Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast. This
Speaker 1: is Alice and I don't know if the science editor
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. This is Robert Lamb, science
Speaker 1: writer at how stuff works dot com. And today we're
Speaker 1: tackling a pretty big question and one that, uh, at
Speaker 1: the time of this recording, was still making the rounds
Speaker 1: in the news media. Um, will aliens destroy us? And
Speaker 1: I need a need of stress here that we're dealing
Speaker 1: with a a big cosmological question here, one of the biggest.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of speculation in this, like like very
Speaker 1: high minded speculation, not like you know what if a
Speaker 1: you know, just it's um, it's not based necessarily in
Speaker 1: in strict scientific research. You know that. That's the whole
Speaker 1: nature of some of these big cosmological questions. Yeah, said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be having more of a conversation than a
Speaker 1: discussed and tearing apart some study today. So the reason
Speaker 1: this was making the news is because I've been series
Speaker 1: currently airing on Discovery. Yeah, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.
Speaker 1: You wrote for this, right, Yeah, I wrote for the website. Um,
Speaker 1: did some summaries a couple of really cool quizzes on
Speaker 1: aliens and time traveling, a couple of really hard quizzes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't even get them right, they're that hard. And
Speaker 1: I wrote the during things. Um but but yeah, so
Speaker 1: that the first episode right out of the gate was
Speaker 1: Aliens and uh and I'm just gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: read part of the script here. You know that of
Speaker 1: what Hawking says, he says, we only have to look
Speaker 1: at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into
Speaker 1: something we wouldn't want to meet. We humans are already
Speaker 1: capable of manipulating the course of our own evolution. Exactly
Speaker 1: the same, presumably, would be true of advanced extraterrestrials. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: they could halt aging and become virtually immortal. What's more,
Speaker 1: they might have reached that point in many millions of
Speaker 1: years ago. It might sound unlikely, but if you think
Speaker 1: about it, logically, alien technology should be as extraordinary to
Speaker 1: us as a rocket ship is to a caveman. I
Speaker 1: imagine they might exist in massive ships like these. And
Speaker 1: this is where in the show you get to see
Speaker 1: like a big giant spaceship, you know, yeah, um, like
Speaker 1: these having used up all the resources from from the
Speaker 1: home planet below. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads
Speaker 1: looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.
Speaker 1: If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each
Speaker 1: new planet for materials to build more spaceships. Uh, so
Speaker 1: they could move on and naturally with quotes like these
Speaker 1: news stories were right on it, and it's pretty soon
Speaker 1: they started producing headlines like don't talk to aliens, weren't
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking from Fox News or seen Stephen Hawking? Aliens
Speaker 1: might hate us? I like that one. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it was. It was kind of a slow newsweek
Speaker 1: when all this hit, Like this was right before um,
Speaker 1: you know, we had some environmental issues pop up and
Speaker 1: some some other big stories hit, so and you got
Speaker 1: to fill that science section of the website with something. Right.
Speaker 1: But I don't think Hawking was engaged in fear mongering,
Speaker 1: and I really wasn't his intent. It was speculation. Yes,
Speaker 1: So we can't stress stress it enough that that Hawking
Speaker 1: was not saying, you know, go, you know, buy a
Speaker 1: shotgun and hiding your basement because the aliens are coming
Speaker 1: to harvest the planet. The argument is simply, hey, if
Speaker 1: life universally evolves from the chemistry on planets where the
Speaker 1: you know, you have the correct minerals, the right temperature range,
Speaker 1: and there's enough time for it to evolve. Then and
Speaker 1: you know, if if that's true, and if they are
Speaker 1: eventually evolved to the point where they have technology sufficient
Speaker 1: enough to reach us, then what might they be like?
