Latest / Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker / Aliens Part 1: A $300k Bet & Math Behind The Great Galactic Graveyard

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Aliens Part 1: A $300k Bet & Math Behind The Great Galactic Graveyard · Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker

• 0:00
  Welcome to Nonsense Season 4 Episode 19, our big story in our
• 0:02
  second show of the week. I'm Jeff Parker.
• 0:04
  I'm CJ Little. We're not here next week, but
• 0:06
  this time we're looking at the real reason the government is
• 0:09
  hiding their UFO data. Up next I.
• 0:11
  Just can't find it. It's like in a hoarder's den.
• 0:13
  Yeah, they have no idea where it is.
• 0:14
  We can't release. It I told them years ago, use
• 0:17
  Dewey Decimal and they're just like Nope.
• 0:19
  It's just yellow pad after yellow pad after yellow pad with
• 0:22
  no system. Organization.
• 0:23
  It's one of those Indiana Jones warehouses, but it's all just
• 0:26
  yellow pads. Totally.
• 0:27
  It's all it is. Yellow pads all the way down.
• 0:30
  Are you sure? We.
• 0:30
  What is this Watergate now? What's just keep going?
• 0:33
  Fission. What's this?
• 0:34
  What's that over? There OK, the 2026 transparency
• 0:37
  mandate, the silent wherever UAP data, let's go.
• 0:40
  Of all the mandates, the transparency 1 is my favorite
• 0:43
  because you can. See through it because.
• 0:44
  You can see right through it. For HG Wells, tentacled invaders
• 1:06
  to Spielberg's Wide Eyed botanist, our cosmic imagination
• 1:10
  has evolved alongside our own insecurities.
• 1:12
  We've dreamed up little green men, skin walking doppelgangers,
• 1:15
  and cold biomechanical predators, each reflecting a
• 1:18
  specific era of existential dread.
• 1:20
  Nano Nano. Yet while our fiction has grown
• 1:23
  increasingly bold, official data has remained locked in a vault,
• 1:26
  guided by a silence that's more about hardware than human panic.
• 1:30
  For government's reluctance to dump their files isn't just
• 1:32
  about avoiding ontological shock.
• 1:34
  It's a strategic calculation involving the sensor trap.
• 1:37
  Releasing high fidelity unidentified aerial phenomena
• 1:40
  data risks exposing the classified capabilities of the
• 1:44
  very satellites and radar systems used to track them.
• 1:47
  Admitting the neighbors are here means admitting exactly how well
• 1:50
  we can see them, and, by extension, how well we can see
• 1:53
  our earthly rivals. Only now is public pressure.
• 1:55
  In 2026, transparency mandates collide.
• 1:58
  Is the national security seal finally cracking, Trading
• 2:01
  tactical security for a long overdue look at the stars?
• 2:04
  And so it seems like the perfect time to examine the modern
• 2:07
  zenological landscape, from analyzing the mathematical
• 2:10
  probability of existence to the physical and biological
• 2:13
  realities of non carbon based. Life.
• 2:15
  Zenological. Zenological, yes.
• 2:18
  And I'm. Sticking by.
• 2:19
  Holly, syllabic, modern day English, Socrates.
• 2:22
  Who the hell are? You.
• 2:22
  It's a thing they put in your gum.
• 2:24
  It's delicious it. Keeps it chewy, doesn't it?
• 2:26
  It does. That makes sense.
• 2:28
  Now there's some alien tech I can get behind gum that doesn't
• 2:30
  go bad. I've seen Willy Wonka, I know
• 2:32
  how it works. That dude was not from here.
• 2:34
  Listen, had I made the production meeting, my first
• 2:36
  question would have been why are we telling this story?
• 2:38
  Well, first of all, who doesn't want to talk about aliens?
• 2:39
  Yeah, that's amazing. Right.
• 2:41
  So I I mean, that's really the answer.
• 2:44
  I've been waiting 200 episodes on this show just to talk about
• 2:46
  aliens. But what reminded me about
• 2:48
  aliens and the fact that they exist and we should talk about
• 2:50
  them. Yes.
• 2:51
  Last month, somebody placed a very peculiar bet on the
• 2:54
  prediction market. Kalshi.
• 2:55
  OK, Literally at 7:45 PM Eastern Time, which I think might
• 3:00
  irrelevant. And the time's important because
• 3:01
  why it? Was post dinner time on the East
• 3:03
  Coast. I'll let you.
• 3:04
  OK, I'll let you know. Right after the McDonald's
• 3:06
  delivery, OK. A single trader put down nearly
• 3:09
  100 grand. Oh, on the claim that by the end
• 3:12
  of December of this year, 2026, yeah, the Trump administration
• 3:15
  will confirm that alien lifer technology exists somewhere in
• 3:19
  our universe. And you are thinking it's like
• 3:21
  the guy who made the big bet about there being a streaker at
• 3:24
  the Super Bowl. You think Trump himself has laid
• 3:26
  this bet and then 'cause he can control the outcome?
• 3:28
  OK, maybe. But let me give it a little more
• 3:30
  context, OK? 35 minutes later, another bet
• 3:34
  almost twice as large. Yeah, was placed potentially by
• 3:38
  the same person. We don't know.
• 3:39
  So maybe. He realized if I can control the
• 3:42
  outcome by by releasing the data myself, I might as well put more
• 3:45
  money on this. Thing it's completely possible
• 3:47
  there's some overexcited UFO die hard with a hunch and some money
• 3:51
  to burn, right. Maybe they sold some crypto.
• 3:53
  Yeah, fine. And they wanted to create a new
• 3:55
  cycle. Maybe that person hosts a show
• 3:57
  called nonsense. I don't know.
