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Are there Aliens? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Have you ever looked up at the night sky and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: wondered if there's life in other parts of the universe?
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: You mean our aliens? Real? Yeah, I mean some of
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: these questions are so deep that no matter what the
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: answer is, it's going to blow your mind. So like,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: if there is life out there, that would be totally
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: mind blowing. And if we're the only living beings in
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the entire universe, oh my gosh, also mind blowing. Him.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And I'm Daniel, and I'm a cartoonists former roboticist, and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, which means I know things about
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: particles and space and the universe, and I make up
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: things about aliens. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Horror
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Explain the Universe today. On the program, we're asking the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: question are we alone in the universe? Is there anyone
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: else out there that thinks and feels and loves and
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: slips on bananas? Or is it just us in the
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: universe thinking and feeling? Are we the only ones intelligent
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: or somewhat intelligent in this entire universe at least? Do
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: you think humans are intelligent? Or hey, I mean that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: says something about you right there. Well, it's a little bar.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I wonder if aliens have come to Earth and
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: just sort of dismissed us as not intelligent life and
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: moved on. Yeah, They're like, oh my god, we don't
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: want to associate with these people, these dumb rocks. So
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: we were wondering about this question, and as usual, we
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: went out and we asked people on the street. We said,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: do you think we're alone in the universe or is
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: there other intelligent life out there? What do you think
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: are we the only ones in the universe. Here's what
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: they had to say. I definitely think there's other intelligence
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: out there. Why is that? Well, first of all, I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: think it's kind of arrogant to think that we're the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: only ones here because it's a pretty big place. I
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: think it's possible that there's other intelligent life just because
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: of how spacious the universe is. I think there's another
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: intelligent life somewhere out there. Yeah, I think because I
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: think the universe is so big, and I don't I
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: just don't think it's possible that human as the only
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: intelligence forever life. Yeah, alright, So I think most people
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: seem to be pretty optimistic about it, right, You think
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that's optimistic? I was surprised that everybody believes in aliens,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Like almost every single person thinks there is other intelligent
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: life out there, right, I was really shocked. I thought
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot more skepticism, really a lot
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: more like human centric people like we're special. Yeah. Well,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: you know, America is a fairly religious nation, and the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: narrative of the mainstream Christianity is that humans were made
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in the image of God, and there's not a whole
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: lot a place in that narrative for other intelligent races. Well,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I guess there's nothing on the In the Bible, it
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: says that there aren't aliens. Right, Oh, that's true, I suppose,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: But are they human like or you know, other weird
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: stuff or yeah, I suppose. Yeah. Anyway, it would be
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a fascinating moment and a reckoning for Christianity and most
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: religions the day that we discover other intelligent life. You
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and I should write that Extra Testament, the Newest Testament
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: by Jorhand Daniel, the Extra Terrestrial Testament, the Terrestament. But
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I was surprised by how subtle people's arguments were. You know,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: they were like, um, it's a big universe, so it
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: would be surprising if we were the only ones. Like,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that's a very kind of subtle argument, right, what's subtle
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: about it? I mean they're just saying it's huge, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: so it's probably not empty, right, there's a lot of
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: interesting nuances. They're like, yeah, it's big, but we don't
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: know how rare life is, and so we have no
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: idea if being big means that there's a lot of life,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: we could still be the only ones. You know. What
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I'm really interested in is your comment. You said you
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: thought they were optimistic, So you think, um, having aliens
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: out there is good news. Well, I don't know if
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: it's good news, but it's it's kind of like, um,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: it sort of feels like the sadder option is that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: we were the only ones in the entire universe, right,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Like there's something comforting emotionally about the fact that we're
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: not the only ones out there, right, Like, you wouldn't
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: want to be the only person in live in the universe.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It depends how friendly they are, you know,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: if there's their ferocious life out their way and to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: kill us, I'm not sure i'd be too comforted knowing
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: that they're they're not very far away, and they could
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: come over here and squish us in a moment. Oh,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I see, you're you're pessimistic about the optimistic scenario where
