November 16, 2024 • 43 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert discusses big questions, fears and possibilities concerning extraterrestrial life with astrophysicist Adam Frank, author of “The Little Book of Aliens.” (originally published 11/02/2023)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday, so we have
a vault episode for you. This one, originally published eleven two,
twenty twenty three, is an interview with astrophysicist Adam Frank
about the search for alien life.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Let's dive right.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
In Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I'll be chatting with
Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of
Rochester and author of the new book The Little Book
of Aliens, which is available now in all fourmats. So hey,
let's jump right into the conversation. I think you're going
(00:57):
to really enjoy this one.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hi, Adam, Welcome to the show. It's great to be here.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
You discussed this a bit in the new book, The
Little Book of Aliens, and of course I have to
ask you about it here in the episode. How did
you first become interested in the possibility of alien life?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, it's hard for me to remember a time when
I wasn't interested in the possibility of alien life. As
I discussed in the book. I got my start on
this when I was five years old, when I wandered
into my dad's library. My dad was a writer who
had an interest in science fiction, science and science fiction,
(01:37):
and they're on the lower levels of the library, you know,
the lower shelf there was all of his pulp science
fiction magazines, all those amazing stories and Isaac Asmanov's you
know whatever, and those pictures. You know, every cover had
a semi lurid illustration of dudes bouncing around on you know,
alien worlds and michel entire space suits or rocket ships
(02:01):
blasting through space, or bug eyed monsters and aliens. And
from that moment on, like, I've never had any other choice. So,
you know, after thirty years of being an astronomer, of
being an astrophysicist, including you know, a fair amount of
time recently last decade or so focusing on astrobiology, I
wrote the book because I really wanted people to see
how close we were to scientists finding evidence one way
(02:23):
or the other for alien life where they live on
alien planets.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Now I'll get back to like the real hunt for
extraterrestrial life here in a second. But on the subject
of just media that inspired you. Were there any particular
favorite films? And I have to add the caveat. I'm
asking this as someone who appreciates both higher browse sci
fi but also the silliest cheese. So don't shy away
from mentioning anything from the discount band.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Plan nine from Outer Space. No, No, that actually not
so listen. I'm a huge science fiction fan, huge, and
so when I was a kid, I devoured everything there was.
And you kids today don't know how bad it was
back then. Right back then, you literally had Star Trek reruns.
So this is the mid seventies, right when I'm coming
(03:11):
up as a kid Star Trek reruns. You had Lost
in Space, which was terrible, right, and then there was
all the bad science fiction movies from the fifties that
would rerun on like Saturday morning at eleven thirty on
what was called Chiller Theater, which was you know, on
Channel eleven back in the days when you only had
like five or six channels. So I devoured everything, and
(03:33):
so the things, the highbrow stuff I loved were my dad.
I remember one night my dad wakened me up and say,
come on, come on, you gotta watch this. And it
was Forbidden Planet, right, which is this classic which is
amazing because it's the embodiment of the nineteen fifties pulp
science fiction. But it's really smart, right, It's really actually
based on the Tempest and the key idea that it
(03:56):
has in there, which I explore in the book quite
a bit. I have a whole chapter on it, is
the idea of dead ancient alien civilizations, right, the vision
of the Krell machinery when they're down in the planet,
if anybody's ever seen there. So, you know, so all
of Star Trek, all you know, movies like This Island Earth,
you know, which wasn't so great, but so all of
(04:17):
that really shaped my own on thinking about about aliens
and about space. It really mattered quite a bit to me.
There's also a show called UFOs, which do you know
of that one? Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I don't think I know that one?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Though it was it was a British show. It was
actually a precursor to Space nineteen ninety nine, do you
know that? Yeah, So this was actually the same kind
of models. You'll see a lot of similarities, and it
was it ran you know. You can find it on
the internet you want, and it was this idea that
you know, the the UFOs were coming to steal human
organs and there was a secret shadow organization which was
(04:52):
protecting the Earth from that, and I loved that as well.
So pretty much anything I could get my hands on
I watched endlessly, and of course Marvel Comics, because there
was a whole space side of you know, star Lord.
You know. When I when I, you know, I was
the the science advisor for Doctor Strange and I got
to meet Kevin Figi. We were, you know, in the
(05:13):
room working on the script together, and he asked me,
you know, what was your favorite star Marvel and I
got to like totally nerd out. And there's this like one,
this little known edition of star Lord from the seventies,
which was actually my favorite because it was a space opera,
it was a space adventure. So all of that really
shaped my pop culture understanding. And up until streaming, I
(05:34):
think I could claim I'd seen every science fiction movie
TV show ever made by stream. When streaming happened, it
was I was overwhelmed.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But now I'm glad you mentioned like the you know,
aliens coming for organs and so forth, because of course
that's a huge part of it the scarier visions of
what alien contact might consist of, and like for my
own part, I remember there was a short period in
my childhood when I had just seen some uf episodes
of unsolved mysteries, and I became legitimately scared for a
(06:04):
short amount of time that UFO abduction could happen to me.
I just wasn't exposed to like speculative or that many
optimistic views of what UFOs could consist of. So I
can't help but wonder how many others were sort of
fundamentally primed that way toward the possibility of alien life.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, you know, I have the there's a chapter in
the book where I look at sort of the pop
culture effects of aliens because you know, one of the
maazting things that is happening right now, which is really
kind of the purpose or one purpose of the book
is to show people how the search for life in
the universe is now totally scientifically legitimate, which it wasn't
(06:44):
when I was coming up. When I was coming up
as a graduate student in the eighties, the search for
life was either a joke or it was considered a
dead end because the Viking probes in the seventies to
Mars hadn't really found anything, so it was a really
sort of dead paer in the search for life. And
then but now, you know, for reasons I'm sure we're
going to talk about, and the reason they know that,
(07:06):
which is what a lot of the book is about.
We're really you know, the next giant telescope is only
is going to be built focusing on the detection of life.
So you're right that the pop culture really shaped a
lot of people's opinions about what we should think about
with aliens and what life in the universe might be. Now,
you know, as I discussed in the book, and I'm
sure we're going to talk about, I'm very skeptical about
(07:28):
that UFOs have anything to do with life outside the universe.
But again, as you say, the pop culture stuff, the
UFOs and the TV and the movies, whether hybrow or lowbrow,
shaped people's understanding of how we should be thinking about
life in the universe. And the amazing thing about the
science is the science takes us actually in a more
(07:49):
imaginative and more amazing directions because you've got to really
try and think about it in a systematic way. But
it's it's interesting to note, right, many people are afraid
of aliens or feeling, you know, they're it's either one
either the aliens are like these gods who are coming
down to give us the cures for cancer, or they're
coming to eat us or mate with us, you know,
(08:10):
one of the others.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So you mentioned the seventies being this pivotal point, and
you talked about this in the book. Why did this
What did the serious quitt it, serious consideration of potential
alien life look like prior to the seventies and the
advent of Seti and what like? What were the limiting
factors in how did it change?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, So what's interesting is this question are we alone?
