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Selects: How SETI Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, Chuck here, I saw a UFO last night.
0:04
Speaker 1: Actually that's not true, but it would be a great
0:06
Speaker 1: story if I were setting up this episode from March one, twelve,
0:09
Speaker 1: How SETI works Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Welcome to Stuff
0:19
Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
0:28
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me
0:31
Speaker 1: as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is
0:34
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know the podcast. Don't get it confused.
0:40
Speaker 1: What is that? What was that? That was my instation?
0:45
Speaker 1: That was burgess, Meredith. Okay, thank you, that's pretty good. Thanks.
0:51
Speaker 1: It's a good Burgess Meredith. Chuck, you're in the mood
0:55
Speaker 1: for alien talk. Sure, this is the second time we've
1:00
Speaker 1: done something like this. Almost a year later, right at it?
1:04
Speaker 1: We did? Uh how UFOs work live in Austin, Yeah,
1:07
Speaker 1: last March. So yeah, I guess once a year we
1:10
Speaker 1: do aliens aliens? Yea um. But hey, before we get started,
1:15
Speaker 1: may I take a second. Yeah, I want to just
1:17
Speaker 1: say special high to my wife Umi, right, who made
1:25
Speaker 1: me the happiest guy in February. Yeah, I could just
1:30
Speaker 1: call her on February when we got married. Indeed, Yeah,
1:34
Speaker 1: any dats Are you just gonna no, that's all all right.
1:37
Speaker 1: I was just wanting ever, I wanted to share my
1:39
Speaker 1: happiness with everybody out there. Very well done, thank you
1:42
Speaker 1: very much. Hey Umi, So let's get back to aliens. Okay, yes, okay.
1:47
Speaker 1: So we are doing this in honor of Are We Alone?
1:51
Speaker 1: Month on Science Channel? Right, So the month of March
1:55
Speaker 1: is are We Alone? Month? And Science Channel Every Tuesday,
1:58
Speaker 1: I believe at Tan is having a premiere of, um
2:03
Speaker 1: some new show that has something to do with the
2:06
Speaker 1: search for extraterrestrial life. Yeah, it's gonna be very cool.
2:10
Speaker 1: And I mean there's some like all shows are gonna
2:13
Speaker 1: be awesome, but there's some that are clearly going to
2:15
Speaker 1: be really awesome, like Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.
2:20
Speaker 1: I mean that in the context of an are We Alone? Month? Yeah,
2:25
Speaker 1: it's big news. Also, um uh the Alien Encounters with
2:29
Speaker 1: Nick Sagan got to be related to Carl Carl Pilkington,
2:34
Speaker 1: yes uh. And then if you're in the mood for
2:37
Speaker 1: a contest, what would a month be without one? There
2:41
Speaker 1: is a set live contest where the prize is to
2:45
Speaker 1: go visit cet no Way, go to the California to
2:48
Speaker 1: the institute. Yes, pretty sweet. Yes, So this is all
2:51
Speaker 1: going on on Science Channel all month long. And if
2:53
Speaker 1: you want more details watch Science Channel pal yeah, or
2:56
Speaker 1: hit him up on Facebook. I bet they have info there. Yeah.
2:59
Speaker 1: And in honor of this month is very special month,
3:02
Speaker 1: we are doing how study works, which is an acronym
3:06
Speaker 1: study if you don't know, for to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes,
3:11
Speaker 1: and I joked before we did this, are we Alone?
3:14
Speaker 1: Month will be followed by yes We're Alone Day sort
3:17
Speaker 1: of a joke. But they haven't really found a lot
3:20
Speaker 1: of stuff yet. Well, I don't know. Let me let
3:22
Speaker 1: me give you an example of something. Have you heard
3:26
Speaker 1: of the wild signal? Yeah, we talked about this before
3:28
Speaker 1: we did when I think it might have been one
3:30
Speaker 1: of the webcasts. It definitely rang a bell that had
3:34
Speaker 1: your stank on it. No, we talked about the Yosemite
3:40
Speaker 1: Sam signal. I know, but I think we talked about
3:42
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Okay, well, old webcast, let
3:45
Speaker 1: me tell you again. Let me refresh your memory, because
3:47
Speaker 1: you clearly don't remember. August fifty seven, a guy who's
3:52
Speaker 1: now known as Dr Jerry or Aman e h m
3:55
Speaker 1: A N I keep wanting to call him ermine. Yeah
3:58
Speaker 1: he uh. He was manning the Big Year Radio telescope
4:03
Speaker 1: at Ohio State University UM and was analyzing some data
4:08
Speaker 1: from it, and so basically saw, this is what it
4:11
Speaker 1: looks like. It's a it's a bunch of numbers and letters.
4:14
Speaker 1: It looks like the matrix scroll very much. So, yes, Um.
4:18
Speaker 1: But what that is is a burst of radio activity
4:25
Speaker 1: transmitted on the one four, two oh point four or
4:28
Speaker 1: five six mega hurts frequency for seventy two seconds W
4:32
Speaker 1: A L N right right um. And it was basically
4:39
Speaker 1: the closest thing we've ever gotten to hard evidence of
4:43
Speaker 1: a radio transmission from an alien civilization. It meant like
4:47
Speaker 1: all of the criteria that set he follows, which will
4:49
Speaker 1: talk about later UM for um radio transmissions from intelligent life.