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: we're not the only ones. Yeah, the fact that we're
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: not the only ones. Um, if we were, if we
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: discover that there is intelligent, other intelligent life out there,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I agree, it means something really fascinating and deep about
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: life and intelligence and consciousness. But I'm not sure it
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: would be good news for humans, you know. And what
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you said a moment ago is fascinating as well, because
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: you say it would be comforting to think that there's
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: other intelligent life out there. On the contrary, if we
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: are the only intelligent life in the entire vast cosmos,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: that means we're quite special. You know. In the history
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of science, mostly the role of science has been to
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: put humanity in its place. You know. Oh, you the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Earth is not the center of the Solar system. Oh,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the Earth is not the center of the galaxy. Oh,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: this galaxy is one of zillions. So it turns out
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: we're tiny little things living on a tiny speck in
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. Wouldn't it be amazing if science
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: then put humanity right back in the center of importance
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and said we are special. We are the only intelligent
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: life in the universe. We are basically the universe's brain.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: That would be a fascinating new role for science in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: sort of the communal mindset. I guess I don't have
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the same ego as a physicist, maybe, right. Cartoonists are
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: famously self depricating, right, it doesn't take any ego to
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: put your art online for millions to admire. But yeah,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a big universe, and so it would
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: be weird if we were the only ones. And so
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: that's that's a big question, right, Like why haven't we
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: by now we've been listening to these guys and looking
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: out there by now, why haven't we heard from, or
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: been contacted by, or seen evidence of other intelligent life forms? Right,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: It's a famous question, and people call it the Fermi
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: paradox from for Enrico Fermi, who first posited it. He said,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the universe is huge, and it's old, and that's another
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: important factor. The universe is old, and that means that
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: even though it's pretty big, it doesn't take that long
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: to get across it, like take our galaxy. Right, it's
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: pretty big, but you could traverse it in you know,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of million years if you had pretty good technology. Right, So,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: so by now we should have seen some passing cruise
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: ship or ailing cruise ship or some sort of probe
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: or something by now. Yeah, Like, if I wanted to
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: explore the galaxy, how would I do it? I would
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: send out a probe which would then self replicate. It
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: would like land on an asteroid and mind the materials
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: to build two copies of itself, which would then land
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: on an asteroid, which would then land on asteroids. So
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: you get this exponential growth in these probes, and it
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: only takes you know, a few hundred thousand years to
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: visit every single thing in the galaxy if you use
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: that technique. So then the question is, why haven't we
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: been visited? If the galaxy is billions of years old
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and not that hard to get across in a fraction
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: of the galaxy's lifetime, where is everybody? Right? So that's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: firm me his famous question, right, right, And it's kind
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: of related to this idea you mentioned earlier, which is
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: that it sort of depends on the probability of things,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: like the probability that we would be contacted by life
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: is equal to the probability that life can form and
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that it can do other things. Right, That's right, And
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you have to sort of break the problem into pieces.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: And the guy who did that first is called Drake.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: And so there's this equation called the Drake equation, which
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: tries to sort of compartmentalize the questions. It says, you know,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the probability for us to be contact by aliens is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the number of stars out there times the fraction of
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: those stars that have earthlike planets. Right, That gives you
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: the total number of earthlike planets out there times the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: probability for life to be formed on those planets times
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: the probability for that life to be intelligent, times the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: probability for that life to have technology, times the probability
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that we overlap in eras so that we can actually
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: talk to them. So it's a lot of different pieces.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: So it's like you have to stack these probabilities one
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: on top of the other. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: what's the probability you're gonna roll a two ones when
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: you rule to die, And it's like you have to
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: multiply the probability of rolling one in one die and
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: then another one in another die, which is one six
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: times one six. So it's like there's like a one
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: in thirty six probability you're gonna throw a deuce a
