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How Alien Contact Might Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and Chuck's here too, and so Jerry, and this is
0:16
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. I don't have a shirt on.
0:21
Speaker 1: That's cool. I don't have pants on. I probably should
0:24
Speaker 1: have told you that before we got going, but or
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Speaker 1: not at all. But that is a definitely the state
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Speaker 1: that we're in these days. It's totally fine that you're
0:32
Speaker 1: not wearing a shirt while we're recording. I went to
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Speaker 1: put one on, and then I was like, why, that's
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Speaker 1: a great question to ask yourself every morning. Really, by
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Speaker 1: the way, we should point out I just noticed. I
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Speaker 1: don't think I told you this, but I noticed today
0:47
Speaker 1: I got um, I haven't always have a a Google
0:52
Speaker 1: search setting for stuff you should know when that pops up,
0:55
Speaker 1: and it popped up that our board game is for
0:58
Speaker 1: sale on Amazon dot com again. Finally it came back
1:04
Speaker 1: in huh, I guess so. And it's on sale, so
1:06
Speaker 1: it's like off even if anyone wants it. We should
1:11
Speaker 1: point out I looked at the negative reviews. This is
1:14
Speaker 1: not trivial pursuit. This is this completely different stuff you
1:18
Speaker 1: should know. Game that Trivial Pursuit loved and wanted to
1:21
Speaker 1: co brand. Uh So, as far as the one star
1:24
Speaker 1: reviews that say this doesn't work with my trivial pursuit board,
1:29
Speaker 1: I've tried to mash them together, but it's out there again.
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Speaker 1: I think if people are interested in that, yeah, hopefully
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Speaker 1: they are. I didn't realize that was a plug until
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Speaker 1: about halfway through. You're still thinking about shirt. I thought
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Speaker 1: there's some story, right, I thought there was some story
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Speaker 1: coming out of it, and then I was like, oh,
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Speaker 1: I see where he's going with this. No, I just
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Speaker 1: I noticed that this morning, so I thought i'd mentioned
1:54
Speaker 1: before we get into what will admittedly be a bit
1:57
Speaker 1: of a freewheeling dicussion. I think on alien first contact,
2:02
Speaker 1: this one didn't quite fit into our what we like
2:06
Speaker 1: to do, which is sort of a tighter beginning, middle
2:08
Speaker 1: in type of thing. So I think this will be
2:11
Speaker 1: a little more free wheeling. It's actually super appropriate because
2:16
Speaker 1: that's basically the same instution attitude that humanity has shown
2:21
Speaker 1: towards the possibility of having to communicate with aliens thus far.
2:27
Speaker 1: You know, it's just kind of like, uh, yeah, we'll
2:30
Speaker 1: figure that out on the fly after it happens kind
2:33
Speaker 1: of thing. And that's really I mean, in some ways,
2:37
Speaker 1: it's like, well, yeah, I mean, why would we waste
2:40
Speaker 1: any time figuring out what we're going to say to
2:42
Speaker 1: aliens if we're not even certain that aliens exist. But
2:46
Speaker 1: in another way, if you look at it, you can say,
2:49
Speaker 1: like that is extraordinarily irresponsible, and like, really, how much
2:53
Speaker 1: time and resource and money would it take to say, hey,
2:56
Speaker 1: you group of humans who are into this, can you
2:58
Speaker 1: go figure out what we should do and what we
3:00
Speaker 1: should say some contingency plans just in case? Just in case?
3:05
Speaker 1: Um so, I mean it kind of just depends on
3:07
Speaker 1: your perspective, I think. But there are people out there, Chuck,
3:11
Speaker 1: who are working on this. They're just not really receiving
3:14
Speaker 1: any government funding, and they may or may not be
3:16
Speaker 1: being listened to by governments around the world. But there
3:19
Speaker 1: are people who have us covered to an extent. Yeah,
3:23
Speaker 1: that's a good preamble, thank you, I think. I guess
3:27
Speaker 1: you know. The first thing we should talk about briefly
3:29
Speaker 1: at least, are the couple of ways that this could
3:32
Speaker 1: go down. Uh. One of them is far less interesting
3:36
Speaker 1: than the other, which is to say, if we find
3:39
Speaker 1: evidence of primitive life. Let's say let's say the Mars
3:42
Speaker 1: rover UH finds and and there has been some promising
3:47
Speaker 1: evidence of life on Mars. But if we find like
3:50
Speaker 1: a mold or some weird you know, virus or just
3:55
Speaker 1: microbes or anything on Mars, not super ex siding, but
4:01
Speaker 1: they still have to sort of prepare how they would
4:04
Speaker 1: handle that, and they have talked about that kind of thing,
4:07
Speaker 1: and they basically have said that if that happened, there
4:10
Speaker 1: would be like a joint press conference and all the
4:12
Speaker 1: scientists would be involved, and then they would start studying
4:15
Speaker 1: that stuff. I think the real money and sort of
4:18
Speaker 1: the fun of this discussion comes when we talk about
4:21
Speaker 1: intelligent life, because you know, that's what that's the money. Topic.
4:26
Speaker 1: Is something more like close encounters of the third kind? No, definitely,
4:29
Speaker 1: but there's a little more on discovering primitive life. What
4:33
Speaker 1: you just described that press conference that already happened back
4:36
Speaker 1: in with the a l H eight four zero zero
4:40
Speaker 1: one meteorite that turned out to be a chunk of
4:42
Speaker 1: four and a half billion year old um Mars basically
4:48
Speaker 1: that had broken off at some point and landed in Antarctica.
4:52
Speaker 1: And there is multiple um circumstantial evidence on this rock
4:59
Speaker 1: that suggests that magnetic microbe inhabited this rock at some
5:04
Speaker 1: point that maybe within you know, four and a half
5:07
Speaker 1: billion years ago, there was microbial life on Mars and
5:10
Speaker 1: we have evidence of it. There's a lot of people
5:13
Speaker 1: out there who are are you know, very well versed
5:16
Speaker 1: on this, who say it's still not proof of life.
5:19
Speaker 1: There's it's still all just circumstantial evidence that, yeah, put
5:22
Speaker 1: together is pretty convincing, but it's not convincing enough to say, yes,
5:26
Speaker 1: there's life out there. But it's still up for debate,
5:29
Speaker 1: even all these years later. So that that press conference
5:31
Speaker 1: with the scientists who discovered it with skeptics who present
5:35
Speaker 1: the opposite side, like that has actually been put into
5:39
Speaker 1: practice before. But yes, I agree with you um finding
5:43
Speaker 1: the UM like intelligent life elsewhere what are UM commonly
5:49
Speaker 1: referred to as extraterrestrial intelligences or e t e s,
5:53
Speaker 1: which sounds way smarter than just saying the aliens those
5:57
Speaker 1: are that is that that's the money contact for sure,
6:01
Speaker 1: right and you know, within that becomes the whole host
6:03
Speaker 1: of UH issues And we're going to just kind of
6:07
Speaker 1: talk about all those because there are a lot of
6:10
Speaker 1: things that play here, you know, one is like, we
6:12
Speaker 1: have no idea what that could look like. We have
6:15
Speaker 1: no idea if you know, and we'll talk, you know,
6:18
Speaker 1: all throughout this about different ways we might try and
6:20
Speaker 1: communicate or pick up communication from them, but we have
6:24
Speaker 1: no idea if that would even be possible, or if
6:27
Speaker 1: they even have brains like we do that could process
6:32
Speaker 1: any kind of communication like we do. So there's just
6:36
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation when it comes to stuff like this. Uh,
6:40
Speaker 1: and I think that some of it probably has been
6:43
Speaker 1: informed by the movies a little bit, right, Yeah, I
6:45
Speaker 1: think it absolutely has been informed by not just movies,
6:48
Speaker 1: but like the science fiction um genre of like books
6:54
Speaker 1: and rom coms for sure, a little bit definitely maybe
6:57
Speaker 1: in there, um but but yes, But the reason why
7:02
Speaker 1: is because science fiction writers have like a really long
7:05
Speaker 1: upstanding history of making fairly accurate predictions or figuring out um,
7:11
Speaker 1: you know, paradoxes, weird solutions to issues that that you know,
7:17
Speaker 1: normal scientists aren't necessarily thinking about, and they've contributed to
7:20
Speaker 1: the field. So it makes sense that we would kind
7:23
Speaker 1: of lean on science fiction to come up with some
7:25
Speaker 1: of these are letta influence us too. Yeah, and you know,
7:29
Speaker 1: there are a lot of smart people thinking about this stuff.
