Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says my
Speaker 1: supersonic ships at your disposal. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about who who to thunk its space
Speaker 1: Space space, something that we have touched on once or
Speaker 1: twice on this show, but we specifically wanted to look
Speaker 1: at the potential of extraterrestrial life. We've already decided what
Speaker 1: they look like, right, we had that podcast. Yeah, most
Speaker 1: statistically probable alien life formance according to Joe. So the
Speaker 1: the French aliens called the cone heads are what they're
Speaker 1: gonna look like. But we haven't actually gotten in touch
Speaker 1: with them yet. And we want to talk about some um,
Speaker 1: some some things that that scientists and researchers have proposed
Speaker 1: over the years as a kind of a method to
Speaker 1: figure out how probable is it that we will that
Speaker 1: there are other intelligence species out there and that we're
Speaker 1: going to come in contact with them eventually. Right, everybody
Speaker 1: goes with their gut, don't they? You know, they say
Speaker 1: do you think that there's life out there? And you
Speaker 1: kind of go, well, I don't know. You're like you're
Speaker 1: answering with the part of yourself that decides whether or
Speaker 1: not you want ice cream right now. So the answer
Speaker 1: can change depending upon how hot it is outside and
Speaker 1: whether you and you're not really doing the math in
Speaker 1: your head. I mean, it's it's not the same kind
Speaker 1: of probability with which you would, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're my friends play poker or or a dice
Speaker 1: gambling game or something like that, You're you're more you're
Speaker 1: more going like yeah, totally, or like now we're answering.
Speaker 1: We're answering with our feelings. Um, yeah, But when those
Speaker 1: feelings incorporate things like the more you know about the universe,
Speaker 1: the more you think, well, if considering how enormous it
Speaker 1: is and how much potential there is, and the fact
Speaker 1: that life does exist is where proof, then how likely
Speaker 1: is it to have happened at least one other time?
Speaker 1: And most of us feel like it's pretty likely. Well,
Speaker 1: what if we were to narrow the question down a
Speaker 1: little bit too, something that's a little bit um more
Speaker 1: manageable and more testable than just is their other life?
Speaker 1: You mean, like if we were to come up with
Speaker 1: some sort of crazy equation where we could perhaps determine
Speaker 1: the likelihood that intelligent life out there would exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to limit the product of the equation, say, instead
Speaker 1: of asking is there life out there somewhere? What if
Speaker 1: we were to ask how many civilizations are there in
Speaker 1: our galaxy? That's the milky capable of communicating across solar systems,
Speaker 1: all right, So some sort of interstellar communication, we'd probably
Speaker 1: be talking about radio or maybe lasers. So we'd have
Speaker 1: to be able to detect it, obviously, because if we're
Speaker 1: not able to detect it, there could be all sorts
Speaker 1: of communication going on that we're just unaware of. Right,
Speaker 1: we're ruling out, you know, really intelligent psychic materia that
Speaker 1: that only only communicate via color flash or germ thoughts
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. Another way of phrasing this is to
Speaker 1: say technological civilizations. How many technological civilizations are there in
Speaker 1: the Milky Way other than us? Obviously we know about one. Well,
Speaker 1: is there a way we could actually start to concert
Speaker 1: this a bit, to think about real numbers that would
Speaker 1: inform our judgment of that probability? Well, according to Frank Drake, yes,
Speaker 1: there is, or at least he proposed a way of
Speaker 1: thinking about the problem that might be able to give
Speaker 1: you at least a likelihood. Although depending on how you
Speaker 1: look at this equation, your mileage berries right, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Drake equation. Yes, right. What's the Drake equation? Well, essentially,
Speaker 1: it's an equation that predicts the potential number of civilizations
Speaker 1: in the galaxy to have the capability to communicate via
Speaker 1: radio transmission or other interstellar communication that we could actually detect.
Speaker 1: So it actually takes into account lots of different factors.
Speaker 1: This is something that Frank Drake came up with in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one when he was trying to get fellow
Speaker 1: astronomers to convene for the first serious um A conference
Speaker 1: on the search for extraterrestrial life, which would become set,
Speaker 1: which is something that we actually haven't talked that much
Speaker 1: about before, I don't think on this podcast. No, crazily
Speaker 1: enough um And And Frank Drake was pretty young at
Speaker 1: the time. I think he was thirty or thirty one.