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: two ones in a pair of die exactly. And the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: more pieces you have that have to line up that
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the heart of the chances are even if you do
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: something more more likely, like flip a coin. Right, what
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: are the chances you're gonna flip a coin eight times
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and get eight heads in a row? Right? Well, not
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: very high? You know, one over two to the eight
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: is a small number. So even if all of those
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: numbers are pretty big, it's the probability of all them
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: together can be kind of small. Oh, I see. It's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: like you have to flip a coin and get ahead,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and then flip another coin and get ahead, and so
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that there's probability stuck up. And if you have one
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: coin that's like messed up, that's tails and both sides
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and you'll never get all heads. Right, that's right, And
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: that's the calculation I think people were doing in their
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: heads when we asked them, is their intelligent life out there?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: And they thought, well, the first part of that number,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the number of stars is huge, and so it doesn't
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: really matter what the other numbers are. I think that's
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the argument they were making. But I think that argument
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is pretty flawed. Actually, what do you mean it's flawed? Well,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the first number is big, right, So how many stars
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: are there in the universe? Well, every galaxy has about
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a hundred billion, which is, you know, already a totally
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: infathomable number. Like it's just it's hard to even imagine, right,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: how many stars that is. Plus you have to multiply
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: that by the number of galaxies in the universe. And
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: in our observed prubble universe, the part we can see,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: there's two trillion galaxies. So we're two trillion times a
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: hundred billion zillion stars. That's the official that's right technically,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: because and so I in fact that I think they've
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: figured out that um on any given star, the probability
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that there's an earthlike planet, there's like maybe three or
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: four of them right per star. Yeah, this is something
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: we've only learned pretty recently because of the rise of
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: this exoplanet science where we can look at other stars
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: and see the planets around them and try to estimate
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: we've seen enough now that we can start to estimate
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: what fraction of those stars have an earthlike planet, meaning
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: a planet that's pretty rocky, reasonable size, and has a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: reasonable amount of solar radiation right fried to a crisp
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: or totally chilly. And yeah, the fraction of stars that
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: have an earthlike planet is one in five. One in
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: five stars as an earthlike planet. Yeah, which is amazing
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: because that takes that huge number two trillion times a
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: hundred billion and just divides it by five, which still
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: leaves an enormous number. There's a huge amount of planets
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: out there that are just like the Earth, that's right,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: And we only learned this recently, you know, a few
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: years ago it could have been that earthlike planets were
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: super rare. That number could have been one over two gazillion. Right.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So the fact that the first number is big, that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the number of stars is huge, doesn't guarantee that the
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: whole number is big, because if any of those numbers,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the fraction that have earthlike planets, the fraction that have life,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: the fractions have intelligent life, if any of those are tiny,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: then the whole number is tiny. Right. So, but so
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: far it's pretty big still, number of stars times number
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: earthlike planets still an enormous number, but that's as far
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: as we know. We really just don't know, Like, can
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: you answer the question what fraction of earthlike planets have
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: life on them? That's a pretty basic question, right, You
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: might ask a biologist, like if you ran an Earth
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: stimulator a hundred times, how many times would you get
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: life on it? We just don't know the answer to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: that question. It's one of the core questions and modern biology.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And I'm speaking as a particle physicist who doesn't know
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: that much biology except for being married to a biologist.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: But we still don't know they answer that very basic question.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: So basically she would say, you don't know anything. You
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: don't know. She says that to me a lot, and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: she's usually right. Not just about biology, that's right, it's
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: more of a broader conversation that we have before we
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: keep going. Let's take a short break. But we sort
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: of know a little bit about how life form, right, Like,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you haven't planeted like the Earth, and um that maybe
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: has water. It's in the right spot relative to the sun,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: it's not too hot, not too cold. It's called the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Goldilocks planet. We sort of know a little bit about
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you need this kind of primordial soup, and eventually,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: at least on Earth, like some of those molecules kind