7:32
Speaker 1: There's a gentleman named Jacob hawk Misra who works at
7:37
Speaker 1: Penn State University, go Nitney lyons uh and it is
7:41
Speaker 1: an astronomer there and said basically, and this is in
7:44
Speaker 1: an interview with Life Science, said, you know what we
7:47
Speaker 1: would probably do if we did spot some sort of
7:50
Speaker 1: intelligent life is we would probably or we should probably
7:54
Speaker 1: slow our role and just sort of watch them for
7:57
Speaker 1: a while from a distance, try and gather information, learn
8:01
Speaker 1: as much as we can, and then maybe at some
8:03
Speaker 1: point before we even send humans, send out like a
8:07
Speaker 1: robot or something. Right. So, what he's talking about, right,
8:13
Speaker 1: what he's talking about bears a really strong resemblance to
8:17
Speaker 1: a military document from the fifties that no one has
8:20
Speaker 1: a copy of but has been written of um by
8:24
Speaker 1: people who supposedly have read it before back in the day.
8:28
Speaker 1: It's called seven Steps to Contact, and it was basically
8:31
Speaker 1: that plan. You know, we we find something, we sit
8:35
Speaker 1: and observe it from a distance, we get a little closer.
8:37
Speaker 1: There is a procedure where we abduct a member of
8:42
Speaker 1: that species or whatever if we can to like learn
8:44
Speaker 1: what we can from him, and then we announce our
8:47
Speaker 1: presence and then we try to communicate, right and um,
8:50
Speaker 1: communicating using like a probe um or some sort of
8:55
Speaker 1: like computer makes a lot of sense, but it leads
8:59
Speaker 1: us to a important kind of rule of thumb in
9:02
Speaker 1: this this um this field, and that is that if
9:05
Speaker 1: we humans have come up with it, there's a really
9:08
Speaker 1: good chance that an advanced civilization that we will come
9:11
Speaker 1: in contact with has actually done it already. So if
9:15
Speaker 1: we've decided that space probe is probably the best way
9:18
Speaker 1: to contact people, that's probably what we should be looking
9:22
Speaker 1: for because that's probably what they will actually do. Yeah,
9:25
Speaker 1: and this is where, you know, it's sort of a
9:30
Speaker 1: it's sort of a heady thing to think about, but
9:32
Speaker 1: the idea is that they would be an advanced, like
9:35
Speaker 1: way more advanced civilization than we are. It's sort of
9:38
Speaker 1: an assumption that if they contact us, or if we
9:42
Speaker 1: can make contact with them, that they're way far ahead
9:44
Speaker 1: of us in technology and that they have actually survived
9:49
Speaker 1: uh beyond where we are now, which is uh technical
9:53
Speaker 1: or technological adolescence. I mean, it seems like we've done
9:57
Speaker 1: a lot, but you know, Lvia points out that we've
10:00
Speaker 1: only been communicating you know, view radio via radio for
10:04
Speaker 1: like a hundred years, so like we're super super young.
10:07
Speaker 1: So the idea is that if there's something out there,
10:10
Speaker 1: they're way more advanced, they've survived beyond that. They have
10:13
Speaker 1: technology that is, uh, they have advanced that did not
10:17
Speaker 1: end up killing them. So they survived what's called the
10:20
Speaker 1: Great Filter, which we're not even I don't know how
10:24
Speaker 1: you know better than I am. How close are we
10:25
Speaker 1: to approaching that? Um, The predictions are within the next
10:30
Speaker 1: hundred years, if we can serve out the next hundred years,
10:33
Speaker 1: we might be okay of like advancing tech to the
10:36
Speaker 1: point where tech then takes over and wipes us out. Yeah.
10:41
Speaker 1: So if we can survive that the great filter, um,
10:44
Speaker 1: that means that will have such a mastery of technology
10:48
Speaker 1: that we can defend ourselves from extinction in any form, natural,
10:52
Speaker 1: self imposed, whatever. We'll just we'll have such a mastery
10:55
Speaker 1: of technology that it can't wipe us out and we
10:58
Speaker 1: can't be wiped out. And so the lifespan of the
11:01
Speaker 1: humans could go on for billions of years. So if
11:05
Speaker 1: we detect an advanced civilization, what they tell us, Chuck,
11:09
Speaker 1: is that it's possible to make it through the Great Filter,
11:12
Speaker 1: because we don't know if that's the case or not.
11:14
Speaker 1: All the evidence we have is that we're the only
11:16
Speaker 1: intelligent life in the universe, So that that raises the question,
11:20
Speaker 1: are we the only intelligent life in the universe because
11:23
Speaker 1: all other intelligent life has destroyed itself as it's tried
11:26
Speaker 1: to go through the Great Filter? And if so, does
11:29
Speaker 1: that mean we're about to destroy ourselves because we're about
11:31
Speaker 1: to go through the Great Filter? Or or was it
11:35
Speaker 1: already in the past? Was it was there some other
11:37
Speaker 1: stage and evolution that we've already gone through. And so
11:41
Speaker 1: if we come in contact with an advanced civilization, they
11:44
Speaker 1: show us that the Great filters probably behind us, and
11:48
Speaker 1: we have a long, happy, technologically advanced life ahead of
11:52
Speaker 1: us for our species. Right, we should probably break but
11:56
Speaker 1: before we do, uh, I do want to mention that
11:59
Speaker 1: that same Jacob Hawk Misra also points out kind of
12:02
Speaker 1: the obvious, but we do need to mention it that
12:05
Speaker 1: they may are like this whole idea that we could
12:07
Speaker 1: be out there watching them. Potentially they may already be
12:10
Speaker 1: out there watching us and we just don't know about it,
12:14
Speaker 1: and then we would be in a reactive mode rather
12:17
Speaker 1: than a proactive mode. And it's just something to think about.
