WEBVTT - The Search For Alien Life, with Astrophysicist Adam Frank 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:15.319 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.279 is Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I'll be chatting with 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.799 Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.560 Rochester and author of the new book The Little Book 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:30.040 of Aliens, which is available now in all fourmats. So hey, 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.199 let's jump right into the conversation. I think you're going 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:38.160 to really enjoy this one. Hi, Adam, Welcome to the show. 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.360 It's great to be here. Thanks so much. You discussed 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:43.240 this a bit in the new book, The Little Book 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:45.400 of Aliens, and of course I have to ask you 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.120 about it here in the episode. How did you first 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.159 become interested in the possibility of alien life? 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:54.360 Well, hard for me to remember a time when I 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:57.560 wasn't interested in the possibility of alien life. As I 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.760 discussed in the book, I got my start on this 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.840 when I was five years old, when I wandered into 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.479 my dad's library. My dad was a writer who had 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.160 an interest in science fiction, science and science fiction, and 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:16.480 they're on the lower levels of the library, you know, 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:19.040 the lower shelf. There was all of his pulp science 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:23.000 fiction magazines, all those amazing stories and Isaac Asmanov's you 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.720 know whatever, and those pictures. You know, every cover had 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:32.360 a semi lurid illustration of dudes bouncing around on you know, 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:37.119 alien worlds and michel entire space suits or rocket ships 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.679 blasting through space, or bug eyed monsters and aliens, And 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.120 from that moment on, like, I've never had any other choice. So, 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:45.959 you know, after thirty years of being an astronomer, of 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.640 being an astrophysicist, including you know, a fair amount of 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.720 time recently last decade or so focusing on astrobiology, I 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:54.600 wrote the book because I really wanted people to see 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.800 how close we were to scientists finding evidence one way 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.840 or the other for alien life where they live on 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:02.840 alien planets. 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:05.440 Now I'll get back to like the real hunt for 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.680 extraterrestrial life here in a second. But on the subject 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.600 of just media that inspired you, were there any particular 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.639 favorite films? And I have to add the caveat. I'm 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.480 asking this as someone who appreciates both higher browse sci 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:21.000 fi but also the silliest cheese, So don't shy away 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:23.160 from mentioning anything from the discount Bend. 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:30.040 Plan nine from Outer Space. No, No, that actually not 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.560 so Listen. I'm a huge science fiction fan, huge, and 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.880 so when I was a kid, I devoured everything there was. 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.840 And you kids today don't know how bad it was 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:44.640 back then. Right back then, you literally had Star Trek reruns. 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:46.399 So this is the mid seventies, right when I'm coming 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.520 up as a kid Star Trek reruns. You had Lost 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:54.079 in Space, which was terrible, right, and then there was 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.280 all the bad science fiction movies from the fifties that 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.200 would rerun on like Saturday morning at eleven thirty what 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.160 was called Chiller Theater, which was you know, on Channel 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:05.120 eleven back in the days when you only had like 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:08.520 five or six channels. So I devoured everything. And so 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.840 the things, the things, the highbrow stuff I loved were 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:15.120 my dad. I remember one night my dad wakened me 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:17.080 up and say, come on, come on, you gotta watch this. 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:19.519 And it was Forbidden Planet, right, which is this classic 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.120 which is amazing because it's it's the embodiment of the 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:27.280 nineteen fifties pulp science fiction. But it's really smart, right, 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:30.800 It's really actually based on the Tempest and the key 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:32.920 idea that it has in there, which I explore in 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:34.560 the book quite a bit. I have a whole chapter 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:39.040 on it is the idea of dead ancient alien civilizations, right, 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.760 the vision of the Krell machinery when they're down in 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.240 the planet, if anybody's ever seen there. So, you know, 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.800 so all of Star Trek, all you know, movies like 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.680 This Island Earth, you know, which wasn't so great, but 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.240 so all of that really shaped my own on thinking 0:03:56.560 --> 0:04:00.760 about about aliens and about space. It mattered quite a 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.080 bit to me. There's also a show called UFOs, which 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:04.880 do you know of that one? Have you ever seen that? 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:06.240 I don't think I know that one. 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.680 It was it was a British show. It was actually 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:13.119 a precursor to Space nineteen ninety nine, you know Space. Yeah, 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:15.080 so this was actually the same kind of models. You'll 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:17.640 see a lot of similarities, and it was it ran 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.120 you know, you can find it on the internet you want, 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:22.400 and it was this idea that you know, the the 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.360 UFOs were coming to steal human organs and there was 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.600 a secret shadow organization which was protecting the Earth from that. 