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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. Man, Welcome back to Coast to Coast George,

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Speaker 1: nor with you, Seth Shaw, Stack back with us. For

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Speaker 1: those of you who don't know Seth, let me tell

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Speaker 1: you a little bit about him. He's a senior astronomer

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Speaker 1: and Institute Fellow at the SETI Institute Search for Extraterrestrial

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Speaker 1: Intelligence in Mountain View, California. It was an undergraduate degree

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Speaker 1: in physics from Princeton University, a doctorate in astronomy from

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Speaker 1: the California Institute of Technology, and from much of his career,

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Speaker 1: Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and for a

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Speaker 1: decade he chaired the International Academy of Astronomics Seti's Permanent Committee,

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Speaker 1: and each week he still hosts the City Institute's hour

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Speaker 1: long science radio show, Big Picture Science. Seth, Welcome back,

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Speaker 1: my friend. How are you just fine? George? It's good

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Speaker 1: to speak with you again. You too, When you went

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Speaker 1: and got your PhD in astronomy, what was it? What

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Speaker 1: was your catalyst for getting that done? Well, to tell

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Speaker 1: you the truth, I got into grad school in the

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Speaker 1: physics department. So my plan was to study physics, which

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Speaker 1: I had done is an undergraduate. But you know, I

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Speaker 1: think more or less the first or second week there,

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Speaker 1: I was walking through the halls of the astronomy department

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Speaker 1: and there were all these wonderful drawings of the construction

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Speaker 1: of the Mount Palomar two hundred inch telescope, and I

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Speaker 1: think more than anything else, it was sort of the

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Speaker 1: romance of that massive instrument that convinced me to switch departments.

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Speaker 1: And once you did, once you got your doctorate in astronomy,

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Speaker 1: how did you move into the Seti Institute? How did

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Speaker 1: that evolve? Well? I think I was always a little

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Speaker 1: bit interested in the idea of Setti. I mean, who

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Speaker 1: wasn't interested in aliens after all? But you know, I

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Speaker 1: was studying galaxies. That was my line of work, and

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Speaker 1: I took some postdoc positions, and I also took eventually

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Speaker 1: a position in Europe at a university there, and one

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Speaker 1: of the things we did there was to actually do

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Speaker 1: a Seti experiment, the first time it had ever done

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Speaker 1: in the Netherlands, which is where I was. So I

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Speaker 1: got interested then. And then I moved back to California

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Speaker 1: for completely different reasons, and I was here for I

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Speaker 1: don't know. About six months or a year, somebody at

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Speaker 1: the SETI Institute found out that I was in the

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Speaker 1: Bay Area. They called me up and they said, do

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Speaker 1: you want a job? Oh, that's fantastic, And you've done

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Speaker 1: a great job ever since, my friend, you really shed

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Speaker 1: an interesting light in perspective on what you do. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of you to say, George. You know, I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure myself, but I try and listen to people

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Speaker 1: I trust, gus. Lots have been going on in the

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Speaker 1: world VTS these days. I mean, the government seems to

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Speaker 1: be leaking things to us. Do you get that feeling? Well,

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Speaker 1: I know, not really, but you know how I feel

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Speaker 1: on these things. But right, it is true that, you know,

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Speaker 1: I grant you that these Navy videos have certainly made

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Speaker 1: the news. They're weird, well they are. They're they're puzzling,

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Speaker 1: there's no doubt about that. It's also the case, of

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Speaker 1: course that they're some you know, stories in the setting

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Speaker 1: realm as well, and you know they've made the newspapers

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Speaker 1: as well. So there are things happening, that's for sure.

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Speaker 1: I was thinking back when the first time I talked

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Speaker 1: to you, I was doing my local Saint Louis Nighthawks

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Speaker 1: show back in ninety six ninety seven, so twenty four,

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Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. And you were at Arecibo in

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Speaker 1: Puerto Rico when I was interviewing you. Do you remember

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Speaker 1: being down there? I do, I do, and I remember

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Speaker 1: talking to you as well. It was an amazing thing.