12:20
Speaker 1: We're not like trying to say aliens, man, but uh,
12:25
Speaker 1: just because we don't know what's out there yet, doesn't
12:27
Speaker 1: mean that they don't know that we're out there. No,
12:29
Speaker 1: And it's again, it's probably not aliens. If we're being observed,
12:32
Speaker 1: it's probably a probe of some sort. And the spot
12:36
Speaker 1: doujure that people are suggesting where it would be hiding
12:38
Speaker 1: out as in a co orbital asteroid out in the
12:42
Speaker 1: asteroid belt UM that has the same orbit as Earth
12:45
Speaker 1: around the Sun but doesn't orbit Earth. UM. That would
12:48
Speaker 1: provide a really great um hidden spot to to check
12:53
Speaker 1: out Earth and kind of keep tabs on us because
12:56
Speaker 1: he would be crazy enough to fly their spaceship into
12:58
Speaker 1: an asteroid field. Well, what's what's really exciting is like
13:01
Speaker 1: we'll probably be mining asteroids in like the next fifty years.
13:07
Speaker 1: So if that's the case, we would find that probe
13:11
Speaker 1: and possibly Han Solo. That's right, super old Han Solo
13:16
Speaker 1: with a single diamond earring for some reason. All right,
13:20
Speaker 1: let's take that break and we will come back and
13:23
Speaker 1: talk about a topic that we previously covered. Set right
13:27
Speaker 1: for this, all right, we have a whole episode on
13:51
Speaker 1: CD the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence? Was that one at
13:56
Speaker 1: comic Con? No, because UFO one comic book. I think
14:01
Speaker 1: that's the when you're thinking of, that's what I'm thinking of.
14:03
Speaker 1: Those are always fun, the comic cons that is. Uh,
14:09
Speaker 1: they were always fun because we had a mix of
14:11
Speaker 1: like stuff you should know listeners but also sort of
14:13
Speaker 1: arms crossed nerds entertained me. Yeah, that ended up liking
14:20
Speaker 1: what we did generally. Yeah, So I just have to say, now,
14:23
Speaker 1: anytime I hear comic kind have you seen Love on
14:25
Speaker 1: the Spectrum US? The new season of Love on the Spectrum?
14:29
Speaker 1: I never saw the old edition. Oh you gotta see.
14:32
Speaker 1: So there's a new one and there's one um, one
14:36
Speaker 1: regular person. Um, I want to say character, but it's like,
14:39
Speaker 1: you know, real life. So there's one person on it.
14:43
Speaker 1: Her name is Danny and she's like super into animation
14:47
Speaker 1: and it's just laser focused on finding a partner who
14:51
Speaker 1: is equally into animation as she is, which is really
14:54
Speaker 1: tough because she's really into but um. One of her
14:56
Speaker 1: first questions in any one of the dates she goes
15:00
Speaker 1: on is have you heard of comic Con? Or do
15:02
Speaker 1: you feel you would ever want to go to comic Con?
15:05
Speaker 1: Or something similar to that. It's really super cute. I
15:09
Speaker 1: think you can say, cast member, I think that still
15:11
Speaker 1: covers reality. Oh it does. Okay, yes, so one of
15:13
Speaker 1: the cast members named Danny Yeah. Um, alright, So CT,
15:18
Speaker 1: like I said, search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. You can listen
15:21
Speaker 1: to that full episode. Uh. There is a body, a
15:24
Speaker 1: key body for CET called the International Academy of Arrow
15:28
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Astronautics. And they are non governmental and they
15:33
Speaker 1: were founded in nineteen sixty and what they try to
15:36
Speaker 1: do is bring together experts from all over the world. Uh.
15:40
Speaker 1: I think there's seventy seven member countries at this point. Uh.
15:43
Speaker 1: It is un recognize so it's not just you know,
15:45
Speaker 1: a bunch of crackpots out there talking about aliens. And
15:49
Speaker 1: they helped establish some protocols in the late eighties and
15:53
Speaker 1: then updated them in um, just sort of some guidelines
15:57
Speaker 1: about how to handle it if said he did find something. Yeah,
16:01
Speaker 1: and they're really kind of basic and boring even when
16:05
Speaker 1: you stop and think you're talking about discovering and searching
16:08
Speaker 1: for extraterrestrial intelligence. But it's it's good that they do this.
16:12
Speaker 1: They provided a baseline so that if you're a scientist
16:14
Speaker 1: working in this field. You know, Oh, I can't speak
16:17
Speaker 1: to the press, or oh I haven't haven't really confirmed
16:20
Speaker 1: this discovery, so I shouldn't announce it yet. Like there's
16:23
Speaker 1: just really basic guidelines that I think if you are
16:26
Speaker 1: in the grip of having discovered something like this, it
16:30
Speaker 1: would be really helpful to be able to refer to him,
16:32
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, And I think what's promising about these
16:35
Speaker 1: guidelines is they talk a lot about being honest and
16:39
Speaker 1: open with the press, like you said, and working together
16:43
Speaker 1: with people from all scientists from all over the world,
16:46
Speaker 1: in forming task groups and not jumping the gun. And
16:50
Speaker 1: like if you you know, in the movies, if you
16:52
Speaker 1: get a um, you know, the computer screen pops up
16:55
Speaker 1: an alien signal, Like the first thing you do is
16:57
Speaker 1: type back an answer like they eight no, no, no,
17:00
Speaker 1: don't type back any answer. Uh, you're not the guy
17:04
Speaker 1: in the chair. Uh. What we need to do is
17:07
Speaker 1: like take our time with this stuff and consult everybody,
17:10
Speaker 1: including the u N on like best next steps. Right,
17:13
Speaker 1: the guy in the chair who's big, sweaty bearded and
17:17
Speaker 1: has a really affectionate relationship with the heroin who's actually
17:20
Speaker 1: interested in the male lead. Yeah, you just describe me
17:23
Speaker 1: right now, except that guy has on a shirt, right,
17:27
Speaker 1: So you've got what you've got searching. You do it transparently.
17:31
Speaker 1: You're supposed to communicate with the public and as we'll see. Um,
17:34
Speaker 1: that's you know, if you think about it, if you
17:36
Speaker 1: pay any kind of attention to science journalism, there's all
17:40
Speaker 1: sorts of discussion and talk about searching the stars for
17:43
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial intelligence these days, and that is part of this,
17:47
Speaker 1: this this protocol, like keep the public informed, tell them
17:51
Speaker 1: everything you're doing, tell him what you're finding, and then
17:54
Speaker 1: later on, as we'll see, tell them how excited they
17:56
Speaker 1: should be about that. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess
18:00
Speaker 1: we should talk about that. They actually have a scale
18:02
Speaker 1: that they've developed to gauge how excited the general public
18:07
Speaker 1: would be about finding something out. And it's called the
18:10
Speaker 1: Rio scale, uh. And it was um proposed by astronomers
18:15
Speaker 1: Yvonne Almar of Hungary and Jill Tarter of the United
18:20
Speaker 1: States and two thousand and it's kind of funny. It's
18:23
Speaker 1: based off the or at least modeled on, the Torino scale,
18:27
Speaker 1: which is a scale of like, uh, the effects of
18:30
Speaker 1: an asteroid hitting the Earth. But it's how excited would
18:34
Speaker 1: the public be? And what's funny about it? It's a
18:36
Speaker 1: zero to ten. And one of the examples that Livia
18:41
Speaker 1: gives is, all, right, let's say they found a like
18:46
Speaker 1: a pretty full proof report that they found of a
18:50
Speaker 1: signal from intelligent or potentially intelligent life, but they found
18:55
Speaker 1: it in the archives, like, hey, we dug this up
18:57
Speaker 1: from two thousand two and it's confirmed and it was
19:00
Speaker 1: a signal of alien life trying to speak to us.