4:56
Speaker 1: Right Um. The problem is is after searching for for
5:00
Speaker 1: like fifty times, specifically, it's never been found again. And
5:05
Speaker 1: the reason it's called the wow Um transmission is because
5:08
Speaker 1: Jerry Ahman Um circled it and wrote wow with an
5:11
Speaker 1: exclamation point, and that's that's why it's called that. So
5:16
Speaker 1: although since that time, nothing else has come up in
5:20
Speaker 1: that same area and we haven't had anything even remotely
5:23
Speaker 1: close to it. Set still continues, right, Yeah, and CT
5:28
Speaker 1: is both a a movement and a group of people.
5:32
Speaker 1: It's an institute. Yeah, well there's the SETI Institute and
5:36
Speaker 1: there's just independent Set Operations. Yeah. I mean you can
5:41
Speaker 1: use SET as a would that be an down because
5:45
Speaker 1: it is a search? Yeah, yeah, you're right, just a
5:48
Speaker 1: funky nown right, But let's talk about it, Chuck, let's
5:51
Speaker 1: talk about set the challenges that has. Uh. Well, first
5:55
Speaker 1: of all, if you've seen the movie Contact I have
5:58
Speaker 1: apparently it's not two and accurate from the writer of
6:02
Speaker 1: this article who was Freud and Lake, wasn't it, He
6:06
Speaker 1: said that that movie, if you want to watch that one,
6:08
Speaker 1: is fairly accurate and on track. Well, it was based
6:11
Speaker 1: on a book written by Carl Sagan and he definitely
6:13
Speaker 1: knew his stuff. Yeah, he was like, the Sagan Institute
6:16
Speaker 1: is one of the parts of CET Institute, very nice
6:19
Speaker 1: or the second Research Center, I think. So go ahead,
6:23
Speaker 1: and you're saying, oh, well, so let's talk a little
6:28
Speaker 1: bit about the origin of it. Um SET came about
6:31
Speaker 1: in a time when there was a large intellectual push
6:35
Speaker 1: towards searching for alien life. A lot of very very
6:38
Speaker 1: smart people suddenly started postulating that there's probably other people
6:44
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, there's gotta be two guys, um Philip
6:48
Speaker 1: Morrison and Giuseppe Cony I wrote wrote a paper in
6:55
Speaker 1: Nature and they basically said, look, if we look, we
7:02
Speaker 1: may very well not find anything. But if we don't look,
7:05
Speaker 1: we're definitely not going to find anything. Point. And that
7:09
Speaker 1: came at a time when a guy named Frank Drake,
7:11
Speaker 1: an astrophysicist an astronomer, was um trying to start his
7:17
Speaker 1: own search, and he eventually founded CET I think in
7:21
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty founded the ct Institute or just set said
7:26
Speaker 1: he well, he conducted the first st search. Yeah, Frank
7:30
Speaker 1: Drake did, and it was based on something called the
7:33
Speaker 1: Drake equation, which I find just utterly fascinating and refreshingly
7:38
Speaker 1: understandable as far as like theoretical math equations go. Yeah,
7:43
Speaker 1: and and is the number of civilizations in the Milky
7:46
Speaker 1: Way whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable. So in equals are
7:52
Speaker 1: times FP times in A, times FL times five times
7:55
Speaker 1: FC times L. And then there's the R is the
7:58
Speaker 1: rate of formation of ours over the lifetime of the galaxy.
8:01
Speaker 1: And that's anywhere from like ten to forty a year.
8:04
Speaker 1: Yea stars suitable for development of intelligent life. That narrows
8:08
Speaker 1: it down. Um. Then there's the fraction of those stars
8:10
Speaker 1: with planets. Then there's the average number of those planets
8:16
Speaker 1: that are Earth type, meaning suitable for life as we
8:19
Speaker 1: understand it. An, that's about of the fifty of stars
8:25
Speaker 1: with planets, but we're starting to whittle down pretty quickly. Um.
8:29
Speaker 1: And then there's the fraction of those planets where life
8:31
Speaker 1: develops that's estimated at and as much as a dent.
8:37
Speaker 1: And then there's the fraction of life that develops intelligence.
8:40
Speaker 1: So it's not just enough to be in am but
8:42
Speaker 1: you have to be an amiba capable of creating a radio. Right. Um,
8:48
Speaker 1: that's pretty low as well, um about ten percent um,
8:53
Speaker 1: and then another ten percent as the fraction of planets
8:56
Speaker 1: where intelligent life develops technologies such as radio. Okay, So
9:01
Speaker 1: you've got life and then l intelligent life and then technology,
9:08
Speaker 1: and then you have the lifetime of that communicative civilization
9:11
Speaker 1: in years. So boom, multiply that on out. You got
9:15
Speaker 1: your Drake equation and you have as little as one
9:18
Speaker 1: as much as billions, well plus it's it's as little
9:24
Speaker 1: as one or billions because it you know those are
9:27
Speaker 1: it depends on what value put in there, and everyone's
9:29
Speaker 1: gonna put in different values, So the Drake equation is
9:31
Speaker 1: going to have a wide swath. Yes, it makes sense. Um,
9:37
Speaker 1: so you've got this. This is the framework. Then, the
9:39
Speaker 1: Drake equation created by Frank Drake, the founder of CT.