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of the same way that we
Speaker 1: we figure out how solar systems work by looking at
Speaker 1: our own solar system. It's the best model we have
Speaker 1: in the closest likewise with life. So if we you know,
Speaker 1: we we look at how life has evolved here on
Speaker 1: Earth and we we use that as a model for
Speaker 1: how it might have applied, how how it might have
Speaker 1: evolved elsewhere. And so we sort of have to look
Speaker 1: in the mirror and consider what that first contact would
Speaker 1: be like. You know, so if you think about aliens
Speaker 1: in fact reaching our planet, then you have to think that, uh,
Speaker 1: such a scientific development would also be accompanied by an
Speaker 1: ethical development, right, if they're going to reach our planet,
Speaker 1: they probably value life. Well, that's that's yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: counter argument, that's that's come out. You know, people say
Speaker 1: they're probably not going to be like some sort of
Speaker 1: evil like or grace intent on destruction. And you've read
Speaker 1: something about the Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hillier making this claim.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen that. Well, yeah, this was making the
Speaker 1: rounds and uh. And they're saying that he's he's claimed
Speaker 1: that they've been visiting for a while and they haven't
Speaker 1: done any harm yet. And I actually, you know, there're
Speaker 1: probably a lot of people out there who would say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I think aliens have come to this planet
Speaker 1: and they haven't. You know, enslaved usn't taken all our
Speaker 1: resources yet. I'm sorry, So you think that they No,
Speaker 1: I don't think that at all. So the Canadian Defense
Speaker 1: minister thinks that they're already here. That's what some news
Speaker 1: sources are saying. The former this former Canadian defense minister.
Speaker 1: I wonder why he's a former, because I don't know
Speaker 1: the aliens benefits something to do with it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the argument about the ethics is that like an
Speaker 1: ethical stance would end up taking over um or you know,
Speaker 1: augmenting what Darwinian evolution started, you know, because it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to say it's like, all right, survival of the fittest,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at an organism. You know, big organisms
Speaker 1: either want to consume other organisms or compete with them
Speaker 1: for the same resources. And if you just follow that structure,
Speaker 1: then you know, even like if you had a starship,
Speaker 1: you would still be an organism intent on getting more
Speaker 1: resources unless you you develop these ethics along the way
Speaker 1: where you have you know, high minded ideas about I
Speaker 1: don't want to destroy another planet because that's an independent, um,
Speaker 1: you know, evolution, and I don't want to interfere with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe I just want to observe it, et cetera. Or
Speaker 1: it could be maybe I just want to exploit the
Speaker 1: resources and slave the people. It's kind of a whole
Speaker 1: like our aliens gonna be touchy feely or are they
Speaker 1: going to be jerks? You know, I personally would prefer
Speaker 1: them to be touchy feely. Well, and basically Hawking was
Speaker 1: I would prefer that too, and imagine Hawking would prefer
Speaker 1: would prefer that. Yeah, but he's just saying it's like, well,
Speaker 1: let's look at what we know. What we've seen. The
Speaker 1: model that, you know, the best model we have shows
Speaker 1: humans kind of being jerks. That's true. Nuclear weapons are
Speaker 1: up there, um, yeah, the you know, exploiting less technologically
Speaker 1: advanced people's, etcetera. Another reason put out there not to
Speaker 1: fear an alien invasion is that they probably don't know
Speaker 1: we're here. Um Like, even if you even a look
Speaker 1: at the d take the Drake equation and you you know,
Speaker 1: extrapolate it in a very um, you know liberal way.
Speaker 1: Do we have a lot of different races out there
Speaker 1: with with technology sufficient to either detect our signals or
Speaker 1: you know, or even travel to us. Um. You have
Speaker 1: to take take into account that these places are like
Speaker 1: thousands of light years away, so they won't they won't
Speaker 1: even know about us. They won't be able to detect
Speaker 1: a signal until about three three thousand a d. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's one of the big, one, big reasons
Speaker 1: not to get all up in arms over this is
Speaker 1: because the universe is so big, the distances are so vast. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it takes that long for light to travel
Speaker 1: so and and as far as we know, traveling faster
Speaker 1: than light is impossible. That's the universal speed limit. So
Speaker 1: even so, they're limited in their ability to even detect
Speaker 1: that we're here and uh, and also in the in
Speaker 1: their ability to travel to us in a reasonable amount
Speaker 1: of time. You know, if they're if you're three thousand
Speaker 1: light years away and you can travel the speed of light,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take you three thousand years to reach us.