19:03
Speaker 1: That ranks a two out of ten. Right, it's a
19:07
Speaker 1: when in two is um is nominally low importance. I
19:12
Speaker 1: just think that's so telling of people in there, like
19:16
Speaker 1: having to be so in the moment, like when did
19:18
Speaker 1: this happen? Okay, yawn right right. So so it's not
19:23
Speaker 1: just like how excited the public will be, it's also
19:26
Speaker 1: how excited you should tell the public to be, like
19:29
Speaker 1: how important refinding this is? Right? So you would turn
19:32
Speaker 1: around and it's still it strikes me as really weird too, that, hey,
19:36
Speaker 1: we found a beacon that we've confirmed is from an
19:39
Speaker 1: intelligent life outside of our galaxy, but it's not that important.
19:44
Speaker 1: That's weird. The while signal wasn't the Whatev's signal like
19:49
Speaker 1: they were excited about it. They included an exclamation point
19:53
Speaker 1: I should point out though, that same signal if they
19:56
Speaker 1: found that like right now tomorrow, they said that would
19:59
Speaker 1: rank as seven out of and so it would be
20:01
Speaker 1: news year. I guess right, So seven is high importance
20:05
Speaker 1: and then ten is oh my gosh, oh man, oh geez. Yeah,
20:10
Speaker 1: that's that level of importance. Yeah, well, which is potentially
20:14
Speaker 1: like panic level, right, it is because basically you've got
20:18
Speaker 1: a um, you essentially have contact, is what a ten
20:22
Speaker 1: would be, or a signal that is coming to us
20:25
Speaker 1: from our solar system that we can like study. It's
20:28
Speaker 1: it's all about how credible and reliable it is. And
20:32
Speaker 1: the first RIO scale that was introduced in two thousand
20:36
Speaker 1: I think you said, um, that was updated here there,
20:38
Speaker 1: I think in two thousand three, and then in two thousand,
20:41
Speaker 1: um eighteen, I believe there was an update to it,
20:47
Speaker 1: so so much so that they call it RIO two
20:49
Speaker 1: point oh. It was led by Duncan Forgan of the
20:52
Speaker 1: Center for ex Planet Science at the University of St.
20:55
Speaker 1: Andrew in Scotland. Go Scotland. Go uh, Golfers. I'm sure
20:58
Speaker 1: it's the University of Senn Drew. UM and so he
21:03
Speaker 1: and the company updated the Rio scale to make it
21:06
Speaker 1: even more robust. And again it all comes down to
21:10
Speaker 1: how credible is this information? Right? Like, how how credible
21:15
Speaker 1: is this discovery? Can we study it? Um? What do
21:18
Speaker 1: other scientists in the field think about it? And you
21:21
Speaker 1: put all this together and then you say, actually, this
21:23
Speaker 1: is low importance, this is high importance. This is as
21:25
Speaker 1: important as it comes. And then you tell the public
21:29
Speaker 1: we found something and the importance of it is as
21:31
Speaker 1: important as it comes, or it's not that important, which
21:35
Speaker 1: would be a tin which is she dances on the sand.
21:39
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, but I like the
21:41
Speaker 1: sound of it. Chucked all right? Should I point it out?
21:43
Speaker 1: Or should I let you just discover it later? Or
21:47
Speaker 1: never at all? I think maybe someone will email and tell,
21:50
Speaker 1: you know, point it out. I hate it when people
21:52
Speaker 1: email this hony stuff that I missed. It was a
21:55
Speaker 1: dad joke, an eighties uh kid of the eighties dad joke. Okay,
22:00
Speaker 1: all right, I'm nothing, I've got maybe um Mr Mr No,
22:07
Speaker 1: you're close. It's the Rio scale. She dances on the
22:09
Speaker 1: same Yeah, that's great. I can't believe it. All right,
22:14
Speaker 1: it was great. It's a great song. It is biproxy great.
22:20
Speaker 1: Should we talk about SETA. Yeah, just one more thing
22:23
Speaker 1: before we pass on from the Rio scale. Like one
22:26
Speaker 1: of the important things is the reason why the scale
22:28
Speaker 1: is so varied from like low importance to she dances
22:33
Speaker 1: on the sand importance is Um, you're supposed to communicate
22:39
Speaker 1: this to the public. If it's low importance, that doesn't
22:42
Speaker 1: mean don't bother. It means go tell the public we
22:44
Speaker 1: found this. But it's actually not that big of a deal.
22:46
Speaker 1: It's it's instructing astronomers how to present this to the public.
22:52
Speaker 1: You know, how excited you should tell them to be,
22:54
Speaker 1: how important it is. Yeah. And then also before we
22:57
Speaker 1: go on to SETA, once you actually have a detection,
23:00
Speaker 1: there's that Setti Permanent Committee from the I A. A.
23:03
Speaker 1: They have protocols for for when you do actually confirm
23:07
Speaker 1: you have detected an alien signal or presence somehow set up. Yeah.
23:13
Speaker 1: And so if they're if they're broadcasting on the electromagnetic band,
23:17
Speaker 1: which we are out there looking for, um, so hopefully
23:20
Speaker 1: that's what they're using, UM, that band would be protected.
23:24
Speaker 1: Everybody else would get kicked off of that band, and
23:26
Speaker 1: then that band would be studied as intensively as an
23:29
Speaker 1: electromagnetic band has ever been studied in the history of humanity.
23:34
Speaker 1: I love that. And then lastly, chuck um, there's a
23:38
Speaker 1: there's a protocol not to respond. Again, you're the guy
23:41
Speaker 1: in the chair, Like you said, you don't get to respond,
23:43
Speaker 1: but so neither do the astronomers. Neither do like the
23:46
Speaker 1: I A A like. It's meant to become an international
23:50
Speaker 1: global discussion on how humanity should reply to this, and
23:55
Speaker 1: that's based on the idea that how we reply is
23:57
Speaker 1: going to have a really big impact on how the
24:01
Speaker 1: conversation goes. Um from that point on, Well, yeah, because
24:05
Speaker 1: what we don't know. And one of the things that uh,
24:09
Speaker 1: I think would be the most pins and needles sort
24:12
Speaker 1: of thing to find out is whether these E T
24:16
Speaker 1: I s are what they call selfish or whether they're universalists.
24:21
Speaker 1: So are they here to help us and say, you know,
24:24
Speaker 1: we have all this great technology, then we can help
24:26
Speaker 1: you out. By the way, we have a cure for cancer.
24:28
Speaker 1: You might be looking for that. Or are they uh, well,
24:33
Speaker 1: I guess that would be the universalist or are they selfish?
24:36
Speaker 1: And are they here to conquer us? And there was
24:39
Speaker 1: a researcher that you dug up that pointed out something
24:42
Speaker 1: kind of key, which is sure, we wonder if they're
24:45
Speaker 1: selfish or universalists, but I don't know if anyone's noticed.
24:49
Speaker 1: Everything we talk about is how it benefits or uh
24:53
Speaker 1: is bad for us. So we are definitely on the
24:56
Speaker 1: selfish side because nobody at all is talking about how
24:59
Speaker 1: we might be able to possibly help them. Right, And
25:02
Speaker 1: it sounds pretty goofy and childish to say, like, you know,
25:06
Speaker 1: they want to conquer us or whatever, but there's actually
25:08
Speaker 1: like legitimate reasons and alien intelligence would want a conquress.
25:13
Speaker 1: They might want our resources to exploit for their own uses.
