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

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you,

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Speaker 2: one of our favorite guests. Back with us, Seth Jeff

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Speaker 2: Stack directing the search for extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute

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Speaker 2: in California, trying to find evidence of intelligent life in space.

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Speaker 2: He is also committed to get into the public, especially

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Speaker 2: young people excited about astrobiology and science in general. A

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Speaker 2: couple of his books include Life in the Universe, Confessions

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Speaker 2: of an Alien Hunter, Cosmic Company, Sharing the Universe, Perspectives

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Speaker 2: on extraterrestrial life. Seth, welcome back. How are you just

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Speaker 2: find George?

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Speaker 3: And it's great to talk with you again.

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Speaker 2: It's in a long time, my god. But how many

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Speaker 2: years we've been doing this now?

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm not so sure of, but I think one

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Speaker 3: of the first times I spoke to you, I was

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Speaker 3: found at the Arecibo Radio Observatory, you know, using the

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Speaker 3: big dish there to try and eavesdrop on et. And

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Speaker 3: my gosh, that's at least twenty years ago.

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Speaker 2: At least I was doing my local show in Saint

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Speaker 2: Louis at the time.

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Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.

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Speaker 2: That would have probably made it around ninety six, ninety seven.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that could be. I was around. I was around.

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Speaker 3: It shocks me to say that when I think of

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Speaker 3: how long ago it was.

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Speaker 2: Is there a sebull functioning at all anymore?

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't know that they're using it. I honestly,

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Speaker 3: that's a very good question for which I have a

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Speaker 3: last no answer. But you know, anybody can do a

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Speaker 3: quick search to see if they are. They had problems

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Speaker 3: because you know, the parts of the dish collapsed and

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Speaker 3: so forth, and the problem was to fix it. Well,

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Speaker 3: let me back up a moment. A piece of the

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Speaker 3: antenna actually came loose and it dropped through the reflecting

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Speaker 3: dish underneath, you know, creating a big hole and a

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Speaker 3: lot of damage. And the estimate was that it was

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Speaker 3: going to cost you know, many millions of dollars to

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Speaker 3: fix that, And okay, many millions is not so much.

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Speaker 3: But you know, many of the people involved figured, look,

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Speaker 3: instead of spending that money fixing arecibo, why don't we

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Speaker 3: use that money to build something else. So I don't

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Speaker 3: know what's going to happen.

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Speaker 2: Tell us about the late Frank Drake and how this

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Speaker 2: all started.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Frank Drake, Frank Drake, whom I usually referred to

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Speaker 3: as the world's last nice guy. Unfortunately he's gone now,

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Speaker 3: so you know there are no more nice guys, I guess.

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Speaker 3: But he was a guy who actually had studied radio

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Speaker 3: astronomy at Harvard and he got a postdoc position at

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Speaker 3: the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Okay,

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Speaker 3: that's a lot of words, but it was an observatory

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Speaker 3: that had a lot of big antennas and some new ones.

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Speaker 3: And the director of the observatory, guy by the name

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Speaker 3: of Otto's Roof. He met this guy, Frank Drake, the

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Speaker 3: new kid. He was twenty nine, thirty years old. Something

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Speaker 3: I got and he said, look, here are some new antennas.

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Speaker 3: Think of something to do with them. And Frank, it was,

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Speaker 3: you know, a very smart guy. He thought, instead of

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Speaker 3: using it to study galaxies or gas in the Milky

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Speaker 3: Way or stuff like that, he thought, why don't I

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Speaker 3: try an eavesdrop on signals that maybe aliens are broadcasting.

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Speaker 3: And that was the start of the whole SETI discipline

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Speaker 3: began with Frank Drake. That was back in nineteen sixty and.

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Speaker 2: Since the beginning of SETI, have you heard strange anomaly signals?

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Speaker 3: We hear signals all the time, George, I wish I

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Speaker 3: could tell you that we heard a signal that, you know,

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Speaker 3: looked like it might be what we're really looking for,

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Speaker 3: which is of course a signal broadcast by some aliens.