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Speaker 1: And now that telescope has gone defunct. Ton, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: hope it's not gone permanently, but I fear that it

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Speaker 1: may be. I think that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

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Speaker 1: actually offered eight million dollars, you know, to try and

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Speaker 1: rebuild it, but unfortunately eight millions not enough, not enough

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Speaker 1: for that. Have we been able to replace it? That

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Speaker 1: we have telescopes like that, well, you know, every telescope

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Speaker 1: has its own pluses and minuses. And the biggest a

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Speaker 1: kind of telescope these days is actually in China. They

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Speaker 1: built their own Arecibo. They went to Arabi, you know,

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Speaker 1: the sort of checkout how it was put together, and

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Speaker 1: instead of a three hundred meter diameter telescope, they built

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Speaker 1: one that's five hundred meters in Wow, And that makes

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Speaker 1: a difference, doesn't it It does. It's you know, it's

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Speaker 1: like two or three times more sensitive. That's true. How's

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Speaker 1: the array of telescopes that you're doing that the late

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Speaker 1: Paul Allen donated, Yes, the Allen telescope array. Well, we're

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Speaker 1: putting new receivers on it thanks to the generosity of

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Speaker 1: the settle by the Enigma Franklin Antonio down in the

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Speaker 1: San Diego area, and so that will really improve the experiments.

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Speaker 1: We're also going to be using the very large array

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Speaker 1: in New Mexico for SETI experiments in the coming months

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Speaker 1: super South. Earlier this year in January, we had a

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Speaker 1: chance to interview a Harvard astronomer by the name of

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Speaker 1: Abbi Loebe, and he has come up with a bizarre theory,

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Speaker 1: which you've looked into, and I want to get your

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Speaker 1: take on it. There's some kind of object out there

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Speaker 1: with a name that anybody wants to pronounce more than welcome,

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Speaker 1: womaduma or whatever it's called. And he thinks that there's

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Speaker 1: something strange about that. Tell me your thoughts about that. Well, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's a mua muab, even though my Hawaiian is probably

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Speaker 1: worse than yours. But apparently what it means in Hawaiian

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Speaker 1: is scout or something like that, or maybe messenger, depending

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Speaker 1: on who's Hawaiian you're listening to. But in any case,

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Speaker 1: this was an object that was found in twenty seventeen

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Speaker 1: and it got an Hawaiian name because it was found

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Speaker 1: by a telescope on Hawaii. In fact, on Maui, on

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Speaker 1: top of Mount hawi Alkala. There there's something called the

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Speaker 1: pan Star's telescope. There's kind of an acronym, but it's

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Speaker 1: it's essentially a wide angle lens telescope and it's you know,

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Speaker 1: looking for things that change in the sky. Normally you

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Speaker 1: use a big telescope, you look at something in the sky,

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Speaker 1: a galaxy, nebula, whatever, and you make a picture of it,

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Speaker 1: and then you know, the next person comes on and

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Speaker 1: they do something something else. You never get to sort

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Speaker 1: of routinely check all the sky in case something has happened,

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Speaker 1: something has gone bang, something has lit up. Well that's

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Speaker 1: the idea of this new telescope. Anyhow, So they were

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Speaker 1: using this thing in twenty seventeen and they found a

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Speaker 1: little dot. It was just a one pixel thing on

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Speaker 1: the photos, but it was moving across the sky and

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Speaker 1: not the way the stars do because of the rotation

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Speaker 1: of the Earth. It was moving because it was moving

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Speaker 1: and they realized, well, this is, you know, an asteroid

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Speaker 1: or a comet or something, but it didn't have the

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Speaker 1: orbit of an ordinary comet or asteroid one that's usually

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Speaker 1: resident in our own solar system, in the outer regions

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Speaker 1: of our own solar system. So this was the first

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Speaker 1: time that anything was found of any size coming from

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Speaker 1: somebody else's solar system. So I guess why they call

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Speaker 1: it scout. Yeah, he's a pretty good physicist as well,

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Speaker 1: and his theory that it may be some kind of

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Speaker 1: alien craft is bizarre. I mean, he's he's gotten a

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Speaker 1: lot of publicity over this. Well, he has. In fact,

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Speaker 1: he has a book on the bestseller list of the

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Speaker 1: New York Times. Yeah. Yeah, well, Abbie lobed right. The

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Speaker 1: thing about Abbie Lobe is that he is a very

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Speaker 1: smart guy, and you know, I've read several of his papers.