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: of came together and became a life. Yeah, that's true. Um,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: we know what's necessar seria, but we don't know if
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: it's sufficient. Right. So, you know, we know that you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: need liquid water, and you need basic amino acids, and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: you need some source of energy right to organize things, um,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: lightning or the sun or whatever. But we don't know
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: if you put that all together, if you get life
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: every time, or if it's a totally freak chance. Right.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: We just really, we really have no idea how many
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: times that happens. And people are studying this, you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: they do things like put that promodial soup or our
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: understanding of it, in a test tube and zap it
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: with electricity, and they see cool stuff happen, like basic
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: amino acids the building blocks of DNA and stuff they
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: do form. But that doesn't make life, right. Life needs
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to be self replicating and has to have metabolism. And
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: but you know there's a whole other question there about
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: what is life anyway. Well, so even if you can
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: get life out of primorial soup, you still have to
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: have that live, survive and evolve and become uh critters
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: and beings and intalligent beings. We can build radios and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: technology and harness and launch podcast the city, yeah, and
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: large podcasts and then get transmitted across the cosmos. Like
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: that's that's a huge gap to write, like a huge improbability.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: That's right, we just don't know, and so we've already
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: gone past our knowledge, right that the fraction of planets
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that form life could be one in two, it could
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: be one in a gazillion. Right, Um, you're absolutely right,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And then you're right that we don't know what fraction
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: then make intelligent life, Like, yeah, we have the example
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: here on Earth. We also know that that one example
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: is highly dependent on a bunch of random events, like
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: a meteor crashed in the Earth and killed all the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: dinosaurs and made room for the mammals to evolve. Would
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the dinosaurs have become intelligent if we hadn't come around?
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Is is it guaranteed that something becomes intelligent? Or is
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: this just a total fluke and in a thousand different
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: other similar earths without in a meteor, or if the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: meteor hit somewhere else, you wouldn't have intelligent life, or
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: you'd have super intelligent life, or like dumb life or
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: life all life would be dead. We just we really
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: have no where to answer that question. But even then,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: that's just a probability that there is life out there, right,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Like you just need all those factors to add up
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: to more than one in a gazillion, Like if it
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: was to an a gazillion, there's probably definitely life out there.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: But then there's the other question of like, why haven't
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: we heard from them or contacted them or seen them? Right, Like,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: it's kind of two separate questions, like is there life
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: out there? Right? And then there's a question of why
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: haven't we like seen it or had contact with it?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I like that thought. Let's assume that life is not
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: so rare, and even that intelligent life is not so rare, Okay,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: So then we live in a universe filled with Earth
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: life planets that have some sort of squishy, weird intelligent
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: life on them, right, And then the question is if
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that's true, why haven't we heard from them? Right? Because
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: as we said earlier, it's not that complicated to make
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: self replicating probes that explore the entire galaxy. So why
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: haven't we heard from them? Yeah, and there's a lot
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of fun ideas. They're like my favorite hypothesis is that
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: maybe we have heard from them and we just don't know.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, would we understand a message from space? I mean,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: in order to understand it, it it would have to be
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: in a language we've recognize. It would have to be
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: in a communication medium we're looking for, Like maybe they're
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: sending us signals, but it's uh in some kind of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: thing that we don't even look for, like neutrinos or
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: some other medium that's not light exactly. We're listening to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: messages from the sky, we're not actually listening that hard,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and we're only listening to a tiny little slice of
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the possible messages we can get. And the message could
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: be in a totally different medium, you're right, Or it
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: could even be you know, in radio waves, which is
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: what we're listening for, but just be undecipherable. I mean,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: what if aliens live thousands of years and so their
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: messages last hundreds of years and we're hearing it, We're
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: just hearing the first, you know, few snatches of it,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and we don't even recognize that. It is like maybe
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: we're getting a message thing, uh, guys going, but like
