Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my name
Speaker 1: is Julie Tuglass. And this is part two of our
Speaker 1: steady episode the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This again, this
Speaker 1: is part two. I highly recommend you listen to part
Speaker 1: one first. Sometimes when we do a part one in
Speaker 1: a part two, you can kind of take them in
Speaker 1: any order you want, But this is not the case here. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a definite, uh narrative structure in place, and uh,
Speaker 1: it just won't make sense if you don't listen to
Speaker 1: part one first. That's right. We created the setup so
Speaker 1: that when we get to this part that you guys
Speaker 1: have a little bit more of an understanding of the
Speaker 1: context of exp planets and aliens. So I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoy Part two. Yeah, we're talking about set, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the possibility of intelligent alien life elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the cosmos, and we're talking about radio waves. I thought
Speaker 1: it's important to point out that there's a reason why
Speaker 1: why radio waves are so important in all of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Nidograsse Tyson's book Space chronicles. He points out that
Speaker 1: radio waves are a communication band of choice for potential
Speaker 1: alien civilizations due to the radio waves ability to traverse
Speaker 1: the galaxy unimpended by interstellar gas and dust clouds really well,
Speaker 1: travel really well. So it's it's something we can look
Speaker 1: for that we know travels vast distances and again, and
Speaker 1: and that's the one of the things that we as
Speaker 1: we mentioned when we're talking about firm and paradox and
Speaker 1: the Drake equation, is that when we're talking about finding
Speaker 1: life elsewhere in the universe, we're talking vast stretches of
Speaker 1: time and space, I mean to to the level that
Speaker 1: it's really difficult for us to to think about it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's it's like thinking about thinking about
Speaker 1: in terms of like finding your soul mate. It's like
Speaker 1: that that person is out there in the world and
Speaker 1: they're alive, and they didn't exist, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: five thousand years ago, and it's it's not a situation
Speaker 1: where they won't exist for another five Imagine that you're
Speaker 1: super picky, and so you kind of have to apply
Speaker 1: that Drake equation to your soul mate, right, so like
Speaker 1: they have to be like exactly like five ten and
Speaker 1: three quarter inches and they have to be I don't
Speaker 1: know how many more like constraints can you put on that, right,
Speaker 1: you could put like a hundred million constraints on it.
Speaker 1: And that is what it's like searching for that signal.
Speaker 1: So steady the search for extraterrestial intelligence. There's the Study
Speaker 1: Agency and this was set up in the sixties in
Speaker 1: Earnest by dedicated astronomers who are trying to figure this out.
Speaker 1: Could they really pick up a signal? Now the search
Speaker 1: uses large radio telescopes and with these telescope, scientists involved
Speaker 1: in the STEADY hope to detect radio signals that are leaking.
Speaker 1: This is what we're thinking leaking from other intelligent civilizations,
Speaker 1: or that other civilizations have specifically aimed that signal at us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so either we'll listen in on on an alien phone
Speaker 1: call essentially, or we will risk eve that alien phone
Speaker 1: call that we both hope and dreadful. Now, according to
Speaker 1: Marshall Brain, he is the founder of Hastaff Works, He's
Speaker 1: got a nice blog post on this. He says, the
Speaker 1: problem with steady is that it requires massive computational resources
Speaker 1: because think of all that data that you have to
Speaker 1: comb through Study is listening to a huge number of frequencies.
Speaker 1: Then the computer has to look at each frequency separately
Speaker 1: and try to decide if it's carrying an intelligent signal
Speaker 1: as opposed to noise. To give you an idea of
Speaker 1: the scope of the problem, the antenna used by Study
Speaker 1: at Home records thirty five gigabytes of data every day.
Speaker 1: It takes millions of hours of computation time just to
Speaker 1: process one day's worth of data. Now he's talking about
Speaker 1: a program that's called Study at Home that sort of
Speaker 1: runs the data for you in the background. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the distributed computing program where you would install this on
Speaker 1: your home computer. You could have to go use the
Speaker 1: restroom or you go to have lunch or whatever. Screensaver
Speaker 1: kicks in and your computer instead of working on your
Speaker 1: own you know, efforts in your word, process a thing
Speaker 1: or what have you, It then contributes that computing power
Speaker 1: to studies problem of analyzing all of this data. That's right.