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Speaker 1: This guy knows what he's talking about. So when Abbi

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Speaker 1: Loebe makes the suggestion that this thing that looks like

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Speaker 1: an asteroid or a comet is not but is you know,

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Speaker 1: something that was made by aliens that came to us

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Speaker 1: from somebody else's solar system, you have to at least

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Speaker 1: listen to what he's saying, because you know, he's not

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Speaker 1: just a guy off the street. Well, and he says

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Speaker 1: that we'd be arrogant to think we're alone in the universe.

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Speaker 1: He's right about that. You believe that too, you wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be doing what you're doing. Oh, of course, of course no.

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Speaker 1: I think one of the greatest services that ab Lobe

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Speaker 1: has been doing with this claim about Omoamuah is that

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Speaker 1: he at least makes it legitimate to investigate things that

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Speaker 1: you don't at first understand. And I really do agree

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Speaker 1: with him that if we just assume that everything we

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Speaker 1: find that we don't understand is nature and not necessarily

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Speaker 1: artificially constructed, we're very likely to overlook something that really

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Speaker 1: is important. I mean, we have our SETI experiments, and

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Speaker 1: of course we're using big antennas as we discussed here,

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Speaker 1: you know, trying to pick up a signal, and that

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Speaker 1: would be pretty pretty strong proof that somebody is out

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Speaker 1: there that's smart enough to build a radio transmitter. But

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Speaker 1: it's also possible that you know, they're not broadcasting at

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Speaker 1: the time we're listening. A lot of things have to

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Speaker 1: go right for that to work. Whereas if they've built

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Speaker 1: anything big that not even something to you know, moves

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Speaker 1: around space, but just something big, a society that's a

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Speaker 1: billion years more advanced than we are. I mean, there's

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Speaker 1: time for that to have happened. You know, maybe we'll

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Speaker 1: see that and we'll learn that they're there without having

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Speaker 1: to count on picking up their radio tree instimations. Some

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Speaker 1: of the things that Professor Ravi has said is it's

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Speaker 1: got weird geometry, it lacks a commentary tale. It seems

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Speaker 1: to have accelerated away from the Sun in a straight

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Speaker 1: line out of its orbit, almost like it's being propelled

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Speaker 1: by something. And I mean his possibilities are kind of intriguing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he certainly has made those arguments. Now for most of

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Speaker 1: them you can say, yeah, I mean it is interesting

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Speaker 1: that it's you know, it's when we found it, it

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Speaker 1: already rounded, the Sun was already on its way out

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Speaker 1: of the Solar System. It was moving away from us

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Speaker 1: by the time we found it. But it accelerated. You

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Speaker 1: don't expect that. What you expect is that its speed

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Speaker 1: will kind of in it because of the gravitational pull

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Speaker 1: of the Sun, and it was in fact speeding up.

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Speaker 1: But comets do that too, and the reason they do

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Speaker 1: that is that comets are you know, mostly ice balls

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Speaker 1: and a little bit of dirt. And so if anybody

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Speaker 1: who's seen this with the Bruce Willis film we lance

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Speaker 1: on a comet film, Well, it's probably a good use

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Speaker 1: of Bruce Willis. But you know, because there's all that ice,

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Speaker 1: and when they go around the sun and the ice

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Speaker 1: begins to evaporate and you lose a little evaporating jets

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Speaker 1: of water vapor really act like well they act like jets,

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Speaker 1: they act like rocket engines, and they accelerate the comet.