Is one of the oldest human questions around. You can
see the Greeks arguing about it, and you know, the
book starts with this discussion of the history of this.
So Aristotle and Democratists, you can see them kind of
arguing with each other in writing from two thousand, five
hundred years ago. Giordano Bruno gets burnt at the stake,
(08:53):
you know, for heresy, which had to do with Catholic doctrine.
But really one of the reasons he got in trouble
was he was advocating for this Pernican view that the
Earth was just one planet of many, and many of
those planets out among the stars would be inhabited. But
what happens, actually the first pivotal decade is the fifties,
because you get the Fermi paradox and you get the
Drake equation. You get these two things happening at the
(09:15):
beginning of the end, which are the first sort of
scientific the scientific questions, questions that you could ask a
you could ask scientifically, you could pose a research problem
and carry it out. And then Drake, Frank Drake carries
out at the end of that nineteen sixty the first
astro biological experiment ever done. So he takes two radio
(09:36):
telescopes and he points him at the sky and he
looks for signals from you know, an intelligent civilization something
like might be beaming off of Earth right now. And
that is the first time anybody's been able to do
any kind of experiment asking whether it's dumb life, you know,
microbial life, or smart life meaning that builds civilizations. So
that launches SETI, that launches the scientific inquiry about a
(09:59):
life the universe, and through most of the sixties it's
now SETI becomes a field, but it's very marginal. It's
still in the you know, there's a few brave scientists
doing it, but it's still kind of seen to be
kind of out there. And then what happens is the
UFOs and everything that's going on with UFOs, which is
you know, tends to be the conspiracy theories and the
hoaxes and the that starts to cloud the public's opinion
(10:23):
about and the scientists even opinion about things like SETI.
Now NASA is also at the same time conducting searches,
is thinking about life on planets in the Solar System.
So there's the Viking landers to Mars, which scoop up
some soil and try and test for sort of earthlike microbes.
Those have inconclusive results, negative or inconclusive results. So by
(10:45):
the time you coming into the eighties, the search for
life in the universe is either you still have this
sort of what we call the giggle factor that if
you tried to mention the search for life in the universe,
particularly the search for intelligent life meaning industrial technology life, yeah,
eyebrows are going to raise Congress literally some congressmen make
hay and that there's I talk about this the giggle
(11:06):
factor in the book and show people how this happened.
Congress like doesn't even allow NASA to fund SETI because
the congressmen are like, this is a waste of taxpayers dollars.
You know. So by the time you're into the late eighties,
when I'm a graduate student, SETI is just there's a
few brave pioneers who are living on you know, private funds,
not that SETI. SETI never really got a lot of funding,
(11:27):
and that's an important part part of this, but it's
living on fumes. There really is barely any SETI going on,
and people the thought about, you know, even dumb life
on planets had stalled, and so by you know, when
you're coming into the nineteen nineties, the idea of life
in the universe is almost nobody cares. Nobody's paying except
for you know, some pioneers. And certainly when I was
a scientist, then there was a sense of like, don't
(11:50):
even think about that. That's a dead end, you know,
or you're going to become a joke. Don't waste your
career on that, which is amazing because again that's the
point of the book is to show that right now,
this is the this is the most important issue in
astronomer or one of the most important issues in astronomy.
If you're a young astronomer, good shot that you're going
to aim your career at astrobiology. Quite a change, right.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Oh yes, so you mentioned the Fermi paradox and the
Drake equation. What do you think are the most important
fundamentals for listeners or just like the alien curious, alien
optimists or skeptics out there to take home concerning these
two properties.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, that's a great question, rob because the point here
is that whether you are into UFOs or not into UFOs,
if you have if you want to think about life
in the universe at all, you And that's why, you
know why I lay out this history in the book
in this short fun chapters. You know, it is literally
a little book of aliens, because I wanted people and
easy to have an easy way in and out. For this,
(12:47):
you have to deal with the Fermi paradox and the
Drake equation. So let's deal with Let's think about the
Fermi paradox first. The Fermi paradox just asked the question
if life is common, particularly intelligent life, then why aren't
they everywhere? Right? And that can take two forms. One
is why aren't they here now? Right? But FORMI recognize
very quickly he's he kind of did the calculation in
(13:07):
his head and saw that a spacefaring race, even if
it's going at it can only go at a tenth
of the speed of light, which we believe is the
limit for any and nothing can travel faster than light.
That you would cross the galaxy and you could hop
from star system to star system in a time that's
very short compared to the age of the galaxy. Long
for us, it's on the order of six hundred thousand years.
(13:28):
But in terms of the galaxy, the galaxy should be
entirely populated. So one way of interpreting that is why
aren't they here now? Right? And so there's various answers
to that. But there's an indirect version of that, which
is more important because people often have this feeling that, oh,
every night, astronomers like take their telescopes and look at
the sky searching for evidence of alien intelligences, right, and
(13:50):
nothing could be further from the truth. Right. That's a
version what I call that the indirect Fermi paradoxes. Well,
We've looked and we haven't found But as I've said,
because of the giggle factor, we haven't looked, right, We
just we have not done those searches. There's never been
any money funding to use telescopes to do that. So
Jason Wright and colleagues did a study where they showed
(14:11):
that if the sky was like the ocean, how much
of the ocean have we searched and you know, and
aliens were fish, how much of the ocean have we
searched for? And answer is a hot tub? Right, that's
how all you take all the steady searches and you
combine them, and we've basically looked at a hot tubs
worth of ocean. Now, if you looked at a hot
tubs worth of water and didn't find any fish, would
(14:32):
you then say, up, there's no fish in the ocean.
So the answer is we just haven't looked. But we
are looking now, Like finally there's funding, right, Finally there's
there's a community of scientists with the backing of you know,
the government science agencies to really start this search for life.
Whether it's whether it's again dumb life or smart life,
it doesn't matter. We're finally we finally know where to look.
(14:55):
We finally know how to look, and we're looking. So
that's the Fermi paradox, the Drake equation. What's important about
it was in nineteen sixty after doing this his first search,
he was asked by the Government of all People to
lead a workshop on interstellar communications. And so they brought
together a few people, the eight or nine researchers. And
(15:16):
what Drake needed to do he needed an agenda for
the meeting, like what do we even talk about? And
what he did is he took the problem the question
is how many intelligence civilizations are there in the galaxy?