Speaker 1: He had begun his career as an electronics officer in
Speaker 1: the Navy, partially because he had a he had gotten
Speaker 1: a scholarship to go to Cornell for electronics from his
Speaker 1: RTC and he would go on to get a master's
Speaker 1: in a PhD in astronomy from Harvard and worked there
Speaker 1: by chance his first summer with radio astronomy equipment and
Speaker 1: absolutely fell in love with it. In nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 1: he would help discover Jupiter's radiation belts and observe some pulsars,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen sixty uh he was working with
Speaker 1: radio telescopes at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank,
Speaker 1: West vir West Virginia, where he form to the very
Speaker 1: first experimental search for radio signals from potential civilizations in
Speaker 1: nearby stars. Yeah. He's also the guy who, along with
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan, helped design the plaque aboard the Pioneer spacecraft
Speaker 1: right right. And the seventies, he was working a lot
Speaker 1: with Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was a huge proponent of
Speaker 1: the Drake equation. The two of them got along pretty
Speaker 1: famously and they even helped. They even collaborated. They dropped
Speaker 1: a record together, only two copies of which exist and
Speaker 1: both of them are outside well the system now, but
Speaker 1: it totally it did go gold but not platinum. Not
Speaker 1: platinum ones outside the Solar System, and one is on
Speaker 1: its way out. We're talking, of course about the Golden
Speaker 1: records aboard the Voyager spacecraft. Both UH Sagan and UH
Speaker 1: and Drake had a hand in the design of those. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those are sort of our own feeble in a way,
Speaker 1: attempts at communicating with an alien civilization. But of course
Speaker 1: they're not the best ways we could communicate. The best
Speaker 1: ways would be via a radio transmission, or if that
Speaker 1: can travel at the speed of light, and or you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps even better, if we could find a planet that
Speaker 1: we were pretty sure had life capable of receiving a
Speaker 1: signal on it and focus a an optical beam at them.
Speaker 1: That would that would be even more In fact, NASA,
Speaker 1: as of the recording this podcast, NASA had just had
Speaker 1: just proven the feasibility of using lasers in space communication
Speaker 1: and showing that it had a much higher capacity for
Speaker 1: carrying data than radio transmission. Right. But but again, that's
Speaker 1: within an extremely narrow location. She really have to be
Speaker 1: pointing it at something. Yeah, it's we're talking line of sight, right,
Speaker 1: so anyway, but either way we would have to we
Speaker 1: would have to be able to get something back from
Speaker 1: whatever intelligent races out there for that to be a
Speaker 1: confirmation that in fact, some other intelligent race has exists
Speaker 1: in the Milky Way. Okay, well, before we talk about
Speaker 1: the search itself, let's talk about the equation and how
Speaker 1: they used it to play this game and see if
Speaker 1: we could predict how many civilizations are out there in
Speaker 1: our galaxy. All right, because what's really fascinating to me
Speaker 1: is that when Drake was designing this equation, we had
Speaker 1: not detected any exit planets at all. That wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until the nineteen nineties. So and now we've detected about
Speaker 1: a thousand of them. But even so, I mean that's
Speaker 1: direct detection, we of course suspect that there are a
Speaker 1: wicked lot of of them out there, that maybe at
Speaker 1: least half of star systems, is what Drake said himself
Speaker 1: in about so uh so. So yeah, So the equation
Speaker 1: is n N being this number of civilizations that could
Speaker 1: that are advanced enough to create technology that we could
Speaker 1: listen to. Um equals are being the rate of star
Speaker 1: formation in the galaxy. Okay, so that's how often the
Speaker 1: galaxy creates new stars that you have planets, right, uh
Speaker 1: f subset P, which is the fraction of stars that
Speaker 1: form planets. So not every star necessarily has a planet
Speaker 1: attached to it, so you have to you have to
Speaker 1: eliminate all the ones that don't planets. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, no life can exist upon a star itself.
Speaker 1: Then you have in subset E, which is the number
Speaker 1: of planets hospitable to life, so earthlike planets, anything that
Speaker 1: could actually sustain life. So now talking about something terrestrial
Speaker 1: and with water being that waters, how we know life exists?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it's again we're not accounting for
Speaker 1: things that for other forms of life that may or
Speaker 1: may not Right where we are, we're all we are
Speaker 1: having to extrapolate from a sample size of one being
Speaker 1: that there's only one planet we know of that has
Speaker 1: life on it. But within E. Basically, if you think
Speaker 1: that every star has one earthlike planet or one planet
Speaker 1: capable of having life, that that value would be like one, right,
Speaker 1: and then you have wouldn't be like one, it would
Speaker 1: be one. It would be one. Precisely if F sub
Speaker 1: L is the fraction of these planets on which life
Speaker 1: actually emerges. So this is the difference between the potential
Speaker 1: for life and the actual existence of life. And then
Speaker 1: you have of f sub I, which is the fraction
Speaker 1: of these planets on which intelligent life evolves. So we've
Speaker 1: gone beyond just life now to life that's actually intelligent. Right,
Speaker 1: We're not just talking about sebreddit, We're talking about actual
Speaker 1: intelligent life difference between bacteria and dolphins. Then we have
Speaker 1: F sub C, which is the fraction of the planets
Speaker 1: with intelligent beings that are actually capable of interstellar communications.
Speaker 1: So we might have some intelligent life out there, but
Speaker 1: they're still banging rocks together to make fire and haven't
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where they can make you know,
Speaker 1: interstellar communication because they don't have rocks that are big enough.