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.120 And I loved that as well. So pretty much anything 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:35.440 I could get my hands on I watched endlessly, And 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:37.920 of course Marvel Comics because there was a whole space 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:41.359 side of you know, star Lord. You know when I 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:45.440 when I, you know, I was the the science advisor 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.400 for Doctor Strange and I got to meet Kevin Figi. 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:49.880 We were, you know, in the room working on the 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:52.279 script together, and he asked me, you know, what was 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.520 your favorite star Marvel and I got to like totally 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:58.680 nerd out. And there's this like one, this little known 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.520 edition of star Lord from seventies, which was actually my 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:03.520 favorite because it was a space opera, it was a 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:06.599 space adventure. So all of that really shaped my pop 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:10.279 culture understanding. And up until streaming, I think I could 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.200 claim I'd seen every science fiction movie TV show ever 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.120 made by stream. When streaming happened, it was I was overwhelmed. 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:20.279 But now I'm glad you mentioned like the you know, 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:23.560 aliens coming for Organs and so forth, because of course 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:26.520 that's a huge part of it, the scarier visions of 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.719 what alien contact might consist of, and like for my 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:31.840 own part, I remember there was a short period in 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:35.880 my childhood when I had just seen some UFO episodes 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.280 of Unsolved Mysteries, and I became legitimately scared for a 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.120 short amount of time that UFO abduction could happen to me. 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.159 I just wasn't exposed to like speculative or that many 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:52.480 optimistic views of what UFOs could consist of. So I 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:54.200 can't help but wonder how many others were sort of 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:58.000 fundamentally primed that way toward the possibility of alien life. 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.200 Well, you know, I have the the there's a chapter 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:02.720 in the book where I look at sort of the 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:06.280 pop culture effects of aliens, because you know, one of 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.440 the mazing things that is happening right now, and which 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:11.440 is really kind of the purpose or one purpose of 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.919 the book is to show people how the search for 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.800 life in the universe is now totally scientifically legitimate, which 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:21.240 it wasn't when I was coming up. When I was 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.479 coming up as a graduate student in the eighties, the 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.839 search for life was either a joke or it was 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:30.440 considered a dead end because the Viking probes in the 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.120 seventies to Mars hadn't really found anything. So it was 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:36.640 a really sort of dead period in the search for life. 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.760 And but now, you know, for reasons I'm sure we're 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:41.599 going to talk about and the reason they know that, 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:43.320 which is what a lot of the book is about. 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.400 We're really you know, the next giant telescope is only 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.279 is going to be built focusing on the detection of life. 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.479 So you're right that the pop culture really shaped a 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.960 lot of people's opinions about what we should think about 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.880 with aliens and what life in the universe might be. Now, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:01.520 you know, as I discussed in the book, and I'm 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:03.760 sure we're going to talk about, I'm very skeptical about 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:08.560 that UFOs have anything to do with life outside the universe. 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:10.520 But again, as you say, the pop culture stuff, the 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:15.640 UFOs and the TV and the movies, whether highbrow or lowbrow, 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.640 shaped people's understanding of how we should be thinking about 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:22.440 life in the universe. And the amazing thing about the 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.040 science is the science takes us actually in a more 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:29.640 imaginative and more amazing directions because you've got to really 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.720 try and think about it in a systematic way. But 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.480 it's it's interesting to note, right, many people are afraid 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.680 of aliens or feeling, you know, they're they're it's either 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:40.920 one either the aliens are like these gods who are 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:43.240 coming down to give us the cures for cancer, or 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.240 they're coming to eat us or mate with us, you know, 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:47.200 one of the others. 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:52.000 So you mentioned the seventies being this pivotal point and 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.920 you and you you talked about this in the book. 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.320 Why did this What did the serious qut it, serious 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.400 consideration of potential alien life look like prior to the 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:04.920 seventies and the advent of SETI and what like? What 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.120 were the limiting factors in how did it change? 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.600 Yeah? So what's interesting is this question are we alone? 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.840 Is one of the oldest human questions around. You can 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:16.840 see the Greeks arguing about it, and you know, the 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.200 book starts with this discussion of the history of this. 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.320 So Aristotle and Democratists, you can see them kind of 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.800 arguing with each other in writing from two thousand, five 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:29.040 hundred years ago. Giordano Bruno gets burnt at the stake, 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.000 you know, for heresy, which had to do with Catholic doctrine. 