And he broke it up into seven sub problems, which
when you multiplied their answer together, you'd get the answer
to the big question. And it turned out that those
sub problems became so famous because he offered people a
(15:39):
way of breaking this big problem up into smaller problems
that you could actually do research on. For example, the
first sub problem is how many stars are there? Right,
that's the first thing you want to know, and we
already he already knew that, right. The second sub problem
was how many planets are there? Or what's the fraction
of stars with planets at the time, nobody knew what
(16:01):
that was. It could have been that the universe was barren.
You know, that our solar system was a freak and
most stars don't have planets. And now we've answered that
question thanks to the Drake equation, and people said, like, oh,
that's the next question we need to answer. We now
know that every star in the sky hosts a family
of worlds. That is that's one of the that happened
in the nineties, the beginning of the nineties, and that
(16:23):
was the beginning of this change. Right. That was a
massive revolution in astrobiology because it told us that the
place where life forms, which is planets, those are common,
those are as cheap as dirt. And then the next
term in the Drake equation was for every star that
has planets, how many planets are in the right place
(16:44):
for life to form, which we think has to do
with liquid water on the surface. What's the what's the
you know, how many are in this this Goldilocks ban
of orbits where it's not too hot, not too cold,
so you can have liquid water on the surface. And
the answer for that is one in five. So go
outside tonight, look up at the night sky. Every star
you see has has worlds orbiting it, and every five
(17:05):
of those has a planet that's sitting there where the
experiment with life and civilizations even is being run by
the universe.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So getting into what we're looking for, I thought, we
thought we might ask about techno signatures and biosignatures in
what In twenty nineteen you became principal investigator on NASA's
first grant to study techno signatures. So what are they
and how are we looking for them? And what have
we found?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes, So the amazing thing about these revolutions, so the
exoplanet revolution, as I call it, and started in nineteen
ninety five when we discovered our first planet. By within
another ten or twenty years or so, we had figured
out how to look into the atmospheres of those planets.
And what happens is, you know, we detect planets as
(18:05):
they when they orbit in front of their star. It's
like a little tiny eclipse. The planet passes in front
of the star and blocks the light. But if the
planet has an atmosphere, there's a little while when the
light from the star passes through the atmosphere and reaches us.
And when that happens, it leaves an imprint. There's some
of the light is absorbed by chemicals, compounds, molecules in
(18:25):
the atmosphere, and we can use that. Every one of
those imprints is like a fingerprint of what's in that atmosphere.
So we call that atmospheric characterization. And so what's in
that imprint it potentially are signatures of things like a biosphere. Right,
so the Earth has a biosphere. It's the sum total
of all the life on the planet, all the plants,
(18:46):
all the planktin. It leaves a giant imprint in the
light from Earth, and the same thing can happen in
an alien world. So a biosignature would be something like
oxygen right on Earth. The only reason oxygen is in
the atmosphere is because life puts it there. If life
goes away, the oxygen goes away very quickly. So if
(19:06):
you discover oxygen on a in an alien world, that's
a good shot that that planet has life a robust biosphere.
So oxygen dimethyl sulfide, that is a chemical which is
in Earth's atmosphere. It's only there because all the plankton
are kind of farting it out there. So we have
a whole long list and that we're we're generating more
(19:28):
and more lists of biosignatures which if we detect them,
that will be and that will be evidence that there's
life on that planet. Techno signatures this is this is
a newer field. And as you say, I'm the principal
investigator on the first time NASA was willing to fund
the search for intelligent life. Last NASA been funding the
search for dumb life for a while, but because of
(19:49):
that giggle factor, techno signatures or you know, intelligent life
was not on the list. Now it is. So the
group I'm part of we are looking for we're designing,
we're coming up with the list of possible techno signatures.
So one, what are they? One, we just wrote a
paper on this. Chemicals, industrial chemicals, So for example, chlorofluorocarbons
(20:13):
or CFCs. These are the things that you know, we
were using in air conditioners that got pumped into the
atmosphere and we're destroying the ozone hole, right. Those things actually,
so either by pollution or if you were trying to
terraform mars, you would purposely pump them into an atmosphere
because they're great greenhouse gases. Actually, so we showed that
even with the James Web Space Telescope, you could detect
(20:36):
chloroflora carbons in the atmosphere of a world that was
forty light years away and if it had levels close
to our level even now. So those that's if we
and chloroflora carbons cannot be there is just no way
nature produces them. They're too complex and weird. Or so
discover those you've discovered there's a technological civilization there on
(20:59):
that planet. If you discovered those in a planet's atmosphere,
city lights, if you know, if a civilization is using
artificial illumination, we may be able to detect the spectral signature,
the signature in light of those cities. The large scale
use of solar panels, you would be able to see
(21:19):
the reflectants, all that light bouncing off the solar panels,
you'd be able to see. And the list goes on
and on. We may be able to detect if you
have a lot of satellites in orbit, in geosynchronous orbit,
you might be able to detect They call that the
Clark Belt after Arthur C. Clark. You might be able
to detect that. So you know, the list goes on
and these we're figuring out now exactly how to look
(21:39):
for those, so once people start doing these observations, they'll
be able to they'll be able to know exactly where
to look. So it's amazing we actually have the technology
now so that over the next ten years, twenty years,
thirty years, we're going to have actual data relevant to
the question, whereas the last two than five hundred years
have been people yelling at each other or burning each
(22:01):
other at the stake.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's I think it's fascinating that with the techno signatures,
you're talking about things that have a lot more nuance
to them, I guess arguably compared to what might pop
into a lot of sci fi viewers' heads, not being
something like a Dyson sphere or a diceent cloud something
they've seen on Star Trek.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And so right, yeah, you know, the Dyson sphere is
still ongoing though there's still people looking for, you know,
alien mega structures. Who doesn't love saying alien megastructure. That's
still an ongoing concern. And you know, with one of
the important pieces of the history that I talk about
in the book is boujoyan star or Tabby Star people
called him, and this was a. This was a star
(22:40):
we were looking at with you know, the Kepler space telescope,
which is a planet finder, and rather than the sort
of smooth the clips that we expect when a planet
passes in front of the star, what they were seeing
signals of like they couldn't understand it. It was like
the light from the star was blotting out and then
coming back and then blotting out again, blotting, blotting, not thing.