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Speaker 1: So the fact that it's accelerating is maybe not the

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Speaker 1: most convincing argument. I always felt that his most invincing

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Speaker 1: argument for this was something else. He said, Look, this

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Speaker 1: thing came into our solar system, it went around the Sun,

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Speaker 1: and it is headed back out. Okay, but what are

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Speaker 1: the chance as that that would happen by random chance,

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Speaker 1: that just something kicked out of somebody else's solar system

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Speaker 1: would so accurately target our solar system that they go

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Speaker 1: right around. And that's a good point. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: like you, you know, standing on the corner of Sunset

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Speaker 1: Boulevard and some cross street and throwing a tennis ball

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Speaker 1: into the air and having it land on a nickel

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Speaker 1: a block away. I mean, it's going to come down somewhere,

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Speaker 1: but the chances that it will come down on that

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Speaker 1: nickel are not very high. What does your gut tell you, south, Well,

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Speaker 1: the object I had to say that I tend to

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Speaker 1: bow to history on these sorts of things, George, because

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Speaker 1: the history tells you that every time astronomers find something

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Speaker 1: they don't at first understand, there's always a tendency to

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Speaker 1: blame it on the aliens. Right. You know, I was

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Speaker 1: around when they've discovered the quasars, and for a while

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Speaker 1: the Russians were claiming that the quasars were actually you know,

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Speaker 1: alien transmissions. The same with the pulsars, the same with

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Speaker 1: the markings on Mars Heck in the last century, right

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Speaker 1: just about well, fast radio burst today, all these things

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Speaker 1: which we don't understand it first. Some people will say, well,

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Speaker 1: you ought to consider the possibility that it's actually alien activity,

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Speaker 1: and you should, But the historical record is pretty clear

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Speaker 1: every time we thought it was aliens, it was not.

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to go on the side of conservatives

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Speaker 1: here and say, yeah, it's probably not going to be

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Speaker 1: that Omoamua was an alien craft, would you like it

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Speaker 1: to be? Of course? Of course, of course, of course.

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Speaker 1: But you know what, the sort of the ironic thing

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Speaker 1: about it all is that we'll never know because Muhama

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Speaker 1: was gone. It's just gone. It's past Jupiter now, it's

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Speaker 1: way out there, and we don't have any rockets that

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Speaker 1: could possibly catch up with it, so we're not going

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Speaker 1: to see it again. Well, that's absolutely true. And how

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Speaker 1: many other objects are out there that are suspicious? Well,

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Speaker 1: so far, not too many. I mean, there's been one

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Speaker 1: other interstellar object that's been found about a year or

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Speaker 1: two after a Muamua. It's called two ey Borisoff, which

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Speaker 1: is a wonderful name. But Borisoff was the Russian amateur

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Speaker 1: astronomer who found it, so he gets to name it.

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Speaker 1: It's named after him. And that's clearly a commet. It

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Speaker 1: has a tail, and nobody's claiming that it's anything but

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Speaker 1: a commet. So I think now that we have the

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Speaker 1: telescopes that can find these babies, we're going to find

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Speaker 1: lots of them. And it's you know, it may be

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Speaker 1: that we never find another one quite like a muamua,

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Speaker 1: but that would surprise me too. Because usually if you

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Speaker 1: find something with the telescope for the first time, you

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Speaker 1: can be sure you're going to find more of them.

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Speaker 1: Have you had a chance to talk to Professor Avi,

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Speaker 1: I have, yes. What do you think, well, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I personally like the guy, and I again as to

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Speaker 1: say that to me, he's putting his career on the line,

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Speaker 1: isn't he. I don't think so. Listen, he's got tenure

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Speaker 1: at Harvard. He was the chairman of the Harvard Astronomy

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Speaker 1: Department for longer than anybody else ever was. And I

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Speaker 1: don't think his job's on the line. But you know,

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Speaker 1: for anybody, if you will have lesser talents, their job

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Speaker 1: might have been on the line, I suppose. And that's

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Speaker 1: why what he's doing is somewhat valuable, because if Abbi,

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Speaker 1: because he can get away with us, he can say

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Speaker 1: anything he wants. He's got tenure, he's guaranteed that that

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Speaker 1: cherry's sitting in is still going to be there tomorrow morning,

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Speaker 1: and so he can suggest sort of, if you will,

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Speaker 1: radical ideas. And it turns out that in science, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you have a radical idea, most of the time

