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