(23:01):
And for you know, so when people were thinking about this,
they made their list of possible you know what this
was comets, clouds of dust, broken up planets, and at
the bottom list was alien megastructures. And that was twenty fourteen,
twenty seventeen. That blew the doors off of the old
(23:21):
The fact that they even mentioned this in the paper
and that everyone was like, oh, yeah, okay, it could
be kind of signaled that, you know, if you're doing
this work, you can't laugh, you can't giggle about that
possibility anymore. If you're going to stare at hundreds thousands
of planets and you know, look for biosignatures, you can't
ignore the possibility of that some of these are going
(23:42):
to have techno signatures. So that was really that was
an art an apocryphal moment in this study where people
were finally, you know, the giggle factor had was gone,
and it's like, yeah, sure, okay, that's one of the
things we have to consider. It's probably last on the
list because you want to consider things you already know exist,
but it's there, and then you know, at some point
(24:05):
we may have a planet where you really are going
to take that seriously.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Now, I of course have to to ask you about
the various alleged UFO evidence and the recent congressional hearings
on UFOs or UAPs. Do you feel like this had
an impact on like the average person's interest in or
willingness to, you know, give credence to UFO reports or
to give credence to the possibility of alien life. And
(24:30):
how should we logically consider the current state of UFO
UAP evidence or lack thereof.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yes. So that's the reason why about a third of
the book is about UFOs and UAPs, because I really
wanted people to understand how science sees them, how scientists
see them. Because, of course, as you say, because of
pop culture, right, the UFOs have they they you know,
the alien invasion happened in the fifties and they won.
(24:58):
They live in our heads, you know, in many ways.
For me, the prevalence of UAPs and UFOs now is
actually because of what's been happening with the science right
since the nineteen nineties. Every week there's a new story
earth like planet found orbiting other stars. The fact that
scientists have been so clearly been willing to take the
(25:19):
search for life seriously on alien worlds, I think helped
in some way smooth the ground for this, you know,
explosion of interest in UAPs and the whole I document
both the history of you know, UAP or UFOs going
back to nineteen forty seven, the first the first sighting,
and people really need to know that because that shapes
a lot of UFO culture to what's happening now. With
(25:42):
that twenty seventeen New York Times article, right, that's what
blew everything out of the water, with those three videos
which have been you know, cycle endlessly over and over again,
and people sort of think there's lots of videos, there's
really only those three. But the important thing is, I
think that for people to understand where we're at right
and where we're going, and that's what I try and
(26:02):
give people in the book. So the first thing is
that absolutely, for a scientists, there is no evidence, not
even close, that would link anything about UFOs or UAPs
to alien life to something non human. Right, and you
actually and that's why I wanted people to you know,
if you actually look even what has happened since twenty seventeen,
(26:24):
that this that conclusion holds. You know, scientists are brutal.
We're really really mean to each other. You know about
like trying to link a piece of data to a claim, right,
and where we are brutal and nasty to each other,
because that is how we can ensure that we're correct.
If we weren't brutal and nasty to each other, you
and I wouldn't be using these amazing technologies, right, you know,
(26:47):
quantum mechanics, electronics, you know, electromagnetism, all the technology, all
the science that goes into the technology you and I
are using right now was because scientists are so mean
to each other. And the day for UFOs and UAPs
just isn't even close to that. It's either blurry photographs,
which haven't changed over seventy years, right, I mean, there's
(27:08):
still blurry photographs come on or personal testimony and personal testimony,
it's it's not much science can do with that. So
I think it's great that the pilots feel that they
you know, pilots have the freedom to report what they're
seeing because you know, they are seeing something. The question
is what are they seeing? So like Ryan Graves, you know,
he's one of the pilots who's involved with this, and
I was on his podcast. You know, I've had some
(27:28):
really great conversations. So that's great, And I'm all for
an open, transparent, you know, investigation by like they'd say,
the NASA panel or Project Galileo. It's for to investigate this,
right and let's just let's go where the data leads us.
But as of right now, that data does not lead
(27:50):
us anywhere that would point to extraterrestrial So, for example,
at the nat so, the NASA panel held a hearing
and you know, they were talking about their results and
the result of some of the other agencies, and you know,
one of the things that was talked about there was,
you know, of the of the thousand or eight hundred
or so sightings, including those you know from the military
(28:11):
that the government has and announced in that famous report
in twenty twenty one, only six percent couldn't be explained right,
only six percent right, which means that the sky the
other ninety four percent had reasonable explanations. The sky is
not full of unexplainable stuff, which you know, the hype
around UFOs and UAPs makes it seem like, oh my god.
(28:31):
And then even that six percent, you know, some of
those are unexplained because you don't even have you can't
even begin to make an explanation. Now. I will note, though,
and I talk about this in the book, that some
of the ones in the unexplained category are truly when
you hear the stories, you know are truly freaky deeky
right in the sense like a ghost story, it raises
the hair on the back of your neck. But until
(28:54):
you do the research, you know those ones are probably
we'll see, we'll just see where those go. But the
is the vast overwhelming majority are either explainable or don't
have enough data to explain, with a tiny minority that
are like, wow, okay, that's interesting and then we're just
going to have to do the rea. But again, that's
so even with that category, that's not a place that
(29:15):
you're or that's not enough to be make this jump
to this enormous conclusion that that that aliens are visiting
us because you know, again, you need this very solid
data chain, not just personal testimony, not that somebody said, oh,
the radar operator said it was moving at this speed.
I need to see the instrument. I need to know
how that instrument was built. I need to know every
(29:37):
just like I would with the James Webspace telescope.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
So how well prepared are we culturally and or institutionally
to either you know, have that glimpse of of of
some distant world where there's a strong possibility that what
we're looking at is you know, anything ranging from a
techno signature that we can put stock in, or some
(30:00):
sort of a megastructure, or even on the other end
of the spectrum, like actual first contact. Like how prepared
are we for those possibilities.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
I believe that it will be the most profound discovery
in human history. It will it will reshape our understanding.
And again, I don't care if we even if we
find dumb life, even if we detect a planet and
you know, through its study, find that it's got a
biosphere that is equally it doesn't have to be a civilization, right,
(30:33):
And the reason for that is life is so bizarre
compared to every other physical system. So I'm involved. I
have a part of a project from actually the PI
on this other study where we're also just looking at
the physics of life. We're trying to answer why is
life so different from every other physical system? Right? So
for example, you know, black holes are weird, black holes
are crazy, right, But a black hole will never invent
(30:55):
a giant rabbit that can punch you in the face,
which is a kangaroo. Right. Only evolution does that. Life
is the only physical system which invents, which creates, which innovates,
And right now, as far as we know, we're the
only example of life in the entire universe. Like, you know,
are we a one off? Are we an accident? Are
we a mistake? Or is life with all of its
(31:17):
creative capacity common? Because even if it's just life, even
if it's just microbes, it means that we're part of
a community, a cosmic community of life. And because of
life's innovative capacities, who knows, you know, if it's if
life is common, who knows where it's gone. I don't
need to find an alien civilization. I just need to
find a microbe because then I know that evolution is
(31:39):
something that the universe does more than just here, and
evolution is unbounded. Evolution can do anything. So I don't
think we would have riots in the street, you know,
I don't think that's going to be necessary. But I
do think you know, if people want an example, the
Copernican Revolution, right, you know, in fortune hundred, you went
(32:00):
to bed and you were like, oh, the sun's going
to rise tomorrow because the Earth is the center of
the universe and the sun goes around the Earth. And
then two hundred years later you went to bed and
you're like, oh, the sun doesn't come up. The horizon
goes down because the Earth is spinning as it goes
around the Sun. And that was just an astronomical discovery.