• 3:58
  It's possible. I'm saying it's possible, but
• 4:01
  it's also possible It's somebody with some modicum of inside
• 4:03
  information. Yeah, that's another.
• 4:05
  Somebody could control the outcome.
• 4:06
  It could have been the aliens themselves.
• 4:08
  Maybe they just want to have a coming out party and this is the
• 4:10
  way they. I don't know, I'm just saying.
• 4:12
  That's the way they finance a couple. 100 grand was placed on
• 4:15
  on this bet and I think that's mildly interesting.
• 4:18
  I was like, oh, we should we should probably talk about
• 4:20
  aliens. The best I could tell,
• 4:21
  supposedly in 1990, yeah. The Vegas odds of quote, the
• 4:25
  disclosure, right. The disclosure of alien
• 4:27
  information. Confirmation of life or
• 4:29
  technology. Giving out the information that
• 4:31
  we have from Roswell. The odds of that, this is what
• 4:33
  35 years ago were one in 10,000 that that was the odds they
• 4:37
  ascribed to that. OK.
• 4:38
  According to prediction markets today, those odds are one in
• 4:41
  three, so highly likely. So well, one in three isn't
• 4:44
  highly likely. It's 33%.
• 4:46
  I'll help you with the math there.
• 4:47
  Yeah, thanks. But it's not a certainty, but
• 4:49
  like that's a lot better than one in 10,000.
• 4:51
  And as you know, prediction markets, they're incredible.
• 4:54
  OK, two thoughts. Oh.
• 4:55
  Boy number one, it is Trump in office, sure.
• 4:58
  The unthinkable is now very, very likely.
• 5:00
  Sure. So the fact that we were holding
• 5:02
  this data back for some reason, sure, Trump is very likely just
• 5:05
  to spill the beans 'cause, you know, that's what he does.
• 5:07
  Sure. And two, prediction markets
• 5:08
  blow. No, they do, trust me as a
• 5:10
  sports fan, no when it comes to closely matched teams.
• 5:13
  They're. Wrong as often as they're right.
• 5:15
  That's garbage though. Calcium Polymarket are staffed
• 5:18
  by drunks. OK, that was Jeff Parker.
• 5:21
  I'm nonsense. I see a little.
• 5:23
  I'll say I can say my name clearly there.
• 5:25
  I want them to know who is who so that when the lawsuit comes
• 5:27
  in hopefully just names you and not the show.
• 5:29
  Excellent. OK, sports, I'm gonna set aside.
• 5:31
  I I sports betting to me, who knows clearly.
• 5:33
  The people in the prediction. Markets don't.
• 5:35
  Well, OK, look, there is research from the University of
• 5:38
  Pennsylvania. Yeah.
• 5:39
  And the Iowa electronic market, Yeah, that shows that prediction
• 5:42
  markets often outperform expert forecasters because they
• 5:44
  aggregate dispersed information without ideology or public
• 5:47
  pressure or narrative inertia or any of that crap.
• 5:50
  But we should say that for other episodes.
• 5:51
  Whoa, whoa. Outperform expert forecasters?
• 5:54
  Well, OK, hey, that's not a high bar.
• 5:56
  How often do you old man, yell at your weather app?
• 5:58
  It says it's cloudy. I see the sun right there.
• 6:01
  What? No.
• 6:02
  Never my weather app it is is so accurate these so.
• 6:04
  Good, I know. I know rain will start in 7
• 6:06
  minutes. It likes no sound.
• 6:08
  Minutes, 58 seconds, the first drop hits and you're like, well,
• 6:10
  it could have done a little better.
• 6:11
  It's pretty close. But sure, I do feel like we
• 6:13
  should have more weather side bets on Kalchi.
• 6:15
  That would be fantastic. Yes, let's set prediction
• 6:17
  markets aside. I think we should come back and
• 6:18
  revisit those. I think they're fascinating.
• 6:20
  Yeah. I think we should talk about
• 6:21
  aliens and that's that's that was the context of the show,
• 6:23
  right. Why would you not want to talk
• 6:24
  about Alien? Help yourself, please go ahead.
• 6:26
  Morky Mork in the Funky Bunch, I know.
• 6:28
  He was an alien. the US has kept our UFO data secret because it's
• 6:32
  sensors that how do we know these things?
• 6:34
  How can we see everything? And they don't want to reveal
• 6:36
  all that that information or the lack of what we can and cannot
• 6:39
  see. Probably just as important, we
• 6:40
  don't tell people what we can't see.
• 6:42
  And so they don't want to reveal the information about what we've
• 6:45
  seen or not seen. Tell what our sensors are.
• 6:47
  So yeah, that's why they're hush hush when you.
• 6:48
  Say it that way. You sound like Fletch.
• 6:50
  It's all sensors these days. It is all sensors.
• 6:54
  Sure, talk about all the different kinds of sensors that
• 6:56
  we have. The ones that that aren't, you
• 6:57
  know, ones you can buy at the hardware store, the ones you
• 6:59
  can't buy on Amazon, the good ones, the industrial ones.
• 7:02
  The ones that aren't $8 for 100 on LAX, we have some.
• 7:05
  Serious. Serious.
• 7:06
  Stuff. What kind of sensors are you
• 7:07
  thinking about? I am thinking about overhead
• 7:10
  persistent infrared. Oh yeah.
• 7:12
  OK, that's pretty. Cool.
• 7:12
  We are constantly looking at the heat of the earth so that we can
• 7:16
  tell things. They can detect the heat of a
• 7:17
  single plane crash or a forest fire, or.
• 7:20
  Like instantly too, right? Tactical missile launch.
• 7:22
  Yeah, exactly. From thousands of miles, yeah,
• 7:25
  Geostationary. Or turns out anything
• 7:27
  interesting that happens typically has a heat signature.