Speaker 1: And what could you possibly want that bad that's worth
Speaker 1: that kind of trip, you know, Well, yeah, but then
Speaker 1: you could get that um by just communicating with us.
Speaker 1: You know, we could just have a long term relationship
Speaker 1: us in the aliens. There's no need to you know,
Speaker 1: speed things up. You can't speed things up faster than
Speaker 1: the speed of light. You know, we could just text message, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: send a long email, heartfelt Yeah, why would they need
Speaker 1: to show up? So that actually goes into one of
Speaker 1: the reasons to be afraid is that if an alien
Speaker 1: the distance is so great that an alien actually showed
Speaker 1: up at our doorstep, he would have to be he she,
Speaker 1: It would have to be here for something on the planet, like,
Speaker 1: because everything else could be done via communication. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like if you're you're having like an email exchange
Speaker 1: with somebody online and it's like, oh, this, this relationship
Speaker 1: is fine, this is exactly where it needs to be.
Speaker 1: We're emailing back and forth, and then that person shows
Speaker 1: up here your doorstep. Call the cops because there's something up,
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of the argument here, unless faster
Speaker 1: than light travel is somehow possible for a ridiculously advanced
Speaker 1: alien civilization, in which case it's, you know, no big
Speaker 1: deal for him to show up at your doorstep. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if the other thing is that time
Speaker 1: isn't on our side. Given the age of the universe,
Speaker 1: which we know to be thirteen point seven billion years
Speaker 1: courtesy of w MAP, Thank you, w UP, it's more
Speaker 1: probable that they're intelligent species that are ten thousand, a million,
Speaker 1: even ten million years more advanced than us, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a crazy thought. Yeah, the technology ten million
Speaker 1: years ahead. Yeah, like they would just be so I
Speaker 1: mean we can't even comprehend that. It's like an aunt
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like how you know an iPhone
Speaker 1: works or something, right, I mean, they would be gods
Speaker 1: and we would be the m Yeah, we would be
Speaker 1: just at the mercy of the the iPhone. Another cool point,
Speaker 1: this goes back to the whole alien showing up at
Speaker 1: your doorstep. After an email conversation, Ray Billard pointed this
Speaker 1: out on just the Discovery Space blogs. Um, have you
Speaker 1: seen the movie avatar. I haven't, okay, I badly want
Speaker 1: to see it. All right, Well this this is not
Speaker 1: a spoiler. But the whole reason that the evil humans
Speaker 1: come to this alien world is to harvest a special
Speaker 1: element do you know that called unobtanium which on the
Speaker 1: far future period at the table. But but that the
Speaker 1: thing is, the whole idea is, oh, it's unobtainium. It's
Speaker 1: this magic element you can only get one place in
Speaker 1: the universe, and that's why we're going to do everything
Speaker 1: in our in our power, no matter how cruel, to
Speaker 1: harvest it um. But in reality, there's no such things
Speaker 1: as is unobtainium or anything like this. Like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: on Earth that that aliens could want that bad, that
Speaker 1: would merit that kind of a journey and that much
Speaker 1: time and effort, unless they are just jerks and want
Speaker 1: to kick us around. Well, what about something in the
Speaker 1: Amazon rainforest, perhaps a very rare cure that's only found
Speaker 1: deep in the reaches of the Amazon rainforest, and they
Speaker 1: know they have very little time left because the rainforest
Speaker 1: is being chopped down acres per day, And maybe it's that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but if you have that kind of technology, what could
Speaker 1: possibly exist in the Amazon rainforest that you couldn't create
Speaker 1: on your own, you know, you could a genetic code
Speaker 1: for it. Maybe they're not that good at recreating the
Speaker 1: natural world. But I guess if you're that far advance,
Speaker 1: what do you need with the natural world? You can
Speaker 1: create anything, unless what they want our art, you know,
Speaker 1: or to communicate with our whales. Right. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that's really key in our discussion is the is
Speaker 1: our concept of aliens, what we imagine aliens to be.