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:33.480 But really one of the reasons he got in trouble 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.600 was he was advocating for this Copernican view that the 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.520 Earth was just one planet of many, and many of 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.120 those planets out among the stars would be inhabited. But 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.480 what happens, actually the first pivotal decade is the fifties, 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.199 because you get the Fermi paradox and you get the 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.800 Drake equation. You get these two things happening at the 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.000 beginning of the end, which are the first sort of 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:58.000 scientific the scientific questions, questions that you could ask a 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:02.480 you could ask scientifically, could pose a research problem and 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.520 carry it out. And then Drake, Frank Drake carries out 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.240 at the end of that nineteen sixty the first astro 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.120 biological experiment ever done. So he takes two radio telescopes 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:13.520 and he points him at the sky and he looks 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.400 for signals for from you know, an intelligent civilization something 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:21.640 like might be beaming off of Earth right now. And 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:23.800 that is the first time anybody's been able to do 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.800 any kind of experiment asking whether it's dumb life, you know, 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.520 microbial life, or smart life meaning that builds civilizations. So 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:35.000 that launches SETI. That launches the scientific inquiry about a 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.800 life in the universe. And through most of the sixties 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.400 it's it's you know, now SETI becomes a field, but 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:42.840 it's very marginal. It's still in the you know, there's 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.280 a few brave scientists doing it, but it's still kind 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.240 of seen to be kind of out there. And then 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.840 what happens is the UFOs and everything that's going on 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:52.400 with the UFOs, which is, you know, tends to be 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.880 the conspiracy theories and the hoaxes, and the that starts 0:09:55.960 --> 0:10:00.200 to cloud the public's opinion about and the sign tis 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.640 even opinion about things like SETI. Now NASA is also 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.720 at the same time conducting searches, is thinking about life 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.240 on planets in the Solar System. So there's the Viking 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:13.439 landers to Mars, which scoop up some soil and try 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:18.400 and test for sort of earthlike microbes. Those have inconclusive results, 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.440 negative or inconclusive results. So by the time you coming 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:24.800 into the eighties, the search for life in the universe 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:26.840 is either you still have this sort of what we 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.080 call the giggle factor that if you tried to mention 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:31.679 the search for life in the universe, particularly the search 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:36.960 for intelligent life, meaning industrial technological life, yeah, eyebrows are 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.600 going to raise Congress literally some congressmen make Hay and 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:43.040 I talk about this the giggle factor in the book 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:45.719 and show people how this happened. Congress like doesn't even 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:49.080 allow NASA to fund SETI because the congressmen are like, 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.920 this is a waste of taxpayers dollars. You know, So 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:53.839 by the time you're into the late eighties when I'm 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:57.000 a graduate student. SETI is just there's a few brave 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.840 pioneers who are living on you know, prime funds, not 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:02.840 that SETI. Set he never really got a lot of funding, 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:04.880 and that's an important part of part of this, But 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:07.960 it's living on fumes. There really is barely any SETI 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:10.960 going on, and people the thought about, you know, even 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.080 dumb life on planets had stalled, and so by the 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:15.840 you know, when you're coming into the nineteen nineties, the 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.319 idea of life in the universe is almost nobody cares. 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.440 Nobody's paying except for you know, some pioneers. And certainly 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:25.040 when I was a scientist then there was a sense 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:26.680 of like, I don't even think about that. That's a 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:28.520 dead end, you know, or you're going to become a joke. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.520 Don't waste your career on that, which is amazing, because 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:33.400 again that's the point of the book is to show 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.200 that right now, this is the most this is the 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.719 most important issue in astronomer or one of the most 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.680 important issues in astronomy. If you're a young astronomer, good 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:44.920 shot that you're going to aim your career at astrobiology. 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:46.720 Quite a change, right. 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.400 Oh, yes, So you mentioned the for Me paradox and 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.200 the Drake equation. What do you think are the most 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:57.920 important fundamentals for listeners are just like the alien curious, 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:00.800 alien optimist or skeptics out there to take home concerning 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:01.800 these two properties. 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.520 Yeah, that's a great question, Rob because the point here 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:08.720 is that whether you are into UFOs or not into UFOs, 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:10.800 if you have, if you want to think about life 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:12.720 in the universe at all, you And that's why, you 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:14.680 know why I lay out this history in the book 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.600 in this short fun chapters. You know, it is literally 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:19.800 a little book of aliens because I wanted people and 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:22.240 easy to have an easy way in and out. For this, 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:25.400 you have to deal with the Fermi paradox and the 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:27.439 Drake equation. So let's deal with Let's think about the 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:30.520 Fermi paradox first. The Fermi paradox just asked the question, 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:36.120 if life is common, particularly intelligent life, then why aren't 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.440 they everywhere? Right? And that can take two forms. One 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.280 is why aren't they here now? Right? But Fermi recognized 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:43.200 very quickly He's he kind of did the calculation in 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.679 his head and saw that a spacefaring race, even if 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:48.320 it's going at a it can only go at a 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:50.520 tenth of the speed of light, which we believe is 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.360 the limit for any and nothing can travel faster than light. 