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Speaker 3: But we have not. And you know, what can you

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Speaker 3: say about that one? Maybe it just means there aren't

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Speaker 3: any aliens. I don't believe that. I don't think you

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Speaker 3: believe that. I don't think anybody believes that. The other possibility,

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Speaker 3: of course, is you're not pointing the intent in the

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Speaker 3: right direction, you're not tuned to the right frequency. You know,

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Speaker 3: maybe you don't have enough sensitivity. There are lots of ways.

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Speaker 3: There could be plenty of radio traffic in the space,

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Speaker 3: but you could still miss it. So that kind of

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Speaker 3: an experiment continues today. We continue to hope to find

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Speaker 3: a signal that would tell us, essentially overnight, that we're

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Speaker 3: not alone.

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Speaker 2: What are the possibilities, seth that their technology is way

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Speaker 2: advanced and they don't even use the kind of technology

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Speaker 2: we still use to pick up these signals.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's a legitimate point, and Actually, I've

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Speaker 3: heard it from a lot of people. Say, you guys,

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Speaker 3: you know you're looking for radio signals or radio. I mean,

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Speaker 3: come on, the aliens are way beyond all that. Well,

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Speaker 3: you know this may be comforting to you being in

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Speaker 3: the radio business, but radio will never be obsolete because

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Speaker 3: it's just a good way to send information from one

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Speaker 3: place to another, particularly if you're talking about one place

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Speaker 3: in the cosmos to another place in the cosmos. So

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Speaker 3: you know, there's always going to be radio. I mean,

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Speaker 3: it doesn't mean it has the same youth. Maybe they're

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Speaker 3: not broadcasting top forty or anything like that, but radio

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Speaker 3: will always be used. And you know that's what we

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Speaker 3: look for because radio radio signals just go right through space.

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Speaker 3: They're unhindered by the fact that there's a lot of

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Speaker 3: gas and dust between the stars.

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Speaker 2: How does the universe make sounds anyways.

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Speaker 3: Well, universe doesn't make terribly many sounds. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 3: you can go out into space and take off your

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Speaker 3: spacesuit if you really want to do that and take

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Speaker 3: a listen. You won't hear much. But there are things

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Speaker 3: that do make sounds. Actually, some of the activity, for instance,

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Speaker 3: on the Sun, these big flares and so works. Now,

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Speaker 3: they undoubtedly make some audio, but you'd have to be

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Speaker 3: very close to the sun hear them. Remember, you only

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Speaker 3: hear things, you know in your daily life because we've

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Speaker 3: got an atmosphere on Earth, and the atmosphere, you know,

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Speaker 3: the air actually allows sound waves to go through it,

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Speaker 3: so you know, it conducts the sound from wherever it's

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Speaker 3: being made to your ear. So somebody honks their car

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Speaker 3: behind you, you know that sound wave goes through the

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Speaker 3: air between that car and you. But in space there's

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Speaker 3: not too much air, so they could honk and you

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Speaker 3: wouldn't hear them.

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Speaker 2: Instead of using any kind of new technology these days.

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean there's always I don't know that there's

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Speaker 3: any radically new technology, but there are always new technological approaches.

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Speaker 3: One of the things, I mean, we could even talk

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Speaker 3: about it, but that's being tried, is to kind of

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Speaker 3: pickyback on other kinds of radio observations of the sky.

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Speaker 3: The sky is often being studied in the radio part

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Speaker 3: of the spectrum because you can learn a lot about

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Speaker 3: things like that quays, are as, pelsars, even planets and

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Speaker 3: things like that. They all make some sort of natural

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Speaker 3: radio emission. But you could also you know, tap off

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Speaker 3: a bit of that signal and analoge it and see

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Speaker 3: if there are any signals in there that are not

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Speaker 3: made by nature but are made by you know, et

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Speaker 3: So that is being done.