Speaker 1: Even if they are highly technologically advanced, maybe there are microorganisms.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're alien micro organisms which pose the greatest danger
Speaker 1: to us, to life on Earth. Yeah, like, even if
Speaker 1: they were to you know, to again show up at
Speaker 1: our doorstep and well, you know, whether they were ethical
Speaker 1: or jerks, what if they had some sort of little
Speaker 1: uh little illness, you know, hanging around in their bodies
Speaker 1: that is nothing to them, but would just you know,
Speaker 1: be chaos for us, Be like a war of the
Speaker 1: world's except the reverse right in the Spanish conquister doors
Speaker 1: exactly bring with them some sort of accidental bioweapon, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean all the the Europeans coming to the New World.
Speaker 1: I mean just you know, they've accidental bioweapons over the place,
Speaker 1: you know, measles and small boy term. I mean it
Speaker 1: kind of won the battle for the Conquista doors. So again,
Speaker 1: if you look took to past model of what it's
Speaker 1: like when an alien species such as the Spanish, you know,
Speaker 1: arrives on an alien world such as that of you know,
Speaker 1: South America, Um, what what can happen? People can be jerks,
Speaker 1: people can carry um microbes that the their their hosts
Speaker 1: aren't prepared for to turn to imperialism if you want
Speaker 1: to know what's going to happen between aliens and us?
Speaker 1: And that's that's Hawking's whole argument. Yeah, well, it's definitely
Speaker 1: an excellent thought provoking question. Yeah, that's a great thing
Speaker 1: about it. I mean it makes us think about the
Speaker 1: far future, about our place in the cosmos, and look,
Speaker 1: you know, at ourselves and just what we're capable of.
Speaker 1: So what do you think? Are you afraid? Now? I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, yea, infinitely curious. What about you? I used
Speaker 1: to be afraid. I used to be afraid of UFOs
Speaker 1: that I would mainly that I would be abductive, not
Speaker 1: that I would be that our planet would be enslaved
Speaker 1: and harvested for its resources. More that they would just
Speaker 1: come get me. To me, that seems a little egosential
Speaker 1: to think. I mean, why would they pick you? I
Speaker 1: was like thirteen. I mean, everybody's at the center of
Speaker 1: their own universe thirteen. But you know, it's like Unsolved
Speaker 1: Mysteries had all these UFO abductions going on, you know,
Speaker 1: like that was like half of the program. And so
Speaker 1: the idea was, if you're looking up into into the
Speaker 1: stars there, you're going to see a UFO, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna know that you saw the UFO and then they
Speaker 1: have no choice but to come and get you. It
Speaker 1: does seem funny though some of the people who have
Speaker 1: said that they're abducted by aliens. Why why would the
Speaker 1: aliens pick you? If I were an alien, I would
Speaker 1: pick some famous mind, maybe ahead of state something like that.
Speaker 1: Really just a thirteen year old I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'd probably pick up Brian Cox unless
Speaker 1: it was Ender Wiggins. Can you tell I've been reading
Speaker 1: my science fiction? Are you reading that one? Okay? So
Speaker 1: if you guys have any thoughts on whether aliens are
Speaker 1: going to destroy us, send us an email. At science
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff first dot com. Yeah, just dropped
Speaker 1: by the website and search for SETI search for aliens.
Speaker 1: We have a whole bunch of cool articles about those topics. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we also have a Twitter account and uh and
Speaker 1: do you think aliens have Twitter and Facebook? Yes? Yeah
Speaker 1: they do. I just like friended one on Facebook the
Speaker 1: other day, but but no Facebook. Twitter. You can find
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Speaker 1: with us there, ask us questions, see what we're up to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all we got. Thanks for listening, guys. For more
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