9:42
Speaker 1: This is the framework that CD conducts its research with.
9:48
Speaker 1: Like one of the things they do is try to
9:49
Speaker 1: figure out exactly how many stars out there have planets
9:54
Speaker 1: with that are suitable for life. Um, to really kind
9:58
Speaker 1: of plug in the best possible data into the Drake
10:01
Speaker 1: equation and to help them figure out where to look.
10:04
Speaker 1: Because there's three main challenges for SET that they face
10:08
Speaker 1: just as a concept and an organization, and they are, Um,
10:15
Speaker 1: you have a really big sky out there, right, you
10:18
Speaker 1: have a lot of frequencies that could that. You have
10:22
Speaker 1: a lot of radio frequencies, and um, you have a
10:26
Speaker 1: limited amount of telescopes, not much equipment. No, Because it's
10:30
Speaker 1: very expensively and while CT is funded to a large degree,
10:36
Speaker 1: it's not funded to a large degree compared to like
10:38
Speaker 1: like when it was part of NASA. I think it's
10:40
Speaker 1: only like one percent of their budget. Even still, that
10:43
Speaker 1: was like the most money cet He has ever had.
10:46
Speaker 1: But they're they're pretty well funded, the SETI Institute is.
10:48
Speaker 1: So as far as private funding goes, they're doing okay. Yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: I mean they're nonprofit obviously, so they're not getting rich,
10:54
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. No, they're they're kind of
10:56
Speaker 1: hurting right now. All thought they were doing all right. No,
11:00
Speaker 1: the they also received federal funds and that's all but
11:03
Speaker 1: dried up right now because of the economic downturn. Yes, said,
11:07
Speaker 1: he's the first to go, isn't it all right? So
11:10
Speaker 1: you proposed the three problems. Um here a couple of
11:13
Speaker 1: approaches for the large sky problem. A lot of area
11:17
Speaker 1: out there, so they have two approaches there. The wide
11:20
Speaker 1: field search basically casting a wide, non specific net over uh,
11:26
Speaker 1: you know, a low resolution over a long period I'm sorry,
11:30
Speaker 1: a short period of time over a wide area could
11:33
Speaker 1: get you some nibbles if you were fishing, let's say,
11:36
Speaker 1: but it's going to be difficult to find out exactly
11:38
Speaker 1: like where this stuff is coming from, right, Or a
11:41
Speaker 1: targeted search, which is what my money would be on,
11:44
Speaker 1: which are limited to sun like stars like they basically
11:50
Speaker 1: factor in more of Drake's equation in this one, say,
11:53
Speaker 1: let's look at places where we might find uh, you know,
11:56
Speaker 1: target these things where we might find E. T. S. UM.
12:01
Speaker 1: And they do both of those depending They have various
12:04
Speaker 1: projects going on ongoing UM. And some are targeted, some
12:09
Speaker 1: are wide field search. UM. So they're kind of covering
12:12
Speaker 1: their bases as much as possible. UM. The next challenge
12:16
Speaker 1: was you know what frequency to listen for to listen
12:19
Speaker 1: to you know, like it's not a radio no, but
12:22
Speaker 1: even with a radio, even with like a walkie talkie,
12:25
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever used one of those, if you're
12:28
Speaker 1: not on the right frequency, you are going to miss
12:30
Speaker 1: everything that's being told to you. So there's like you said,
12:36
Speaker 1: it's not a radio dial. It doesn't go from like
12:38
Speaker 1: eight eight point five all the way to one or
12:40
Speaker 1: seven point five. They're billions from alternative to country exactly. Um,
12:45
Speaker 1: there are billions of radio frequencies and they UM, I mean,
12:50
Speaker 1: which one are you gonna listen to? You? You can
12:52
Speaker 1: listen to them all, but again you're cycling through them. Uh,
12:56
Speaker 1: You're not able to spend a lot of time as
12:58
Speaker 1: much like the same dilemma with the sky you have
13:01
Speaker 1: with the radio. Frequencies plus are full of noise. Yep,
13:04
Speaker 1: that's another problem occurring stuff right. Um, But there is
13:10
Speaker 1: a window in the radio frequency that's called the water hole,
13:14
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. UM. It's a natural place in
13:17
Speaker 1: the radio frequency spectrum. UM. And by the way, radio
13:21
Speaker 1: is their light waves. It's a type of light wave UM,
13:25
Speaker 1: but they're very specific. They exist on a specific frequency.