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:55.840 That you would cross the galaxy and you could hop 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.319 from star system to star system in a time that's 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.679 very short compared to the the galaxy long for us, 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.080 it's on the order of six hundred thousand years. But 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.640 in terms of the galaxy, the galaxy should be entirely populated. 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.720 So one way of interpreting that is why aren't they 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:12.679 here now? Right? And so there's various answers to that. 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.080 But there's an indirect version of that which is more 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.160 important because people often have this feeling that, oh, every 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:20.920 night astronomers like take their telescopes and look at the 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:26.280 sky searching for evidence of alien intelligences, right, and nothing 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:28.400 could be further from the truth. Right, that's a version 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:31.320 what I call that the indirect Fermi paradoxes. Well, we've looked, 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.200 and we haven't found but as I said, because of 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:37.480 the giggle factor, we haven't looked, right, we have not 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.960 done those searches. There's never been any money funding to 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.920 use telescopes to do that. So Jason Wright and colleagues 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:47.880 did a study where they showed that if the sky 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.840 was like the ocean, how much of the ocean have 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.280 we searched and you know, and aliens were fish, how 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:55.720 much of the ocean have we searched for? And answer 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:58.440 is a hot up, right, that's all. You take all 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:00.679 the steady searches and you can buy them. And we've 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.679 basically looked at a hot tubs worth of ocean. Now, 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:05.800 if you looked at a hot tubs worth of water 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.960 and didn't find any fish, would you then say, up, 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.640 there's no fish in the ocean. So the answer is 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.120 we just haven't looked. But we are looking now, Like 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.760 finally there's funding, right, finally there's there's a community of 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.720 scientists with the backing of you know, the government science 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:24.920 agencies to really start this search for life. Whether it's 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.080 whether it's again dumb life or smart life, it doesn't matter. 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:30.760 We're finally we finally know where to look, We finally 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.040 know how to look, and we're looking. So that's the 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.480 Fermi paradox, the Drake equation. What's important about it was 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:41.440 in nineteen sixty after doing this his first search, he 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:44.040 was asked by the Government of All People to lead 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:48.360 a workshop on interstellar communications. And so they brought together 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.840 a few people, the eight or nine researchers, and what 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.880 Drake needed to do he needed an agenda for the meeting, 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:57.160 like what do we even talk about? And what he 0:14:57.160 --> 0:14:59.040 did is he took the problem the question is how 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.360 many intelligence civilizations are there in the galaxy, and he 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:06.160 broke it up into seven sub problems, which when you 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.000 multiplied their answer together, you get the answer to the 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.800 big question. And it turned out that those sub problems 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.880 became so famous because he offered people a way of 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.600 breaking this big problem up into smaller problems that you 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:24.160 could actually do research on. For example, the first sub 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:26.440 problem is how many stars are there? Right, that's the 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:27.920 first thing you want to know, and we already he 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:30.640 already knew that, right. The second sub problem was how 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.200 many planets are there? Or what's the fraction of stars 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.200 with planets? At the time, nobody knew what that was. 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.760 It could have been that the universe was barren, you know, 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:43.120 that our solar system was a freak and most stars 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.000 don't have planets. And now we've answered that question thanks 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:48.040 to the Drake equation, and people said like, oh, that's 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.600 the next question we need to answer, we now know 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.960 that every star in the sky hosts a family of worlds. 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:57.480 That is, that's one of the that happened in the nineties, 0:15:57.520 --> 0:15:59.200 the beginning of the nineties, and that was the beginning 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:03.640 of this change, right. That was a massive revolution in 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:07.480 astrobiology because it told us that the place where life forms, 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:10.840 which is planets, those are common, those are as cheap 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.520 as dirt. And then the next term in the Drake 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:18.040 equation was for every star that has planets, how many 0:16:18.080 --> 0:16:20.600 planets are in the right place for life to form, 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:22.480 which we think has to do with liquid water on 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.200 the surface. What's the you know, how many are in 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:28.600 this this Goldilocks ban of orbits where it's not too hot, 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:30.760 not too cold, so you can have liquid water on 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.080 the surface. And the answer for that is one in five. 