Speaker 1: Then you finally have L, which is the length of
Speaker 1: time that such a civilization is actually detectable. And this
Speaker 1: is I think one of the cleverer parts of the
Speaker 1: equation that it includes this L. It doesn't assume that
Speaker 1: these ones they exist, will exist forever. They may only
Speaker 1: be transmitting for some range of time. Well, let's let's
Speaker 1: say that this civilization is analogous to Earth and just
Speaker 1: just happens to be that way. There's just some random
Speaker 1: chance where there is an alien civilization. They're intelligent, they
Speaker 1: are capable of communicating through interstellar space. Uh, and they
Speaker 1: are at the same level of sophistication that we are
Speaker 1: at and arrived there at approximately the same time, but
Speaker 1: they're a hundred light years away. Well, we haven't been
Speaker 1: using interstellar means of communication in a way where we
Speaker 1: could necessarily detect that, because it would take a hundred
Speaker 1: years for that those transmissions to travel over here. Now,
Speaker 1: if they had powerful enough radios early on, then theoretically
Speaker 1: we could hear it, but chances are we wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to pick up on that, even though they would
Speaker 1: be out there right now. Right. I've also seen that
Speaker 1: number expressed as F subset capital L, meaning basically the
Speaker 1: number of civilizations that have not blowed themselves up yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they would not only be sophisticated enough, but they
Speaker 1: still they haven't killed themselves either. Yeah, And you know, right,
Speaker 1: the the idea being that certainly, on our planet, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, dinosaurs were not broadcasting radio signals
Speaker 1: into the sixty five million years ago, but they just
Speaker 1: put someone but someone could have someone could have been
Speaker 1: tuned into our planet at that point, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: or really the way that that's expressed, I think was
Speaker 1: a lot of how seventies nine seventies era scientists were
Speaker 1: viewing mankind's um state of affairs at that moment, informed
Speaker 1: a little bit by the Cold War, probably, yeah, saying
Speaker 1: like like, well, you know, humans have this terrible history
Speaker 1: of making war upon each other, and there is the potential,
Speaker 1: particularly with things like nuclear weapons, that we could have
Speaker 1: a catastrophic event. So that you're saying, well, if we
Speaker 1: extrapolate that, then there might be a lot of alien
Speaker 1: aries is out there that have the same problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not totally unreasonable to notice that about the
Speaker 1: same time a civilization gets the power to make radio broadcasts,
Speaker 1: they're also starting to get really advanced weaponry. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is when you start trying to fill these
Speaker 1: variables out. Yeah, so lots of people have tried to
Speaker 1: compute this equation with their own guesses filled in, and
Speaker 1: one thing you start to notice if you read these
Speaker 1: different estimates is they're all over the place. Well, it's
Speaker 1: because we have such a lack of information about some
Speaker 1: of these things, particularly when it comes to the actual
Speaker 1: questions about life. We have not detected life anywhere else.
Speaker 1: We have lots of guesses, but their guesses they're not
Speaker 1: based upon any observable, testable data that we've come that's
Speaker 1: come back to us where we can definitively say, here's
Speaker 1: another example, our our sample size has doubled or whatever.
Speaker 1: So early on in early versions of the Drake equation,
Speaker 1: where people were filling out all these variables. One of
Speaker 1: the earliest is one that was documented in the series Cosmos. Yes,
Speaker 1: highly recommended, by the way, if you have not ever
Speaker 1: watched Cosmos, I mean, you know, you've got to get
Speaker 1: over some dated effects and fashions they are. They're doing
Speaker 1: a remake, but it's my person all favorite thing, getting
Speaker 1: to see all of the super high tech computers in
Speaker 1: the background are way bigger than this podcast, but it's
Speaker 1: it's everything is covered in shag carpets, but it's still
Speaker 1: the science in it is phenomenal. And and of course
Speaker 1: Sagan's enthusiasm for science is one of those things that
Speaker 1: you cannot, you know, easily replicate. You have to actually
Speaker 1: possess that yourself. It's hard. You can't really be insincere
Speaker 1: and try and be like science is great. You can
Speaker 1: just see his sort of like calm tope joy. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about his Tope approach to the
Speaker 1: Drake equation. So he said that in his version, he says,
Speaker 1: all right, so in the Milky Way, imagine there are
Speaker 1: four hundred billion stars there, and then about a quarter
Speaker 1: of those have planets exactly. So then you you have
Speaker 1: just gotten down to one billion stars that have the
Speaker 1: potential to have plants that would perhaps support life. So that,
Speaker 1: of course, if you extrapolated this to other galaxies, which
Speaker 1: the Drake equation does not do, it's specifically for the
Speaker 1: Milky Way, but he said, if you were, you'd end
Speaker 1: up with trillions of stars to work with. But sticking
Speaker 1: to the Milky Way hundred billion, he then suggests that
Speaker 1: in every star system there will be approximately two planets
Speaker 1: suitable for life on average, meaning that some would have more,
Speaker 1: some might not have any, uh, and then that perhaps
Speaker 1: a one half of those might be planets on which
Speaker 1: life actually arose. Right, So now we're back to specifically
Speaker 1: a hundred billion planets. Once you look at those those
Speaker 1: numbers into the equation. We're not done yet, though, he says,
Speaker 1: then you have to look at the likelihood that the
Speaker 1: life sustaining planets actually give rise to intelligence, and he
Speaker 1: gave it as a conservative estimate of one out of
Speaker 1: ten uh, saying that you know, some scientists say that
Speaker 1: that intelligence is something that is so advantageous evolution evolutionary,
Speaker 1: Lee speaking that it's almost a given that that life
Speaker 1: will get to an intelligent level. But other scientists disagree
Speaker 1: with this assessment. So he says, let's be conservative. We'll
Speaker 1: say one out of ten. And then he said that
Speaker 1: only one out of ten of those might be able
Speaker 1: to come up with some form of interstellar communications, So
Speaker 1: you have to multiply by one tent twice. And he
Speaker 1: called that middle of the road, meaning that you know,
Speaker 1: again there are different opinions on how likely this is.