13:29
Speaker 1: But UM, in this the spectrum, the band, there's this
13:33
Speaker 1: thing called the water hole UM, which goes from the
13:37
Speaker 1: one to tend giga hurts range and it has very
13:41
Speaker 1: little UM natural background noise, like very few things you
13:46
Speaker 1: know broadcast on this frequency. And the reason being, UM,
13:50
Speaker 1: they these frequencies are caused by hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl ions,
13:55
Speaker 1: both of which are constituents of water, which is why
13:57
Speaker 1: it's called the water hole. And they suspect that for
14:01
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons, alien civilizations would be aware of
14:04
Speaker 1: this one, that it's just so profoundly unique in the
14:09
Speaker 1: radio spectrum that if you had any kind of awareness
14:12
Speaker 1: of the radio spectrum, you would stumble upon this, and
14:15
Speaker 1: that you would intentionally broadcast in a low noise frequency
14:19
Speaker 1: exactly because you want to be heard. Yeah, I mean
14:22
Speaker 1: anybody who broadcast on the radio wants to be heard,
14:24
Speaker 1: right um. And then the other reason they think that
14:27
Speaker 1: alien civilizations would know about it is because water, with
14:30
Speaker 1: which it's associated um, is considered a an essential to
14:35
Speaker 1: life and therefore universal among intelligent life. It's not geocentric.
14:39
Speaker 1: The concept of water is so aliens would be familiar
14:43
Speaker 1: with water and would thus be familiar with the water
14:46
Speaker 1: hole in the frequency spectrum as well, So that this
14:49
Speaker 1: is probably where they're putting most of their research or
14:53
Speaker 1: their effort into this waterhole band of frequencies. Yeah, I
14:56
Speaker 1: mean they search all over, but pretty much all set
14:59
Speaker 1: operation will search the water hole as part of their problem,
15:03
Speaker 1: as part of their ops. Then there's magical frequencies to
15:07
Speaker 1: like basically, they're saying, like, where on this band of
15:10
Speaker 1: billions of frequencies is there some sort of universal pattern.
15:14
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they figured out is
15:16
Speaker 1: prime numbers might be a good place to look because
15:18
Speaker 1: prime numbers are part of math and their universal constant.
15:22
Speaker 1: So an advanced civilization might be aware of prime numbers,
15:25
Speaker 1: and if they're trying to communicate to another advanced civilization,
15:28
Speaker 1: they may be broadcasting on prime number channels. That's a
15:31
Speaker 1: magical frequency. I wonder if they've searched pie the Pie station.
15:36
Speaker 1: So so far we've got to We've got two of
15:39
Speaker 1: the big problems tackled. Yes, generally. The third one is
15:44
Speaker 1: the most down to earth problem. Yeah. No, no equipment. Basically,
15:49
Speaker 1: these radio telescopes are expensive to build and so there's
15:53
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of them. So they said, you know,
15:56
Speaker 1: there's a few ways we can handle this. We can
15:59
Speaker 1: UH conduct limited runs on ones that are already out there,
16:03
Speaker 1: basically rent space from other dudes. Uh. We can conduct
16:08
Speaker 1: analysis of data are already acquired by other dudes, so like, hey,
16:13
Speaker 1: you've been listening in on all these frequencies, let us
16:16
Speaker 1: see your data and we'll just work from that. Or
16:18
Speaker 1: we can build SETI dedicated radio telescopes, which is clearly
16:24
Speaker 1: the least popular because it's so expensive and it's the
16:28
Speaker 1: most popular but least feasible. Yeah, and like the UM,
16:32
Speaker 1: like the projects that they have ongoing for wide target
16:36
Speaker 1: search UM or wide field search or targeted search. They
16:40
Speaker 1: have different projects dedicated different types of radio use, like
16:43
Speaker 1: UM Project Phoenix. UH rents time at some of the
16:48
Speaker 1: better radio telescopes around the world, Australia, Aricibo, Yeah, in
16:54
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, U. The one in West Virginia, Green Bank,
16:58
Speaker 1: West Virginia has a huge radio telescope. But that's where
17:00
Speaker 1: the first city conference was held over teen sixty, I believe. Yeah. Um.
17:05
Speaker 1: And then there's the serendip project, which piggybacks cracks me
17:10
Speaker 1: up for some reason. Why serendip I don't know, just
17:14
Speaker 1: because it's short for serendipity. It sounds like your friend
17:18
Speaker 1: Adam that shortens everything, like he would say, yeah, we
17:21
Speaker 1: met up. It was a bit of serendip Yeah, he
17:22
Speaker 1: would say that, total serendip um. Yeah. So they piggyback
17:28
Speaker 1: by basically saying like hey, like you said, let me
17:31
Speaker 1: see your dad, and once you're done with it, we
17:33
Speaker 1: want to go over it too. Yeah. It's like, hey man,
17:36
Speaker 1: it's like the hippie rob version of Astronomy Boy. He
17:40
Speaker 1: had made an appearance in a while, he just did.