Speaker 1: It grinds away on that data, which is really cool. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the other problem, I guess you could say the problem
Speaker 1: of having so much data is, uh, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to tune into the most probable frequencies. So one way
Speaker 1: to go about this is to determine the best range,
Speaker 1: and the one to tend giga hurt range is the
Speaker 1: best range to listen is the quietest. Study also uses
Speaker 1: large multi channel bandwidth signal processors that can scan millions
Speaker 1: or billions of frequencies uh simultaneously, and that's really what's
Speaker 1: what they're more leaning towards these days. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: there are so many factors you have to take into
Speaker 1: account to you have to you have to worry about
Speaker 1: about waves that are actually emitted by us, that are
Speaker 1: just bouncing back from from something else, say, you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of space garbage, even um pulsars to pulsars,
Speaker 1: because that was a big one. Yeah, the pulsars are
Speaker 1: sending out this signal, this pulse, and when we first
Speaker 1: just governed them, we didn't know what they were. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, this is it, this, this could be it.
Speaker 1: And then we we looked a little deeper when we've
Speaker 1: realized that will actually there are these things and we'll
Speaker 1: call them pul stars because they're pulsing starts start exactly
Speaker 1: stars emitting a pulls um. And I also wanted to
Speaker 1: mention too that most of study research has been done
Speaker 1: by renting time on existing radio telescope, So it's not
Speaker 1: even something that's in an endeavor that we can do constantly. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to rent the time because it's super expensive
Speaker 1: to to even get this sort of technology, uh for
Speaker 1: your own devices, right. Yeah. And it's a nonprofit and
Speaker 1: they depend on the funding from a variety of different sources.
Speaker 1: NASA UM kicks in and as well as you know,
Speaker 1: even just you know, individuals and various groups out there
Speaker 1: contribute to the steady effort because it's something that's it's
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people will leaeve in it,
Speaker 1: and for good reason, because it is if you if
Speaker 1: you consider the even the possibility that there's life out
Speaker 1: there in the universe, then it's it's it's essential that
Speaker 1: we find out what it is and what it might
Speaker 1: consist of. Yep. And the three main radio telescopes are
Speaker 1: the Parks Radio Telescope in Australia. Uh, there's the telescope
Speaker 1: in green Bank, West Virginia and the r CEBO Radio
Speaker 1: Telescope in Puerto Rico. And I believe that's the one
Speaker 1: that was in the movie Contact. Yes, at least in
Speaker 1: the intro stuff. Yeah, and of course SETTI continues to
Speaker 1: evolve with the times. A laser technology has made it
Speaker 1: possible to search the optical portion of the electromatetics spectrum
Speaker 1: for pulses of laser light that are just a few
Speaker 1: nanoseconds long and duration so short you have to really
Speaker 1: fine tune it to to actually you know, record them
Speaker 1: and analyze them. But during that nanosecond they can actually
Speaker 1: briefly shine brighter than the light of nearby stars. So
Speaker 1: there's just another area set he's looking for the possible
Speaker 1: clues and trying to intercept that phone call. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just to give everybody an idea of friendly, how how
Speaker 1: huge this is, this this um this idea of trying
Speaker 1: to pick up this particular signal. Uh. There are a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways to go at at. One is
Speaker 1: called the wide field search. So you have this expansive
Speaker 1: sky beyond right, what do you do? I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a ton of data that's coming at you at any
Speaker 1: little point that you decide to concentrate on. So with
Speaker 1: the wide field search and this method, you survey large
Speaker 1: chunks of the sky for one at a time for signals,
Speaker 1: and it allows the entire sky to be searched at
Speaker 1: a low resolution for short period of time. The problem
Speaker 1: is the low resolution, right, But if you get some
Speaker 1: data back that says, hey, this seems kind of like
Speaker 1: a hot area, then can go back later with high resolution.
Speaker 1: That's the idea at least, and then you have targeted searches.