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Speaker 2: Oh, tell us about artificial intelligence and how SETI is

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Speaker 2: using that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, artificial intelligence. I mean I kind of figured

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Speaker 3: that the aliens will be examples of artificial intelligence. I

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Speaker 3: think we've talked about this in the past, but occasionally

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Speaker 3: get asked, you know, well, what do you think the

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Speaker 3: aliens will look like? You know, they're going to be short,

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Speaker 3: little green guys or whatever, hairless, you know, no clothes,

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Speaker 3: no names, that kind of thing. Well, actually, when you

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Speaker 3: think about, you know, what might replace almost sapiens on

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Speaker 3: this planet, not not next week, but say one hundred

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Speaker 3: thousand years from now, will we still be this same

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Speaker 3: species we are now or will we have invented machines

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Speaker 3: that are better than we are. We upload everything we

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Speaker 3: know to the machines and they essentially take our place

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Speaker 3: on this planet. I don't know if you like that idea.

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Speaker 3: I'm not sure I like that idea, but uh, but

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Speaker 3: it might happen, and you can assume that the kind

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Speaker 3: of aliens you might overhear have already done that. So

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Speaker 3: maybe which you'll actually hear is not little soft squishe guys,

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Speaker 3: but machines.

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Speaker 2: I've always thought that the reports of extraterrestrials that people

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Speaker 2: think they see on this planet might be robots as well.

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Speaker 2: Is that possible, Well, it's possible.

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Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we use robots a lot. I

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Speaker 3: mean when I say robots, most people think of the

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Speaker 3: sort of humanoid looking robot, the kind of thing that

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Speaker 3: might I don't know, change the tire on your car

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Speaker 3: if they were good at that, which I think in

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Speaker 3: general they're not. But you know, we think of the

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Speaker 3: robots that kind of look like us, but actually most

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Speaker 3: of the robots don't look anything like us. Are the

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Speaker 3: kind of robots that put together your car, for example, right,

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Speaker 3: They're very specialized kinds of robots. And you know, one

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Speaker 3: of the big advantages of robots is that they don't

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Speaker 3: insist on, for example, round trip tickets. If you send

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Speaker 3: them into space, you can send them on a one

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Speaker 3: way ticket and you won't get any complaints.

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Speaker 2: And they don't eat, they don't drink water, they don't

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Speaker 2: have to worry about that exactly.

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Speaker 3: You don't need all that life support stuff. So you know,

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Speaker 3: there's probably a lot of robots around, and it could

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Speaker 3: be that if we actually encounter the aliens, well, just

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Speaker 3: as you say, we may in fact just encounter their hardware.

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Speaker 2: How did you get interested in all this sets you're

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Speaker 2: an astronomer or by trade, right, yeah.

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Speaker 3: I am. I am. Well, it was because you know,

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Speaker 3: when I was a kid, which was back before the

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Speaker 3: Crimean War. When I was a kid, I was very

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Speaker 3: interested in astronomy, you know, I had picked up some

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Speaker 3: books and so forth, and then eventually, by the age

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Speaker 3: of ten, I built some sort of telescope that kind

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Speaker 3: of thing. So I was interested in that. But I

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Speaker 3: was also interested in aliens, George. And that's because on

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Speaker 3: the weekends I went to see these sci fi films

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Speaker 3: were they were making back then, the kind of cheesy

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Speaker 3: sci fi films, but they very often had aliens in them, right,

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Speaker 3: because he needed a bad guy, and the big advantage

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Speaker 3: of using aliens as bad guys is that nobody will complain, right,

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Speaker 3: nobody's going to defend the aliens, so they would be

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Speaker 3: pretty bad. They would just you know, sort of try

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Speaker 3: and flatten earth and kill everybody, and that kind of thing,

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Speaker 3: so I, you know, got interested in aliens that way.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to throw out an old movie that my

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Speaker 2: dad took me to and I guarantee it. I'll bet

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Speaker 2: money that you know the title when I say it,

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Speaker 2: the Mysterians.

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Speaker 3: I don't know it.