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.240 So go outside tonight, look up at the night sky. 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.720 Every star you see has has worlds orbiting it, and 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:42.720 every five of those has a planet that's sitting there 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:48.240 where the experiment with life and civilizations even is being 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:49.840 run by the universe. 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:04.199 So getting into what we're looking for, I thought we 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:08.879 thought we might ask about techno signatures and biosignatures in 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.080 what in twenty nineteen, he became principal investigator on NASA's 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.480 first grant to study techno signatures. So what are they 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:18.119 and how are we looking for them? And what have 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:18.800 we found? 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:23.720 Yes, So the amazing thing about these revolutions, so the 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.280 exoplanet revolution, as I call it, and started in nineteen 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.920 ninety five when we discovered our first planet. By within 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.119 another ten or twenty years or so, we had figured 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:38.359 out how to look into the atmospheres of those planets. 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:40.520 And what happens is, you know, we detect planets as 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.000 they when they orbit in front of their star. It's 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.000 like a little tiny eclipse. The planet passes in front 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.119 of the star and blocks the light. But if the 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:50.320 planet has an atmosphere, there's a little while when the 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.720 light from the star passes through the atmosphere and reaches us. 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:56.399 And when that happens, it leaves an imprint. There's some 0:17:56.400 --> 0:18:00.840 of the light is absorbed by chemicals, compounds, molecule in 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:03.199 the atmosphere, and we can use that. Every one of 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.240 those imprints is like a fingerprint of what's in that atmosphere. 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:10.119 So we call that atmospheric characterization. And so what's in 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:17.360 that imprint, It potentially are signatures of things like a biosphere. Right, 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:19.200 So the Earth has a biosphere. It's the sum total 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:21.440 of all the life on the planet, all the plants, 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.919 all the plankton. It leaves a giant imprint in the 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.840 light from Earth, and the same thing can happen in 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:34.639 an alien world. So a biosignature would be something like oxygen. 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:36.960 Right on Earth. The only reason oxygen is in the 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.720 atmosphere is because life puts it there. If life goes away, 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.520 the oxygen goes away very quickly. So if you discover 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:47.960 oxygen in an alien world, that's a good shot that 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:54.080 that planet has life, a robust biosphere. So oxygen dimethyl sulfide, 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:56.960 that is a chemical which is in Earth's atmosphere. It's 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.000 only there because all the plankton are kind of fartening 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.080 it out there. So we have a whole long list 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.280 and that we're we're generating more and more lists of 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.679 bio signatures which if we detect them, that will be 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.160 and that will be evidence that there's life on that planet. 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.520 Techno signatures this is this is a newer field. And 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:15.680 as you say, I'm the principal investigator on the first 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:20.720 time NASA was willing to fund the search for intelligent life. 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.320 Last NASA had been funding the search for dumb life 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.760 for a while, but because of that giggle factor, techno 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.760 signatures or you know, intelligent life was not on the list. 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:33.960 Now it is. So the group I'm part of we 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:38.080 are looking for or we're designing, we're coming up with 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:42.000 the list of possible techno signatures. So one, what are they? One? 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:46.160 We just wrote a paper on this. Chemicals, industrial chemicals, 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:51.320 So for example, chlorofluorocarbons or CFC's. These are the things 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.640 that you know, we were using in air conditioners that 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.600 got pumped into the atmosphere and we're destroying the ozone hole, 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:00.880 right those things actually, so either by polue or if 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:03.880 you were trying to terraform mars, you would purposely pump 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.040 them into an atmosphere because they're great greenhouse gases. Actually, 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:10.879 so we showed that even with the James web Space telescope, 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:15.160 you could detect chloral flora carbons in the atmosphere of 0:20:15.240 --> 0:20:17.560 a world that was forty light years away and if 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.919 it had levels close to our level even now, so 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.680 those that's if we and chloroflora carbons cannot be there 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:29.040 is just no way nature produces them. They're too complex 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.679 and weird, or so discover those you've discovered there's a 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.600 technological civilization there on that planet. If you discover those 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:39.280 in a planet's atmosphere, city lights, the if the you know, 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:43.080 if a civilization is using artificial illumination, we may be 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:46.480 able to detect the spectral signature, the signature in light 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:53.080 of those cities. The large scale use of solar panels, 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:55.359 you would be able to see the reflectants, all that 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.800 light bouncing off the solar panels, you'd be able to see. 0:20:57.840 --> 0:20:59.439 And the list goes on and on. We may be 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:01.720 able to detect if you have a lot of satellites 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:04.040 in orbit, in geosynchronous orbit, you might be able to 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.359