Speaker 1: He considered that relatively conservative. And then he said, now
Speaker 1: you have to look at that length of time when
Speaker 1: such a civilization is active that would allow us to
Speaker 1: detect them, so that they would be active at a
Speaker 1: time when we would be able to right now find
Speaker 1: out about them. He says that would be the really
Speaker 1: limiting factor. He said that you know, Earth is an
Speaker 1: example of this. But despite tens of thousands of years
Speaker 1: humans have that humans have been on this planet, we
Speaker 1: have only really relatively recently harnessed radio, so just a
Speaker 1: few decades really, So in the grand uh amount of
Speaker 1: time that humans have been alive, we've only had a
Speaker 1: tiny little sliver of a window when we've actually been
Speaker 1: active with this radio technology. And in the same may
Speaker 1: be true for other civilizations. So he said that you know,
Speaker 1: you might have as little as one in one hundred millions,
Speaker 1: so one millions of a chance for that. So that
Speaker 1: was the last variable he filled in. Once you fill
Speaker 1: in all those numbers and multiple I'm altogether, you are
Speaker 1: left with the number of ten ten civilizations across the
Speaker 1: Milky Way galaxy that we could potentially detect, assuming they
Speaker 1: were close enough for us to be able to communicate
Speaker 1: with them on some meaningful way, which sounds really pessimistic,
Speaker 1: especially for Carl Sagan, for for someone who's generally optimistic,
Speaker 1: as he was, But he went on to say that
Speaker 1: you know, if if you if you play with that
Speaker 1: last number just a little bit, you could wind up
Speaker 1: with millions if possible civilizations. And some people have estimated millions,
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I think most of the estimates that I've
Speaker 1: seen are more around the ten thousand range. Issues I
Speaker 1: did see one that gave it to point zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero eight civilizations. So that's not even
Speaker 1: accounting for others. Yeah, that seems to account the fact
Speaker 1: that Earth is there. But but yeah, I I don't
Speaker 1: have all the numbers there to tell you exactly how
Speaker 1: that number was arrived at. But that was I think
Speaker 1: I think someone took a right turn in Albuquerque and
Speaker 1: in that in that equation. Well, as we've discussed um,
Speaker 1: part of the problem with this equation is is that
Speaker 1: as you move from the left to the right along
Speaker 1: the different variables that you have to plug in, your
Speaker 1: level of certainty decreases. So we we know pretty well,
Speaker 1: uh say, like the rate of star formation of the galaxy.
Speaker 1: We're learning a lot more right now about the number
Speaker 1: of those stars that have planets and the number of
Speaker 1: those planets detecting some and then we're extrapolating a lot
Speaker 1: from what we're detecting. But it seems to be bearing out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're learning a lot more. But once you get
Speaker 1: into stuff about the fraction of these planets on which
Speaker 1: life emerges, well, how do we know? So you have
Speaker 1: you have to just guess. In these cases, you have
Speaker 1: to use your intuitions and all that, But we get
Speaker 1: back to those ice cream feelings that we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. Yeah. Um, one of the things that might
Speaker 1: encourage us to be more conservative or some might use
Speaker 1: the word pessimistic in estimating those later numbers is something
Speaker 1: called the Fermi paradox. Yes, Fermis paradox. Yeah, this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is pretty simple, right, It's that if if this
Speaker 1: equation in fact suggests that there are potentially thousands of
Speaker 1: civilizations of intelligent creatures out there, you can sum it
Speaker 1: up in three words, where are they? Where is everybody?
Speaker 1: If they're supposed to be out there? But we haven't
Speaker 1: heard him, and he was talking about this before the
Speaker 1: Drake equation actually existed back in nineteen fifty. But right,
Speaker 1: it asks if extraterrestrials are so common, why haven't they visited,
Speaker 1: why haven't they communicated with us? Or why haven't they
Speaker 1: left behind some residue of their existence? And we would
Speaker 1: be able to pick up He actually went on to suggest, like,
Speaker 1: imagine this, and it's not difficult to imagine if you
Speaker 1: just look back at human history. So human history, we
Speaker 1: have this history of exploration and colonization, whether you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the ancient peoples and spreading out across
Speaker 1: the Earth, or the more relatively recent European expansions and colonization.
Speaker 1: We've got this history where we want to go and
Speaker 1: explore the world that we that is unfamiliar to us.