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Speaker 2: It was a japan There was a Japanese movie of

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Speaker 2: ets coming here doing exactly what you said to try

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Speaker 2: to eliminate us. But the movie was called The Mysterians,

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Speaker 2: and he brought me to it. I must have been

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Speaker 2: about six or seven years old. Scared the living daylights

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Speaker 2: out of me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I had the same kind of a reaction to

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Speaker 3: these films. They mostly scared me, and yet I insisted

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Speaker 3: on going. In fact, if I saw one of these

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Speaker 3: films that night, you know, at home, I would be

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Speaker 3: vomiting all night. I was really sick. I was so scared,

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Speaker 3: and I think, you know, two weeks later, there'd be

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Speaker 3: another film and I'd want to go to it, and

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Speaker 3: my mother would say, look, why do you want to

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Speaker 3: go see that film. It's only going to make you sick.

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Speaker 3: And I said, well, look mom, I just have to

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Speaker 3: see these things.

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Speaker 2: So I went, if we do get a message from

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Speaker 2: outer space, would it be a message that might have

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Speaker 2: been sent to us directly, or do you think it

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Speaker 2: was some kind of old broadcast from the universe from

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Speaker 2: a long time ago.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, of course you can't say until you pick up,

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Speaker 3: you know, the signal. My guess is that were more

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Speaker 3: likely to find a signal that was not intended forced, right,

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Speaker 3: because if they wanted to send a signal to us directly,

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Speaker 3: you know, attention all humans, we wanted to tell you this,

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Speaker 3: or maybe we want to sell you something or whatever,

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Speaker 3: they would need to know about us. And it's not

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Speaker 3: so easy to know about Homo sapiens. If you're a

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Speaker 3: bunch of aliens on a planet that's one hundred light

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Speaker 3: years away, right, you're not going to know. So I

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Speaker 3: think it's more likely, but this is just a guess,

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Speaker 3: of course, more likely that we'll pick up a signal

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Speaker 3: that's you know, just sort of radio traffic for whatever

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Speaker 3: purpose the aliens have for that kind of communication, and

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Speaker 3: that means we probably won't understand it. But on the

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Speaker 3: other hand, we'd at least know somebody's out there.

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Speaker 2: With Seth Shostak from the City Institute search for Extraterrestrial

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Speaker 2: Intelligence Seth tell us about the WOW signal. When did

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Speaker 2: that pop up? And what was that?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I've kind of forgot when it was. It

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Speaker 3: was in the nineteen seventies, but in any case, it

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Speaker 3: was picked up by a big antenna in the Midwest.

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Speaker 3: You know about the Midwest.

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Speaker 2: George, Oh, yeah, that's where I am right now.

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Speaker 3: Are you really okay? Yeah? This was picked up I

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Speaker 3: think at the Ohio State They had a big antenna.

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Speaker 3: It's gone now, but they used it for radio astronomy.

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Speaker 3: But they also, you know, would just use it to

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Speaker 3: scan the whole sky or as much of the sky

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Speaker 3: as you could see from Ohio and you know, trying

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Speaker 3: to pick up a signal that would tell us that

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Speaker 3: somebody out there has a transmitter. And the output of

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Speaker 3: this antenna and the receivers and all that stuff was

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Speaker 3: directed to what was called a line printer. And there

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Speaker 3: are unduly people in the audience who remember line printers.

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Speaker 3: That's the way you got output from your computer. You

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Speaker 3: don't do that very much anymore. But it was just

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Speaker 3: this big, very expensive printer that could print you know,

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Speaker 3: one hundred lines a minute or maybe a south and

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Speaker 3: you know, it would just print out numbers and that

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Speaker 3: was you know what was coming out of the computer.

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Speaker 3: In any case, there was a guy that worked there,

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Speaker 3: guy the name of Jerry Amen, and he would come

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Speaker 3: in every couple of days to this little shack next

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Speaker 3: to the antenna where this big printer was, you know,

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Speaker 3: printing out whatever signals are coming into that thing. And

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Speaker 3: you know, in general, it was just a noise. I mean,

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Speaker 3: it wasn't anything terribly interesting. But one day he came

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Speaker 3: in and it was this big signal and he wrote

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Speaker 3: wow next to it, and so ever after it was

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Speaker 3: called the Wow signal. The sad thing is that maybe

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Speaker 3: that was et, but nobody was ever able to find

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Speaker 3: that Wow signal again. It was never seen a second time.