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it's so slow if we don't even pay attention to it. Yeah,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Or it could be the reverse. It could be like
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: super fast, like super pico second signals that we can't
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: even detect. Yeah. Absolutely. We have actually in the past
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: heard messages or heard things from space that we don't understand.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite stories is this message called the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: WOW signal. That's the scientific term. It's literally called the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Wow signal because when somebody heard it, they wrote wow
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: down on a piece of paper when they saw it,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: and it was exactly the kind of signal you would
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: expect to get from space if they were aliens. It
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: was the thing. It was the ninety seven and they
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: had a telescope and they heard this extraordinarily loud, intense
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: burst of radiation well above the background and nothing they
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: had seen like that before. And you know, they said,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: is it a satellite, is it something reflecting off this,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: is it something weird bounce off the moon? Is it
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: something else? And they ruled out all those possibilities they
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: recorded it. Yeah. Absolutely, So we have the data, um,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: but nobody knows if it comes from an intelligent life
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: or not. Because first of all, it was never repeated,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: so we only heard it once and we can't decipher it.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: It's very short. We don't know what it means. So
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: without being able to decipher it, it it could just be like,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, some weird emissions structure to it. Yeah, it
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: has that we can determine, right, I mean, who knows
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: how these things could be structured encoded in a way
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that's totally alien to us. Anything we get will be encoded.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Like think about the message that we sent into space.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I think about that a lot. Like we send messages
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: into space, like on the Voyager Probe and the Pioneer. Right,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: there's like the famous Golden Record, that's where we send
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: that satellite out there into space with like information about it,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: like a little note that says call me maybe maybe
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I'm crazy, call me um. And I wonder, like, if
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: you're an alien species, would you have any chance of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: deciphering that? Right? In order for that to work, we
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: have to have some a lot of stuff in common
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: about the way we think. And I think that's the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: critical factor, is that really all we're capable of discovering
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: is life that's very similar to ours in the sense
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: that it thinks the way we do. It uses math
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: and it communicates the way we do, and also that
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: they want to communicate. I mean, there could be just
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: be life out there that just doesn't care about finding
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: other life, that's busy living their squishy, little eyeball life. Right,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Like we're the only extroverts in the universe, and most
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: thoughts aliens out there are like, why would you want
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: to talk to other people? That's insane, that's right to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: just slam the door and pretend to not home. You know,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: we could be the weird ones in that perspective. Um.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And you know we sent other messages into space when
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: we got this wow signal. We can tell where in
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the sky it's coming from because from directionality of the
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of the antenna. And so people actually sent a response,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: like they beamed a response back into space. What again,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it was it was new phone who did UM. So
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: that's one possibilities that like, even if there is intelligent
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: life out there and there are signals to be seen,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: there's just two alien for us to even recognize or
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: process or be able to cypher. That's right, And I
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: think that's honestly likely because it's hard for us to
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: imagine things that are really alien to us. I mean,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: like look at all of our science fiction, right, It
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: usually the aliens are like some variation on humans with
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: like fuzzy eyebrows or pointy ears or something, because it's
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: difficult to extrapolate that far into the unknown. I mean
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: even here on Earth, people travel to other countries and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: they're like shocked at the weird stuff people eat and
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the way they talk and how they sleep and what
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: they wear, and like even human cultures are bizarre and
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: alien to us if we're not familiar with them. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I love traveling for that reason that you discover what's
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: universal about being human and what's just like totally arbitrary
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: and made up about your culture. And that's one of
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the amazing things about aliens, Like what stuff that everybody
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: does and what's stuff that only you for some reason
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: or your culture? Yeah, exactly, Like everybody needs caffeine in
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the morning of some kind, right, but only we drink
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: this water from a weird being on a tree, right.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And so if we discovered aliens, then we would learn
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: so much about, um, you know, what is common in life,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Like how did they do they use math to think?