And yet the Copernican Revolution figures in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
(32:26):
the Protestant Reformation. It was, you know, it was a
game changer. It actually rewired how all of humanity understood
itself and what was possible. So you know, these astronomical
discoveries don't just sit out there in some egghead's brain.
You know, they matter, and they always have mattered. So
finding life in the universe one way or the other
(32:48):
would change everything. Finding a civilization would that Now that outright,
that takes us even further. And I think the most
important thing there is, you know, we are so horrible
to each other. We're such a messed up species. And
though we're capable of so much, and it's not clear
whether or not, through nuclear war, climate change, or AI,
whether we're going to still be around in one hundred
years or five hundred years. Finding a civilization, as I
(33:11):
discussed in the book, because we did research on this,
would mean we would Finding a civilization means finding an
older civilization. That's what the probability tells you. Anything you
find will be older, and that means somebody made it right.
It would be It would be like an existence proof
that long lived civilizations are possible, and without we don't
have to have contact with them, we don't have to
talk to them. Just knowing they were there would be
(33:33):
proof that, yeah, you know what, it's possible to get
through all of that evolutionary baggage and you know, make
it last for a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
That's a wonderful way of looking at it. I don't
think I quite thought about that spin on it before. Now,
another thing you talk about in the book I wanted
to ask you about here is getting beyond sort of
the mirror image idea of what alien life consists of.
You know, it could be because as everyone always discusses,
like life on Earth and our model of intelligent life
(34:04):
is the only model we have when considering what might
be out there. But what else is possible?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah, the most fun parts of the book for me
were the last you know, third or so, where I
started asking, you know, using what we understand with the
science we have, what might aliens look like and what
might they be like? So the first part of that
is understanding how evolution works. Right, So we know the
laws of physics and chemistry are universal, they're going to
(34:31):
occur anywhere, and we also Darwinian evolution is really a logic.
It's a logic that anything we'd want to call alive
probably has to follow. So that means you can use
those as kind of guide rails. You know, remember when
you were bowling when you were a little kid and
had those bumper rails that kept your ball. That's what
science is, right, Science is constrained imagination. You want to
(34:53):
use your imagination, but you also don't want to just
write science fiction story, so you can use those three
principles physics, chemistry and Darwinian evolution. And the cool thing
about that is is you see an evolution there are
two forces. There's convergence. Physics and chemistry is going to
give life problems. How do you move around? How do
you find food? You know? Are you on a are
you in a water world? Are you you know? Are
you in a world that has a surface and then
(35:14):
an atmosphere. Evolution will probably find the same kinds of
solutions to those problems, like, for example, wings right. If
you have an atmosphere, then you know, passing air over
a curved surface great way to get around, right wings.
But it doesn't mean the wings look will look anything
like what has happened here. Could be like some kind
(35:34):
of weird bony frame with like mucus, a gooey mucus,
you know, in between them. That was just something I
have to think of some ideas. So, but evolution also
works by accidents, like a trillion accidents. So this battle
between accidents and sort of the the you know physics
and chemistry means that you know, legs well, you should
(35:56):
expect to find legs being you know, evolved in lots
of plays, but don't expect them to look anything like
what we have here. And in fact, accidents are so
important that Stephen J. Gould, the great evolutionary biologist, said
that if you rewind the tape of life on Earth
and allowed it to start over again, you wouldn't have
any species of the kind that we have today. Everything
(36:17):
would be different. And this leads to a startling conclusion,
which is that in spite of Star Trek and in
spite of Star Wars, we are the only humans in
the entire universe. We are the only humanoids in the
entire universe. So we should not expect to find, you know,
little grays, little green men. You know, the idea of
a head on top of shoulders, with two arms and
(36:40):
two legs, you know, maybe with an antenna on the forehead.
You know, I talk about the whole idea of prosthetic foreheads,
in the prevalence of prosthetic foreheads in sci fi. That's
just not going to happen, you know, the odds are
you know, it's pretty remote. So when we think about
life in the universe, we should expect to be surprised,
and we might also expect to be grossed out by
(37:01):
what we find. So that's the first point, and then
we can talk about alien ethics and alien minds. There's
always this idea that, oh, you know, we're gonna be
able to figure out a way to communicate because they'll,
you know, like Carl Sagan thought, oh well, we'll teach
them our math and then we'll translate our math to
their math, and that will be the beginning, you know.
And then very soon after you know, figuring out that
(37:23):
pie you know is involved with circles, we'll be sharing
knock knock jokes and cures for cancer. But that may
not be possible at all. And my favor one of
my favorite science fiction movies is a Rival, right with
that great you know, they send in aliens arrived, They
send in a Carl Sagan kind of character and a linguist,
and the Carl Sagan character, with his you know, using
math to communicate fails spectacularly. And it's the linguist who
(37:47):
understands that language is not about mathematics. It's about the
experience of being in a body and living, and she
makes contact to find out that they actually have a
very different kind of physics even they live or experience
of physics. They live past, present and future at the
same time. So I think, you know, the beautiful part
about this study, the scientific study, is how we can
(38:08):
use science to systematically explore or imagine the unimaginable. Right O.