• 7:29
  So if you can look at all of the heat signatures that are out
• 7:31
  there, you can see all sorts of interesting stuff that that is
• 7:33
  pretty cool. We scan the earth every 10
• 7:35
  seconds. Wow.
• 7:36
  Space based airborne moving target indicators.
• 7:39
  Basically these are the motion detectors of 2026.
• 7:42
  Space Force is pouring billions of dollars into shifting
• 7:45
  aircraft based tracking like the old B3A.
• 7:48
  Wax a wax. But I think, I think the point
• 7:50
  you're trying to make is that with these sensors, if they
• 7:52
  released information from that, it would basically show with
• 7:55
  their hand of what they could detect, right?
• 7:56
  That's kind of the point, right? They can detect very small fast
• 7:59
  moving objects like stealth fighters, cruise missiles,
• 8:02
  anywhere on the planet in a real time.
• 8:04
  It's amazing what a few trillion dollars a year will buy you.
• 8:07
  This is the whole point about engineering, right?
• 8:08
  You got? A big enough checkbook.
• 8:10
  Yeah, exactly. Like if you're willing to take
• 8:11
  smart people, put them through school, get them focused on a
• 8:13
  purpose, and then just say, hey, we're going to take some time
• 8:15
  and some money and throw it at this crazy proposal.
• 8:18
  We're. Going to throw a fire hose of
• 8:19
  money at this and we're going to send a man to the moon.
• 8:21
  We can do anything. Exactly.
• 8:22
  Yeah, yeah. Phased radar and solids safe
• 8:25
  phase array radar systems. They can track an object the
• 8:27
  size of a baseball. Yeah, from over 20,000 miles
• 8:30
  away. Yet somehow we can't call balls
• 8:33
  and strikes reasonably. We can track a baseball from
• 8:36
  space, but you get inside a ball field and all of a sudden the
• 8:39
  strikebox is the size of a U-Haul truck.
• 8:41
  I don't understand. We're not using the technology
• 8:44
  well. That's why.
• 8:45
  That's why we can't disclose alien technology.
• 8:47
  Because the MLB would be hosed. They would be, absolutely.
• 8:50
  Hosed I've got a hunch the US government has more money to
• 8:53
  spend on this than. The MLB.
• 8:55
  The MLB. I don't know, I think.
• 8:56
  It's going the other way. Just my guess, I would.
• 8:58
  Like to see doge higher show Hey.
• 9:00
  One more Electro optical multispectral imaging, what we
• 9:04
  think of as cameras, but like on a major, major scale.
• 9:07
  But you can't say cameras 'cause that would be way uninteresting.
• 9:09
  You can buy 30 centimeter resolution imagery.
• 9:12
  Enough to make out like a the marketing of a car?
• 9:14
  Sure, from a company like Max or Planet labs.
• 9:17
  Supposedly there are classified birds who can get much better
• 9:20
  resolution or sub 10 centimeter resolution.
• 9:22
  That's crazy. Early 2026 is a major push for
• 9:24
  nighttime EO that can capture high resolution visible light
• 9:28
  images without the sun essentially turning the night
• 9:30
  into days to surveillance. By the way, my surveillance
• 9:32
  cameras with the big sensors can all see in the dark too.
• 9:35
  Sub 10 centimeters. So just for our our American
• 9:37
  friends listen to the show. That's less than like 4 inches,
• 9:40
  which is the kind of nuts that's 1/3 of a Subway sandwich.
• 9:43
  That's a good way to put it. That's the way we can all
• 9:44
  understand. That's the units we need.
• 9:45
  Yeah, people know people. Americans aren't gonna
• 9:47
  understand centimeters or inches.
• 9:48
  You're right. 1/3 of a Subway sandwich that you could tell if
• 9:52
  it was ham and cheese or a BLT from space.
• 9:54
  That's what we're talking about here.
• 9:55
  So this is right. We don't want to reveal what
• 9:57
  we've seen because this would reveal, yes, how we were able to
• 10:00
  see it. That's the problem.
• 10:02
  Well, yeah, but not in the 50s. In the 50s you had like a like a
• 10:04
  guy with a binoculars. This is a crazy story.
• 10:07
  When the Brits figured out radar, Yeah, they didn't want to
• 10:10
  reveal that they had created this thing called radar.
• 10:12
  Sure. And it became very obvious to
• 10:13
  the German pilots, Yeah, that the British people could see
• 10:16
  anything. And they were like those Brits.
• 10:17
  They have cat eyes. They have the most amazing
• 10:19
  vision on the face of the Earth. How can they do this?
• 10:21
  And so the British created this huge lie that eating carrots
• 10:24
  gave give you great vision. That's where that whole thing
• 10:27
  came from. Is that where it comes from?
• 10:28
  Yeah. And you it's.
• 10:29
  Beta Carroty doesn't do anything for your eyes.
• 10:30
  The. Lie was so good it hangs around
• 10:32
  even today. They hired Walt Disney and all
• 10:34
  these other people didn't make all these propaganda films about
• 10:36
  eating carrots. It was never true.
• 10:38
  But like, that was how they were hiding the fact that they had
• 10:40
  created Radar. I thought the beta carrotene
• 10:42
  actually helped your overall eye health, is that not true?
• 10:44
  Won't improve. Wow.
• 10:45
  I'll give you a super eyes. No, absolutely made-up did.
• 10:47
  They did they do this like did they pick carrots because like
• 10:50
  there were no carrots in Germany?
• 10:51
  Like carrots rolling for the noble elite or something.
• 10:53
  They wanted you to change your garden and so that it was edible
• 10:55
  food and so potatoes and carrots and things you could grow
• 10:58
  easily. And so they wanted to give you a
• 11:00
  reason to grow those carrots and say, well, you eat the carrots.
