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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcast.

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Speaker 1: mysterious death of Kurt Kobain. The possibility that government may

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Speaker 1: a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Coast to Coast, Seth Show Stack back

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Speaker 1: with a senior astronomer at SETI Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

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Speaker 1: No need to give him a full bio, because you

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Speaker 1: know Seth, he's a regular contributor here on Coast to Coast.

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Speaker 1: Mr shaw Stak, good to have you back. It's good

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Speaker 1: to be here, George. What's going on with the CET

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Speaker 1: these days? You've been having conferences, meetings. What's happening, Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: of course, we're continuing to do a long term project,

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Speaker 1: which is to look at the dim bulb stars in

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Speaker 1: the sky twenty they're called red dwarfs. Anybody who's taken

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Speaker 1: Astronomy one on one will know about red dwarfs. Most

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Speaker 1: stars are little guys, uh, and there's good reason to

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Speaker 1: look at them because they have a lot of planets

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Speaker 1: that look like they might be habitable. So so we think.

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Speaker 1: But the other thing that's really been somewhat interesting in

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Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks, roughly two weeks ago, we

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Speaker 1: had a conference. People came from around the world. Actually, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were a bad Yes, I hope they liked the food. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there were roughly forty of them and uh, they were

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Speaker 1: presenting one talk after another about new thoughts when it

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Speaker 1: comes to looking for e T. So that was most

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Speaker 1: definitely very interesting. Is the thoughts seth that there are

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Speaker 1: et s out there. Do you think the majority believes that? Now? Oh? Yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: I think that the majority of the public is certainly believed.

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Speaker 1: I believed that for a very long time. I mean

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Speaker 1: you can look at you know, look at polls taken well,

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Speaker 1: certainly back to the ninety nineties. I think it was

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Speaker 1: much earlier than that. In fact, and typically fifty of

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Speaker 1: the public says yes to the question and do you

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Speaker 1: think there's intelligence out there or other life out there?

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Speaker 1: Other life doesn't have to be intelligent, and so the

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Speaker 1: percentages go up a little bit more. But yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's not so much the issue. Maybe you're asking, do

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Speaker 1: scientists believe that? You know, I don't know if any

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Speaker 1: polls that have as scientists that. But if you if

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Speaker 1: you just go down the street and grab the next

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Speaker 1: ten scientists, you see if it's somehow obvious either hair

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Speaker 1: dues or something that they're scientists, I think them would

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Speaker 1: say yes. To Seth. Let me ask you this. I mean,

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Speaker 1: the folks at Setting yourself included, believe that there's extraterrestrial

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Speaker 1: life out there, or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing.

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Speaker 1: You wouldn't be listening for it. How come you don't

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Speaker 1: believe that that they possibly came here at this Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's not impossible for them to come here.

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Speaker 1: I'll be the first to admit that. But the chances

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Speaker 1: that they've come within shall we say historic times, just

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Speaker 1: say the last ten or fifteen thousand years? Right, the

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Speaker 1: Earth has been here for four and a half billion years.

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Speaker 1: There's been life on the Earth for probably four billion

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Speaker 1: certainty three and a half, right, So you know, ten

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Speaker 1: thousand years as a part of four billion years is

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Speaker 1: a very very tiny fraction of that time. So if

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Speaker 1: they're just coming here, you know, on a random basis,

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Speaker 1: the chances that you'll be visited while you're around to

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Speaker 1: notice it are very very small. Now, you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: they did come. Maybe they you know, took a look

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Speaker 1: at Rome and decided they didn't like the the fish

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Speaker 1: oil or whatever it was they were serving for dinner

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Speaker 1: and left. That could be, but the Romans didn't write

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Speaker 1: it down, and there's no evidence when you go into Rome,

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Speaker 1: you don't, you know, dig up some some ruins. You

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Speaker 1: don't find klingon cell phones or anything like that. That

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Speaker 1: would be pretty convincing. But sure of that, it's pretty

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Speaker 1: hard to tell. Maybe they visited the dinosaurs, but you know,

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Speaker 1: the dinosaurs didn't didn't write it up. Staff. Every time

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Speaker 1: a planet has been discovered by either the Kepler Space

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Speaker 1: Telescope or some other means, do you folks at SETI

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Speaker 1: kind of aim the array of telescopes listening devices that

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Speaker 1: way just in case. Well, we used to George, you know,

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Speaker 1: when Kepler first got underway a couple of years ago

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Speaker 1: now uh, and you know, started finding planets around other stars.