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Do they have scientists you know, are they spiritual? Do
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: they see color? Do they have two genders? Nine genders?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: No genders? Like what is basic and similar in life
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and what is totally different? That would be so fascinating.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool to think about. Yeah, there's another possibility,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: like maybe there's life out there, but the universe is
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: so big and so vast and so old that the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: chances of us hearing about them are contacting them is
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: just too small. I don't like that one because I
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: feel like, eventually somebody's going to invent the self replicating probe.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Your civilization doesn't even have to survive. You could just
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: send out that probe and eventually it will contact everybody
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: in the galaxy. I like how you're thinking like a physicist.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking like an engineer, and I'm like, self recomplicating probes.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: That's an impossible engineering feed. Are you kidding me? Is
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: that what engineers do? They say things are impossible? No,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you can't have this, you can't have this, you can't
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: have this. How hard is that? I mean, all you
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: gotta do is land and astro w mind some materials,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: build a factory, right, Sure, that's super easy. I mean
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: we can be doing it for a long time. Why not.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call Elon Musk and I'm sure you'll have
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a we'll start a company to do it tomorrow and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: ask him how those are still driving cars are doing. Hey,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: when you're done building model threes, can we build self
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: replicating probes that explore the galaxy? And while we're at it,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: let's give them artificial intelligence so they can interact with
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the aliens and answer their questions. That would be pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah, well,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: this is a perfect point to take a break. We'll
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: be right back in a minute. I think the idea
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: is that it's like we're in an ocean, right, Like
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: if you're stranded in the ocean on a raft, Like,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: what are the chances you're going to run into other
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: people stranded in the raft? It's pretty small, right, It
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: depends how many rafts there are, right. But also there's
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: not just like the space of it, that is also
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: the age of it, right, Like me be we are
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: alive right now in a moment that's after the most
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: populous time in the universe. Like maybe everybody was alive
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: a few billion years ago, or maybe everyone's going to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: be alive a few billion years from now, but right
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: now we're maybe like the first ones at the party
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: or something, yeah, or the last ones. Yeah. And that's
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the last element that in that Drake equation, right, is
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the probably that we're alive at the same time to communicate.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And you're right in terms of how long we've been
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: around and like listening to this guy and talking to it,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: it's a tiny fraction of the life of the universe.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: And then you have to wonder, like how long is
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: humanity is going to be around and receptive to messages.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Is there going to be fifty years, which is all
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: we've had so far, or fifty thousand years even still,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: which would be a tiny fraction. So you're right. It
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: could be that life flourishes and intelligent life is created
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and then you know, destroys itself every time, and so
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: that these things don't last very long, which would make
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: it difficult to talk to each other. Yeah, yeah, but
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: that's not very optimistic the idea that maybe life is
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: super pop blur in the universe, but it all eventually
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: like kills itself, that's right, blows itself up in a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: glorious fireway. Like maybe there's been other civilizations that have
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: followed the exact same steps we have. You know, like
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: um evolved, make cars. Um, you're about to say that
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is inevitable. That is that what you're saying.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: It's a universal truth that every civilization creates Donald Trump.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Eventually Trump is an alien. That would explain a lot.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: But but like it isn't like at some point all
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: civilizations eventually maybe like learn how to split the atom
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: and then they all blow each other up inevitably. It's possible,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: But again I think that's just extrapolation from our experience.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: You know, that's the kind of things humans do, and
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: so we like to think, well, probably everybody does that,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: but we really don't know, right, Remember, we really have
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: no idea. I mean, it could be that other aliens
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: don't have such a defined sense of individuality, right, I Mean,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: we have this notion that I'm me and you are you,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and there's this biological difference defined by our skin. But
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that's a biological that's a conclusion from a biologic artifact, right,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: was this the skin that we have and other beings
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: could be like more fluid, where like the nature of
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: an individual depends on who's near each other, and so
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: their concept of resource sharing and therefore war is totally
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: different and maybe very unlikely that they kill themselves, So
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: we we just don't know, but it's it's certainly possible
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that life is flourishing and destroying itself very rapidly. Well.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I also, um, I thought the craziest idea that I
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: read out there was this idea that maybe the universe
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: is teeming with life, but nobody wants to talk to us,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: like somehow we're in a bubble where they're like, let's