25:16
Speaker 1: That's a big deal. Um. They may also basically have
25:21
Speaker 1: a their own protocol where anytime they meet intelligent life
25:25
Speaker 1: they snuff it out because they don't want any potential
25:28
Speaker 1: future rivals to come along, and it's not worth their
25:30
Speaker 1: while to investigate that life further to see if it
25:33
Speaker 1: ever would be arrival, so they just wipe it out
25:35
Speaker 1: wherever they encounter it. So, yes, it sounds childish at first,
25:38
Speaker 1: but when you start to think about it becomes a
25:40
Speaker 1: little eye popping because they there there are universal you
25:44
Speaker 1: would you would expect universal reasons for them to harm us,
25:49
Speaker 1: and they're predicated on the idea that natural selection is
25:53
Speaker 1: a universal phenomenon, that that that all life, or more
25:58
Speaker 1: to the point, no life just comes fully formed into
26:03
Speaker 1: being out of nowhere. It progresses from other forms of
26:07
Speaker 1: life and develops along the way, and so you can
26:11
Speaker 1: it makes sense that it would it would happen elsewhere
26:13
Speaker 1: in the universe. And if that's the case, then yeah,
26:16
Speaker 1: you can make a really good case, um that there
26:18
Speaker 1: are that they're destructive intelligences out there that um just
26:23
Speaker 1: wipe out competition and rivalry arrival or Yeah. The other
26:27
Speaker 1: option too, though, is that's hanging out there, is they
26:30
Speaker 1: may have initially been uh selfless or universalist or benevolent,
26:37
Speaker 1: and then they either accidentally infect us somehow. I mean,
26:42
Speaker 1: we've seen that if you look to our own past
26:44
Speaker 1: of when you know, conquering colonialists invaded foreign lands and
26:48
Speaker 1: brought their disease with them. I mean, it's not a
26:51
Speaker 1: far stretch to think that could happen, you know, on
26:53
Speaker 1: an interplanetary or I guess, uh, I'm well sure interplanetary
26:57
Speaker 1: level or that doesn't happen and they come here and
27:01
Speaker 1: they want to help us out, but then they study
27:03
Speaker 1: us for a while and hang out, and they're like,
27:06
Speaker 1: you people are awful if either they undermine us some
27:09
Speaker 1: way by accident or on purpose, or then they decide
27:12
Speaker 1: to wipe us out right because they place a higher
27:15
Speaker 1: value on, you know, life in general. And they're like,
27:19
Speaker 1: these guys are actually a threat to life in general.
27:21
Speaker 1: So maybe if they're utilitarians, it would make sense for
27:25
Speaker 1: them to eliminate us to save more life, you know,
27:29
Speaker 1: because again, like if you let's say we actually did
27:32
Speaker 1: encounter an advanced civilization, their perspective is much different than ours.
27:36
Speaker 1: We have no idea how long humans will be around,
27:39
Speaker 1: and frankly, those of us living today in the century
27:42
Speaker 1: probably have a a shorter idea of what the human
27:47
Speaker 1: lifespan is than people in the past, it, right, So
27:51
Speaker 1: they're coming at it like these guys might be around forever,
27:54
Speaker 1: and my who knows how technologically advanced they could become.
27:58
Speaker 1: So they could see it as like beneficial to the
28:01
Speaker 1: greater good by getting rid of us now, like like
28:03
Speaker 1: going back and strangling Hitler in his crib when he
28:06
Speaker 1: was a baby or something like that. That would be
28:08
Speaker 1: their opportunity to do that, because we would be utterly
28:11
Speaker 1: defenseless against the civilization that was so advanced it could
28:15
Speaker 1: come visit us. We can send probes. But baby Hitler
28:19
Speaker 1: is the human race exactly in this case, which is
28:22
Speaker 1: really sad. But yeah, right, let's just move on to
28:27
Speaker 1: seta which we were gonna do minutes ago. But I
28:30
Speaker 1: told you this would be free wheeling, everybody, it was
28:33
Speaker 1: so free wheeling. I have one other thing. Do you
28:36
Speaker 1: really go ahead? I have two other things. Actually, So
28:39
Speaker 1: there's we actually have um legitimate reason to believe that
28:44
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't be a conquering type because number one,
28:48
Speaker 1: they're very long lived. That's our assumption, right, And if
28:52
Speaker 1: they're very long lived, they're probably a cooperative society. Because
28:56
Speaker 1: non cooperative societies fight amongst themselves and can end up
29:00
Speaker 1: wiping themselves out. They're much likelier too. So if we
29:03
Speaker 1: encounter an advanced civilization that has very very long lived,
29:06
Speaker 1: has been around for millions or billions of years as
29:08
Speaker 1: a species, um, they probably are super peaceful because they
29:12
Speaker 1: learned along the way and maybe even evolved along the
29:15
Speaker 1: way to cooperate. So it would be more likely that
29:17
Speaker 1: they would be those universalists that we met. Okay, And
29:22
Speaker 1: then there's one other example of life here on Earth
29:26
Speaker 1: where there was like positive contact, not necessarily between societies,
29:30
Speaker 1: but between an encoded version of a society and a
29:34
Speaker 1: new society. And that was when the Spanish Moors of
29:37
Speaker 1: the twelfth century discovered lost Greek knowledge and they turned
29:42
Speaker 1: around and introduced it to Europe, and it brought Europe
29:44
Speaker 1: out of the medieval or Dark Ages into the Renaissance.
29:48
Speaker 1: It was triggered just by this knowledge that had been lost.
29:50
Speaker 1: So you can imagine that if we were suddenly bestowed
29:53
Speaker 1: with a tremendous amount of new knowledge, who knows where
29:56
Speaker 1: we could go with them? Well, yeah, And that brings
29:59
Speaker 1: up a point, which is, um if we're talking about
30:02
Speaker 1: what might happen if a super advanced civilization got in
30:05
Speaker 1: touch with us, and you want to do that brain experiment,
30:08
Speaker 1: one way to sort of go about that might be
30:10
Speaker 1: to look back at our past and say, well, what's
30:13
Speaker 1: happened in the history of humanity when the equivalent of
30:17
Speaker 1: that has happened, which is like, let's say, uh, more
30:20
Speaker 1: like advanced and it might as well have been aliens
30:23
Speaker 1: contacting humans, but a much more advanced European nation like
30:28
Speaker 1: going into a primitive tribe and you know, deepen the Amazon,
30:33
Speaker 1: and the answer isn't pretty if you don't know anything
30:36
Speaker 1: about world history. So if you want to look to
30:39
Speaker 1: the past of how humans have uh kind of operated
30:42
Speaker 1: when they're the advanced civilization, maybe a little humility going
30:47
Speaker 1: forward and what might happen to us is in order,
30:50
Speaker 1: you know, right for sure, And we'll talk about societal impacts.
30:53
Speaker 1: But that really kind of um shifts a little light
30:56
Speaker 1: on that foreshadows that at least that like whether we
30:59
Speaker 1: wanted to feel humbled or not, we probably would if
31:02
Speaker 1: we encountered an advanced civilization. All right, I think we
31:05
Speaker 1: beat around the bush so far that we can actually
31:07
Speaker 1: take a break, okay, and then talk about set us
31:11
Speaker 1: at a port. Set is just sitting out there. It's
31:13
Speaker 1: a fun bush to beat though, isn't it. It really is.