Speaker 1: And this method you make intensive investigations of a limited
Speaker 1: number of sunlike stars. So again that's that sort of
Speaker 1: Goldilocks area that you would be looking for. And the
Speaker 1: targeted search allows more detailed investigations of small areas that
Speaker 1: we think might be probable locations of e T. Now
Speaker 1: what what happens if you think you've heard a signal, Well,
Speaker 1: then you have to analyze that signal. You just run
Speaker 1: to the press and say we got it, we got
Speaker 1: it here that we just they said, they just totally
Speaker 1: morse coded us um from the article has study works
Speaker 1: on on hastaf works dot com. If a signal detected,
Speaker 1: there are a series of steps that follow to confirm
Speaker 1: that signal is extraterrestrial. First, the radio telescope is moved
Speaker 1: off the target. The signal should go away, right, and
Speaker 1: then it should return When the telescope is pointed back.
Speaker 1: So they come and say, let's just make sure that
Speaker 1: this is the real deal, move this off access and
Speaker 1: then take it back. UH. Known Earth or Near Earth's
Speaker 1: sources such as satellites must be ruled out stuff that's
Speaker 1: originating from that object or bouncing back from you know,
Speaker 1: Earth signal bouncing back off that object. Similarly, quasars pulsars
Speaker 1: have to be ruled out as well, and then the
Speaker 1: signal has to be confirmed by another radio telescope, preferably
Speaker 1: one on a different continent to say, are you guys
Speaker 1: hearing the same thing that we are hearing? UM? All right,
Speaker 1: so so far we don't. We haven't really had that contact.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventies seven there's something called the Wow
Speaker 1: signal that was detected, and this got people really excited
Speaker 1: because it is still an anomaly. It's certainly the seventy
Speaker 1: two second signals something that that seems to be something
Speaker 1: that was picked up by the big Ear radio telescope
Speaker 1: in Ohio just outside of Delaware, UM and the main
Speaker 1: astronomer and all of this American astronomer Jerry ruh Emon
Speaker 1: PhD and UH, and he's even kind of gone back
Speaker 1: and forth on it. Um. I was reading some of
Speaker 1: his writings about it, and like for a while he
Speaker 1: was he was just he was of the mindset, now
Speaker 1: there's got to be a you know, a terrestrial explanation
Speaker 1: for this and what have you. But on the thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Wow signal, he had this, uh, this
Speaker 1: really cool bit to say. I'm just gonna read the
Speaker 1: quote here. He says, Thus, since all of the possibilities
Speaker 1: of the terrestrial origin have been either ruled out or
Speaker 1: seemed improbable, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin
Speaker 1: has not been able to be ruled out, I must
Speaker 1: conclude than an E. T. I extraterrestrial intelligence might the
Speaker 1: MND is bolded and to tell us us UM might
Speaker 1: have sent the the signal that we received as the
Speaker 1: Wild Source. The fact that we saw the signal and
Speaker 1: only one beam could be due to an E. T.
Speaker 1: I sending a beacon signal in our direction and then
Speaker 1: sending it in another direction that we couldn't detect. Of course,
Speaker 1: being a scientist, I await the reception of additional signals
Speaker 1: like the wild source that are able to be received
Speaker 1: and analyzed by many observatories. Thus, I must state that
Speaker 1: the origin of the wild signal is still an open
Speaker 1: question for me. There's simply two little data to draw
Speaker 1: many conclusions. In other words, as I stated above, I
Speaker 1: choose not to quote draw vast conclusions from the half
Speaker 1: vast data unquote. Yeah, there's this great quote too that
Speaker 1: he says it was sort of like a tug on
Speaker 1: the cosmic fishing line. So it doesn't prove that you
Speaker 1: have a fish on the line, but it does say
Speaker 1: that you should keep your line in the water because
Speaker 1: there might be something there. And what is so mysterious
Speaker 1: about the signal is that it was being in minted
Speaker 1: from an area that was not a Goldilocks zone. It
Speaker 1: was sort of the void. It was sort of like
Speaker 1: there's nothing there, and they couldn't figure out like what
Speaker 1: what was the what was originating, what was making that?
Speaker 1: And a couple of really interesting theories came out of that,
Speaker 1: which I think helped to sort of color our ideas
Speaker 1: of why we haven't picked up a significant signal since
Speaker 1: And that's this idea that that it was a lighthouse signal.