17:42
Speaker 1: I didn't expect him to pop up in set if
17:45
Speaker 1: he didn't pop up in Magic Mushrooms, you know. Uh
18:18
Speaker 1: So Project serendip like you said, it takes um, takes
18:21
Speaker 1: advantage of a lot of telescope time, but they don't
18:24
Speaker 1: have the control to say, hey, pointed over there, So
18:28
Speaker 1: they have a lot of hours, but they're just basically
18:30
Speaker 1: that's the wide search being cast. And then you said,
18:34
Speaker 1: like the most desirable one was having their own telescope. Well, yeah,
18:38
Speaker 1: that'd be great, staid he figured out something. Rather than
18:41
Speaker 1: making a huge or paying for a huge radio telescope. Um,
18:47
Speaker 1: they figured out that they can take a bunch of
18:49
Speaker 1: backyard satellite dishes, which I'm sure are really easy to
18:52
Speaker 1: come by these days. Um, you know the kind like
18:56
Speaker 1: from the eighties. Oh yeah, put a bunch of those together.
18:59
Speaker 1: They're like eight eat wide right. Yeah, you put a
19:01
Speaker 1: bunch of those together and connect their signals using a
19:04
Speaker 1: process called interferometry. Nice, thank you dude, well done. First
19:09
Speaker 1: try and uh, you can basically simulate a huge, large
19:14
Speaker 1: telescope for a fraction of the cost. Yeah, it's like
19:16
Speaker 1: linking a network of computers, which, um is actually something
19:21
Speaker 1: also being done. We might as well get into that
19:23
Speaker 1: the cet at symbol at home project and uh, that's
19:29
Speaker 1: actually the SETI Institute, isn't it. Yeah, So they decided
19:32
Speaker 1: that hey, instead of building a couple of supercomputers to
19:36
Speaker 1: analyze this data, because that's one of the big problems
19:38
Speaker 1: is there's so much data. It's not like you can
19:40
Speaker 1: just plug it into your laptop. But you can plug
19:43
Speaker 1: a tiny chunk into a laptop and network a bunch
19:46
Speaker 1: of laptops together to do the power of the supercomputers.
19:49
Speaker 1: And that is what they've done, and you can participate. Yeah,
19:52
Speaker 1: it's pretty ingenious UM. And there's there's other things that
19:56
Speaker 1: I think Seti at home started it and now there's
19:58
Speaker 1: things like folding at home really to UM simulate protein
20:01
Speaker 1: folding for cancer research. Same thing UM. And I'm sure
20:06
Speaker 1: there's other ones that I didn't get a chance to look,
20:07
Speaker 1: but Setty at home started it. Where you it's a
20:10
Speaker 1: screen saver UM, but it's also a program and while
20:14
Speaker 1: it's running, it's it downloads a chunk of UM data
20:19
Speaker 1: from the air CBO radio telescope and that's like your
20:23
Speaker 1: little assignment And it's like a hundred second chunk maybe
20:26
Speaker 1: something like that. It doesn't seem like much, but it
20:27
Speaker 1: takes like ten to twenty hours for the normal UM
20:31
Speaker 1: computer to process it. But like you said, if it's
20:34
Speaker 1: if you have thousands of computers doing this, you have
20:37
Speaker 1: a thousand times the processing power. All of a sudden
20:40
Speaker 1: for free. Pretty cool. Uh, And while your computers analyzing it,
20:43
Speaker 1: it's making notes of all this stuff using studies algorithms,
20:48
Speaker 1: and then it uploads the results to set and then
20:50
Speaker 1: downloads another chunk for an analysis. And dude, I bet
20:54
Speaker 1: this is a very popular thing to do for stargazers,
21:00
Speaker 1: for stargazing nerds of the world. There's a guy I remember,
21:02
Speaker 1: um who was in Arizona I think, and he uh
21:06
Speaker 1: was fired from his job as like the i T
21:09
Speaker 1: head for the Department of Education in this one community. Um,
21:13
Speaker 1: because he he booted, said he at home onto all
21:17
Speaker 1: the computers without asking. But I mean it's not a
21:21
Speaker 1: big deal. It doesn't take that much processing power and
21:24
Speaker 1: it just kind of runs in the background. Um. Well,
21:27
Speaker 1: he was made a mockery of by the local news
21:30
Speaker 1: like that he was fired because of his search for aliens.
21:35
Speaker 1: Yeah it was pretty bad. But yeah, some poor guy
21:38
Speaker 1: got fired for that. Said he at home got him fired.
21:43
Speaker 1: I bet he got a job with STI or something, though,
21:46
Speaker 1: I'm I don't bet that, you don't think so they
21:49
Speaker 1: just said sorry thanks anyway pretty much. Um, well, you
21:54
Speaker 1: talked about building your own and the alien telescope array.
21:57
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the Allen Telescope Array. Yeah. I kept taking
22:01
Speaker 1: it like that until I found out it's named after
22:03
Speaker 1: Paul Allen, the co founder of Microsoft, who donated all
22:06
Speaker 1: of the money for it. Well, that is still underway. UM.