31:16
Speaker 1: I like this kind of stuff. All right, We'll be
31:18
Speaker 1: right back with SETA, I promise, okay, chuck um SETA.
31:44
Speaker 1: I got a few more points to make. So if
31:47
Speaker 1: SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, set UH is
31:52
Speaker 1: the search for extraterrestrial artifacts. Because again, there's a lot
31:55
Speaker 1: of people out there who say the best way to
31:57
Speaker 1: explore the universe is through machine that we deploy and
32:01
Speaker 1: then send back information and maybe you're so advanced that
32:04
Speaker 1: they can actually serve as ambassadors for the civilization. Right,
32:08
Speaker 1: So not only maybe that should be our way forward
32:12
Speaker 1: for us, but with SETA, it's a search for extraterrestrial artifacts.
32:16
Speaker 1: Is maybe we should also really really keep an eye out,
32:20
Speaker 1: not just because typically we've been listening for things and
32:23
Speaker 1: they said maybe we should also be looking for evidence
32:27
Speaker 1: of a probe. Um as far as us doing it,
32:29
Speaker 1: there's are some benefits. One is uh that maybe it
32:34
Speaker 1: would uh that they wouldn't know where we're coming from,
32:37
Speaker 1: Like we're not literally sending out a beacon from where
32:40
Speaker 1: we are just in case they are dangerous. So if
32:43
Speaker 1: they found our probe, unless it was stamped made in
32:45
Speaker 1: the USA, which it probably would be with the map Dallas, Texas, Uh,
32:54
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't know where we are. So there is
32:56
Speaker 1: potential benefit there. But um, I think Seta's entry saying
33:00
Speaker 1: the idea that we should be looking for stuff out there,
33:03
Speaker 1: maybe in those asteroid fields. Yeah. So back in the
33:07
Speaker 1: mid eighties, a couple of steady researchers, Robert Frieda's Jr.
33:12
Speaker 1: And Francisco Valdi's or valds um. They basically said, there's
33:18
Speaker 1: we can conceive of three different classes of artifacts that
33:22
Speaker 1: you could that that like an intelligence, an extra terrestrial
33:25
Speaker 1: intelligence might send out UM. And they weren't talking about like,
33:29
Speaker 1: you know, this this kind of von Newman probe or
33:32
Speaker 1: something like that. They were saying, like, as far as
33:34
Speaker 1: detection goes, it would be put into into three categories.
33:39
Speaker 1: The first one is ones that actively seek out other intelligences,
33:43
Speaker 1: the second one is ones that avoid detection, and then
33:47
Speaker 1: the third one are ones where the extraterrestrial intelligence is
33:51
Speaker 1: indifferent to whether we find it or not. And after
33:54
Speaker 1: examining it, they said, we should be looking exclusively for
33:58
Speaker 1: class three artifacts X because class one UM we would
34:03
Speaker 1: have detected already because they would have come and found
34:06
Speaker 1: us if they were seeking attention. And then class two
34:09
Speaker 1: we're never going to find because this is an advanced civilization.
34:12
Speaker 1: So we would just guess that they would be able
34:16
Speaker 1: to keep us from knowing that that we were being watched. Yeah,
34:20
Speaker 1: like maybe they have just you know, figured out invisibility.
34:23
Speaker 1: Something's basically that sure, Yeah, so we should look for
34:26
Speaker 1: the ones where they're like who cares if they find
34:28
Speaker 1: this old space junk, right, and that's actually what um
34:32
Speaker 1: umuamuah is thought to be by at least one astronomer.
34:36
Speaker 1: You know about that excuse you, Mua? Was that the
34:42
Speaker 1: guy uh that's working on the Galileo project? Now Lobe? Yeah,
34:46
Speaker 1: av Lobe al right, well, yeah, to talk about Mua,
34:50
Speaker 1: then we'll talk to about the Galileo project. I think okay,
34:53
Speaker 1: So muamua um means I think like visitor um and
34:59
Speaker 1: it was owned in two thousand seventeen. We're not quite
35:02
Speaker 1: sure what it is. It's probably a hunk of a planet.
35:05
Speaker 1: But the one thing everybody agrees on it's not from
35:08
Speaker 1: our Solar system. It's from another star system because it
35:11
Speaker 1: doesn't move like anything in our star system does UM.
35:15
Speaker 1: But it's supposedly has been observed exhibiting um gravitational acceleration
35:23
Speaker 1: non gravitational acceleration, meaning it's accelerating faster than gravity would
35:28
Speaker 1: would suggest it would on its own right, which means
35:32
Speaker 1: like it might be propelled by something, which is crazy
35:35
Speaker 1: to think about. And that av Lobe we were talking
35:38
Speaker 1: about is a Harvard astronomer and came out and was
35:43
Speaker 1: one of the only people that came out and says,
35:45
Speaker 1: you know, straight up, I think this is alien technology.
35:48
Speaker 1: And so abb Lobe is who launched the Galileo Project
35:51
Speaker 1: in one which is the only sort of active set
35:54
Speaker 1: a thing that we have going right now, and right
35:58
Speaker 1: now they are. There was the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Report
36:03
Speaker 1: last year from the U s Office of the Director
36:05
Speaker 1: of National Intelligence, and that's basically I mean, they were
36:08
Speaker 1: meeting about that even just recently, you know, the government,
36:12
Speaker 1: the US government that is finally saying like, all right,
36:14
Speaker 1: we don't need to be like, uh, embarrassed about talking
36:18
Speaker 1: about this stuff. There are things that we've seen that
36:21
Speaker 1: we can identify. They are unidentified flying objects that like
36:25
Speaker 1: our military has seen, like our best pilots are reporting about,
36:29
Speaker 1: so we should start talking about this. And part of
36:32
Speaker 1: that was this report, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Report in
36:37
Speaker 1: the Galileo project is sort of combing through that also
36:40
Speaker 1: has some telescopes going now watching for objects. Uh. I'm
36:45
Speaker 1: not sure like how vast that is at this point,
36:48
Speaker 1: but it's just launched a year ago, so I'm sure
36:51
Speaker 1: they're getting going. Yeah, And we should say av Lobe
36:54
Speaker 1: is viewed um alternatively as a genius or a maverick
36:58
Speaker 1: or rogue or crack pot. But he does have, you know,
37:02
Speaker 1: legitimate bona fides. He's not one of those guys. He's like,
37:05
Speaker 1: you know, um, he parks his camper on the campus
37:09
Speaker 1: of Harvard, So he's a Harvard astronomer. Like he's a
37:12
Speaker 1: legitimate He was the head of the astronomy department for
37:15
Speaker 1: quite a while, I believe, so. Um. Yeah, he thinks
37:18
Speaker 1: from what I read, that UMA is billions of year
37:23
Speaker 1: old defunct alien probe that no longer works or operates
37:28
Speaker 1: and just happened to stumble into our solar system for
37:31
Speaker 1: us to find accidentally. What does it look like? You?
37:34
Speaker 1: I didn't even look it up. I should have. It
37:36
Speaker 1: looks like a kind of cigars shaped. Um. It's apparently
37:40
Speaker 1: between three hundred and three thousand feet long, um, and
37:45
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifteen and five hundred forty eight feet thick.
37:49
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it now. You're generous with the cigar.
37:52
Speaker 1: It looks like a joint. Okay, straight up. Yeah, it
37:56
Speaker 1: looks like a spliff, it does. Um. So yeah, it
38:00
Speaker 1: looks like an alien spliff is probably what it is.