Speaker 1: So rather than it just being like hey, and we're
Speaker 1: just gonna send this universe the signal out into the
Speaker 1: universe constantly. It was sort of like, we have limited
Speaker 1: energy and resources and maybe even technology, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be more of a lighthouse signal that just kind
Speaker 1: of goes around and well, and that was one of
Speaker 1: the ideas. Yeah, that Aimon mentioned the idea that it's
Speaker 1: blasted this signal at Earth and then it turned blasted
Speaker 1: in another direction, so we didn't get a heat signal
Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's going in a circle or
Speaker 1: what have you. It's it's it's trying to send out
Speaker 1: the signal to anybody who might be out there and
Speaker 1: letting them know, hey, what's up or or if if
Speaker 1: it is. Indeed, and even with the true lighthouse saying
Speaker 1: stay away because we have rocks or hideous monster gods
Speaker 1: here and you should you shouldn't come anywhere near us. Well,
Speaker 1: there is that zoo theory, right that that that we
Speaker 1: have been picked up on and there's an intelligent extraterrest
Speaker 1: fields out there. They're saying, hey, just let them do
Speaker 1: their thing. We're just watch them from a distance like
Speaker 1: a colony of ants and see what are up to um.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the idea that maybe that technology
Speaker 1: died or the technology from that society died out, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just that we didn't overlap. So in other words,
Speaker 1: by the time that we started listening, we missed any
Speaker 1: sort of signals that might have been sent out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the whole thing that possibility, as well as
Speaker 1: just the lighthouse possibility. It reminds me of any of
Speaker 1: these movies where someone is stranded on a desert aisle
Speaker 1: and that that plane flies over, and generally they're like
Speaker 1: a sleep or doing something else. You're talking to a
Speaker 1: volleyball when it happened planes flying over, and so they
Speaker 1: frantically try and get that plane's attention, but it's too late.
Speaker 1: It's already passed over. And maybe there just wasn't a
Speaker 1: very good way to get its attention to begin with.
Speaker 1: So there's this kind of like haunting feeling. What if
Speaker 1: they did. What if that was an attempt at communication
Speaker 1: from a distance civilization, and in one one way or another,
Speaker 1: we were too late. We were just we we didn't
Speaker 1: have the technology to respond or our our time the
Speaker 1: time light line, or where the life cycle of our
Speaker 1: civilizations didn't overlap, were can't overlap enough for that to
Speaker 1: be possible. You know, it's like you know, it's like
Speaker 1: star torn lovers out there in the cosmos. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: But that's what makes people so obsessed up about it
Speaker 1: because they say, again, we've got the ingredients of this
Speaker 1: primordial soup. There's got to be a possibility here. Um,
Speaker 1: let's just keep listening. And that is what Study is
Speaker 1: trying to do. And Study is not just listening. They're
Speaker 1: preparing too. And we had mentioned this in a previous podcast,
Speaker 1: guess about a couple of years ago, and I think
Speaker 1: it was called Alien Etiquette one on one. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was one of the early ones that we did together.
Speaker 1: They the Study Institute had a workshop in Paris in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two inviting people from all different disciplines
Speaker 1: to discuss the ways in which we might communicate with
Speaker 1: aliens and the best modes to do it. And then
Speaker 1: I really love this one. Two eight NASA sponsored a
Speaker 1: course at the University of Wyoming called Interstellar Message Composition,
Speaker 1: and UH students were asked to ponder how aliens might
Speaker 1: communicate and how you would translate between languages and so
Speaker 1: on and step forth. One of the students wrote a
Speaker 1: poem about menstruation with syllables arranged in the Fibonacci sequence
Speaker 1: in her quest, I think to try to let extraterdials
Speaker 1: know about some of the human biology. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because you never know what the talking points are going
Speaker 1: to be. You want to be like, hey, do you
Speaker 1: guys have ad menstruation and they're like, yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: do actually, and then you have something to talk about
Speaker 1: like oh, how quaint. Yeah, it's like a first date
Speaker 1: between species um civilizations. Um. I mean you could make
Speaker 1: the argument that you need to appoint somebody like you
Speaker 1: know what if Dennis Rodman was the was the go
Speaker 1: to man. You know, he's doing so well, Dennis Rodman, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's been doing so well in term
Speaker 1: of just being an international emissary, you know, going out
Speaker 1: to North Korea on unofficial behalf of the United States.