Speaker 1: And then uh claimant, so he says, well, it's it's
Speaker 1: not always so nice. Let's assume that there's at least
Speaker 1: one intelligent alien civilization that has the same sort of
Speaker 1: of of propensity for colonization, someone out there who does
Speaker 1: essentially the same sort of thing, but they can do
Speaker 1: it on an interstellar level, and it may take thousands
Speaker 1: of years for their civilization to spread, but as they spread,
Speaker 1: they spread into more vectors, so they'll colonize one world
Speaker 1: and then over time will branch out and start colonizing
Speaker 1: other worlds. And every world they colonize means that that's
Speaker 1: another base of operations from which they launch. And if
Speaker 1: you expand this out over the course of millions of years,
Speaker 1: then surely they would have reached a point of saturation
Speaker 1: where we would be able to detect them. And that
Speaker 1: sounds kind of crazy, but then you remember the universe
Speaker 1: is billions of years old, so a few tens of
Speaker 1: millions of years is nothing in the grand cosmological scheme
Speaker 1: of things. So if you were to think of it
Speaker 1: that way, then where are they? Yeah, So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of hypotheses to explain this question of, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, why aren't we detecting them? The most obvious
Speaker 1: one I think you should start with is they just
Speaker 1: detecting them because they're not out there. Nobody's home psychic bacteria.
Speaker 1: And so how would you explain this? Well, you could
Speaker 1: look at this equation and say, okay, so we know
Speaker 1: the problem is not in say like h R or FP,
Speaker 1: as in the stars that are forming or the number
Speaker 1: of planets that are out there. Right, We've got some
Speaker 1: data coming in on that, and we know pretty well
Speaker 1: that well, there's going to be enough of that. But
Speaker 1: once you get into those later variables, you say, it
Speaker 1: could be that one or more of those variables is zero. Right,
Speaker 1: It could be it could be that the number of
Speaker 1: plants that actually support life is very very very low,
Speaker 1: and then that on top of that, the plants that
Speaker 1: actually support life zero. Yeah. The so that would be
Speaker 1: known as the rare Earth hypothesis. It's the idea that
Speaker 1: Earth is actually even more special than we thought that.
Speaker 1: It's just this really really super lucky situation with just
Speaker 1: the right chemicals. If all plants are special, then no
Speaker 1: planets are I get you. Okay, well, okay, no, we
Speaker 1: know Earth is at least somewhat special. It's at least
Speaker 1: very special in our solar systeah, sure than one out
Speaker 1: of eight planets. I'm still calling Pluto a planet. I'm
Speaker 1: going one nine, Okay, but I mean we just know that, like,
Speaker 1: mercury ain't that special. It's just not very good. No,
Speaker 1: it's no offense to mercury, but it's kind of crappy
Speaker 1: down on mercury. So and and to be fair, a
Speaker 1: lot of the terrestrial planets that we have found out
Speaker 1: there so far have been um too too hot and
Speaker 1: too um black, lacking in atmosphere. I think things they
Speaker 1: do not appear to be capable of sustaining life as
Speaker 1: we are familiar with it. Okay, So that's that's like
Speaker 1: the rare Earth hypothesis. But maybe there are other things
Speaker 1: that could explain it. So maybe earthlike planets are pretty common,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, A biogenesis is just super rare.
Speaker 1: A biogenesis is the word that means life arising, So
Speaker 1: we know what's happened once it's here on Earth. Um,
Speaker 1: but we don't know how it happened, and we don't
Speaker 1: know how special it is. We don't know how rare
Speaker 1: that is. Right. It could be something that's fairly common
Speaker 1: given the kind of conditions our planet underwent, what four
Speaker 1: point five billion years ago or so, Or it could
Speaker 1: be something that's super super special and almost never happened.
Speaker 1: Or it could be that life happens all over the place,
Speaker 1: but intelligent life hardly ever evolves from it. So our
Speaker 1: galaxy could be full of planets that have bacteria but
Speaker 1: nothing with a brain. Right. Uh. And then beyond that,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, maybe intelligent life does exist out there,
Speaker 1: and that's fine and everything. Everything in that part of
Speaker 1: the equation up to that point is supportive. But then
Speaker 1: they like the radio. Well, it could be that humans.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really weird to think about this,
Speaker 1: and it makes us kind of, uh, a little more grandiose,
Speaker 1: I would say, But it could be that humans are
Speaker 1: the first intelligent race to hit that threshold. I think
Speaker 1: that highly unlikely, considering the relative youth of Earth and humans.
Speaker 1: But let's say that that's a possibility. Our sense of
Speaker 1: avoiding hubris kind of makes us not want to choose
Speaker 1: that position but can't. Or or perhaps that those those
Speaker 1: civilizations that also have it are too far away for us,
Speaker 1: like you were saying earlier, Joe, Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: that they're just too young for us to have detected.
Speaker 1: All right, I mean it's important to think. Maybe the
Speaker 1: number out there is not zero, but if it's sufficiently small. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Milky Way galaxy is a hundred thousand light years wide.