What we have to do now is get beyond the
terrestrial and imagine life as we don't know it. And
there's a bunch of different projects by different people. You know,
we're trying to do this in our own project, but
to really break past the boundaries of Earth life. And
(38:30):
that's really exciting because you know, it's great to go
places where you know, you want to be surprised. The
universe is much more imaginative than we are.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, And of course I can't help but think of
various sci fi visions we've had they try and get
into this, like the differences and in what a potential
extraterrestrial civilization could want compared to us. And I guess
like this more basic, sort of Twilight Zone era version
of this is like, well, we we want to explore
and they want to eat us, right, But you know, the.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
More a cookbook that's a Cookbook's episode. Ever, it's still
a waterful episode.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
But then you have all these other, you know, visions
I instantly think of, like Iimbanks's culture novels. We're listening
to the idea of, like it, very advanced civilizations just
ending up with fundamentally different goals and ambitions to the
point where they just like sort of blink out of
existence and so forth. And yeah, it's I feel like
(39:27):
those kind of examples kind of help us expand our
horizon on imagining what aliens could want. And then also
of course just sort of brings us to a limit
and realize, oh, there are all these other things we
can't even imagine.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Right right, And then but that's what's cool is we
have to then sort of try to imagine them. We
have to figure out how to work our way like
because the first so then what that means is and
this was the fun part of exploring this in the
book and people hopefully you know, will take this journey
along with us, is you have to sort of the
first thing you do is figure out, Okay, where am
I blinded? Right? So the first job is to say,
(40:00):
what are the constraints that I've been operating my where
are my biases? What have I what have I been
blinding myself to identify those, and then you can see like,
oh oh, I got to go around those, you know,
and begin to work on that. So, uh, you know,
the science fiction writers. I've always wanted to have a
meeting between scientists and science fiction writers because I, you know,
(40:20):
I'm a I read a lot of science fiction, and
I find often a lot of my best ideas that
I want to pursue in research come from you know,
science fiction writers as storytellers have a kind of imaginative
capacity that I think we lack in science because of
these biases that we've put on for ourselves. And so
but then they're systematically doing it right in the sense
(40:41):
that they have to write a story that has, you know,
challenges and obstacles, et cetera. So I think that could
be really fruitful. And that's part of this frontier that
we're on. We're going to look for life, and as
we look for life, we have to look for things
that are not just replicas of life here on Earth.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Adam, thanks for coming on the show. This is this
has been a treat. This is a great way to
start my Wednesday morning. Here November first, the book, The
Little Book of Aliens is available in all formats. I
think it's going to be a great stocking stuff for,
if you will, for anybody on the spectrum of interest in,
or skepticism about, or enthusiasm for alien life.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Thanks Rob, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for
having me on.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Thanks once more to Adam Frank for coming on the
show again. The book is The Little Book of Aliens,
available now in all formats. You can read more about
his work at adamfrankscience dot com and his Facebook author's
page is Adam Frank Author. Thanks as always to the
excellent JJ Possway for producing the show. A reminder that
(41:50):
we are a science podcast here at Septa Bow your
Mind with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays
we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a short
form Artifa Monster Fact episode, and on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema. And yes, we have been
meaning to discuss Forbidden Planned and maybe this islander for
(42:11):
some time, so I don't know, Maybe this conversation will
encourage us to go ahead and view one of those selections.
As always, you can follow us wherever you follow your
various shows online where on. All of our social media
accounts are now reactivated. I recommend you check them out.
We are STBYM podcast on Instagram, so follow us there
(42:33):
if you're not already following us, and if you want
to get in touch with us, you can email us
directly at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday, so we have
a vault episode for you. This one, originally published eleven two,
twenty twenty three, is an interview with astrophysicist Adam Frank
about the search for alien life.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Let's dive right.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
In Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. On today's episode, I'll be chatting with
Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of
Rochester and author of the new book The Little Book
of Aliens, which is available now in all fourmats. So hey,
let's jump right into the conversation. I think you're going
(00:57):
to really enjoy this one.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hi, Adam, Welcome to the show. It's great to be here.
Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
You discussed this a bit in the new book, The
Little Book of Aliens, and of course I have to
ask you about it here in the episode. How did
you first become interested in the possibility of alien life?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, it's hard for me to remember a time when
I wasn't interested in the possibility of alien life. As
I discussed in the book. I got my start on
this when I was five years old, when I wandered
into my dad's library. My dad was a writer who
had an interest in science fiction, science and science fiction,
(01:37):
and they're on the lower levels of the library, you know,
the lower shelf there was all of his pulp science
fiction magazines, all those amazing stories and Isaac Asmanov's you
know whatever, and those pictures. You know, every cover had
a semi lurid illustration of dudes bouncing around on you know,
alien worlds and michel entire space suits or rocket ships
(02:01):
blasting through space, or bug eyed monsters and aliens. And
from that moment on, like, I've never had any other choice. So,
you know, after thirty years of being an astronomer, of
being an astrophysicist, including you know, a fair amount of
time recently last decade or so focusing on astrobiology, I
wrote the book because I really wanted people to see
how close we were to scientists finding evidence one way
(02:23):
or the other for alien life where they live on
alien planets.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Now I'll get back to like the real hunt for
extraterrestrial life here in a second. But on the subject
of just media that inspired you. Were there any particular
favorite films? And I have to add the caveat. I'm
asking this as someone who appreciates both higher browse sci
fi but also the silliest cheese. So don't shy away
from mentioning anything from the discount band.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Plan nine from Outer Space. No, No, that actually not
so listen. I'm a huge science fiction fan, huge, and
so when I was a kid, I devoured everything there was.
And you kids today don't know how bad it was
back then. Right back then, you literally had Star Trek reruns.
So this is the mid seventies, right when I'm coming
(03:11):
up as a kid Star Trek reruns. You had Lost
in Space, which was terrible, right, and then there was
all the bad science fiction movies from the fifties that
would rerun on like Saturday morning at eleven thirty on
what was called Chiller Theater, which was you know, on
Channel eleven back in the days when you only had
like five or six channels. So I devoured everything, and
(03:33):
so the things, the highbrow stuff I loved were my dad.
I remember one night my dad wakened me up and say,
come on, come on, you gotta watch this. And it
was Forbidden Planet, right, which is this classic which is
amazing because it's the embodiment of the nineteen fifties pulp
science fiction. But it's really smart, right, It's really actually
based on the Tempest and the key idea that it
(03:56):
has in there, which I explore in the book quite
a bit. I have a whole chapter on it, is
the idea of dead ancient alien civilizations, right, the vision
of the Krell machinery when they're down in the planet,
if anybody's ever seen there. So, you know, so all
of Star Trek, all you know, movies like This Island Earth,
you know, which wasn't so great, but so all of
(04:17):
that really shaped my own on thinking about about aliens
and about space. It really mattered quite a bit to me.
There's also a show called UFOs, which do you know
of that one? Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
I don't think I know that one?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Though it was it was a British show. It was
actually a precursor to Space nineteen ninety nine, do you
know that? Yeah, So this was actually the same kind
of models. You'll see a lot of similarities, and it
was it ran you know. You can find it on
the internet you want, and it was this idea that
you know, the the UFOs were coming to steal human
organs and there was a secret shadow organization which was
(04:52):
protecting the Earth from that, and I loved that as well.
So pretty much anything I could get my hands on
I watched endlessly, and of course Marvel Comics, because there
was a whole space side of you know, star Lord.