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: not let's not even touch these guys. Or or there's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: an idea out there that we're like in a zoo
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: or something. Oh, I hate that idea. I hate that
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: It not because I think it's wrong. I think it's
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: actually pretty reasonable and clever. But how frustrating, right, I
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: mean I said earlier that meeting aliens would be dangerous,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and I think that probably would be, But that doesn't
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: mean I wouldn't want to. I mean, I would love
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: to meet aliens. We could learn so much about the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: universe and six and math and life. So if they're
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: out there and could contact us and they're just not
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: because we're lame, boy, that would be pretty disappointing. That
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: would be a crush through the to our self image.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: So I think it would be comforting to know that
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: we're not alone in this universe, right like today idea.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like having an older sibling or something,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: you know, somebody who's been through it, who sort of
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: had maybe has some more knowledge than we do. I
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: think that would be cool. Um. But you're you're thinking
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: that maybe it might be dangerous to contact other life forms. Absolutely,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I think it would be dangerous. Um. The history of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: contact between different cultures is that the more advanced one
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: always crushes the lesser advanced one. And if we're going
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: to contact aliens, more likely they're going to come to us,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: then we're going to get to them, which means they
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: are the more advanced. And you know what that means, right,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about the way we treat lesser intelligent creatures. Right.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: We domesticate them, right, Dogs and chimpanzees don't have rights
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: in our society, um, and we argue that they're less intelligent.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: We even eat some less intelligent creatures, right, So when
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: aliens come, do we apply that same morality to them
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: and say, well, yeah, you guys are twice as smart
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: as us. So go ahead and make us your pets
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and eat however many of us you want, right, I
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: think that's the most likely outcome. I see, Like, if
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: you run into less intelligent species, you're most likely your
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: thought is, it's not hey, let's bring these guys up
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and show them all we can do, more like hey,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: slave labor or something like that. Exactly. Look, resources, Yeah,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: we've been traveling on the spaceship for millions of years.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Finally we get to eat something warm. Yeah, that's right,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: roasted human. That's my concern. And you know, we have
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: sent messages into space, and I think that's kind of dangerous.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're like advertising where you are and who
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: you are and the fact that you're pretty clueless. So imagine,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: for example, say the universe is teeming with life and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: nobody's contacted us just because nobody knew we were here.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: And then we just on the edge of our technological
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: capabilities to contact people, we announced ourselves, Hey everybody, look
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: at us, were totally weak and helpless. Then you know
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen here exactly Exactly. Imagine dropping a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: baby into the most dangerous neighborhood on Earth. Right, it's
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: gonna scream and cry and then what's going to happen. Well,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: it's very unlikely somebody kind harder is going to pick
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: it up and take care of it. So again, I
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: don't know if finding intelligent life in the universe is
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: an optimistic or pessimistic viewpoint. So it doesn't seem likely
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that we will ever contact or talk to or learn
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: a lot. So maybe the lesson here is that we
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: should learn to be by ourselves in a way, you know, like,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: don't expect some siliciation to save us or to destroyers.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe the lesson is to really just kind of own
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: being alone and take responsibility for our existence here on Earth. Yeah,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I think the best case scenario would be if we
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: discover intelligent life, you know, we developed technologically, we move
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: on to other planets, maybe we explore the galaxy, we
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: build those self replicating probes, and then we discover alien
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: life and we learn from them. I think that would
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: be the best case scenario for humans to be the colonizers,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: not like cutting out the colonized e s. Well, I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: hope by that time, you know, we will have developed
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a higher morality and we will you know, not take
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: advantage of those squishy little cute aliens we discover around
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: whatever planet. Um. But yeah, I think it could be
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: better if we found them before they found us, for sure.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: But I would also love to to see another planet
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: and to meet aliens and to get to talk to them.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: But you know, every time I see a science fiction
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: movie where there's aliens, I'm always amazed at how it
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: always takes like six minutes for them to figure out
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: how to talk to each other. You know, you just
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: raise your hand, part your your fingers and that's it. Right,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Live long, and prosper well, whether we are alone or
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: we're one of many who out there anna enjoy the
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: experience of being And to our alien listeners, if you're
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: going to come to Earth, please arrive gently, eat something
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: before you get here, that's right, fill up for the trip,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: please please thanks a lot. If you still have a
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com.