38:03
Speaker 1: Maybe they're sending us a message. I've never used the
38:06
Speaker 1: word spliff before in my life until just now. Yeah,
38:09
Speaker 1: I don't say that word either for us. I think, oh,
38:13
Speaker 1: is that hip? It didn't used to be. Oh, I
38:16
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it was. I think it was
38:20
Speaker 1: European maybe at first, right, didn't used to be Yeah,
38:24
Speaker 1: I don't know. We we are so in cool. I
38:27
Speaker 1: have no idea, So, Chuck, if we run into somebody,
38:31
Speaker 1: or somebody finds us, or we just detect life and
38:35
Speaker 1: are figure out a way to communicate with it, um,
38:40
Speaker 1: we're gonna immediately hit a wall because the idea that
38:45
Speaker 1: will be able to communicate with an extraterrestrial intelligence presumes
38:50
Speaker 1: a lot of factors and variables that would have to
38:53
Speaker 1: be in place that may or may not and if
38:56
Speaker 1: you take one or two of them out, we're totally
38:59
Speaker 1: up the creek as far as communicating goes. Yeah, that's
39:02
Speaker 1: why I always loved close Encounters of the third kind,
39:05
Speaker 1: because even as a kid, I remember thinking how cool
39:08
Speaker 1: it was that they didn't just like hold up a
39:11
Speaker 1: sign that said hey, how are you, and that they
39:14
Speaker 1: used uh, and that they used you know, the doo
39:22
Speaker 1: doo doo doo doo and the lights. I just I
39:24
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of cool because that is, you know,
39:26
Speaker 1: we don't know if they even have the same senses
39:31
Speaker 1: that we have as far as hearing something or seeing something. Uh.
39:35
Speaker 1: There was there is a book that someone put out
39:38
Speaker 1: a German mathematician name Hans Freudenthal, called lynkos l I
39:44
Speaker 1: n c O S colon Design of a Language for
39:47
Speaker 1: Cosmic intercourse and by that he means speaking to one another.
39:54
Speaker 1: I think, uh, and this it's kind of funny. Libya
39:57
Speaker 1: included a quote from an astrophysics just that said, it's
40:01
Speaker 1: the most boring book I've ever read. Logarhythm tables are
40:05
Speaker 1: cool compared to it. Uh, And it sounds like it's
40:08
Speaker 1: not anything you'd want to read, but it is. Link
40:11
Speaker 1: HOS is this radio wave language that this guy came
40:16
Speaker 1: up with that basically conveys symbols from math and science
40:20
Speaker 1: from Latin uh, symbolic logic. And it starts very fundamental
40:26
Speaker 1: and then gets like these are numbers and they're conveyed
40:29
Speaker 1: to you through pulses, and then it gets a little
40:31
Speaker 1: more advanced as as it goes. Uh. Not to say
40:35
Speaker 1: that link os is like everyone's like, oh, we should
40:37
Speaker 1: just use link os, but it is to say that
40:39
Speaker 1: very very smart people have thought about like how do
40:42
Speaker 1: we even think about think about communicating with these things? So,
40:46
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, like you could use linkos,
40:50
Speaker 1: it would be something that we could try to use.
40:53
Speaker 1: It's that it's like that established, you know, and um,
40:57
Speaker 1: that book actually kicked off a field of study that's
41:00
Speaker 1: still around today and I think just kind of getting
41:03
Speaker 1: going called zeno linguistics, which is basically the idea of
41:07
Speaker 1: how do you speak to a culture that you you
41:11
Speaker 1: don't share anything in common with? Potentially, Yeah, because if
41:15
Speaker 1: we talk to an extra trust real intelligence, it will
41:17
Speaker 1: be unlike talking to anything that we've ever tried to
41:20
Speaker 1: talk to before, including non human animals, because non human
41:24
Speaker 1: animals have shared a lot of the same experiences that
41:28
Speaker 1: we have here on Earth. I saw it pointed out
41:31
Speaker 1: in one paper humans share fifty of our DNA with
41:35
Speaker 1: a carrot. Right, these intelligence we would have basically nothing
41:40
Speaker 1: in common with no shared experiences, and like you said,
41:43
Speaker 1: we might not even have the same senses. And so
41:46
Speaker 1: when you start to see like what's stacked up against us,
41:48
Speaker 1: Like what if they don't communicate using their eyes or
41:52
Speaker 1: their mouths or sound, and they they use magnets instead
41:56
Speaker 1: or magnetism, we would it would be totally lost on us.
42:00
Speaker 1: We might not even sense it in any way, shape
42:02
Speaker 1: or form, and even if we did, we wouldn't know
42:05
Speaker 1: how to put it into whatever thought they were trying
42:07
Speaker 1: to convey. Yeah, I mean there are very smart people. Uh,
42:11
Speaker 1: there's a gentleman named John Billingham who is a leader
42:15
Speaker 1: in that field in US social psychologist name Roger Haynes,
42:19
Speaker 1: who have worked a lot with historians, historians and scientists
42:23
Speaker 1: and psychologists about how to do this and the repercussions.
42:26
Speaker 1: But there are people like Bellingham that have said, hey,
42:29
Speaker 1: this is likely impossible, Like we should think about these scenarios,
42:34
Speaker 1: but we should all prepare ourselves for the fact that
42:36
Speaker 1: we just may not be able to communicate with them
42:38
Speaker 1: at all ever, right, and even if we do, um,
42:42
Speaker 1: we would be communicating with them on intergalactic distances, which
42:48
Speaker 1: is Carl Sagan put out, like, even if we're if
42:51
Speaker 1: we communicate with somebody fifty light years away, which is
42:55
Speaker 1: pretty close considering how big the universe is, um our
42:59
Speaker 1: conversation back and forth would still take a hundred earth years.
43:03
Speaker 1: So not only would we have to gather everybody together
43:06
Speaker 1: to come up to some consensus on what we're going
43:09
Speaker 1: to say. We would have to keep that that consensus
43:13
Speaker 1: and that level of coordination and cooperation going over multiple
43:18
Speaker 1: generations just to have one back and forth. Yeah, Like,
43:22
Speaker 1: people are working on this and they know that their
43:25
Speaker 1: great granddaughter is going to follow through on it or
43:28
Speaker 1: the hope. The hope is that they will, right, which
43:31
Speaker 1: is kind of cool if you think about it. It
43:33
Speaker 1: is something that could really bring humanity together. It could
43:36
Speaker 1: also be just another thing that divides us further, because
43:38
Speaker 1: I mean we once the last time we came to
43:41
Speaker 1: a global consensus on anything, you know, have we ever? Yeah?
43:45
Speaker 1: I mean yeah. Uh. It is an interesting thought experiment
43:49
Speaker 1: though to think about. And these are the things that
43:52
Speaker 1: these groups of people that John Billingham and Rogerhans get
43:55
Speaker 1: together and they talk about this stuff. Is to explore
43:58
Speaker 1: the idea of like is there like one of some
44:01
Speaker 1: of the first things that we should want to find
44:03
Speaker 1: out is is there a universal set of ethics or morals?
44:08
Speaker 1: Do they believe in something like a god like we do? Um?