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Speaker 1: you're wrong, but occasionally you're right, and that's how science progresses. Now,

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Speaker 1: there's something hot happening these days too, called the Breakthrough

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Speaker 1: Listening Project. What's that? Yeah, well, Breakthrough Listening has been

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Speaker 1: going for a breakthrough listeners. It's called it's been going

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Speaker 1: for what about five years now, and it was the

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Speaker 1: initiative of a guy who actually los fairly close to

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Speaker 1: me here in the Bay Area, Urie Milner. Urie Milner

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Speaker 1: is a very clever guy as well, by the way,

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Speaker 1: Russian entrepreneur. That's right, I've heard that name. Yeah, we've

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Speaker 1: talked about yeah, yeah, and he uh, you know, he's

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Speaker 1: interested in using the money that he has from shrewd

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Speaker 1: investments and things like you know, Facebook and whatever. Right,

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Speaker 1: he has enough money to invest in projects that he

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Speaker 1: thinks are ripe for a revolutionary development, and one of

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Speaker 1: those is SETI. So he has recognized the fact that

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Speaker 1: there's no government money for CETI, and he's promised one

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Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to the University of California, Berkeley set guys. Wow, yeah,

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Speaker 1: well ten million a year. That's a lot of money

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Speaker 1: for as he started that, Yes, he started roughly five

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Speaker 1: years ago. So he's fifty million too it so far, Yes, Okay,

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Speaker 1: that's that's pretty impressive. It is. It is indeed, and

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Speaker 1: allows them to do some really good stuff. They're they're

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Speaker 1: good people anyhow, but you know, allows them to build

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Speaker 1: some very sophisticated receiving equipment to you know, rent time

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Speaker 1: on big antennas and all that sort of thing. But

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Speaker 1: you're asking about something that was in the news, and

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Speaker 1: what was in the news was the fact that this group,

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Speaker 1: the Breakthrough Listen group, was using the park's radio telescope.

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Speaker 1: That's an antenna about two hundred and ten feet across

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Speaker 1: in the Sheep Country, about six hours west of Sydney.

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Speaker 1: And you know, they were actually not using the telescope themselves.

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Speaker 1: There were some astronomers who were aiming the telescope at

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Speaker 1: Proxima Centauri, which is the nearest other star to us. Okay,

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Speaker 1: and by the way, you can't see it in the

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Speaker 1: northern Hemisphere, and that's why you have to use a

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Speaker 1: telescope in place when I call Australia to actually observe

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Speaker 1: this thing. So they were observing it sort of tinkyback

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Speaker 1: mode in other words, the astronomers whoever they were, were

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Speaker 1: doing their thing, and the Breakthrough Listen people were tapping

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Speaker 1: off some of the incoming static, if you will, putting

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Speaker 1: it through their own receivers, and voila, they find a

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Speaker 1: signal and you know it seems to be for real.

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Speaker 1: It's a signal that about when Wizard had a number

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Speaker 1: been down here nine hundred and eighty two megaherts on

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Speaker 1: your radio dial. And you know, they do the obvious thing.

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Speaker 1: They move the telescope a little bit one way or

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Speaker 1: the other. Deceived, that signal goes away, doesn't come back.

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Speaker 1: All those sorts of tests and it passed all the tests.

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Speaker 1: So of course that story was leaked to the Guardian

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Speaker 1: in London and they ran with a story, and so

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Speaker 1: it became a story. It's an amazing story, isn't it. Well,

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Speaker 1: it is, and it could be et although the people

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Speaker 1: who are involved would break through listen, are themselves not convinced.

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Speaker 1: In fact, they sound as if they would be happy

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Speaker 1: to bet you a decent dinner that it's in fact

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Speaker 1: just to rescial interference. And I have to say that

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Speaker 1: the fact that it's at nine hundred and eighty two

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Speaker 1: point zero zero two megaherts on the dial, that's suspicious,

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Speaker 1: because why would the aliens use a frequency that's almost

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Speaker 1: exactly zero zero zero after the decimal point. That doesn't

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Speaker 1: make sense for aliens. Good point. Listen to more Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and

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Speaker 1: go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more