Speaker 1: So maybe we send him to other worlds to talk
Speaker 1: to the hideous monster gods. I don't know. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
Speaker 1: back more setting. Well, a lot of this has been
Speaker 1: us looking out at the cosmos, But what about trying
Speaker 1: to take the perspective of an extra terrestrial life form
Speaker 1: looking at us. What would Earth the exo planet look like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we we're talking about okay, other signal signals that
Speaker 1: we uh, we receive that we may either be listening
Speaker 1: in or being told directly. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this in this situation. It makes me think of when
Speaker 1: you're at a restaurant or something, or any public place
Speaker 1: and you're having a conversation with somebody, or maybe you're
Speaker 1: on the phone, and then you realize too late that
Speaker 1: you're an earshot of someone else and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, did they listen to that whole conversation up
Speaker 1: and at this point? And then only then can you
Speaker 1: maybe have a directed comment to them and greet them
Speaker 1: or whatever. So the idea here is that long before
Speaker 1: we even thought about sending a signal, a radio signal
Speaker 1: out into the Great Blafe Beyond, we were inadvertently leaking
Speaker 1: all these radio signals. And it's you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the worst stuff that we've necessarily that we've we've contributed,
Speaker 1: but not all of it is exactly something that we
Speaker 1: would put on the galactic resume. Hey, otherwise you're right, Um,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like cleaning up our Facebook page if
Speaker 1: we could write it's like only eighteen year old and
Speaker 1: then you see yourself as a thirty year old exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like you said, we've been kind of leaking
Speaker 1: out this the triatus of humanity since the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: in the form of AM and FM radio broadcast, TV
Speaker 1: broadcasts and then satellite and radar broadcast. Um. And then
Speaker 1: there's also just the other sort of ambient noise like
Speaker 1: every time you open your garage door. These are all
Speaker 1: signals that are being out there. So we have lots
Speaker 1: of groaning noises, we have lots of uh, I mean
Speaker 1: ultimately a lot of footage of us, of us as
Speaker 1: a biological specimen that I think is going to be
Speaker 1: good regardless. But then you haven't suddssed that the monster costumes.
Speaker 1: You have various levels of fiction and fantasy, you have
Speaker 1: actual depictions of humanity, and it's that it's worth of
Speaker 1: us waging war on each other, um, waging genocide and
Speaker 1: mas just some really horrible images for another culture to
Speaker 1: look at and go, oh, I don't know if we
Speaker 1: need these guys in our in our friend group. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about that is, say it's say that
Speaker 1: you pick up on our frequency, and then it's sort
Speaker 1: of like this ocean of sound coming at us, and
Speaker 1: and the first thing that you hear that is from
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and then you can move onto the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and it's like bits and pieces from the
Speaker 1: honeymoon or that's the name of the show, right, Yeah, Honeymooners.
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy. Yeah, trying to make sense of all this, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I found that really interesting. To the edge of this
Speaker 1: radio bubble, that is that is admitted by our planet
Speaker 1: and by our culture, uh, is about seventy lot years away,
Speaker 1: you know, just spreading out like like ripples in a pond,
Speaker 1: and and near that edge, that's where you find stuff
Speaker 1: like I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners, and I looked
Speaker 1: it up. I was like, oh, I wonder if I
Speaker 1: never really watched those shows. I wonder if interplanetary relations
Speaker 1: were ever covered, and and of course they were to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. There is an episode of The Honeymooners
Speaker 1: called The Man from Space in which Jackie Gleeson dressed
Speaker 1: up in a like a really bad, uh like robot
Speaker 1: alien costume, and then Ralph comes into the door and
Speaker 1: is scared, like he's terrified. He's like, ah, and then
Speaker 1: he voices some concern over the possibility of of alien invasion.