• 11:03
  You have this incredible vision, but it wasn't true.
• 11:05
  That's a long way to go for that.
• 11:06
  We're going to get a bunch of people to place carrots so we
• 11:08
  don't have to buy them eyeglasses.
• 11:10
  See what happens. Well, no, it was really so the
• 11:12
  Germans wouldn't figure out we'd created radar.
• 11:14
  Yeah, but then what ends up happening is 3 months later some
• 11:16
  spy defects to Germany and just tells them all the answers
• 11:19
  anyway. That's how it always goes.
• 11:20
  Sure. Well, I'm sure at some point
• 11:21
  they found out. Yeah.
• 11:22
  Anyway, ET boy, tell me why we think there might be actually
• 11:25
  life on other planets. Just because there are trillions
• 11:28
  of other exoplanets, that doesn't mean have you ever.
• 11:30
  Watched an episode of Maury Povich.
• 11:32
  How can there not be life on other planets?
• 11:34
  I have not. Not hard to get over that hump.
• 11:36
  Current models indicate something like a 97.6%
• 11:40
  probability that the number of civilizations in the universe is
• 11:43
  greater than 1. So that's kind of nuts.
• 11:45
  Like the math? Tells you tell me how you get to
• 11:47
  that model, because that mod that just sounds like it's
• 11:49
  complete made-up like variables that you just pulled out of the.
• 11:52
  Air Oh yeah, just know those 3 numbers look good together.
• 11:54
  I think is what they they came up with.
• 11:55
  They're just like a 9A7. It was.
• 11:56
  It was basically a show on Price Is Right.
• 11:58
  And if you make it specific enough, you believe it, right?
• 12:00
  Yeah, exactly. If you had two more decimal
• 12:02
  spots, you would go out and buy an alien shirt, I guarantee.
• 12:05
  Totally. No, There is real math behind
• 12:06
  this, and I feel like we feel like talking about a couple
• 12:09
  things. Talk about the math, Yeah, of
• 12:10
  aliens 'cause I do think that is important.
• 12:12
  Yeah. We should talk about the
• 12:13
  extraterrestrial function of geology and biology, sort of
• 12:16
  those things, 'cause I think those get lost in the shuffle
• 12:18
  quite a bit. OK.
• 12:19
  I believe we should talk about our Earthly welcoming committee
• 12:22
  and what they've done, which is awesome and concerning the same
• 12:24
  time. Sure.
• 12:25
  And then finally, maybe let's chat about why they would even
• 12:27
  come here. Why would the extraterrestrials?
• 12:29
  Why the aliens would come here? Want to?
• 12:30
  Come here. Right?
• 12:31
  Like some real reasons that maybe they'd wanna come.
• 12:33
  'Cause we have the good custard. We do.
• 12:34
  We do have the good custard. They're here for the Flon.
• 12:36
  That's all they're here for is the Flon.
• 12:39
  You go, you fly the entire universe.
• 12:41
  That's the one that has the flon.
• 12:42
  Make sure you stop there. Yeah, yeah, Creme brulee like
• 12:44
  Nope here for the flon, OK. The Flon.
• 12:47
  And that's how the aliens got diabetes right there.
• 12:50
  OK, go ahead, start. With the come with the math,
• 12:52
  right? Start with your alien math.
• 12:53
  So I I, I told you it was like 97.6%, which is, which is a huge
• 12:56
  number. How do you get there?
• 12:57
  Yeah. So the way that we sort of look
• 12:59
  at this is through the lens of something called the Drake
• 13:01
  equation. Yes.
• 13:02
  It actually goes back to Frank Drake in 1961.
• 13:05
  Are you familiar with him? Yeah, He had a big.
• 13:07
  Feud with with Kenneth Lamar. OK, This is this is going to be
• 13:09
  one of those shows. Yeah, No, Frank Drake in 1961
• 13:12
  came up with this construct to provide an agenda for the first
• 13:16
  scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial
• 13:19
  intelligence. Sure, right.
• 13:20
  This is early 60s. We've refined some of the
• 13:22
  variables in this quite a bit, especially in the past couple of
• 13:24
  years because of some of the exoplanet hunting missions like
• 13:27
  Kepler and Tess. Those have have sort of helped
• 13:29
  us identify that. But I want to talk about the
• 13:30
  original equation because it still applies today.
• 13:33
  You have 7 factors that are multiplied together.
• 13:35
  So the intent of these factors Sure.
• 13:36
  Is that everyone? 7 numbers you pulled out of thin
• 13:39
  air. No that you multiply together
• 13:41
  and somehow you're. OK, now math and science.
• 13:44
  This is how it works. We're trying to make an
• 13:45
  approximation. OK, great.
• 13:47
  Which by the way, I will say the other day, let's just talk about
• 13:49
  applying factors. A friend of mine the other day
• 13:52
  said, hey, do you know how many napkins McDonald's uses?
• 13:56
  He's like in the US per year because he was bidding on this
• 13:58
  business. I did the math in my head.
• 14:00
  I did multiplication. I approximated how many
• 14:02
  McDonald's were in the US based on how many subways they know
• 14:04
  there are and then a factor. So see a factor.
• 14:06
  And then I approximated how many orders I think they get per
• 14:08
  minute, how many hours they're open, and how many napkins per
• 14:10
  order. My answer was 15 billion napkins
• 14:13
  per year, which is quite a guess 'cause who knows?
• 14:15
  It could be 100 times that. It could be 100 of that.
• 14:18
  The answer apparently is 25 billion.
• 14:20
  So English boy, doing a bunch of math together apparently works.
