How it went down is Matt was visiting the SETI Institute to discuss science and collaboration regarding our WISE search for Kardashev Civilizations.  Franck, whom I know because we overlapped at Berkeley back in the day, was excited to hear about the project.  Since he helps organize these SETI chats / hangouts, he suggested we do one together, with Jill.  We of course accepted.

Then he said that he was going to invite Freeman Dyson.

For those who don’t know, Prof. Dyson is one of the most celebrated and brilliant scientists/mathematicians in the world.  Franck was inviting him because of a foundational 1960 paper he wrote on the possibility of detecting alien civilizations through their waste heat, but he is known in many other fields for even more seminal contributions.  Donald Richards, a statistician here at Penn State, asked me if the “Freeman Dyson” of “Dyson spheres” could really be the same “Dyson” he knew for fundamental work in statistics (indeed he is).  I saw him talk at Berkeley about his “garbage bag theory” of the origin of the cell (and life).

Now, I had intended to ask to give a talk at Princeton after our search was mature and I had really figured out what we were doing.  While there, I imagined, I would get an audience with Prof. Dyson, armed with plenty of data in hand.  Instead, I was going to meet him right away!

Before agreeing to the hangout, Prof. Dyson had some questions about our search, and so I sent him a blurb about it.

But he had more questions, so I sent him our proposal to the Templeton Foundation.

But he had more questions, so I sent him a very rough draft of our first paper (50 preprint pages and counting, although some of those were hastily composed after he requested it!).

That, he said, answered “most” of his questions, and so the Hangout was on.  *Whew!*

And it went great!  I started out nervous, but as I got talking I got excited about the project, much to Franck’s amusement.

Here it is, recorded for posterity: