Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and gather ye round because I am about
Speaker 1: to tell a tale of space. Ah well, let's do
Speaker 1: it of space and discovery. So on October nineteenth of
Speaker 1: this year, of a telescope on a mountain in Hawaii
Speaker 1: caught sight of something very strange passing through the sky.
Speaker 1: The telescope was the pan STARS one, which stands for
Speaker 1: Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System and it's part
Speaker 1: of the High Altitude Observatory on holliakla of Volcano on
Speaker 1: the island of Maui. Robert, have you been to Hawaii?
Speaker 1: I've never been. Yes, I have been once in the
Speaker 1: past and actually looking to go back this year. Can
Speaker 1: did you climb a volcano? I went into a volcano.
Speaker 1: I mean I went to Volcano National Park on the
Speaker 1: Big Island, burned alive and it was reborn. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so picture yourself up on one of these, you know,
Speaker 1: Gravelly big craters, the Big Shield volcano. And so the
Speaker 1: pan stars program is a system of telescopes, cameras, computers
Speaker 1: that are designed to monitor the sky continuously for signs
Speaker 1: of variable objects. Now, there might be new discoveries of
Speaker 1: near Earth asteroids or comets, or there might be like
Speaker 1: small minor moons of big planets like Jupiter Saturn that
Speaker 1: they discover, or they might be looking at other features
Speaker 1: of the sky that move or change over time. And
Speaker 1: on October nineteenth, pan Stars one caught a glimpse of
Speaker 1: something that was indeed moving incredibly fast. Immediately they enlisted
Speaker 1: the help of other observatories like E. S O S
Speaker 1: very large telescope in Chile. And at first what the
Speaker 1: scientists thought they saw with a comet. Now, to remind
Speaker 1: you on basic Solar system geology, and asteroid is a
Speaker 1: small object made of primarily rock and metal, and a
Speaker 1: comet is a small object made primarily of dust and ice.
Speaker 1: And asteroids were generally formed closer to the Sun where
Speaker 1: volatile compounds like H two O would melt or evaporate,
Speaker 1: and comets were generally formed farther away from the Sun
Speaker 1: where water would freeze. So they have this new object,
Speaker 1: they think it's probably a comet. And because they thought
Speaker 1: it was a comet. It got the designated designation see
Speaker 1: slash you one see for comet. So the scientists who
Speaker 1: discovered it enlisted the help of other of other telescopes
Speaker 1: and other scientists, and analysis revealed the path of the object,
Speaker 1: and it was a truly unique one. Pretty Much everything
Speaker 1: in our Solar System orbits on a relatively flat plane,
Speaker 1: and that's because most of the stuff in the Solar
Speaker 1: System was formed out of the same original stellar accretion
Speaker 1: disk four and a half to five billion years ago.
Speaker 1: If you make a model of the movement of objects
Speaker 1: in the Solar System, the angle of their orbital tilt
Speaker 1: with respect to the reference plane of Earth's orbit is
Speaker 1: known as their orbital inclination. Now, most planets are within
Speaker 1: just a few degrees of us. All the planets are
Speaker 1: relatively flat, except Pluto. Pluto is a good bit more
Speaker 1: tilted than the others, with an inclination of a little
Speaker 1: over seventeen degrees, so it's sort of tipped like a hat.
Speaker 1: But the inclination of this new object, discovered in October
Speaker 1: is off the charts. It is a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: three degrees according to the JPL data on it. That
Speaker 1: means if you were to look at a model of
Speaker 1: the Solar System lying flat on a table with all
Speaker 1: the orbits, you know, they're they're flat down on the surface.
Speaker 1: This thing would be approaching the system from above, not
Speaker 1: quite straight down, but close to it, sort of dive
Speaker 1: bombing right through the middle of our galactic neighborhood. Now,
Speaker 1: you might normally see that kind of orbital inclination in
Speaker 1: long period comets originating in the Ort cloud, but not
Speaker 1: in planets or asteroids, whose orbits are generally pretty flat.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing to wonder. You're you're imagining this
Speaker 1: thing dive bombing down into the Solar System. Where did
Speaker 1: it cross the plane right? Was it somewhere out near Jupiter? Nope,
Speaker 1: it was booking right past the Sun. This object pierced
Speaker 1: inside the orbit of Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun,
Speaker 1: passing within twenty of the distance between the Sun and
Speaker 1: the Earth. So it was less than a quarter of
Speaker 1: one astronomical unit. And of course, when you pass that
Speaker 1: close to the Sun, the Sun's massive gravity, well really
Speaker 1: takes a bite out of your trajectory. And so because
Speaker 1: they knew that this had happened, the scientists were able
Speaker 1: to construct a model of the object's path. Now, if
Speaker 1: you look at some of these maps of what the
Speaker 1: objects path looked like zoomed into the scale of the
Speaker 1: inner Solar System, it looks sort of like the object
Speaker 1: barrels past the Sun and then begins to bend in
Speaker 1: its trajectory like a bow. But if you zoom way
Speaker 1: out to a map the scale of the orbit of Neptune, say,
Speaker 1: the trajectory suddenly looks instead like a giant letter V.
Speaker 1: It's straight down to the Sun, sharp turn, then straight
Speaker 1: back out of the Solar System, as if it's slingshotted
Speaker 1: off of the Sun. Yeah. Now, you might see other
Speaker 1: comets with like largely eccentric orbits. You know, a comet
Speaker 1: has an eccentric orbit when it's not very circular, when
Speaker 1: it's like this crazy oval shape that comes really close
Speaker 1: to the Sun and then goes way far back out
Speaker 1: into space. Um. But you don't usually see this kind
Speaker 1: of shape. So so once you know how close it
Speaker 1: recently passed to the Sun, you should know something else
Speaker 1: about it. If it were a comet, you'd expect to
Speaker 1: see what commentary activity he would expect to see it
Speaker 1: acting like a comet. The tail of the comet for instance. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a comet is made of volatile stuff. It's made
Speaker 1: of gas and dust and water, um, and so it's
Speaker 1: frozen into this dirty snowball, this chunk of ice. And
Speaker 1: when a comet gets close to the sun, it starts
Speaker 1: to warm up and thaw out. And for a comet,
Speaker 1: of course, warming up and thaw out in tails, the
Speaker 1: release of gas and dust, uh, the coma, you know,
Speaker 1: the cloud of this haze of dust and gas that
Speaker 1: surrounds the comets nucleus. And then as you mentioned, the tails.
Speaker 1: Actually two types of tails can show up, the you know,
Speaker 1: the dust tail dragging behind the comet, and the gas
Speaker 1: or the ion tail being blown away from the Sun
Speaker 1: by the solar wind. So we've got this weird trajectory
Speaker 1: on this crazy commet. And they look for the commentary
Speaker 1: activity to look for the tail. They look for the coma,
Speaker 1: the gas, the dust, nothing. Astronomers didn't see any of it.
Speaker 1: They found that it was pretty much completely inert with
Speaker 1: no dust or anything around it. So whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it was not made of ice and dust, and so
Speaker 1: it wasn't a comet. So instead they decided to reclassify
Speaker 1: this I think was about a week after the discovery
Speaker 1: or so, so this would still be like late oct
Speaker 1: over probably they reclassified it as an asteroid a slash
Speaker 1: you won. Now earlier we mentioned this thing was moving
Speaker 1: really fast. How fast is that? Well, at its fastest,
Speaker 1: this would be when it was sling shotting right around
Speaker 1: the Sun at its parahelion on September nine of this year.
Speaker 1: So they were able to sort of like take what
Speaker 1: they knew about it and chart the back course that
Speaker 1: had come from. They didn't see it at this point,
Speaker 1: but they knew what it had done by modeling it.
Speaker 1: At this point, it was going a hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: six thousand miles per hour or eight seven point three
Speaker 1: kilometers per second. That is pretty fast. And looking at
Speaker 1: this speed and at the angle of its trajectory compared
Speaker 1: to other objects like long period comets, you start to
Speaker 1: notice something different. Most objects that passed near the Sun
Speaker 1: bend around the Sun in this elliptical path, indicating they
Speaker 1: might go way back out into deep space and they
Speaker 1: might have this really great orbital eccentricity, but you give
Speaker 1: them long enough and they'll be back to pass around
Speaker 1: the Sun again. They're locked in orbit this new object,
Speaker 1: no dice, no orbit. It came from deep space, bent
Speaker 1: around the gravity well of our Sun, and then left
Speaker 1: for deep space again, and it won't be coming back.
Speaker 1: What I'm reminded of are these videos that you see
Speaker 1: of streakers taking to a major sporting event, you know,
Speaker 1: where they just make a bee line onto the field
Speaker 1: and then they're almost immediately chased off the field or tackled.
Speaker 1: In this case, the streaker was not tackled, but got
Speaker 1: in did this, put on their phenomenal show, and made
Speaker 1: a break from it. Yeah, it's perfect. It's a space streaker. Now,
Speaker 1: when you have an orbital path like this, or I
Speaker 1: guess it's not an orbital path, Normally an orbital path,
Speaker 1: you'd have some kind of elliptical pattern, but this is
Speaker 1: what's known as a hyperbolic trajectory. It forms a hyperbola,
Speaker 1: so it's not gonna loop back around. It just bends
Speaker 1: around and then goes off on its own way. So
Speaker 1: scientists have realized that that makes this object totally unique
Speaker 1: in the history of astronomy. This is the first definite
Speaker 1: confirmed sighting of an interstellar object in our Solar System.
Speaker 1: It's from somewhere else and Thus, instead of being a
Speaker 1: slash you one and we'll get to a better name
Speaker 1: in a minute, it became one I seen you won
Speaker 1: I for interstellar. This object ripping through our Solar system
Speaker 1: came from deep interstellar space, and before that it almost
Speaker 1: definitely came from another star. And we've never seen anything
Speaker 1: like this before. Now, of course, the important caveat here
Speaker 1: is is we have never seen it right. And then,
Speaker 1: of course we have to take into account the very
Speaker 1: small portion of time during which humans have been observing
Speaker 1: the cosmos with this degree of detail exactly right, And
Speaker 1: there might be other objects like this that have passed
Speaker 1: before us, even when we've had telescopes. We just didn't
Speaker 1: catch them. Because this thing is very small and very
Speaker 1: far away and moving very fast, and the direction that
Speaker 1: it's moving very fast in is currently a retreat from Earth.
Speaker 1: So it came kind of close to us, and now
Speaker 1: it's going and in within some short amount of time
Speaker 1: our telescopes won't be able to see it anymore. I
Speaker 1: think one of the amazing things about this story is
Speaker 1: that it's exciting on the astronomer astronomer level, Like like
Speaker 1: astronomers and scientists are excited about this, Uh, this ongoing study,
Speaker 1: and uh, outside commentators, um, the science media and beyond
Speaker 1: are also excited about it, but all for good reason,
Speaker 1: Like like, it's not some sort of like geeky level
Speaker 1: of astronomy excitement that one would need to be just
Speaker 1: really in depth in the field to get. And it's
Speaker 1: not something that the journalists have to blow out of
Speaker 1: proportion in order to to to make extremely fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it gets weirder. It's gonna get weirder. I think
Speaker 1: we should take a break and then when we come
Speaker 1: back we can discuss in what ways it gets weirder
Speaker 1: than Alright, we're back. So first the good news. We
Speaker 1: don't have to keep calling it the objects that we'll
Speaker 1: probably use that a little bit. And we definitely don't
Speaker 1: have to keep calling it one I slash you one.
Speaker 1: It has a regular name now as the sort of
Speaker 1: regular Yes, yes, it is called Oma, which has a
Speaker 1: nice ring to it, and it feels comforting somehow, it's
Speaker 1: not frightening. We'll tell me about the name Robert, all right. So, oh,
Speaker 1: Muama is Hawaiian for something that is a quote scout
Speaker 1: or messenger sent from the distant past to reach out
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, I've seen it translated occasionally as first Messenger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this name was chosen in a consultation with Hawaiian
Speaker 1: language expert Cayu Kimura and Larry Kimura. Uh And in
Speaker 1: this uh word oh means reach out for and uh
Speaker 1: mua with the can mua placing emphasis means first in
Speaker 1: advance of, So it's like first first Reacher Outer. Now.
Speaker 1: The Pan Stars Discovery team chose the name, but they
Speaker 1: reportedly referred to it at first as Rama uh in
Speaker 1: a reference to the nineteen seventy three Arthur C. Clark
Speaker 1: science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama, which I have still
Speaker 1: yet to read. I think I have a paperback copy
Speaker 1: of it, but it's a It's a major science fiction
Speaker 1: classic I've only been trying to make a movie out
Speaker 1: of for years. I think um Morgan Freeman I believe
Speaker 1: was attached to it. But it's set in the thirties
Speaker 1: and concerns a fifty kilometer or thirty one miles cylindrical
Speaker 1: alien starship that enters earth solar system, and the fictional
Speaker 1: ship was in turn named for the Hindu god Rama,
Speaker 1: a major deity and central character in the Hindu epic.
Speaker 1: The Ramayana. So already you can see what type of
Speaker 1: excitement was attached to this by the scientists. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of ominous. So they're they're naming
Speaker 1: it after a spaceship. Surely that doesn't mean they actually
Speaker 1: thought it was a spaceship. Well that's that's the interesting
Speaker 1: thing because when you start looking at some of the
Speaker 1: characteristics of this object um, you can't help but begin
Speaker 1: to make those connections. Like you can try and fight
Speaker 1: it off, you can. You can imagine a scientist saying, down,
Speaker 1: I don't think about as a spaceship. Don't don't get
Speaker 1: your hopes up, don't get don't get all riled up
Speaker 1: about this possibly being a spaceship. But when you start
Speaker 1: looking at the bullet points, you can't help but think
Speaker 1: this could be a spaceship, could be it. This is
Speaker 1: what you know. I kept feeling is like, we're responsible
Speaker 1: science communicators. It's not aliens, but it is kind of weird. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we will we'll talk about that more later. We
Speaker 1: should discuss what the characteristics of Omama are. So before
Speaker 1: the discovery of Omama, astronomers knew about approximately seven and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand asteroids and comets in our Solar system, and
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell, every single one of
Speaker 1: those objects originated here in the local Solar system. This
Speaker 1: is the only object from anywhere else that we know
Speaker 1: about that we've ever seen locally. So it provides us
Speaker 1: with this tremendous opportunity to learn about the geology of
Speaker 1: other star systems and what's out there in terms of
Speaker 1: interstellar objects. So this is the first one we've ever
Speaker 1: been able to see up close. Yeah, if it's not
Speaker 1: a and it's probably not a message, a literal messenger
Speaker 1: from another star system, it is figuratively a messager from
Speaker 1: another star system. It is information from another star system,
Speaker 1: bringing us a very brief opportunity to catch a glimpse
Speaker 1: of what research potential is out there. So the scientists
Speaker 1: who discovered it and analyzed it, they published their findings
Speaker 1: in Nature in November. It was a paper called quote
Speaker 1: A Brief Visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar Asteroid,
Speaker 1: and the research was led by Dr Karen Meach and
Speaker 1: astronomer at the University of Hawaii. So let's discuss some
Speaker 1: of the facts we've learned so far about Omumua. First,
Speaker 1: the size, the object is very small. The authors of
Speaker 1: the Nature paper determined it has an average radius of
Speaker 1: just over a hundred meters. But so you're thinking radius
Speaker 1: a hundred meters. Okay, maybe it's a two hundred meter
Speaker 1: wide sphere, But the shape of the thing is not
Speaker 1: a sphere. The shape is one of the weirdest things
Speaker 1: about it. You might wonder, how do you figure out
Speaker 1: the shape of something that's so small and so far
Speaker 1: away and traveling through space at lightning speed, Like, shouldn't
Speaker 1: it just be a blurry streak in the sky. That
Speaker 1: is true, that is sort of what it is if
Speaker 1: you see the direct images we've been able to capture
Speaker 1: of its just kind of a streak on a screen.
Speaker 1: But you can start to analyze what the shape of
Speaker 1: this object is like by looking at something called light
Speaker 1: curve charts. Now, a light curve model is a graph
Speaker 1: that shows the intensity of light measured coming from an
Speaker 1: object over time, and by analyzing patterns of reflected light
Speaker 1: over time, scientists can start to figure out the shape
Speaker 1: and the and the rotation sation of an object like this.
Speaker 1: And what they discovered about this object about O Muamua
Speaker 1: is that it appears to have a roughly ten to
Speaker 1: one length to width and depth ratio. So imagine a
Speaker 1: roughly cylindrical or tube shaped object ten times longer than
Speaker 1: it is wide. According to a NASA write up, I
Speaker 1: found it could be maybe about a quarter of a
Speaker 1: mile long, So that's up to about four hundred meters
Speaker 1: And if so, that would mean it's only about forty
Speaker 1: meters wide. So we have a long, slender space cigar
Speaker 1: redition color this this needle from another star. We should
Speaker 1: point out that this is not a normal shape for
Speaker 1: space objects. We don't know other asteroids are not like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you see the images that have been put out
Speaker 1: there of of of this particular object, the first thing
Speaker 1: that enters your mind is this is not something you
Speaker 1: see in uh in, in typical illustrations of the cosmos.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks more like something you would see
Speaker 1: in a science fiction film. Yeah, exactly. So. Analysis reveals
Speaker 1: also in terms of its rotation, that it's what's known
Speaker 1: as tumbling. This means it's rotating not around a principal axis,
Speaker 1: but just sort of spinning crazily around an irregular axis
Speaker 1: once every seven point three hours. Now, by looking at
Speaker 1: the spectrum of light coming off of the thing. They've
Speaker 1: been able to determine that this thing is going to
Speaker 1: have a deep red coloration on its surface, and this
Speaker 1: is similar to some objects in our Solar System that
Speaker 1: have seen heavy bombardment by cosmic rays. Looking at its trajectory,
Speaker 1: I guess we should ask where's it going. It's already
Speaker 1: on its way back out of the Solar System, heading
Speaker 1: out from the Sun about at an angle of twenty
Speaker 1: degrees up off the orbital plane, so it's going away
Speaker 1: from the Sun and then up at an angle off
Speaker 1: of the orbital disk of all the planets, and this
Speaker 1: puts it on a heading for the Pegasus constellation. It
Speaker 1: passed the orbit of Mars at the beginning of November,
Speaker 1: and it's going to pass the orbit of Jupiter by
Speaker 1: mayen and then saturned by early twenty nineteen. So once
Speaker 1: again it's booking. And this does present kind of a
Speaker 1: problem because like, what if we wanted to send a
Speaker 1: space mission out to meet it, you know, send a
Speaker 1: send a probe to go land on this thing. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be a real tough order. You'd have to put
Speaker 1: together some kind of propulsion system capable of achieving speeds
Speaker 1: unlike anything we've ever done before. You would need a
Speaker 1: real crack team of of scientists and explorers to to
Speaker 1: tackle this kind of problem. Yeah, it would be really
Speaker 1: hard to catch this thing. Uh So, so it's heading
Speaker 1: out towards Pegasus and it's going really fast. The other
Speaker 1: side of that question is where did it come from.