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Speaker 1: Of course, we we swung our array of antenna's in

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Speaker 1: the direction of these star systems, hoping to pick up

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Speaker 1: the signal. But eventually it was like hearing the same

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Speaker 1: jokes over and over again. You know, you got a

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Speaker 1: little bit it got a little bit tedious because there

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Speaker 1: were more and more planets. And at that point we

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Speaker 1: noticed something very interesting, or I should say the astronomical

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Speaker 1: community noticed something interesting, and that was, well, most stars

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Speaker 1: have planets. You know, the actual percentage might be nine percent,

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Speaker 1: but it's the majority. So you know, you could just

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Speaker 1: swing the antenna's at any reasonable star and might as

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Speaker 1: well picked nearby ones because signals would be stronger and

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Speaker 1: with a very high probability it will have planets. So

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Speaker 1: we stopped concentrating on the individuals, as it were, and

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Speaker 1: went with a cry out. Fifteen years ago, you and

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Speaker 1: I were talking on this program and we talked about

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Speaker 1: how the primordial soup in the universe is the same

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Speaker 1: that you're going to have the complexity of what you

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Speaker 1: have on Earth, You're gonna probably have it on other

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Speaker 1: planetary systems, and then if they're you know, in that

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Speaker 1: Goldilocks zone with their star. Uh, you may have the

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Speaker 1: right temperatures, you may have the right complexity of water, oxygen,

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Speaker 1: and atmosphere. It's just a matter of time before we

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Speaker 1: find more and more of those planets, isn't it. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, again, on the basis of studies mostly by Kepler,

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Speaker 1: as you've already mentioned, we now know that maybe one

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Speaker 1: in five stars, one in six, maybe it's one in ten,

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Speaker 1: but you know already makes any difference. Let's say it's

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Speaker 1: one in six stars has a planet that is in

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Speaker 1: that goldilock. That means there are a lot of planets. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're like a trillion in our galaxy. The wait, we

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Speaker 1: can see two trillion other galaxies if our galaxy isn't

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Speaker 1: up here standards. So, uh, there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: them out there, and you know most of them are bad.

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Speaker 1: But if I buy a trillion lottery tickets, I had

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Speaker 1: a feeling that one of them will be a winner

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Speaker 1: at least. Yeah. Absolutely, that's what's so exciting about that.

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Speaker 1: And if life started, you know, aside from some of

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Speaker 1: the incredible theories we've had on the show about life

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Speaker 1: on this planet, but a four and a half billion

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Speaker 1: year planet when did life, intelligent life, in your opinion,

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Speaker 1: really start. Well, I tend to be sort of anthropocentric,

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Speaker 1: being a Homo sapience. Not sure about the sapiens part actually,

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Speaker 1: but being a Homo sapiens, you know, I tend to

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Speaker 1: think that will intelligence there there's something like us people

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Speaker 1: who study dolphins, who preferred dolphins intelligence I think in

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Speaker 1: many cases. So but if you just say, okay, they've

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Speaker 1: got to be able to build a milling machine or

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Speaker 1: invent a computer, or from the standpoint of set build

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Speaker 1: a radio transmitter or maybe a big laser so that

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Speaker 1: they can signal us, then you know that species arose

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Speaker 1: about three hundred thousand years ago, which again you know

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Speaker 1: that's what that's one one millions or something. No, it

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Speaker 1: isn't quite that, but it's a very kindy fraction of

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Speaker 1: the age of the Earth. In other words, the Klingons

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Speaker 1: could have a steady experiment that's been going for four

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Speaker 1: billion years, and you know they wouldn't have picked up anything.

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Speaker 1: They would have struck it exactly exactly. So so we're

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Speaker 1: four and a half billion years old. Three hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: years ago technically intelligent life started popping up. So what

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Speaker 1: about a civilization or a star system, a cluster that

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Speaker 1: is nine billion years old. I mean the universe is

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Speaker 1: fourteen billion years old. So those star clusters that started

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Speaker 1: earlier than we did, they had a jump start of

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Speaker 1: billions and billions of years. They've got to have had

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Speaker 1: civilizations that cropped up and that their way advanced. If

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Speaker 1: they're still alive, well I think that that's a good argument. Actually,

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Speaker 1: what you're saying is that, you know, the majority of

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Speaker 1: stars are older than the Sun, and on average by

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Speaker 1: billions of years. I mean, these little runty red dwarfs

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Speaker 1: that were aiming our antennas at the Allen telescope array,

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Speaker 1: and those guys they don't die for hundred billion years. Well,

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Speaker 1: the Big Bang was only thirteen billion years ago, so

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Speaker 1: you know, those little guys aren't even into in Red

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Speaker 1: Dwarf high school yet right then. They're just getting underway.

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Speaker 1: Every one of them that was born is still around.

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Speaker 1: And if there's life that's you know, popped up on

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Speaker 1: a planet around one of those guys, you're right, it

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Speaker 1: could be billions of years more advanced than we are. Now,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're still around. I mean species last

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Speaker 1: for you know, varying length time typically on earth lift

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Speaker 1: literally about a million years and then something happens to him.

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Speaker 1: But if they can figure out how to avoid their

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Speaker 1: own extinction, yeah, there could be some pretty ancient, accomplished

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Speaker 1: aliens out there. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM

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