• 14:24
  That's my point is I'm getting back to aliens from number of
• 14:26
  napkins. OK.
• 14:27
  But I can sort of guess how many customers McDonald's has a given
• 14:30
  day. I can sort of guess how many
• 14:31
  burgers or whatever just. Apply that to aliens.
• 14:33
  In this case, you're just pulling things out of of space.
• 14:36
  I don't even know whether billions plants are there.
• 14:39
  Trillions of vector planets? Yeah, are.
• 14:41
  There. That's how you approximate.
• 14:42
  Go ahead. That's how you approximate.
• 14:44
  Tell me your. The main Tell me your adorable
• 14:45
  cute little man. OK, I see how this is going.
• 14:48
  That's fine. You're gonna have to give up
• 14:49
  your cell phone and go back to using things that are just made
• 14:51
  out of art. OK.
• 14:51
  If you're not gonna accept the math like that, the rough rate
• 14:54
  of * formation in our Galaxy. Yes.
• 14:56
  You start with that as a number, right?
• 14:57
  We refine that number. That's a real.
• 14:59
  Number. It's a real number.
• 15:00
  Yeah, that's a real number. Between 1 1/2 to three, Yeah,
• 15:03
  that's the rate of * formation roughly right within our Galaxy.
• 15:06
  The. That's the mean rate of the mean
• 15:08
  rate, yeah. Star formation the.
• 15:09
  Fraction of stars that have planets OK, we refine that
• 15:12
  approximation to be 1 by the way, we think All Stars have
• 15:15
  planets OK, which is kind of interesting.
• 15:17
  Or at least the vast majority of them.
• 15:18
  Sure. Here's.
• 15:18
  What? It's real.
• 15:19
  Most of those, I'm gonna grant you.
• 15:20
  Those are real numbers. Thank you.
• 15:21
  Yeah, I'm so glad that you approximate real numbers or you
• 15:24
  see or let me like that's a six, that's a real number I see that
• 15:26
  I've recognized. That no, no, I'm I'm
• 15:28
  authenticating Frank's work on the 1st 2:00.
• 15:30
  Points that seven with a hat on it.
• 15:31
  Not a real number. It's a 7 wear and a.
• 15:33
  Hat a real number. Average number of planets that
• 15:35
  could potentially support life. Pulled out of thin air.
• 15:38
  Well, what? Go ahead, go ahead.
• 15:39
  I'm sorry. Just in the habitable zone of
• 15:41
  the Milky Way, we estimate there are somewhere between 300
• 15:43
  million to a billion rocky exoplanets.
• 15:46
  OK, that's crazy. Yeah, that's just in the Milky
• 15:49
  Way. The fraction of habitable
• 15:51
  planets that actually develop life.
• 15:53
  We have no idea. Of course not.
• 15:54
  We really have no idea on this one.
• 15:55
  So this one is like so. Divide by zero.
• 15:57
  You know you know your equation. You're.
• 15:58
  Not dividing. You're multiplying.
• 16:00
  You can multiply by zero and get 0 first of all, so it's not
• 16:02
  undefined totally. But clearly the answer is not
• 16:05
  zero. Why is the answer not 0?
• 16:07
  I don't know, it's unknown. Well, because not according to
• 16:09
  this show, but according to other people, there is
• 16:11
  intelligent life on this planet. So the answer is not zero, my
• 16:14
  friend. We actually have data.
• 16:16
  OK, that backs up. It's not zero.
• 16:17
  It might be a one with a lot of zeros to the left of it before
• 16:21
  the decimal. Totally.
• 16:21
  But my point is it's just an unknown number.
• 16:23
  Sure. And then and this, this one is
• 16:25
  the one that I love the most. Yeah.
• 16:26
  The fraction of those planets that develop intelligent life.
• 16:29
  And we really don't know. However, looking at tectonic
• 16:32
  requirements that I'm going to talk about here in a moment,
• 16:33
  we've sort of approximated this to be somewhere around give or
• 16:36
  take three thousands of a percent up to maybe 2/10 of a
• 16:40
  percent less significantly less than 1%, what a fraction of
• 16:42
  those planets developed technology.
• 16:44
  I feel like this one is a little bit of a guess.
• 16:46
  We're guesstimating 10 to 20%. Seriously, what I'm hearing and
• 16:49
  you say that is he has a cute girlfriend.
• 16:51
  Well, you could, but you could do an upper.
• 16:52
  But you could do an upper. But she was very cute.
• 16:54
  OK, First of all, she just had an astigmatism.
• 16:56
  You could approximately this number to be, again, it has to
• 16:58
  be greater than 0 because we have some sort of technology
• 17:01
  here. It couldn't be any bigger than
• 17:02
  100%. So you could at least calculate
• 17:04
  a range here. And that's I think what.
• 17:05
  We've done so from zero to. Somewhere between 0 and 100%,
• 17:08
  yes. OK, fine.
• 17:09
  You're you're you're coming along here to the math.
• 17:11
  I appreciate it. I appreciate you.
• 17:14
  OK. Can you turn this mic off,
• 17:15
  please? Thank you.
• 17:16
  And then this is actually my favorite.
• 17:18
  Yeah. This is the this is the one that
• 17:19
  I think has the most effect. Yeah.
• 17:21
  This is the mean length of time that civilizations are
• 17:24
  detectable. And we know that number cause
• 17:26
  how? This one's fascinating.
• 17:28
  We approximated this number early to be somewhere between
• 17:31
  1000 years. Yeah.
• 17:33
  And 100 million years, right? Like like Earth years.
• 17:36
  Right. Earth years.
• 17:37
  Yeah, Earth. Years.