Speaker 1: Scientists currently think that it's been flying through interstellar space
Speaker 1: for probably hundreds of millions of years before it entered
Speaker 1: our solar system. Uh And on its approach trajectory, it
Speaker 1: seems like it was coming from roughly the direction of
Speaker 1: the large STARV Vega in the constellation Lira. But this
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it came from the Vegas system because this
Speaker 1: is one of the most disorienting things about space. So
Speaker 1: you've got to remember that our view of the night
Speaker 1: sky is moving, so from our perspective, something that came
Speaker 1: from Vega, say a few hundred thousand years ago, if
Speaker 1: if it would have been a hundred a few hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago where Vega is now, Vega wasn't there
Speaker 1: at the time. So wait, are you saying that the
Speaker 1: age of the object would be in the hundred million
Speaker 1: year range or the hundred thousand year range. Well, we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but I've seen it speculated that
Speaker 1: it it has been drifting. It has existed and been
Speaker 1: drifting for maybe hundreds of millions of years, but that
Speaker 1: about three hundred thousand years ago, say it would have
Speaker 1: been about where Vega is, but about where Vega is now,
Speaker 1: about not where Vega was then. So ultimately we don't
Speaker 1: really know its origin yet. But I just saw there
Speaker 1: is a paper out that's on on pre publication servers
Speaker 1: right now, so it's on archive dot org, a paper
Speaker 1: by Simon's vart at All that discusses three theories about
Speaker 1: where this object came from. So one of the theories
Speaker 1: is that it's actually a Kuiper Belt object, so something local.
Speaker 1: But if you're you might be wondering, Okay, if it's local,
Speaker 1: why would it have this hyperbolic trajectory, And the idea
Speaker 1: there is that it would have had to have been
Speaker 1: accelerated to a hyperbolic velocity by some kind of large object.
Speaker 1: You got a gravity assist from like a dark hidden
Speaker 1: planet or something somewhere out there that made this thing
Speaker 1: go really fast, fast enough to escape the Solar System,
Speaker 1: some sort of local space collision that that beamed it
Speaker 1: in not necessarily collision like that. If there if there's
Speaker 1: a dark, hidden massive plant somewhere, so it gets a
Speaker 1: gravity assist from this unknown object somewhere out there in
Speaker 1: the ort cloud or something like that, and through that
Speaker 1: gravity assist it gets enough momentum, it gets enough velocity
Speaker 1: that an escape the Solar System. They don't rate that
Speaker 1: as very likely. It looks very much like it actually
Speaker 1: did come from another star system. Uh. They look at
Speaker 1: the theory that it originated from a nearby star called
Speaker 1: t y C four seven four to Dash one zero
Speaker 1: to seven dash one Yogurt system. They also rate this
Speaker 1: is very unlikely. So the most likely option is this.
Speaker 1: When a young star forms a protoplanetary disk, the matter
Speaker 1: in this disc gradually coalesces into planets and other smaller objects,
Speaker 1: and this is how our Solar System came to be
Speaker 1: about four and a half to five billion years ago.
Speaker 1: This is how other stars came to be as well.
Speaker 1: But then things like other stars in a star cluster
Speaker 1: can disturb these disks and cause matter to come out
Speaker 1: of orbit, or gravitational resonances between young planets can fling
Speaker 1: stuff out of orbit with great velocity. So mathematical models
Speaker 1: show that these disks frequently eject math is of rock
Speaker 1: and ice out from the systems as they're forming and
Speaker 1: send them flying into interstellar space, and that there are
Speaker 1: probably lots of lonely little asteroids like this floating out
Speaker 1: in the void between star systems, and the authors think
Speaker 1: that's probably what this rock is, unless it's something else entirely.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to those possibilities when we come back
Speaker 1: from a break. All right, we're back and we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss another possibility here. And I and I and
Speaker 1: I know everyone already can guess what it is. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, we know by this point if anybody discovers
Speaker 1: any kind of anomalous phenomenon whatsoever in space, the Daily
Speaker 1: Mail is going to run an article saying it's aliens.
Speaker 1: It's seriously, it's aliens. Also check out these Royal family
Speaker 1: beach bods. But it's aliens. Um. And you know, lots
Speaker 1: of publications like to do this. That it's aliens is
Speaker 1: always going to get you clicks. Uh. And then or aliens,
Speaker 1: you know, just just put a question heavily implying it's aliens. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you've got on the other side all of the
Speaker 1: actual space and science journalists who get really annoyed by this,
Speaker 1: like they're they're jaded from having to fill their careers
Speaker 1: by writing hundreds of It's not Aliens articles over and over,
Speaker 1: and they'll immediately get angry and say, it's not aliens. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course the latter camp is always right so far.
Speaker 1: But let's say we reserve judgment and try to sort
Speaker 1: of marry the responsible skepticism of the scientists and the
Speaker 1: science journalists with the hopefulness and the open mindedness of
Speaker 1: maybe not the it's aliens community, but at least of
Speaker 1: SETI researchers. So it's time to ask this object, is
Speaker 1: it aliens? Yeah? Well, you know, we can't help but
Speaker 1: think about this for a number of reasons. Uh science
Speaker 1: science fiction has been preparing us for a mysterious alien
Speaker 1: vessels to to show up for some time. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: they could be curious visitors, advanced scouts in an invasion fleet,
Speaker 1: or simply a darrelict ship bearing extraterrestrial dead. But it
Speaker 1: is such a common plot point in our science fiction.
Speaker 1: It's even if we even knowing that that is fiction,
Speaker 1: that these are imagined scenarios, we can't help, but look
Speaker 1: for it when when an example like this comes around.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the one thing about space that is
Speaker 1: sure to get everybody's attention. You've got people who are
Speaker 1: into space, and they find space beautiful and interesting on
Speaker 1: its own characteristics, in the same way that geology might
Speaker 1: be interesting. You know that there's mystery out there even
Speaker 1: if there's not life. But generally everybody is going to
Speaker 1: get excited if you think there might be life out there.