22:10
Speaker 1: As far as its construction, I think they they were
22:13
Speaker 1: down for a little while because of a lack of funding,
22:15
Speaker 1: and it's a twenty six million dollar deal. But I
22:18
Speaker 1: think as of two thousand eleven they were up and
22:22
Speaker 1: running again and part of it is complete to the
22:25
Speaker 1: extent I think where they can use it for for
22:28
Speaker 1: things right, But they're still not finished with them. No,
22:30
Speaker 1: they're not. They have enough money to construct it, but
22:33
Speaker 1: they didn't have enough money to run it, so they
22:35
Speaker 1: have like a skeleton crew on it right now. But
22:38
Speaker 1: it is operational. I think it is UM. They're hoping
22:41
Speaker 1: that they're they're going to be able to fund it
22:43
Speaker 1: by UM releasing some time on it to the Air
22:46
Speaker 1: Force who was interested in using it. They should try
22:49
Speaker 1: a bake sale. I don't know, you know, you know,
22:52
Speaker 1: it'll be a great day when schools have all the
22:55
Speaker 1: funding they need and the Air Force has to hold
22:58
Speaker 1: a bake sale to buy a stealth bomber. That'll be
23:00
Speaker 1: the day, somebody should put that on like a bump
23:02
Speaker 1: or stick or something that's we could shorten it. But yeah, agreed, Uh,
23:09
Speaker 1: should we mention the Fermi paradox? Yes, as good a
23:12
Speaker 1: time as any. I mean. One of the things that
23:15
Speaker 1: happens to set is that they're constantly pummeled by critics
23:19
Speaker 1: and a lot of them cite the Fermi paradox too. Well,
23:22
Speaker 1: here's what SETI Institute says, because I dug into their
23:25
Speaker 1: f a Q a little bit on one of the
23:27
Speaker 1: questions is why do we think that there might be
23:29
Speaker 1: life out there? Quote? And SETI said, you should keep
23:33
Speaker 1: in mind that we are one planet around a very
23:37
Speaker 1: ordinary star, and they're roughly four hundred billion other stars
23:41
Speaker 1: and nearly one billion other galaxies, and they think it
23:44
Speaker 1: would be extraordinary if we were the only thinking beings
23:48
Speaker 1: in all these enormous realms. Faremi Enrico Faremi said that, Uh,
23:55
Speaker 1: if it takes life billions of years to develop intelligence
23:58
Speaker 1: and signal or travel to the stars, and there are
24:01
Speaker 1: billions of the worlds in the universe, and the universe
24:04
Speaker 1: is thirteen billion years old plus, then why haven't we
24:07
Speaker 1: been visited yet? Yeah, when you look at it, like
24:10
Speaker 1: that the odds are makes sense. They just increase exponentially.
24:14
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a perverted version of the Drake
24:18
Speaker 1: equation used to disprove the existence of life, the anti drake. Yeah, interesting,
24:25
Speaker 1: anti Drake. So what happens if we get a signal?
24:57
Speaker 1: What happens if they're sitting around one day and they
25:00
Speaker 1: your phone home come over the radio waves. Well, they
25:03
Speaker 1: have a a strict set of protocols that start with,
25:07
Speaker 1: you know, the first person who finds it, to the
25:11
Speaker 1: um the you know who gets told first, what what
25:15
Speaker 1: agencies learn of it? And um, it's pretty cool. Apparently
25:20
Speaker 1: contact follows the course of it pretty pretty um accurately. Yeah.
25:25
Speaker 1: But so it signals detected, right, And the first thing
25:28
Speaker 1: they do is they move the radio telescope away from
25:31
Speaker 1: the signal, and then they move it back. I bet
25:33
Speaker 1: that's nerve wracking. I'll bet too, because you probably just
25:36
Speaker 1: want to stay locked on it, you know, right, you're
25:37
Speaker 1: gonna lose your signal. But you can't do that because
25:39
Speaker 1: you gotta prove that's genuinely coming from there, right. Um,
25:43
Speaker 1: So if you move it and then move it back
25:46
Speaker 1: and the signal wanes and then comes back, you know
25:48
Speaker 1: that you have an extraterrestrial signal. Right, that's a big one.
25:52
Speaker 1: The next step then is to figure out whether you're
25:55
Speaker 1: getting it from like a satellite or from elsewhere on Earth.
25:59
Speaker 1: Right after that, you're starting to shake, your palms are
26:04
Speaker 1: sweaty um, and you start to rule out extraterrestrial sources
26:10
Speaker 1: like pulsars, quasars, other things that broadcast radio frequencies. By
26:15
Speaker 1: this time you may have tinkled a little bit in
26:18
Speaker 1: your pants, um, and you are on the phone with
26:22
Speaker 1: another radio telescope, hopefully one on another continent, saying, hey,
26:25
Speaker 1: can you go check these coordinates and see if you're
26:28
Speaker 1: getting this frequency? Point your little machine that way, what
26:31
Speaker 1: do you see or here? And if they come back
26:33
Speaker 1: and say yep, you say, well, it's time to announce
26:37
Speaker 1: it to the world. Now I gotta get out my book.