You know. When I when I, you know, I was
the the science advisor for Doctor Strange and I got
to meet Kevin Figi. We were, you know, in the
(05:13):
room working on the script together, and he asked me,
you know, what was your favorite star Marvel and I
got to like totally nerd out. And there's this like one,
this little known edition of star Lord from the seventies,
which was actually my favorite because it was a space opera,
it was a space adventure. So all of that really
shaped my pop culture understanding. And up until streaming, I
(05:34):
think I could claim I'd seen every science fiction movie
TV show ever made by stream. When streaming happened, it
was I was overwhelmed.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
But now I'm glad you mentioned like the you know,
aliens coming for organs and so forth, because of course
that's a huge part of it the scarier visions of
what alien contact might consist of, and like for my
own part, I remember there was a short period in
my childhood when I had just seen some uf episodes
of unsolved mysteries, and I became legitimately scared for a
(06:04):
short amount of time that UFO abduction could happen to me.
I just wasn't exposed to like speculative or that many
optimistic views of what UFOs could consist of. So I
can't help but wonder how many others were sort of
fundamentally primed that way toward the possibility of alien life.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, you know, I have the there's a chapter in
the book where I look at sort of the pop
culture effects of aliens because you know, one of the
maazting things that is happening right now, which is really
kind of the purpose or one purpose of the book
is to show people how the search for life in
the universe is now totally scientifically legitimate, which it wasn't
(06:44):
when I was coming up. When I was coming up
as a graduate student in the eighties, the search for
life was either a joke or it was considered a
dead end because the Viking probes in the seventies to
Mars hadn't really found anything, so it was a really
sort of dead paer in the search for life. And
then but now, you know, for reasons I'm sure we're
going to talk about, and the reason they know that,
(07:06):
which is what a lot of the book is about.
We're really you know, the next giant telescope is only
is going to be built focusing on the detection of life.
So you're right that the pop culture really shaped a
lot of people's opinions about what we should think about
with aliens and what life in the universe might be. Now,
you know, as I discussed in the book, and I'm
sure we're going to talk about, I'm very skeptical about
(07:28):
that UFOs have anything to do with life outside the universe.
But again, as you say, the pop culture stuff, the
UFOs and the TV and the movies, whether hybrow or lowbrow,
shaped people's understanding of how we should be thinking about
life in the universe. And the amazing thing about the
science is the science takes us actually in a more
(07:49):
imaginative and more amazing directions because you've got to really
try and think about it in a systematic way. But
it's it's interesting to note, right, many people are afraid
of aliens or feeling, you know, they're it's either one
either the aliens are like these gods who are coming
down to give us the cures for cancer, or they're
coming to eat us or mate with us, you know,
(08:10):
one of the others.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So you mentioned the seventies being this pivotal point, and
you talked about this in the book. Why did this
What did the serious quitt it, serious consideration of potential
alien life look like prior to the seventies and the
advent of Seti and what like? What were the limiting
factors in how did it change?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, So what's interesting is this question are we alone?
Is one of the oldest human questions around. You can
see the Greeks arguing about it, and you know, the
book starts with this discussion of the history of this.
So Aristotle and Democratists, you can see them kind of
arguing with each other in writing from two thousand, five
hundred years ago. Giordano Bruno gets burnt at the stake,
(08:53):
you know, for heresy, which had to do with Catholic doctrine.
But really one of the reasons he got in trouble
was he was advocating for this Pernican view that the
Earth was just one planet of many, and many of
those planets out among the stars would be inhabited. But
what happens, actually the first pivotal decade is the fifties,
because you get the Fermi paradox and you get the
Drake equation. You get these two things happening at the
(09:15):
beginning of the end, which are the first sort of
scientific the scientific questions, questions that you could ask a
you could ask scientifically, you could pose a research problem
and carry it out. And then Drake, Frank Drake carries
out at the end of that nineteen sixty the first
astro biological experiment ever done. So he takes two radio
(09:36):
telescopes and he points him at the sky and he
looks for signals from you know, an intelligent civilization something
like might be beaming off of Earth right now. And
that is the first time anybody's been able to do
any kind of experiment asking whether it's dumb life, you know,
microbial life, or smart life meaning that builds civilizations. So
that launches SETI, that launches the scientific inquiry about a
(09:59):
life the universe, and through most of the sixties it's
now SETI becomes a field, but it's very marginal. It's
still in the you know, there's a few brave scientists
doing it, but it's still kind of seen to be
kind of out there. And then what happens is the
UFOs and everything that's going on with UFOs, which is
you know, tends to be the conspiracy theories and the
hoaxes and the that starts to cloud the public's opinion
(10:23):
about and the scientists even opinion about things like SETI.
Now NASA is also at the same time conducting searches,
is thinking about life on planets in the Solar System.
So there's the Viking landers to Mars, which scoop up
some soil and try and test for sort of earthlike microbes.
Those have inconclusive results, negative or inconclusive results. So by
(10:45):
the time you coming into the eighties, the search for
life in the universe is either you still have this
sort of what we call the giggle factor that if
you tried to mention the search for life in the universe,
particularly the search for intelligent life meaning industrial technology life, yeah,
eyebrows are going to raise Congress literally some congressmen make
hay and that there's I talk about this the giggle
(11:06):
factor in the book and show people how this happened.
Congress like doesn't even allow NASA to fund SETI because
the congressmen are like, this is a waste of taxpayers dollars.
You know. So by the time you're into the late eighties,
when I'm a graduate student, SETI is just there's a
few brave pioneers who are living on you know, private funds,
not that SETI. SETI never really got a lot of funding,
(11:27):
and that's an important part part of this, but it's
living on fumes. There really is barely any SETI going on,
and people the thought about, you know, even dumb life
on planets had stalled, and so by you know, when
you're coming into the nineteen nineties, the idea of life
in the universe is almost nobody cares. Nobody's paying except
for you know, some pioneers. And certainly when I was
a scientist, then there was a sense of like, don't
(11:50):
even think about that. That's a dead end, you know,
or you're going to become a joke. Don't waste your
career on that, which is amazing because again that's the
point of the book is to show that right now,
this is the this is the most important issue in
astronomer or one of the most important issues in astronomy.