Speaker 1: And and that comes back around just to the fact
Speaker 1: that that life elsewhere in the universe is an open question,
Speaker 1: like there are You're gonna find hardliners on both sides
Speaker 1: that say, yes, there's definitely not only extraterrestrial life, but
Speaker 1: intelligent life and also I saw it yesterday, or you're
Speaker 1: going to you're gonna find people who are taking the
Speaker 1: hard line of there's there's probably nothing. We have no
Speaker 1: evidence to support the idea that there is, and there
Speaker 1: probably is not, but it is an unanswered question. We
Speaker 1: ultimately cannot definitively say there are aliens or there are
Speaker 1: no aliens, at least in the broader sense. But when
Speaker 1: we have a situation like this, well then we can
Speaker 1: zero zero in on it. A little bit right, we
Speaker 1: can say, is this aliens? That's a very different question.
Speaker 1: It's a very different question, yes, and also a question.
Speaker 1: The answer to that question is not going to answer
Speaker 1: the larger question obviously either well well, well one answer
Speaker 1: would if this is aliens, there definitely are aliens. But
Speaker 1: if it's not aliens, still might be aliens. That's there
Speaker 1: still might be aliens out there. This is just this
Speaker 1: just shows is how ready I am for it to
Speaker 1: not be aliens, because I do want to just continue
Speaker 1: to drive that home. This is almost certainly not aliens,
Speaker 1: but it never hurts to look Okay, So what are
Speaker 1: some of the obvious problems here? Um, first, there's the
Speaker 1: problem with anybody showing up, period. So astro physicist Michael H.
Speaker 1: Hart he wrote He wrote about the matter in a
Speaker 1: book titled Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience. There's a
Speaker 1: collection of essays and he wrote one of them here,
Speaker 1: and he makes a number of points. Mostly he's talking
Speaker 1: about the possible existence of interstellar empuyers. Uh, both in
Speaker 1: the human sense could we build one? And then in
Speaker 1: the sense are they out there? Because we can't help
Speaker 1: but think about that kind of like colonial expansion right,
Speaker 1: So he's going to be talking about the likelihood of
Speaker 1: like the physical arrival of alien objects of technology or beatings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he points out that first of all, we have
Speaker 1: to remember that space is huge. While technology has drastically
Speaker 1: reduced terrestrial travel to uh, you know, a matter of
Speaker 1: hours uh quote, there is no reasonable hope that future
Speaker 1: technology will ever succeed in reducing interstellar travel time. Two
Speaker 1: months were simply attained in uh to this to this
Speaker 1: room via the confines of special relativity. Bearing some unforeseen breakthrough,
Speaker 1: we cannot beat a beam of light in a drag race.
Speaker 1: You see throughout the Star Wars movies that there is
Speaker 1: a jump to light speed and then it will get
Speaker 1: you there pretty fast. The sad truth is, we can't
Speaker 1: jump to light speed, but even if we could, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be fast enough. So you've got mass, You're not
Speaker 1: going to be going light speed anytime soon. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because even if you could go light speed
Speaker 1: or of light speed, is still going to take you
Speaker 1: forever to get between stars. There's just so much space,
Speaker 1: that's right, heart. He says he started star travel would
Speaker 1: likely work out to at least a fifty year journey
Speaker 1: and that's that's a you know, a reasonable distance of
Speaker 1: the star. We're not talking about going to a far
Speaker 1: flung uh star. And he says given the time frame,
Speaker 1: giving the distance, given the distance involved in the limits
Speaker 1: of travel, he figures it would take two million years
Speaker 1: of like determined colonization for a civilization to colonize the galaxy. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: this is one of those areas where I don't even
Speaker 1: know if that's a low or or a high estimate. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, would the things colonizing the galaxy by the
Speaker 1: end of that still be humans? Yeah, that's that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately could be just machines, right that have
Speaker 1: been created by organic life and become the species of movement. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he points out that this would have also been
Speaker 1: nothing like a human empire who consists of splintered civilizations
Speaker 1: to the tune of a few hundred billion to batch
Speaker 1: match the number of stars. Again, just that the distance
Speaker 1: would would play such a role in in the extent
Speaker 1: to which you could maintain order across any kind of
Speaker 1: a large organization. So I assume in this model he
Speaker 1: is assuming some significantly faster travel than we have today,
Speaker 1: but all so not like light speed Yeah, he's saying
Speaker 1: that that we're still gonna even with advanced technology, we're
Speaker 1: gonna come up against hard limits. There. There are speed
Speaker 1: limits in place, and they prevent some of the models
Speaker 1: of interstellar civilization that we have dreamed up in the past.
Speaker 1: One of the great questions that most sci fi fails
Speaker 1: to address about how to get quickly between stars is
Speaker 1: the question of deceleration. Yes, nobody ever thinks about how
Speaker 1: you need to stop when you get to a place,
Speaker 1: and if you're going it like I don't know, fifty
Speaker 1: percent of light speed or something, and you just hit
Speaker 1: the brakes and decided to suddenly stop. You you are
Speaker 1: maybe atoms still, but you're not a human. I mean,
Speaker 1: that doesn't work well. So you'd essentially have to accelerate
Speaker 1: halfway and decelerate halfway. Yeah, and that's something you definitely
Speaker 1: encounter will a in more realistic science fiction, harder science fiction,
Speaker 1: but also in in proposals for how we might um
Speaker 1: go on longer space flights. We would have to spend
Speaker 1: half the time ramping up in half the time ramping down.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to liquefy, right, you throw on
Speaker 1: the brakes too hard, you're going to you're gonna liquefy. Now,
Speaker 1: the inherent part of all this is that aliens would
Speaker 1: be bound by the same limits, though perhaps they're not
Speaker 1: limited in other ways that humans would be. Uh. They
Speaker 1: could of course be machines. They could have extremely long lifespans.