Speaker 1: So even right there in the Honeymooners, they might clickoff
Speaker 1: and say, whoa, there's some sort of you know, underlying
Speaker 1: fear that we might invade them. Maybe we should we
Speaker 1: should lay low. And then there's and I Love Lucy
Speaker 1: episode called Lucy Is Envious that features two different sets
Speaker 1: of of bad Martian costumes, like Lucy and her friend
Speaker 1: around the roof wearing Martian costume is trying to scare
Speaker 1: people off the roof for some reason, and I think
Speaker 1: paying them to do it, Yeah, I don't know. And
Speaker 1: then then there I think their husbands come in and
Speaker 1: scared them wearing the Martian costumes. It's uh. And so
Speaker 1: this is the thing that's out there on that bubble,
Speaker 1: right yeah. And it's concerning what we think are is
Speaker 1: intelligent extraterrestrial life, which is very interesting. I did find
Speaker 1: it really fascinating that Jackie Gleason was apparently a big
Speaker 1: UFO enthusiast, So I wonder what he would make of
Speaker 1: that to to you know, that is into the idea
Speaker 1: of extraterrestrial life as he was, um, you know that
Speaker 1: he's kind of an emissary of it. It's hard to say, right,
Speaker 1: because then there's the whole thing about how we project
Speaker 1: all sorts of things onto other beings, and we have
Speaker 1: these expectations, and really we don't even really know what
Speaker 1: we're dealing with because, as we had pointed out in
Speaker 1: one of the Slime episodes, intelligence can be many different
Speaker 1: things in many different forms, so it may not be
Speaker 1: what we expect. I wanted to point out to that
Speaker 1: if if some sort of extraterrestrial life we're looking at
Speaker 1: us um they might pick up that we are just
Speaker 1: chemically all over the place. They might look at Earth
Speaker 1: and they might look at the biomarkers that indicate our
Speaker 1: planet is rife with flora and fauna, and they would
Speaker 1: do this through spectroscopy, the analysis of light through a spectrometer,
Speaker 1: which allows us to look at the chemical fingerprint of
Speaker 1: every element in chemical and see how much of it
Speaker 1: is absorbed, emitted, and scattered throughout a particular atmosphere. So
Speaker 1: if intelligent aliens were to set their spectrometer sits on us,
Speaker 1: what would they see. They'd see an unusual amount of methane.
Speaker 1: As we noted, things in parts of the Belgian cows
Speaker 1: and such. Um, they would see sodium from sodium vapor,
Speaker 1: street lights switching on. They would just see all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that they wouldn't necessarily expect, and all sorts
Speaker 1: of industrial pollution as well. Right, Yeah, they would see exactly,
Speaker 1: they would see some some of the what we call
Speaker 1: the anthroposyne era markers that's a man made chemic goals,
Speaker 1: and they would know automatically like there's this this is
Speaker 1: a very loud planet with a lot of different things
Speaker 1: going on, um, and it would be pretty obvious that
Speaker 1: something was afoot. Yeah. In his book Neotographs Test and
Speaker 1: also mentioned some of the you know, possible reasons that
Speaker 1: we haven't been discovered, Like, I mean, the idea that
Speaker 1: we're not necessary. It's easy to get into your mind,
Speaker 1: the idea like a super intelligent species out there and
Speaker 1: they're just all knowing and and they just either they
Speaker 1: you know, they found us and they just don't want
Speaker 1: to do anything about it, or yeah, right, you know,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's a big universe. It is a
Speaker 1: big universe. There's a lot of time and a lot
Speaker 1: of distance involved here, and it's easy to I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like finding a needle in a haystack, And so
Speaker 1: there's their possibilities that the Earth is a little clue
Speaker 1: close to the Sun that even if they were receiving
Speaker 1: this data, it would be confusing and they wouldn't really
Speaker 1: know exactly what they were looking at. And you know,
Speaker 1: you have the wrong extraterrestrial analyzing the data that day
Speaker 1: that maybe you know, maybe he us to get home
Speaker 1: to his wife. So you know, give it the due
Speaker 1: diligence that it's required. Does this point to the limits
Speaker 1: of knowledge too? Because it has had noted that intelligence
Speaker 1: and intelligent life can be something beyond what we know
Speaker 1: or we define as intelligent life. And if there is
Speaker 1: an extraterrestrial um civilization out there that is intelligent, I'm
Speaker 1: putting that in air quotes, maybe there are a completely
Speaker 1: different form that that's different from ours that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to recognize the markers of what our intelligent