26:40
Speaker 1: The SETI Institute, the Declaration of Principles concerning Activities following
26:45
Speaker 1: the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and SETI Institute says, no
26:51
Speaker 1: one's keeping anything a secret. No, they wanted disseminated quickly
26:55
Speaker 1: and widely, but they want you to follow the proper
26:59
Speaker 1: channels first and all the astronomical community gets first DIBs
27:04
Speaker 1: on learning of it. Then after that you go to
27:07
Speaker 1: the u N. Oh, yeah, the u N a lot
27:12
Speaker 1: of other international bodies, and you say, hey, guys, we
27:15
Speaker 1: have confirmed extraterrestrial contact and um they say awesome, and
27:22
Speaker 1: the astronomer goes along and says, okay, we're moving on
27:24
Speaker 1: in the next people. Eventually you get to the public
27:27
Speaker 1: and the person who discovered it UM is meant to
27:31
Speaker 1: have the honor of announcing it to the world, according
27:34
Speaker 1: to the protocols. Jodie Foster uh and CETI is on record,
27:39
Speaker 1: by the way, the SETI Institute is saying that they
27:41
Speaker 1: don't think that there are aliens that we've been hiding
27:45
Speaker 1: in Roswell, New Mexico. They said that, you know, the
27:49
Speaker 1: presence that would be like the biggest discovery in the
27:52
Speaker 1: history of science and a you wouldn't want to keep
27:55
Speaker 1: it a secret and be there would be thousands and
27:58
Speaker 1: thousands of people working on it, and they said it
28:01
Speaker 1: would just be impossible. So they're not, you know, they're
28:04
Speaker 1: not these crackpots that think, oh, we've got aliens hidden
28:07
Speaker 1: away working on a farm in the desert of New
28:10
Speaker 1: Mexico harvesting on water farms. That's where we got our
28:15
Speaker 1: microwaves from exactly. Uh. And I also looked at their
28:18
Speaker 1: f a Q under the are we sending signals? Because
28:21
Speaker 1: I thought that was kind of interesting because obviously close
28:23
Speaker 1: encounters they sent messages out and they said they are
28:26
Speaker 1: completely passive experiment. They're only looking, they are not sending. However,
28:32
Speaker 1: we have been sending signals ah, unintentionally for fifty years
28:37
Speaker 1: or more. Yes, it's the thirties, since we started broadcasting
28:40
Speaker 1: on the radio. Yeah, in television. Uh, this is the
28:43
Speaker 1: early TV broadcast reached out about to about one thousand
28:47
Speaker 1: nearby stars and uh. But they said it's very unlikely
28:51
Speaker 1: that any any alien civilization could have picked up on that.
28:56
Speaker 1: But we are inadvertently broadcasting probably in the water hole too,
29:02
Speaker 1: I would think. And the other reason we don't send
29:04
Speaker 1: out signals is because if the nearest civilization they said,
29:07
Speaker 1: is a hundred light years away, it would be two
29:09
Speaker 1: hundred years to get a reply, and it's just not
29:12
Speaker 1: a very good way to spend your time. Well. Plus
29:14
Speaker 1: also it's in the protocols that UM we decide through
29:20
Speaker 1: like the u N and other international bodies, whether or
29:22
Speaker 1: not to respond to a signal. That's like one of
29:26
Speaker 1: the last steps. Well, they said that we've sent UM
29:31
Speaker 1: symbolic messages before, like, hey, here's what our solar system
29:36
Speaker 1: is like, here the compounds important for life. Here's the
29:39
Speaker 1: structure of our DNA in the form of a human.
29:43
Speaker 1: They say it's symbolic, but I think they're like, oh,
29:45
Speaker 1: you never know, you know, so they're liars. Then when
29:48
Speaker 1: they say they're passive, well, they are passive. They have
29:51
Speaker 1: done that in the past. They said it was like
29:52
Speaker 1: the seventies. They're passive as far as astronomy goes, active
29:57
Speaker 1: as far as lying on their f a Q go.
30:00
Speaker 1: Now they they I think it was Sniking seventy four
30:02
Speaker 1: was the last time they sent out a message. There
30:04
Speaker 1: was what the Viking or some I can't remember, the
30:07
Speaker 1: spaceship we sent into orbit or into outer space that
30:10
Speaker 1: had like UM gold records containing all sorts of information
30:16
Speaker 1: like the world's great information and knowledge on them. Oh yeah,
30:19
Speaker 1: do you remember that sort of Viking? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
30:23
Speaker 1: I think it's let's probably get that wrong though. So
30:27
Speaker 1: what's in the future for CET right now? Uh, well,
30:31
Speaker 1: the future with the programs like SETI at home could
30:35
Speaker 1: uh get more people active and that they're interested in
30:39
Speaker 1: their home. The future could be good there. They said
30:43
Speaker 1: they might be UM sending are looking for light at
30:47
Speaker 1: some point because it may not come via radio, it
30:50
Speaker 1: may come via light. Uh you know, you never know. Yeah.
30:53
Speaker 1: Frank Drake is all about that one now. He says
30:55
Speaker 1: that this is like the hot new field for study
30:58
Speaker 1: is optical UM astronomy, and of course finishing up things
31:03
Speaker 1: like the Allen telescope array is important. And then they're
31:07
Speaker 1: city at home. I mean, if you want to go
31:10
Speaker 1: do that, it's pretty easy to go download UM folding
31:14
Speaker 1: at home. I've never had steady at home. You did folding,
31:16
Speaker 1: uh huh cool? Uh? And then my computer crash and
31:20
Speaker 1: I was just like, maybe that crashed it. I don't know.