Speaker 1: I will say that I think if we ever were
Speaker 1: to detect make alien contact in our solar system, I
Speaker 1: think it's unlikely. But I think it's far more likely
Speaker 1: that we would come across alien technology than aliens themselves
Speaker 1: as beings. I could see more likely the scenario where
Speaker 1: we receive an unscrewed probe, right, I mean, especially if
Speaker 1: we're basing it on how we have we are behaving
Speaker 1: in our exploration of space, it seems more likely that
Speaker 1: a machine would show up or their voyager arrives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their voyager arrives, and it's not even a not even
Speaker 1: representative of their current level of technology. You know, to
Speaker 1: what extent you can talk about current and the current
Speaker 1: state of technology and the now when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: these vast distances. Um, So maybe we should go on
Speaker 1: that model, Like if it is aliens, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: physically biologically aliens. Maybe it's alien technology. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: again he says he thinks it would take two billion
Speaker 1: years for a civilization to really expand and and and
Speaker 1: reach this power, this level of galactic power. Uh. And
Speaker 1: two million years is certainly a drop in the bucket
Speaker 1: compared to the Milky Way galaxies ten billion your history. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it also means that other emergent life forms and
Speaker 1: other emergent civilizations would have the same odds. And nothing
Speaker 1: has seemingly expanded throughout the Milky Way Galaxy in the
Speaker 1: previous two million year uh period of time. So Heart says, quote,
Speaker 1: we might reasonably infer that we are the first colonizing
Speaker 1: civilization in our galaxy, and for the moment, probably the
Speaker 1: only species within advanced technology. If this is so, it
Speaker 1: will be our descendants who are likely to colonize and
Speaker 1: populate the entire galaxy. Alright, So all this just tackles
Speaker 1: the question are there aliens? But again we're dealing with
Speaker 1: a much more specific situation. We're asking is this aliens?
Speaker 1: Is this thing this elongated object, some alien spaceship or
Speaker 1: piece of alien technology? Yeah? Is it an artificial object?
Speaker 1: Be it a ship, be it a you know, like
Speaker 1: a monolith with carvings inside it or something you know,
Speaker 1: is it something that was sent here deliberately or accidentally? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we should instead back up to
Speaker 1: say the question, to ask the question, is there any
Speaker 1: good reason to think it might be aliens other than
Speaker 1: the fact that it's an interstellar anomalous phenomenon. Alright, we'll
Speaker 1: lead Billings of the science writer to discuss this a
Speaker 1: little bit in a Scientific American article that came out
Speaker 1: in the last few weeks. Because everything has pretty much
Speaker 1: come out in the last few weeks and it's still
Speaker 1: coming out regarding this story. So if it does turn
Speaker 1: out to be aliens, this episode is a total bust.
Speaker 1: We are in the odd position of rooting against aliens
Speaker 1: with a scenario simply because it means we'd have to
Speaker 1: re record that episode. Wait, no, so what does Billings
Speaker 1: say about reasons people think it might actually be aliens? Well,
Speaker 1: he points to the to the quote collision minimizing form
Speaker 1: favored in many designs for theoretical interstellar probes. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the elongated form because we don't usually see that in
Speaker 1: naturally formed space objects, and because it mirrors a kind
Speaker 1: of spaceship design form that you would have if you
Speaker 1: wanted to minimize the chance of running into something in space.
Speaker 1: You you might start to think, Okay, maybe that's sort
Speaker 1: of a tick in the column of could be artificial exactly.
Speaker 1: It's it's shaped like we might shape a ship or
Speaker 1: a probe for a similar purpose. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: it's pretty solid, as we discussed, possibly metal, making it
Speaker 1: perfect for surviving a long journey between stars. And additionally,
Speaker 1: we don't have much in the way of satisfactory theories
Speaker 1: about how an elongated object like this would have formed
Speaker 1: or survived ejection from another solar system. Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: a good question. Now. On the other hand, he also
Speaker 1: points out that, Okay, it boasts an impressive spin rate,
Speaker 1: and I imagine some of you are thinking, oh, it's rotating,
Speaker 1: it's good artificialty, but he said, he argues that it's
Speaker 1: it's not really enough to produce meaningful artificial gravity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think they said that it rotates every what
Speaker 1: seven point three hours or something like that. Um, that's
Speaker 1: not super fast and it's not super huge, and generating
Speaker 1: artificial gravity either requires your your environment to be very
Speaker 1: large or to spin pretty fast. So there's nothing really
Speaker 1: we can significantly latch onto with that. Additionally, there's there's
Speaker 1: no sign of propulsion here. It's following an orbit shaped
Speaker 1: by the gravitational fourth of the Sun. That's not to
Speaker 1: say it can't be a ship, but that makes it
Speaker 1: more of a sailboat than a speed boat. And also
Speaker 1: speaking of speed, experts apparently think that it's actually moving
Speaker 1: a bit slow for a probe. The reasoning here is
Speaker 1: that you'd likely want to be moving faster to cover
Speaker 1: more ground and that, but of course that also raises
Speaker 1: a left questions about the presumed alien sense of time. Right,
Speaker 1: So you'd think if they're aliens, say this is like
Speaker 1: a voyager or some some kind of probe to send
Speaker 1: the aliens information about our solar system, you'd think they'd
Speaker 1: want the probes to be going really fast to their
Speaker 1: star systems to get the information back as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: because the people who made it might want something recognizable
Speaker 1: as their own children or grandchildren or something like that
Speaker 1: to be able to get the information. And if it's
Speaker 1: going to take hundreds of thousands of years to travel
Speaker 1: between star systems, like, what's the point unless it's just
Speaker 1: a message in a bottle, and and it's it's not
Speaker 1: about hearing back from it. It's not about their lifespan.
Speaker 1: But again I'm I'm you can. You can make all
Speaker 1: sorts of different interpretations of it and sci fi it
Speaker 1: up and just the right way that it makes sense.
Speaker 1: So I guess some people would say then that there
Speaker 1: might be a few kind of interesting little reasons to think, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this could be artificial. But I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the skeptics are going to be saying, look, it's
Speaker 1: not aliens. Why would you waste your time bothering with this? Well,
Speaker 1: part of it comes down to the fact that we
Speaker 1: can't yet say definitively that it's not. Uh, It's like
Speaker 1: this is an open question. We're still trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what this thing is and it's not. We haven't
Speaker 1: completely ruled it out. It's very unlikely, but we haven't
Speaker 1: completely ruled out the possibility that it is an artificial object.