• 17:38
  We now suspect this number is closer to 5000 and that is kind
• 17:42
  of fascinating to think about. And I, I think that just shows
• 17:44
  you a little bit of what I'll call non optimism, perhaps
• 17:47
  realism amongst the scientific community.
• 17:50
  Based on a sample size thing, really sure.
• 17:52
  Well, I mean, when did we become detectable to external, you
• 17:56
  know, extraterrestrials? We really probably didn't become
• 17:59
  detectable until, let's just call it roundly the 20th
• 18:02
  century, 1900s. I like.
• 18:04
  That you think that we had to send up probes and have radio
• 18:07
  broadcast and things to be detectable?
• 18:09
  Of course, there could be some magic alien technology that
• 18:12
  could sense us and see us walking around, have sub 1
• 18:14
  centimeter precision from 8 light years away, blah, blah,
• 18:17
  blah, blah, blah. Sure.
• 18:18
  I'm just saying if we started when we started sending beaming
• 18:21
  a signal out to space, let's just say 1900s, right?
• 18:24
  Just sure for the scale of those, there's 8 hundreds.
• 18:26
  Yeah, the current estimation is that we're only gonna be doing
• 18:29
  that for 5000 years. Or in countdown.
• 18:31
  By the way, I would take the under, Yeah.
• 18:33
  If you really wanted to ask me, I'd be like 05000 years of
• 18:35
  sending out signal. That seems like a long time.
• 18:37
  Like, yeah, we might not make it to the 22nd century.
• 18:40
  I feel like it's where we're at sure right now.
• 18:42
  This to me, this all, this whole Frank Drake thing is Black
• 18:45
  Shoals in finance, we have this thing called Black Shoals and
• 18:48
  it's absolute bonkers. It makes absolutely no sense.
• 18:51
  But so you got your black Shoals of likelihood.
• 18:53
  No, no. How else would you approximate
• 18:55
  this? There's no other way to
• 18:56
  approximate it. Like you got to just take some
• 18:58
  numbers. I wouldn't.
• 18:59
  I wouldn't. I'm much easier.
• 19:01
  I'm much more truthful saying we have absolutely no.
• 19:03
  Idea you're happy in your ignorance.
• 19:04
  Could be larger than one. I don't know how many planets
• 19:06
  have life on them, but we know it's at least.
• 19:07
  One. Yeah, exactly.
• 19:08
  Admitting my ignorance makes me less wrong than just assembling
• 19:11
  a bunch of numbers because I really want an answer.
• 19:14
  If you, if you. No, no, I love that.
• 19:16
  If you follow this math, yeah, right.
• 19:18
  Which you clearly will not 'cause you don't believe it.
• 19:20
  You just just put it all into pseudoscience.
• 19:23
  I feel like you're better off like going to a palm reader to
• 19:25
  tell you if there's aliens or not.
• 19:27
  I think it's just as accurate of a number.
• 19:29
  No you wouldn't. It's math.
• 19:31
  How do you like? Like everything in the universe
• 19:33
  has been basically predicted by math, how can you not accept
• 19:36
  this anyway? 'Cause you're you have such
• 19:37
  variables that are just completely pulled out of thin
• 19:40
  air. We need to get that Co host AI
• 19:42
  fired up because I feel like that one, I feel like that one
• 19:44
  would be like no, no, no, you're totally spot on.
• 19:46
  The rough numbers are that unless the odds of advancing
• 19:50
  life on a habitable planet are less than approximately 1 in 10
• 19:54
  to the 22nd. Sure.
• 19:56
  Then we're not the only one now. Yeah, 10 to the 22nd is a number
• 19:59
  that you can't even really fathom, right?
• 20:01
  A billion is 10 to the 9th. Yeah.
• 20:02
  So this is much bigger than that.
• 20:03
  And so I just fathom with more, I just well.
• 20:05
  Yeah, I'm good. I but, but it's so hard to
• 20:07
  approximate that number and not approximate so hard to visualize
• 20:10
  that number. Yeah.
• 20:11
  Just to kind of give you the range of this, that's the weight
• 20:14
  of the moon. The weight of the moon is
• 20:16
  roughly 10 to the 22nd in pounds.
• 20:19
  Wow. Which does kind of give me the
• 20:21
  rough sense of how big that number is.
• 20:23
  Conversely, it's also roughly the number of atoms in a few
• 20:26
  grains of sand. So that just sort of gives you
• 20:28
  the scope. Yeah, it's great.
• 20:29
  Yeah, it's very big. It's really.
• 20:30
  Small it is. That's amazing.
• 20:31
  It's it's really pretty incredible.
• 20:33
  And that's gonna that's gonna play a part in something I want
• 20:34
  to talk about here a little bit later.
• 20:36
  We're talking about the the aliens in their side.
• 20:37
  Very cool. It's not the best analogy, but
• 20:39
  we believe the universe. Well, at least some of us that
• 20:41
  believe in math, I don't know. What you believe is that the
• 20:43
  universe is roughly 14 billion years old.
• 20:46
  I'll go with that. 13.8 billion years is roughly what we think
• 20:49
  it is. That's math I can get behind.
• 20:50
  That, oh, that math you're willing to accept?
• 20:53
  OK, great. The 14 billion years, yeah,
• 20:55
  roughly. I'm good.
• 20:56
  I know how we got there. So the lack of of current
• 20:58
  detection is likely a function more of the average lifetime of
• 21:02
  a technological civilization. That's really the probably the
• 21:05
  bigger factor. Sure.
• 21:06
  And if that's true, if we really think that we only last about
• 21:08
  5000 years that were detectable, roughly speaking, of all
• 21:12
  civilizations, then the Galaxy could be just a graveyard of
• 21:15
  extinct civilizations that never existed at the same time.
• 21:17
  Wow. That's such a grim assessment.