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Speaker 3: And I got to tell you that that's kind of

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Speaker 3: like seeing a ghost in your attic, right, but only once.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, for radio stations, if you're on a

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Speaker 2: fifty thousand wats AM station, you go a little farther

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Speaker 2: than you would if you're on a different watted station.

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Speaker 2: In radio waves that go off into space, whether we

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Speaker 2: send them or they come to us, do they ever

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Speaker 2: die off or just simply run out of energy and

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Speaker 2: they just stop moving?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, they don't take vacations and they don't really die off.

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Speaker 3: What happens is they just get weaker with distance. Right,

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Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know, if you could go up

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Speaker 3: to the moon with a flashlight and just aim that

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Speaker 3: flashlight at the sky and you know, turn it on

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Speaker 3: whatever that beam of light. You know, if you're fairly

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Speaker 3: close to it, you can easily see it. But as

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Speaker 3: you get farther and farther away from it, of course,

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Speaker 3: the light becomes dimmer. And it's the same with radio waves,

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Speaker 3: and you know, all of a sudden, they never stop.

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Speaker 3: It isn't that they sort of give up the ghosts

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Speaker 3: after traveling a million miles, but they are possibly so

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Speaker 3: weak that you couldn't you know, really pick them up

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Speaker 3: with any kind of equipment that we have.

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Speaker 2: And is a radio wave of traveling at the speed

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Speaker 2: of light, isn't it?

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Speaker 3: It is? Yeah, radio wave is just another formal lay right.

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Speaker 2: That's intriguing, it really is. Since we began broadcasting in

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Speaker 2: this country, in this world, our signals could be millions

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Speaker 2: of trillions of miles out there by now.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they're moving at the speed of light, so

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Speaker 3: that's about one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second.

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Speaker 3: So every second, the signals are that much farther out

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Speaker 3: into space, and that means that you know, early television broadcasts,

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Speaker 3: for example, beginning in the late nineteen forties and the

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifties, and those signals are like sixty seventy light

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Speaker 3: years out. That's a long distance. A light year is

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Speaker 3: like six trillion miles, so you know, it's like sixty

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Speaker 3: times that, and that means that those signals have actually

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Speaker 3: reached undoubtedly many planets in our galaxy. Now, whether anybody's

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Speaker 3: watching that stuff, I mean, obviously we don't know. Nobody's

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Speaker 3: complained about the programming yet, but maybe they will eventually.

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Speaker 2: Maybe they'll call in one day on the show.

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Speaker 3: Huh, they might do that. Yes, is the.

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Speaker 2: Orson Wells wore the world's type program of possibility that

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Speaker 2: the wrong type of ets could show up.

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Speaker 3: Well, I have to say, George, I'm a big fan

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Speaker 3: of The War of the World's in particular the movie.

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Speaker 3: There was a movie made in nineteen I think it

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Speaker 3: was nineteen fifty three. Yeah, War the World's End. You know,

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Speaker 3: the Aliens come down and they used their machines to

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Speaker 3: flatten Los Angeles, Yeah, flat in Los Angeles, right, And

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Speaker 3: of course I wasn't living in Los Angeles at the time,

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Speaker 3: but when I saw this on the screen, I thought, well,

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Speaker 3: I mean, it's only Los Angeles, right, It isn't that

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Speaker 3: they've done anything really terrible, like flattening Trenton, New Jersey

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Speaker 3: or something like that. But in fact, you know that

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Speaker 3: idea was based on events that were actually happening on

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Speaker 3: Earth that you know, wells converted to this format in which,

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Speaker 3: you know, he kind of he packaged this story in

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Speaker 3: terms of a battle between societies there are on different

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Speaker 3: planets and so on. But the whole premise that aliens

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Speaker 3: might want to flatten you know, Los Angeles and everything

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Speaker 3: else here on Earth. I mean, nobody knows what they

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Speaker 3: find interesting to do, but it's not clear to me

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Speaker 3: why they would want to do that, because what's in

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Speaker 3: it for them? I mean, you know, they go out

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Speaker 3: and flatten Earth, well, you know, how do they benefit

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Speaker 3: from that? I think they would probably find it more

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Speaker 3: interesting to try and establish some sort of communication with us.

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