Speaker 1: I mean, what if they're watching skies for a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years? Right, So what if there are ten other
Speaker 1: civilizations is pretty low number. They are there, but they're
Speaker 1: on the other side of the galaxy. I mean that
Speaker 1: would mean they would have had to have been transmitting
Speaker 1: for a hundred thousand years. They might be chatting with
Speaker 1: each other quite a bit and just leaving us out
Speaker 1: of it. And we're just the unpopular kid in high
Speaker 1: school has to stand in the corner all the popular
Speaker 1: kids dance over there. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
Speaker 1: Some memories don't die anyway. Sorry. Well, and then the
Speaker 1: final variable is l Well, that flits into that fits
Speaker 1: into it at length of time. So let's say that,
Speaker 1: let's say that the length of time, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: the length of time just hasn't been sufficient enough for
Speaker 1: us to be able to detect them because they're too
Speaker 1: far away, and the speed of light, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, is the limiting factor. Now, some of the
Speaker 1: people who have estimated that the length of time a
Speaker 1: civilization transmits um is low. They've estimated this because they
Speaker 1: have feelings about civilizations destroying themselves, really negative feelings. It
Speaker 1: could be that, but it could also be that they
Speaker 1: don't want to transmit all that long, or they don't
Speaker 1: have the resources to do it, or perhaps even natural disasters.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could easily envision a planet that was
Speaker 1: even more bombarded by meteoroids than Earth is. Well, there
Speaker 1: was that one planet that was being pulled into its son,
Speaker 1: and so that one family sent their only son off
Speaker 1: to Earth in order to act as guardian. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about supermanager. That is a really bizarre way of communicating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty you think it would say? You think it's in
Speaker 1: a note first, and rather than just just eject them
Speaker 1: to Earth, consider this radio message the light to show
Speaker 1: you the way. See. Yeah, maybe maybe people are way
Speaker 1: into sending babies as communicators and not radio signals. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, because they travel at a slower than light speed,
Speaker 1: so we're still waiting on the babies. But it also
Speaker 1: to get back to what you were saying, there could
Speaker 1: be that sort of Star trek Uh concept of the
Speaker 1: prime directive, where so we assume that they want to
Speaker 1: contact us, they might not want to for for positive
Speaker 1: or negative reasons. We assume first of all that they're
Speaker 1: not paranoid. What if they are paranoid, I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be entirely reasonable for them to just kind of
Speaker 1: hold up and say we don't want to go messing
Speaker 1: around where we you know, don't know if we're gonna win,
Speaker 1: say in a conflict or something like that. Or it
Speaker 1: could be benevolent like the vulcans well, and it could
Speaker 1: very possibly be that again, that they have shifted to
Speaker 1: a different type of interstellar communication that we don't use
Speaker 1: and cannot detect. So radio waves is pretty is a
Speaker 1: pretty safe bet simply because it was it appears to
Speaker 1: have been kind of a building block along the way
Speaker 1: of learning how to communicate in an interstellar environment. But
Speaker 1: like we were saying, with lasers, that's a much more
Speaker 1: precise way of communicating. You have to have it lined
Speaker 1: up between laser and censor in order for you to
Speaker 1: be able to communicate. You know, you can't just fire
Speaker 1: a laser off into the sky and it it's meaningful
Speaker 1: in any way. So what if these uh, these intelligent
Speaker 1: civilizations have gone beyond where radio waves are and they're
Speaker 1: using something like lasers to communicate because it as allows
Speaker 1: them to have far more bandwidth than they would with radio. Well,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't necessarily pick up on that because they're communicating
Speaker 1: a very specific points among themselves, not necessarily shooting off
Speaker 1: rays at random directions hoping to hit something that could
Speaker 1: figure out what's going on. Yeah, it's entirely possible. And
Speaker 1: we also aren't even imagining all of the weird little
Speaker 1: technological trip ups that might be involved in this, uh
Speaker 1: in this filter. You know that that's creating this paradox. Uh.
Speaker 1: What if it's just that they are sending signals but
Speaker 1: we're not listening close enough to the right place. Sure, right,
Speaker 1: things that that people like Karl Saken and Drake were
Speaker 1: talking about, where that we are really only listening to
Speaker 1: any given section of the sky for a very short
Speaker 1: period of time, and so you know, and if we
Speaker 1: you know, what if they're broadcasting and then they turn
Speaker 1: it off and we tune in a second after that,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's when when you're working with these
Speaker 1: telescopes that, yes, are are tremendously powerful compared to what
Speaker 1: they were forty years ago. But but right you know,
Speaker 1: only a very small segment of the entire sky, yeah,
Speaker 1: much less the universe. Yeah. And and not only that,
Speaker 1: but think about if you've ever studied things like, you know,
Speaker 1: the Voyager spacecraft and how NASA has continued to retrieve
Speaker 1: data or receive really I should say received data from
Speaker 1: the Voyager spacecraft. Uh, they had they had to keep
Speaker 1: building bigger and bigger radar antenna arrays in order to
Speaker 1: detect that increasingly faint signal. So again, if the signals
Speaker 1: that are being sent out by these civilizations are faint,
Speaker 1: it may fade and so well with just background noise
Speaker 1: that we can't quite filter it out yet. Or what
Speaker 1: if they're broadcasting it is slightly different bandwidth then we're
Speaker 1: listening to. Yeah, I think we usually listen to a
Speaker 1: microwave frequency that we we judged would be a good
Speaker 1: one for them to transmit it on but um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they don't like that one. Yeah. Yeah, that's according
Speaker 1: to human people. And you know, are our sensory apparatus
Speaker 1: for listening to the universes is limited? Yeah, and again,