• 21:19
  It is. Somewhat grim, but it kind of
• 21:20
  makes sense if you think about on the cosmic scale, how long
• 21:23
  we've existed, not just as people but even as a planet is
• 21:26
  so, so small on the cosmic scale that it does seem to make the
• 21:30
  most sense that we're not overlapping at the same time.
• 21:32
  So what you think is we can get into the like a Starship, the
• 21:35
  Star Trek Enterprise, and we can go trillions of miles out into
• 21:38
  space, land on a planet, and there'll be some guys who look
• 21:41
  pretty much like us who speak English.
• 21:42
  I listen, we can't even agree on the names to put on bathroom
• 21:46
  doors. You think we're going to fly
• 21:48
  trillions of miles to another planet?
• 21:50
  No, I don't think that's going to be the case.
• 21:51
  I just think the most plausible answer is that there are.
• 21:54
  There have been in our other life forms.
• 21:57
  Then we will likely never see them.
• 21:58
  I think that is the most plausible answer.
• 22:00
  We'll never meet those people. Sure.
• 22:01
  Either because of a temporal issue or a distance.
• 22:03
  And they won't even be people they'll they'll be.
• 22:06
  Things, whatever they are. Centimeters high or they'll be,
• 22:08
  you know, and that's much. Larger.
• 22:10
  Yeah. That's what I want to talk
• 22:11
  about. This is where it starts to get
• 22:12
  really interesting. Are you familiar?
• 22:14
  Yeah. With some, some sort of, I'll
• 22:15
  call them recent, recent ish. Yeah.
• 22:17
  Research that suggests the importance of geology to
• 22:21
  intelligent life. This one blew my mind 'cause I
• 22:22
  was not aware of this. I'm totally up to speed.
• 22:24
  Of course I am. I read it out every night.
• 22:26
  Geology Weekly. Yeah, no geology nightly.
• 22:28
  I don't. I don't.
• 22:29
  Wait for the weekly that's get the nightly build.
• 22:31
  That's outdated. Information that's outdated.
• 22:33
  Yeah, totally, totally. If there's one thing that moves
• 22:36
  faster than weekly, it's geology.
• 22:38
  Geology is the one thing that just speeds right along.
• 22:41
  Wow. The fast moving train known as
• 22:43
  tectonic plates. Geology is totally an important
• 22:46
  part of how we create life. But I didn't know that.
• 22:49
  I didn't appreciate how important it is.
• 22:52
  Your gravitational pull is going to matter.
• 22:53
  What? It's going to make a big
• 22:55
  difference in how you look. Just just the simple thing.
• 22:57
  Things like of course. Yeah, but but I, but
• 22:59
  specifically around tectonic plates.
• 23:01
  Yeah. And the ratio of continents to
• 23:02
  oceans apparently are critical to to transition from primitive
• 23:06
  life to intelligent technology building life.
• 23:09
  And I didn't appreciate that. And they, they think that those
• 23:11
  plate tectonics facilitate what they call the carbon silicate
• 23:14
  cycle. Yeah.
• 23:15
  And it regulates atmospheric CO2 and maintains a stable climate
• 23:18
  for billions of years. So that's really important.
• 23:21
  And I had no idea. Like the deeper down this rabbit
• 23:23
  hole you go, the more you realize we are just lucky times.
• 23:26
  A Bajilly Oh to be. Here what it makes you feel like
• 23:28
  is we should complain about the DMVA lot.
• 23:30
  Less well, because. The odds of us being here are so
• 23:33
  small. I can't speak to that because I
• 23:35
  go to AAA like a civilized human being, OK.
• 23:37
  But yes, the odds of us being here are very small.
• 23:39
  And that's kind of my point to the function The, the the math
• 23:42
  earlier that you disagree with is that it does give you a
• 23:44
  number. It's just incredibly small from
• 23:46
  the the, the grand number of planets, you got a billion
• 23:48
  planets. We think we've up to a billion
• 23:50
  planets just in the Milky Way that are rocky.
• 23:52
  Yeah. How?
• 23:53
  How can you not have intelligent?
• 23:54
  Listen to me, I am so sorry. I don't mean to always point to
• 23:57
  the clock, but I'm pointing to the clock.
• 23:59
  There's no way we're going to finish this segment in this
• 24:01
  episode. Can we come back and have a Part
• 24:03
  2 to this episode? Would that be cool with you?
• 24:05
  All right, my, I'm so, so sorry. Anyway, aliens I'm going with.
• 24:09
  They exist, yes, and that we are not going to see them in our
• 24:13
  lifetime or anytime soon. How about you?
• 24:16
  Oh, that's just, that's just heartbreaking.
• 24:18
  Is it? I'm not sure.
• 24:18
  Yeah, I thought it'd be. I thought it'd be fun to see the
• 24:20
  other we're. Probably not going to see flying
• 24:22
  cars. Oh, wash your mouth that with
• 24:23
  soap. I was told as a young child we
• 24:26
  would see flying cars and I'm and I'm holding to that by the
• 24:29
  way, we are going to see flying. Cars we might see flying.
• 24:30
  I mean, we'll surely see flying cars before we see high speed
• 24:33
  rail in California, OK? All right, we have to get out
• 24:35
  here before we do. Have you seen or read anything
• 24:38
  good this last week? I mean look, it's a it's an
• 24:41
  episode about aliens. So there are a almost non
• 24:44
  enumerable amount of a list, a non enumerable a non.
• 24:48
  There are too many movies to pick from is what I'm trying to
• 24:50
  say. Oh yeah, for sure for.
• 24:51
  Sure, independence. Day and so many good.
• 24:53
  Ones Yeah. Contact, Yeah.
• 24:54
  Men in Black, The Fifth Element, all films, films that I love
• 24:57
  that had a some sort of alien root to it and that's.