31:25
Speaker 1: Maybe I could tell the difference when it was processing
31:29
Speaker 1: UM and that's steady. So if this kind of piqued
31:33
Speaker 1: your interest, there's plenty more information out there. UM. You
31:38
Speaker 1: can also check out sets stuff on Science Channel UM
31:44
Speaker 1: during are We Alone Month in March, premiers come on
31:48
Speaker 1: I think Tuesdays at ten starting March six, every Tuesday. Yep,
31:52
Speaker 1: like Moonlighting, UM was it was that on Tuesday? I
31:57
Speaker 1: think so I seem to remember being drawn to the
32:00
Speaker 1: television on Tuesdays. I think it was Moonlighting and eighteen
32:03
Speaker 1: nice Or was it Moonlighting and love Boat? Now it
32:05
Speaker 1: was love Boat Fantasy Island. Yeah, yeah, those two were
32:08
Speaker 1: definitely together. Let's see recap. Everyone else is at the beginning,
32:11
Speaker 1: I'm married? Do you mean and I are married? Um?
32:15
Speaker 1: And I guess that's it. If you want to read set,
32:18
Speaker 1: you can type that word into the search bar how
32:20
Speaker 1: stuffwork dot com s E T I and that will
32:23
Speaker 1: bring up this very nice article including cool graphs and
32:28
Speaker 1: screenshots from CETI at home for some reason. Um. And
32:31
Speaker 1: since I said search bar, I think I said handy
32:33
Speaker 1: search bar even Um, it's time for a listener and mail.
32:39
Speaker 1: All right, Josh, I'm gonna call this uh Luca Libra
32:41
Speaker 1: slash American wrestling from Zack uh Chuck. You suggested that
32:47
Speaker 1: wrestlers carry fake blood packs. Not quite true, or at
32:50
Speaker 1: least usually not true. Instead, most wrestlers carry a razor
32:53
Speaker 1: blade in order to blade their foreheads. I've heard this
32:56
Speaker 1: actually into that they'll cut, make a little cut and
32:59
Speaker 1: bleed uh right around the hairline after being hit in
33:02
Speaker 1: the head of a chair or a cage or another
33:05
Speaker 1: hard weapon. You were also talking about the big companies
33:08
Speaker 1: in America. The w w E is the biggest right now,
33:11
Speaker 1: with ten as the second biggest, and Ring of Honor
33:14
Speaker 1: is the third. W w E and t n A
33:16
Speaker 1: are on big TV networks, while the Ring of Honor
33:19
Speaker 1: is only on the air in certain markets, and there
33:21
Speaker 1: are many many independent leagues, including Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan's Resistance. Bro.
33:28
Speaker 1: Did you know that? No, I guess so, dude, he's
33:31
Speaker 1: got his own wrestling league. I wonder if he's still
33:33
Speaker 1: on the dope. I don't think so. I saw him
33:38
Speaker 1: one day. He's really tall, which surprised me for some reason.
33:42
Speaker 1: I think I noticed that when the Cubs were in
33:44
Speaker 1: the World Series and he's saying the uh, the national anthem.
33:48
Speaker 1: You know, he's saying the taking out to the ball game,
33:50
Speaker 1: it's stretch. Yeah, he's all those guys. Uh. So Zack says,
33:56
Speaker 1: when talking about the rules, you're saying that weapons are
33:58
Speaker 1: not allowed. And I think I might have said that
34:00
Speaker 1: it's different with American wrestling, but not true. He said.
34:04
Speaker 1: The chair was just really popular in the late nineties
34:06
Speaker 1: because they book matches specifically to be more violent. So
34:10
Speaker 1: they would knock the ref down and people would use
34:12
Speaker 1: the chair when the ref wasn't watching, but you would
34:14
Speaker 1: still get de Q if the ref was to see that.
34:17
Speaker 1: And he also said Raymond would get dairy queen. Oh man,
34:21
Speaker 1: that'd be great. Uh. And then he said, ray mystereo
34:25
Speaker 1: is out with injury, but there's a good chance he
34:28
Speaker 1: we'll be back soon, so he's still kicking it. That
34:30
Speaker 1: was a heck of a dispatch from the wrestling world,
34:33
Speaker 1: and dude, I redacted about half of it. Thanks Zack.
34:36
Speaker 1: That is Zack from I don't know where he's from.
34:39
Speaker 1: He's from Billy Corgan's basement. Well, wow, if you have
34:44
Speaker 1: some supplementary information, not even necessarily correction. I think Zach
34:48
Speaker 1: handled that very well. Sure. Um, we like to hear
34:51
Speaker 1: that stuff all the time and we frequently read them
34:55
Speaker 1: as listener mail. So please feel free to go ahead
34:58
Speaker 1: and send us something. Um. You can tweet to us
35:00
Speaker 1: at s Y s K podcast. You can send us
35:04
Speaker 1: a note or a message on Facebook at facebook dot com,
35:09
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know, or you can send us
35:11
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
35:17
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