Speaker 1: like I said, we're having to extrapolate a lot just
Speaker 1: based upon our own experience because we can't we don't
Speaker 1: have anything else to compare it to. So if if
Speaker 1: some other civilization is significantly different enough from ours, that
Speaker 1: alone makes this incredibly complicated. Yeah. So since we talk
Speaker 1: about the future here, we thinking one thing I want
Speaker 1: to focus on is sort of how future discoveries, those
Speaker 1: that are going on right now and in the near
Speaker 1: future and maybe even in the far future, could affect
Speaker 1: the way we calculate the Drake equation? Are there ways
Speaker 1: that variables in the equation that are fuzzy to us
Speaker 1: right now could become much more clear The more we
Speaker 1: know about Earth, sure, I mean some of the more
Speaker 1: we know about Earth and the more we know about
Speaker 1: just our immediate surroundings. Yeah, As our methods of detecting
Speaker 1: other planets, other terrestrial planets, get better, um, we'll be
Speaker 1: able to see how many might be able to hold
Speaker 1: microbial life and then be able to perhaps maybe someday.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, how do we how do we
Speaker 1: test for life that isn't building pyramids or something like that,
Speaker 1: that's that's hundreds of light years away? Yeah, well, if
Speaker 1: if we just start with those planets, like say, um,
Speaker 1: when Frank Drake came up with this equation, they didn't
Speaker 1: know how how many of the stars out there had planets.
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't have a Kepler survey. Yet we
Speaker 1: still we still don't really know. We have we have
Speaker 1: some good data that gives us some some educated guesses,
Speaker 1: very strong educated guesses. But for as for direct direct
Speaker 1: evidence of uh, it's a relatively small number, but it's encouraging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're well, I think we're getting pretty good evidence that
Speaker 1: lots of stars have planets, but it certainly appears that way. Yes, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but then you know, how do we again, how do
Speaker 1: how do we detect life on this planets because we
Speaker 1: haven't even detected life elsewhere in our own solar system,
Speaker 1: which is a lot more accessible. Well, we can possibly
Speaker 1: do that through lots of spectral analysis and looking at
Speaker 1: the different atmospheres of plants based upon the color that
Speaker 1: we get back that can give us some indications. But
Speaker 1: also yeah, so if if a planet reflects back in
Speaker 1: a way that shows that it's atmosphere is composed primarily
Speaker 1: of oxygen, we seem to think that's something that happens
Speaker 1: when there's life, right, or perhaps even if we can
Speaker 1: watch something over the next couple of thousand years and
Speaker 1: see how you see how the atmosphere of these planets developed. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was also the chance that we might still find
Speaker 1: some evidence of life within our own solar system. Right, say,
Speaker 1: if we were to go to Jupiter's moon Europa and
Speaker 1: discover microbial life there. I mean that I think that
Speaker 1: would blow one of these variables out of the water.
Speaker 1: The idea that that life had arisen twice in our
Speaker 1: own solar system would be Well, if we knew that
Speaker 1: there was life on another planet in our own solar system,
Speaker 1: we would know that it is just it is just
Speaker 1: not that hard for life to arrive. Right. We would
Speaker 1: have to say, oh, okay, all right, all right, that's
Speaker 1: going to that makes that number larger in our estimation
Speaker 1: than it was before when we plug it into this equation. Right,
Speaker 1: So then we would have to think, well that that
Speaker 1: filtering variable probably needs to be one of the other ones. Then,
Speaker 1: So maybe it's that life is less likely to become
Speaker 1: intelligent or to develop radio technology, right, or to be
Speaker 1: around at the same time we're around. I think that's
Speaker 1: the big one. Um, there are here's another one to
Speaker 1: think about. Um, maybe more we discover about the evolution
Speaker 1: of the brain would help us understand better, Um, how
Speaker 1: likely it is that, say, microbial life, given enough time,
Speaker 1: will evolve into intelligent life. Right. Right, Because as much
Speaker 1: as we don't understand about the far reaches of space,
Speaker 1: we also don't understand a whole lot about our own
Speaker 1: bodies and especially those very delicate, very integral nervous systems
Speaker 1: that are that are making up what we consider to
Speaker 1: be intelligence. Right, And when you look at you know,
Speaker 1: even the sample size we do have, which again is Earth,
Speaker 1: that's all we've got. Uh, we only have one species
Speaker 1: that evolved into the type of intelligence capable of interstellar communication. No,
Speaker 1: but you have lots of species that evolved to have
Speaker 1: pretty complex brains. Sure, Sure, ones that you know, like
Speaker 1: like chimpanzees that that do have communication or um or
Speaker 1: or octopi or cuttle fish that in a very different
Speaker 1: way than we communicate, but do absolutely have a form
Speaker 1: of almost language proto language. I mean, you know, the
Speaker 1: exact definitions are a little bit shaky, but you know,
Speaker 1: these are these are creatures that recognize their reflection and
Speaker 1: and can respond to it. But if it if it
Speaker 1: doesn't ever reach the sophistication, Uh, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: for the Drake equation to work, we have to have
Speaker 1: it to the point where they can do interstellar communication,
Speaker 1: because it's just part of the equation. And unless you're
Speaker 1: going by Douglas Adams response to it, dolphins, dolphins cannot
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, but that's there's no telling that given
Speaker 1: them another you know, millions and millions of years, but
Speaker 1: they would not. Yeah, but there's no telling that they
Speaker 1: would either. So no, no, but but but also but also,
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about this this handful. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe less than ten species that we would consider even
Speaker 1: moderately intelligent on the planet. Out of how many billions,
Speaker 1: there's a lot there's still a lot of humans that
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily lump in with intelligent groups. So fair enough,
Speaker 1: that's that's a joke. Mostly you're not that anti social.