Speaker 1: Is it one of those scenarios where the question is
Speaker 1: just so interesting that even if you're ninety nine point
Speaker 1: nine percent sure that the answer is no, you've got
Speaker 1: to ask anyway, just because it feels so titillating. Well,
Speaker 1: and we also have to ask because there are some
Speaker 1: steps that we can take to further investigate the possibility.
Speaker 1: So it's not just one of those things where it
Speaker 1: could be aliens. So let's keep the dream alive. It's
Speaker 1: it's more like it could be aliens. Let's take the
Speaker 1: next logical steps to test that hypothesis out right, we can,
Speaker 1: we can check it out. So for instance, obvious ob
Speaker 1: an astrophysicist and Breakthrough advisor, that's the Breakthrough Listen initiative,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into a little more in a minute here.
Speaker 1: Okay Um and he's also an advisor at Harvard University,
Speaker 1: pointed out the following to Scientific American quote. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: Aliens have a mothership that travels fast and releases baby
Speaker 1: spacecraft that freely fall into planetary system on a reconnaissance mission.
Speaker 1: In such a case, we might be able to intercept
Speaker 1: a communication signal between the different spacecraft. Oh I like that.
Speaker 1: I mean it makes me think of like the scene
Speaker 1: in the Empire Strikes Back where the ship's going through
Speaker 1: and launching the Imperial probe droids off in all these directions,
Speaker 1: exactly same sort of scenario. And indeed, just because the
Speaker 1: things not trying to communicate with us, it could have
Speaker 1: some sort of communication that has to make back to
Speaker 1: the mothership. Well, in that case, let's put some radio
Speaker 1: telescopes on it. And I bet people are already doing
Speaker 1: that exactly, I mean, because that's that's what the folks
Speaker 1: at said he have been thinking to search for extraterrestrial intelligence,
Speaker 1: so they think that it could be emitting or at
Speaker 1: least lead radio waves. However, initial snooping via CETI institutes
Speaker 1: Allen telescope array turned up nothing. On Wednesday, December seventeen,
Speaker 1: the Breakthrough Listen project aimed at the West Virginia based
Speaker 1: on Green Bank Telescope at Omamua for ten hours of
Speaker 1: of observations in a wide range of radio frequencies. So
Speaker 1: was it aliens no nest? So they listened from three
Speaker 1: pm to ninety five pm Eastern Time. They scanned across
Speaker 1: four radio brands, spanning billions of individual channels across the
Speaker 1: one to twelve gig hurts range. Over the course of
Speaker 1: a two hour observation of the object itself, they collected
Speaker 1: ninety terabytes of data raw data. Uh, and they're searching
Speaker 1: that data for signs of artificial signals. But despite some
Speaker 1: heavy computing power, this is still gonna take a little
Speaker 1: while to carry out. So as of this recording, there
Speaker 1: is currently no evidence of any narrow bandwidth signals in
Speaker 1: the data that would suggest artificial nature to this object. So,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it does not appear to be communicating
Speaker 1: via radio waves with anything else yet, unless something is
Speaker 1: happening right now that is changing all of that, in
Speaker 1: which case we will have to revisit putting out the
Speaker 1: episode to begin with. But we're we're making a safe
Speaker 1: bet here. Now here's the Here's another interesting point on
Speaker 1: the topic of rarity made by Breakthrough Listens lead scientist
Speaker 1: Andrew Simon that underlines humanity sort of Babe in the
Speaker 1: Woods understanding of the cosmos. He says, this thing cannot
Speaker 1: be a rarity. I mean, well, the idea is if
Speaker 1: it were, if it were rare, we wouldn't be seeing
Speaker 1: it at all. Okay, Yeah, So, which is an interesting
Speaker 1: argument if if you think about the idea here is
Speaker 1: that it can't be a natural object that just happens
Speaker 1: to fall in our laps. If there's one of these
Speaker 1: out there, there have to be more in the ideas
Speaker 1: that we just haven't each the point where are we're
Speaker 1: able to uh to see them, we just were not
Speaker 1: able to detect them yet and we don't have the technology.
Speaker 1: And is that technology comes online, we realize, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are space cigars everywhere. Uh, this was just the
Speaker 1: first time that we saw one. Yeah, so I think
Speaker 1: that is uh, pretty much in line with what a
Speaker 1: lot of these astronomers are thinking. Yeah, there are probably
Speaker 1: a lot more objects like this coming through the Solar
Speaker 1: system all the time. This is just the first time
Speaker 1: we caught one. It's kind of like the way I
Speaker 1: was thinking of it is, if say somebody does not
Speaker 1: know anything about Bollywood films, but they can name one
Speaker 1: Bollywood film, chances are that one Bollywood film they can
Speaker 1: name is a major title. It's like, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the pillars of Bollywood. Like, what are the chances
Speaker 1: that the one film they can name is some super
Speaker 1: rare entry. You could use that with anything in pop culture,
Speaker 1: chances are if you can only think of one example
Speaker 1: of a type of thing in pop culture, it's one
Speaker 1: of the most widely replicated and talked about examples of
Speaker 1: that genre or category exactly. And so that's basically the
Speaker 1: scenario that's that that is probably taking place with this object.