• 25:00
  Before you get to the TV shows, of course, My Favorite Martian
• 25:02
  and Mork and Mindy. Well, so I, I had to take an
• 25:04
  element of that, right? I think an an element of sort of
• 25:06
  the the Mork and Mendy's I I'm gonna go with Mars.
• 25:08
  Attacks. Oh yeah, because I.
• 25:10
  Really enjoyed that film. Right.
• 25:11
  That's the definitely 1996 American science fiction black
• 25:14
  comedy directed by Tim Burton. Yeah, it's great.
• 25:16
  I've always enjoyed that film. I didn't know this.
• 25:18
  The screenplay was based on the Tops Trading Card series of the
• 25:21
  same name. Yeah, sure.
• 25:22
  And I had never seen it. Also like the cast in this
• 25:25
  thing. The ensemble cast.
• 25:26
  Yeah, is in insane, right? You've got Jack Nicholson, who
• 25:28
  who's in a dual role. You've got Glenn Close, Annette
• 25:31
  Bening, Pierce Bronson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Short,
• 25:34
  Michael J Fox, Rod Steiger is in that which.
• 25:36
  Is amazing in everything. Natalie Portman, Danny DeVito
• 25:39
  and then and I'd also notice it was Sylvia Sidney's last film,
• 25:43
  last role. It was her final film role from
• 25:45
  and I always remember her from Beetlejuice fame, which I also
• 25:47
  loved her in that. Oh sure, sure.
• 25:49
  So really fun film. It's 30 years old.
• 25:51
  It's worth a rewatch. And it's just it just kind of
• 25:53
  frames how I suspect many of us think how not just aliens, but
• 25:56
  AI guy is likely going to come to us, right?
• 25:58
  Which is that it's going to look very friendly and then just try
• 26:00
  to kill us all. And that's what we think is
• 26:01
  going to happen. Not saying that's what's going
• 26:03
  to happen. I'm saying that's how I think a
• 26:04
  lot of us frame it now. Sure.
• 26:05
  And that's what's what's coming. So anyway, that's, that's mine.
• 26:07
  How about you? The 1979 film Alien, of course.
• 26:10
  The the commercial Starship Nostromo is heading home when
• 26:13
  they intercept A mysterious distress signal from a desolate
• 26:16
  moon. What begins as a routine search
• 26:17
  and rescue mission spirals into a claustrophobic nightmare as an
• 26:21
  unidentified Organism hitches a ride on board.
• 26:23
  Trapped in deep space with a rapidly evolving apex predator,
• 26:27
  the crew is picked off one by one in a terrifying game of hide
• 26:30
  and seek. Cat and mouse.
• 26:32
  Director Ridley Scott blends gothic horror with gritty
• 26:34
  sci-fi, trading high tech heroics for raw survival.
• 26:38
  At the center of the chaos is Ellen Ripley, whose steely
• 26:40
  pragmatism becomes the last line of defense against the perfect
• 26:43
  killing machine. Alien is a master class in
• 26:46
  atmospheric dread, proving that in space, no one can hear you
• 26:50
  scream Alien. So fun.
• 26:52
  Catch it on Hulu. Now you know, I've actually
• 26:54
  never seen Alien all the way through what I know get out of
• 26:57
  here. I know, I know, I've never.
• 26:59
  I've seen Mars Attacks several times, but I've seen parts of
• 27:01
  Alien, but never the whole thing.
• 27:02
  So good. I do feel like I need to go
• 27:04
  watch that at the space. Park.
• 27:05
  Of course, what an amazing. Film and it's like just this
• 27:07
  lovely game of cat and mouse and you ha ha, ha something
• 27:10
  something funny. You open the door.
• 27:11
  Oh, it's not the alien, ha, it's just the cat.
• 27:13
  That's really cute. And then you turn around and.
• 27:15
  Behind you, the jumpscape. It's so great.
• 27:17
  Well, that's great. Now that you ruined it for me.
• 27:19
  That's fine, I'm sure. No, that's basically the whole
• 27:20
  movie. You owe me 20 bucks.
• 27:21
  Send me some popcorn. It's only 20 bucks.
• 27:24
  That is, this is the episode. Thank you for joining us for all
• 27:26
  this nonsense. A truly terrible podcast from
• 27:29
  our awful company. This is on the web at nonsense
• 27:31
  dot productions. I'm.
• 27:32
  CJ Little, I'm Jeff Parker. If you like this program, please
• 27:34
  follow, download, subscribe and like at Apple Podcast, YouTube
• 27:36
  Music, Amazon Music, Antenna Pod, iHeartRadio, Spotify, My
• 27:40
  Favorite Overcast wherever you may get your podcasts.
• 27:42
  From Nonsense Studios are guarded from aliens by Barkley
• 27:45
  the dog. Barkley's a rescue mut free and
• 27:46
  open source. Next time you're tempted to buy
• 27:48
  an inbred or purebred dog, don't get a Barkley.
• 27:51
  You'll be so glad you. Did you do such a disservice to
• 27:54
  all the inbred dogs out there? I do.
• 27:55
  Usually you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday morning for
• 27:57
  more nonsense. But not next week because Jeff
• 27:59
  and I are off for spring break. But after that, please join us.
• 28:14
  Seriously, I'm looking forward to Part 2.
• 28:16
  Do you think the aliens will put on disguise so that they, they
• 28:19
  look like us? They look they about our size,
• 28:21
  about our, you know, just more tan.
• 28:23
  I'll just show up looking like Jimmy Buffett and like, oh, this
• 28:25
  is surprising. That's nice.
• 28:26
  That's not what we expected, but OK.
• 28:28
  Can you play Margaritaville?