Speaker 1: civilization is. Yeah, you know, a lot of our our
Speaker 1: fears of alien invasion and all of this, a lot
Speaker 1: of that is because we're reflecting our our understanding of
Speaker 1: ourselves out there into the void. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier, a lot of it comes
Speaker 1: down to there's sort of a self centeredness even in
Speaker 1: our attempt to understand what's going on beyond us. We
Speaker 1: want to know how we fit in, how we relate,
Speaker 1: how we stack up, and and so as we're you know,
Speaker 1: we we we imagine a being, We imagine a civilization
Speaker 1: out there that would take at least some of the
Speaker 1: same interest that we have. So you look at it
Speaker 1: at humans, and what if we don't. We want to
Speaker 1: plan our flag on things, we want to put our
Speaker 1: name on things. We want to colonize other worlds in
Speaker 1: the long term because that's the that is what would
Speaker 1: allow the long term survival of the species itself. We
Speaker 1: want to keep what we are and and we ultimately
Speaker 1: were terrified of change. We want to, uh, we want
Speaker 1: to in many cases, we want to ravage other places
Speaker 1: for their resources. We want to continue to grow into
Speaker 1: and to fuel ourselves. So we we look to the
Speaker 1: possibility of other civilizations and we kind of expect shades
Speaker 1: of this as well. But you know, but what if
Speaker 1: the the extratrustrial life is more of a you know,
Speaker 1: a passive species and more passive culture. What if they
Speaker 1: aren't interested in interfering or reaching out to us? What
Speaker 1: if they just want to check us off on the list, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's life here, we'll let just write it down, tell
Speaker 1: us what it is, and we'll us put it to
Speaker 1: the books. Maybe that's all they want. Indeed, maybe it is.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the meantime, we'll continue to be listening,
Speaker 1: right or rather study well, and uh, there's not a
Speaker 1: huge future right now for study. There there was a
Speaker 1: dedicated um telescope array that was planned, called the Allen
Speaker 1: Telescope Array, but the budget cuts have have sort of
Speaker 1: put that into hibernation. But the meantime, said, it continues
Speaker 1: to eavesdrop on the universe, uh, through rented radio telescopes.
Speaker 1: As of now, they still have an artist in residence,
Speaker 1: Charles Lindsay adding these cool structure installation pieces with a
Speaker 1: sound component and all, and it's really cool stuff. But
Speaker 1: that was like a two thousand eleven through two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen gigs. So I don't do not know if they're
Speaker 1: going to have a second artist in residence. It would
Speaker 1: be awesome if they did, because the whole point of
Speaker 1: that was to try to change our perspective of what
Speaker 1: intelligent life might be, right and in through different forms
Speaker 1: and shapes and I think he captured some really interesting imagery.
Speaker 1: In fact, we'll definitely put that up on Facebook. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and steady again. It's it's something
Speaker 1: that even casual observers to space exploration, you know, people
Speaker 1: with a casual interest in science fiction and whatevy. It's
Speaker 1: it's a very real latable uh and and noble goal,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like it's so I think it's a
Speaker 1: great entry point for people to to learn more about
Speaker 1: science and get excited about science and face exploration. All right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Um, a little bit about
Speaker 1: the history of Cetti, some of the big points in
Speaker 1: their history, what they're doing and uh, and what the
Speaker 1: future may hold for them and uh. We could sit
Speaker 1: around and ponder and uh and hypothesize and imagine what
Speaker 1: alien life might consist. Tough just all day, but you
Speaker 1: have to keep that confined to certain hours of the
Speaker 1: day so you can get done. So, UM, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, guys if you have anything
Speaker 1: to add on this. What do you think about the
Speaker 1: possibility of life elsewhere in the universe? Do you think
Speaker 1: it exists? Do you know it exists? We love those
Speaker 1: stories as well. Uh, so let us know. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, and you can find us on Twitter, uh,
Speaker 1: and you can find us on Tumbler. On Facebook and Tumbler,
Speaker 1: we are stuff to bow your mind. And on Twitter
Speaker 1: we go by the handle blow the Mind. And you
Speaker 1: can always drop us in binary code at below the
Speaker 1: Mind at discovery dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit howstuff Works dot com