Speaker 1: But I got I got a family reunion, a human
Speaker 1: beings can build radios. It's really it's actually pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. Anyway, but yes, I agree that the the
Speaker 1: life variable I think could be tweaked down just and
Speaker 1: probably within our lifetimes. I would expect that to happen,
Speaker 1: or at least I'm optimistic that it will happen. The
Speaker 1: intelligent life. I'm hopeful that, you know, we could as
Speaker 1: we learn more about our brains and the brains of
Speaker 1: other species here on Earth, we might be able to
Speaker 1: draw more conclusions there. The last two variables, though, the
Speaker 1: one about being smart enough for interstellar communication and the
Speaker 1: amount of time, those are the two I think are
Speaker 1: going to be the longest holdouts. Um yeah. There have
Speaker 1: been people who have tried to mess with them to
Speaker 1: to try to inform those variables better. Uh. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Michael Shermer, the skeptic writer and magazine publisher. In two
Speaker 1: thousand two he published an article in Um Scientific American
Speaker 1: where he tried to say, look, we can get a
Speaker 1: pretty good average of the length of time UM that
Speaker 1: we should factor into l by looking at all of
Speaker 1: the civilizations through Earth's history and sort of averaging out
Speaker 1: how long each civilization survived before it's collapse. Um. But
Speaker 1: then I read some criticisms of his piece, and Um,
Speaker 1: while Michael Michael Sherman has written a lot of good stuff,
Speaker 1: I think some of the criticisms of this piece were
Speaker 1: valid because he was looking at, you know, the length
Speaker 1: of time of Chinese civilizations and South American civilizations and
Speaker 1: Rome and African empires and all that, And what you
Speaker 1: think all of these had in common is they didn't
Speaker 1: have radio, so yeah, and they were and they were
Speaker 1: localized civilizations. They weren't a global civilizations. I would argue,
Speaker 1: we have these days, right, So it may be that
Speaker 1: there's something fundamentally different about the length of time ah
Speaker 1: an interstellar communicating civilization lasts as opposed to all these
Speaker 1: empires throughout history. Well. Yeah, and it also again assumes
Speaker 1: that that's some form of you know, almost like a
Speaker 1: universal law that civilization can expect to last X number
Speaker 1: of years. But that's completely based on on just the
Speaker 1: human history, and we simply don't know anything about any
Speaker 1: any extraterrestrial civilizations. If there are any, we don't know
Speaker 1: enough to be able to say the human experience at
Speaker 1: all relates to their experience. Yeah, And again it's assuming
Speaker 1: that as long as a civilization is capable of transmitting it,
Speaker 1: will you know that's not necessarily the case either. Now
Speaker 1: I think you know, it sounds like we're being fairly
Speaker 1: critical here. Uh we didn't make a joke of the
Speaker 1: Drake equation, although some people have a right Yeah. X
Speaker 1: K C. D Um published a comic that said that
Speaker 1: the the unspoken variable here is how how much? What?
Speaker 1: What was your word? What was your word? Bullpucky? Bullpucky?
Speaker 1: You're willing to accept from from Mr Frank Drake. Dr
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that word is offensive. I don't remember where
Speaker 1: I heard. No, No, it's I mean, it doesn't offend me.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with it, all right. So anyway, that being
Speaker 1: the big joke that the unspoken variable is how much
Speaker 1: bullpucky can you take from Frank Drake before you just
Speaker 1: give up on that equation? Uh? Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thought experiment at the very least, and hopefully
Speaker 1: before too long it will go beyond thought experiment to
Speaker 1: something where it's actually applicable as we get more information
Speaker 1: about the universe around us. As I always say, learning
Speaker 1: is just it's just something I can continuously get excited about.
Speaker 1: So I think uh, you know, the future is a
Speaker 1: is a bright one, really, and I expect that there
Speaker 1: will come a time where humans will be in contact
Speaker 1: with some other form of intelligent life out there. I
Speaker 1: doubt that I'll be around to see it, unless I'm
Speaker 1: a head in a jar at that point, but I
Speaker 1: do hope it happens, which we all aspire to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, if anyone is putting heads in jars
Speaker 1: and keeping them alive a very important part of that.
Speaker 1: I want to stress that part of the bad equation,
Speaker 1: I can help you to your all. Right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: wrap this up, guys, this has been a fun conversation.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed it. If you've been enjoying the podcast,
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