44:12
Speaker 1: Did they evolved at all? Are they? Uh? Do they
44:15
Speaker 1: only look at things as like predators in prey? Like
44:18
Speaker 1: are we screwed to begin with, UM, would they mirror
44:21
Speaker 1: us at all? So it's all really really heavy and interesting,
44:25
Speaker 1: I think, And I just think it's cool that people
44:28
Speaker 1: are out there thinking of this stuff. Yeah, and and
44:31
Speaker 1: there are people thinking of it for sure, but UM
44:34
Speaker 1: probably not enough. And in group of researchers got together,
44:38
Speaker 1: led by Katherine Denning and Stephen dick Um, and they
44:42
Speaker 1: created a white paper that was signed by NASA researchers,
44:45
Speaker 1: CET members, other experts UM who basically said, Hey, we
44:50
Speaker 1: need to be throwing a lot more funding at it,
44:52
Speaker 1: we need to be doing a lot more research, and
44:54
Speaker 1: this is important. And they they cited the World Economic
44:58
Speaker 1: Forum back in two thousand teen. Every year the World
45:00
Speaker 1: Economic Form puts out of Global Risks paper and in
45:04
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen they included a list of X factors,
45:08
Speaker 1: which are possibilities in the not too distant future that
45:12
Speaker 1: could happen to humanity that we just couldn't possibly predict for,
45:17
Speaker 1: especially because we're not doing anything to try to predict.
45:20
Speaker 1: And one of those X factors was UM being contacted
45:25
Speaker 1: or discovering life off of Earth. Yeah, I would say
45:28
Speaker 1: that's pretty high on the list. You know. The other ones. Yeah,
45:32
Speaker 1: runaway climate change, um uh, profound cognitive enhancement, like I
45:39
Speaker 1: had them tattooed on my forearm in Elfish um robe
45:47
Speaker 1: geo engineering projects that that could be a problem because
45:50
Speaker 1: there's actually like rich people thinking about doing stuff like that,
45:54
Speaker 1: and then the cost of living longer, which I thought
45:56
Speaker 1: I found fascinating, But it's true, like we can barely
45:59
Speaker 1: support human through age eighty now, socially speaking, how are
46:04
Speaker 1: we going to support people if that the life expectancy
46:07
Speaker 1: doubles in the next fifty years. Yeah, it's a good quay.
46:12
Speaker 1: I gotta say. If you're probably um too shy to
46:16
Speaker 1: plug your own show, but if this kind of stuff
46:18
Speaker 1: interests you, guys, you should definitely if you haven't already
46:21
Speaker 1: listened to the End of the World with Josh Clark,
46:24
Speaker 1: your ten part series Tin right, yeah, Tin, thank you.
46:29
Speaker 1: It's great and it's very hetty and smart and thought provoking.
46:34
Speaker 1: So um, I'm plugging it. That is very nice, Thank you, Chuck.
46:38
Speaker 1: I pretty sure it lives on. It's still there. It is.
46:42
Speaker 1: It's still there to to go be listened to if
46:44
Speaker 1: you want to listen to it for free wherever you
46:46
Speaker 1: get podcasts. It's not old news. It's free. Yeah, no,
46:49
Speaker 1: it's definitely still out there because the world hasn't ended yet.
46:52
Speaker 1: That's what I always say. Somebody should jump on that
46:55
Speaker 1: and do a limited series documentary on it. I've talked
47:00
Speaker 1: to a couple of people about it, and it just
47:01
Speaker 1: hasn't ever quite worked or worked out, So it's it's
47:05
Speaker 1: still I'm still open to the idea for sure. Well,
47:08
Speaker 1: that just goes to show how hard it is to
47:09
Speaker 1: get any TV project off the ground, which you know, really,
47:13
Speaker 1: but if anyone out there is does that kind of stuff,
47:15
Speaker 1: you should get in touch with Josh and man, Chuck,
47:17
Speaker 1: I owe you a fiver at least for this. Well,
47:20
Speaker 1: just don't quit the show if that happens, and we're
47:22
Speaker 1: all good, I definitely won't this This is where my
47:24
Speaker 1: heart is, man good work wise, Yeah, sure I didn't
47:28
Speaker 1: have to pull that out, but sure you got Well.
47:31
Speaker 1: I didn't want anybody think I was like a total
47:33
Speaker 1: weirdo loser, you know, right, he loves work Lengthinge's Yeah.
47:37
Speaker 1: Usually home is where the heart is, Josh, Right, you
47:40
Speaker 1: got your priorities mixed up? You got anything else? Nothing else?
47:44
Speaker 1: All right? Everybody? Well, since Chuck said nothing else and
47:47
Speaker 1: plugged the end of the world with Josh Clark quite nicely. Uh.
47:50
Speaker 1: That means it's time for a listener mail. That's right. Uh,
47:56
Speaker 1: And there's nothing like a nice, intelligent, heady discussion um,
48:00
Speaker 1: followed by pedantic you said the wrong words email. So
48:06
Speaker 1: this is a This is a nice guy. Though I
48:07
Speaker 1: like Danny. Hey guys, a long time listener is he
48:10
Speaker 1: was very squeamish about even mentioning these things. I'm a
48:13
Speaker 1: longtime listener. I love it everything you guys do, and
48:15
Speaker 1: I hate that I am giving into pedantry. But the
48:19
Speaker 1: amazing Free Press episode was all I could take. Naturally,
48:22
Speaker 1: with that topic, I believe Chuck said people's voices were
48:26
Speaker 1: being squashed. I hate to say it, Chuck. The word
48:29
Speaker 1: is quashed. And the reason I hate to say it
48:32
Speaker 1: is it squashed is a much more fun word to say.
48:35
Speaker 1: I'll probably still say squashed because I just like saying it.
48:40
Speaker 1: You're not off the hook, though, either, my friend. Uh,
48:43
Speaker 1: while I'm on it, so sorry, I have to get
48:46
Speaker 1: it off my chest that it bugs me when Josh
48:48
Speaker 1: says to look up contemporary articles about a topic, meaning
48:52
Speaker 1: from the topics time period. This is an amazing insight.
48:55
Speaker 1: But the word he's looking for is contemporaneous. Contemporary will
48:59
Speaker 1: always mean articles from right now. Contemporaneous means from the
49:03
Speaker 1: same time as that topic. Can't you see Danny like
49:06
Speaker 1: at his computer and his hands are shaking because he's
49:09
Speaker 1: using all his might to stop himself. He's like, can't
49:12
Speaker 1: just correcting? I think that was the deal, he says.
49:17
Speaker 1: Please don't roast me for being a pedant. You guys
49:19
Speaker 1: are a true inspiration. I wouldn't say anything about it
49:21
Speaker 1: if I thought it would offend you, and know how
49:23
Speaker 1: graceful you are about such things. So Danny really set
49:26
Speaker 1: us up where we had really did. Let's be nice. Yeah,
49:29
Speaker 1: good email, Danny, thanks for sending it. It was And Danny,
49:32
Speaker 1: if I start using contemporaneous in reference to articles from
49:36
Speaker 1: a certain time, it's because of you, that's right, And
49:40
Speaker 1: we as evidence that we didn't squash your voice. We
49:43
Speaker 1: are open to criticism. That's very good. Check. If you
49:46
Speaker 1: want to be like Danny, just don't just send us
49:49
Speaker 1: an email about something else. You can wrap it up,
49:52
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
49:54
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at I heart radio dot com. Stuff you
50:00
Speaker 1: should know is a production of i heart Radio. For
50:02
Speaker 1: more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
50:05
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.