speaks about sending seasoned researchers like himself to scientific boot camp, the importance of science and science communication, and what finding ET might mean for the future of humankind.

The host of this podcast is nobelprize.org’s Adam Smith.

Nobel Prize Conversations was produced in cooperation with ZEIT-Stiftung.