Speaker 1: That if we're seeing it, it cannot be rare unless,
Speaker 1: of course, it's an alienship, and that kind of changes everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is very characteristic of someone who thinks
Speaker 1: statistically about their experience of reality, and that is a
Speaker 1: mindset that I don't often go to myself, but I
Speaker 1: can respect. Now it makes me question and say, well, well,
Speaker 1: isn't it also true that if this is if this
Speaker 1: does turn out to be an alien spaceship, then alien
Speaker 1: spaceships are also common, and maybe this is just the
Speaker 1: first time we're seeing one of these. I think that
Speaker 1: would be implied by that probabilistic argument. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all based on the assumption you should make that your
Speaker 1: your life is not special and your experience is not unique. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the the anthropic principle and a nutshell,
Speaker 1: the idea that we cannot we cannot look at the
Speaker 1: cosmos with with the notion that the human perspective is privileged,
Speaker 1: or that Earth is privileged in any way that you know,
Speaker 1: defies just mere statistics. At the same time, you are
Speaker 1: all individually very special. I mean, really you have to
Speaker 1: feel special to to think about it. Just think of
Speaker 1: the fact that this story is happening right now? That
Speaker 1: that the the open question is there is there intelligent
Speaker 1: life elsewhere in the universe? Uh, that were this close
Speaker 1: to to potentially getting a yes answer, but probably not. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to renew what I said earlier, which is
Speaker 1: that I think this object and the story of its
Speaker 1: discovery is fascinating, even if it's not aliens, which it's
Speaker 1: almost definitely not. Yeah, but it But it's kind of
Speaker 1: like an unsolved murder, like suddenly there's a suspect. The
Speaker 1: suspect is almost certainly not the perpetrator, but the mere
Speaker 1: fact that there's a subject, that there's a suspect in
Speaker 1: the case is pretty phenomenal, even if they're gonna you know,
Speaker 1: walk the street and just you know, a few hours
Speaker 1: because their ALBI checks out. To be clear, this space
Speaker 1: object has not killed anyone, It's true, not yet. Now
Speaker 1: some of you are probably wondering, well, what what's going
Speaker 1: to happen? Then, assuming that that looking at this object
Speaker 1: data was to present itself that that suggested some sort
Speaker 1: of an intelligence and at least an intelligent design to
Speaker 1: the thing, what would go down? Well? Uh, Simon provides
Speaker 1: a sort of step by step breakdown of how this
Speaker 1: would take place. So first of all, the signal would
Speaker 1: be detected or the signal would be decoded, like we
Speaker 1: would find data in the in the radio waves that
Speaker 1: tipped us off, all right, So the next step would
Speaker 1: be too immediately re observed to confirm that signal. Okay,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that it wasn't a fluke
Speaker 1: in the recording, right. Nobody wants to be the the
Speaker 1: scientists to immediately go on cable news and say we
Speaker 1: did it, we made contact with the aliens and we oh,
Speaker 1: we didn't actually check it though it was actually a
Speaker 1: TV satellite alright. So after this, if they once they
Speaker 1: confirmed the signal, next they will reach out to pre
Speaker 1: selected astronomers around the world to target the object with
Speaker 1: other radio telescopes. And I think his his exact words were,
Speaker 1: we have a we have a rolodex just for this,
Speaker 1: so they have all the contexts ready to go, and
Speaker 1: then if that shakes out, then they're going to go
Speaker 1: public with what's happening. So there's not going to be
Speaker 1: this government conspiracy. Let's hide the nature of aliens from
Speaker 1: the people because they'll all freak out, uh and start
Speaker 1: buying bread and beer. Never really made a lot of
Speaker 1: sense to me. Well, I mean it would. It would
Speaker 1: disrupt things. It would at least disrupt the news cycle
Speaker 1: for a little bit, you know, uh, it would. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it would change everything if if suddenly we
Speaker 1: had proof that there was alien life, it would I
Speaker 1: don't know that it would cause a collapse of civilization,
Speaker 1: but I don't think so. This would be This would
Speaker 1: be a good topic to discuss though, just sort of
Speaker 1: like like the preparations for like the cultural preparations for
Speaker 1: the identification of extra stress real life. I think it
Speaker 1: would be one of the most I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think it would be one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: discoveries in the history of humankind. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if it would actually disrupt life all that much unless
Speaker 1: they were like here and ready to wage war on
Speaker 1: us or something. Well, but that would be the next question,
Speaker 1: like why is it here? What is it doing? What
Speaker 1: are its intentions? Right? And that can lead to a
Speaker 1: certain amount of paranoia. I guess so, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think if we just discovered a not overtly threatening alien,
Speaker 1: I think people would basically be really interested, but in
Speaker 1: the next day they need to go get the groceries.
Speaker 1: I think one of my big concerns here though, is
Speaker 1: is in some sort of a first contact scenario, like
Speaker 1: how does communication go with this entity? You know, like
Speaker 1: certainly well, I think we've touched on this in the
Speaker 1: podcast before about the different individuals and organizations sort of
Speaker 1: uh that have been proposed as a first contact team
Speaker 1: or or counsel. But right, you can certainly imagine scenarios
Speaker 1: were say leaders that exists to might want to be
Speaker 1: the first person to talk to the aliens, and maybe
Speaker 1: that would not be great, Like if they realize that
Speaker 1: Twitter is our primary mode of communication, and so the
Speaker 1: spaceship were to join Twitter, like it were to to
Speaker 1: acquire the omamua Twitter handle, and then anybody could tweet
Speaker 1: at it. Just think of the chaos, and it's just
Speaker 1: an egg. It's just an interstellar egg. It probably would
Speaker 1: they wouldn't you know, They might not even have sight.
Speaker 1: It tries to figure out hashtags and fails, just keeps
Speaker 1: hashtagging normal words, or it doesn't actually say anything. It
Speaker 1: just likes tweets, And then you have to wonder who
Speaker 1: doesn't say it it's likes or an endorsement of the
Speaker 1: idea or not, and so it basically means that we
Speaker 1: have just all the great minds of the world are
Speaker 1: just pouring over Twitter to try and figure out what
Speaker 1: it's Uh, it's ideology is based on its likes, and
Speaker 1: its ideology is it only likes the tweets of that
Speaker 1: guy who played the kid on Star Trek the Next Generation? Yeaheah,
Speaker 1: Well that that would I think it would be an
Speaker 1: okay scenario. And then then Will has to step up
Speaker 1: and be the ambassador for Earth. I was trying to think,
Speaker 1: who else are those good like, well liked social media
Speaker 1: power users. Well there, most of them are, really. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's even divisive depending on where you you stand, right,
Speaker 1: I can't think of a single like universally ld Twitter,
Speaker 1: uh individual, because Twitter, by his very nature is about
Speaker 1: hating and loving and equal measures. Right, we've gone way
Speaker 1: off topic here, but hey, but we've given everybody some
Speaker 1: food for thought here. Uh. Think this is a fascinating,
Speaker 1: ongoing story. And again we're really betting that it's not
Speaker 1: alien life here, but it's still amazing to dream about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first messenger from another star. All right, Hey, in
Speaker 1: the meantime, when we're waiting for answers from our visitor here,
Speaker 1: be sure to hack out check out stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's what we'll find. All the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes will find, blog post videos, and links out
Speaker 1: to our various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and so forth. Big thanks to our audio producers Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and Tory Harrison Hey, and if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly, as always, you can
Speaker 1: do that via email at blow the Mind at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com