If you're a young astronomer, good shot that you're going
to aim your career at astrobiology. Quite a change, right.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Oh yes, so you mentioned the Fermi paradox and the
Drake equation. What do you think are the most important
fundamentals for listeners or just like the alien curious, alien
optimists or skeptics out there to take home concerning these
two properties.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, that's a great question, rob because the point here
is that whether you are into UFOs or not into UFOs,
if you have if you want to think about life
in the universe at all, you And that's why, you
know why I lay out this history in the book
in this short fun chapters. You know, it is literally
a little book of aliens, because I wanted people and
easy to have an easy way in and out. For this,
(12:47):
you have to deal with the Fermi paradox and the
Drake equation. So let's deal with Let's think about the
Fermi paradox first. The Fermi paradox just asked the question
if life is common, particularly intelligent life, then why aren't
they everywhere? Right? And that can take two forms. One
is why aren't they here now? Right? But FORMI recognize
very quickly he's he kind of did the calculation in
(13:07):
his head and saw that a spacefaring race, even if
it's going at it can only go at a tenth
of the speed of light, which we believe is the
limit for any and nothing can travel faster than light.
That you would cross the galaxy and you could hop
from star system to star system in a time that's
very short compared to the age of the galaxy. Long
for us, it's on the order of six hundred thousand years.
(13:28):
But in terms of the galaxy, the galaxy should be
entirely populated. So one way of interpreting that is why
aren't they here now? Right? And so there's various answers
to that. But there's an indirect version of that, which
is more important because people often have this feeling that, oh,
every night, astronomers like take their telescopes and look at
the sky searching for evidence of alien intelligences, right, and
(13:50):
nothing could be further from the truth. Right. That's a
version what I call that the indirect Fermi paradoxes. Well,
We've looked and we haven't found But as I've said,
because of the giggle factor, we haven't looked, right, We
just we have not done those searches. There's never been
any money funding to use telescopes to do that. So
Jason Wright and colleagues did a study where they showed
(14:11):
that if the sky was like the ocean, how much
of the ocean have we searched and you know, and
aliens were fish, how much of the ocean have we
searched for? And answer is a hot tub? Right, that's
how all you take all the steady searches and you
combine them, and we've basically looked at a hot tubs
worth of ocean. Now, if you looked at a hot
tubs worth of water and didn't find any fish, would
(14:32):
you then say, up, there's no fish in the ocean.
So the answer is we just haven't looked. But we
are looking now, Like finally there's funding, right, Finally there's
there's a community of scientists with the backing of you know,
the government science agencies to really start this search for life.
Whether it's whether it's again dumb life or smart life,
it doesn't matter. We're finally we finally know where to look.
(14:55):
We finally know how to look, and we're looking. So
that's the Fermi paradox, the Drake equation. What's important about
it was in nineteen sixty after doing this his first search,
he was asked by the Government of all People to
lead a workshop on interstellar communications. And so they brought
together a few people, the eight or nine researchers. And
(15:16):
what Drake needed to do he needed an agenda for
the meeting, like what do we even talk about? And
what he did is he took the problem the question
is how many intelligence civilizations are there in the galaxy?
And he broke it up into seven sub problems, which
when you multiplied their answer together, you'd get the answer
to the big question. And it turned out that those
sub problems became so famous because he offered people a
(15:39):
way of breaking this big problem up into smaller problems
that you could actually do research on. For example, the
first sub problem is how many stars are there? Right,
that's the first thing you want to know, and we
already he already knew that, right. The second sub problem
was how many planets are there? Or what's the fraction
of stars with planets at the time, nobody knew what
(16:01):
that was. It could have been that the universe was barren.
You know, that our solar system was a freak and
most stars don't have planets. And now we've answered that
question thanks to the Drake equation, and people said, like, oh,
that's the next question we need to answer. We now
know that every star in the sky hosts a family
of worlds. That is that's one of the that happened
in the nineties, the beginning of the nineties, and that
(16:23):
was the beginning of this change. Right. That was a
massive revolution in astrobiology because it told us that the
place where life forms, which is planets, those are common,
those are as cheap as dirt. And then the next
term in the Drake equation was for every star that
has planets, how many planets are in the right place
(16:44):
for life to form, which we think has to do
with liquid water on the surface. What's the what's the
you know, how many are in this this Goldilocks ban
of orbits where it's not too hot, not too cold,
so you can have liquid water on the surface. And
the answer for that is one in five. So go
outside tonight, look up at the night sky. Every star
you see has has worlds orbiting it, and every five
(17:05):
of those has a planet that's sitting there where the
experiment with life and civilizations even is being run by
the universe.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
So getting into what we're looking for, I thought, we
thought we might ask about techno signatures and biosignatures in
what In twenty nineteen you became principal investigator on NASA's
first grant to study techno signatures. So what are they
and how are we looking for them? And what have
we found?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yes, So the amazing thing about these revolutions, so the
exoplanet revolution, as I call it, and started in nineteen
ninety five when we discovered our first planet. By within
another ten or twenty years or so, we had figured
out how to look into the atmospheres of those planets.
And what happens is, you know, we detect planets as
(18:05):
they when they orbit in front of their star. It's
like a little tiny eclipse. The planet passes in front
of the star and blocks the light. But if the
planet has an atmosphere, there's a little while when the
light from the star passes through the atmosphere and reaches us.
And when that happens, it leaves an imprint. There's some
of the light is absorbed by chemicals, compounds, molecules in
(18:25):
the atmosphere, and we can use that. Every one of
those imprints is like a fingerprint of what's in that atmosphere.
So we call that atmospheric characterization. And so what's in
that imprint it potentially are signatures of things like a biosphere. Right,
so the Earth has a biosphere. It's the sum total
of all the life on the planet, all the plants,
(18:46):
all the planktin. It leaves a giant imprint in the
light from Earth, and the same thing can happen in
an alien world. So a biosignature would be something like
oxygen right on Earth. The only reason oxygen is in
the atmosphere is because life puts it there. If life
goes away, the oxygen goes away very quickly. So if
(19:06):
you discover oxygen on a in an alien world, that's
a good shot that that planet has life a robust biosphere.
So oxygen dimethyl sulfide, that is a chemical which is
in Earth's atmosphere. It's only there because all the plankton
are kind of farting it out there. So we have
a whole long list and that we're we're generating more
(19:28):
and more lists of biosignatures which if we detect them,
that will be and that will be evidence that there's
life on that planet. Techno signatures this is this is
a newer field. And as you say, I'm the principal
investigator on the first time NASA was willing to fund
the search for intelligent life. Last NASA been funding the
search for dumb life for a while, but because of
(19:49):
that giggle factor, techno signatures or you know, intelligent life
was not on the list. Now it is. So the
group I'm part of we are looking for we're designing,
we're coming up with the list of possible techno signatures.
So one, what are they? One, we just wrote a
paper on this. Chemicals, industrial chemicals, So for example, chlorofluorocarbons
(20:13):
or CFCs. These are the things that you know, we
were using in air conditioners that got pumped into the
atmosphere and we're destroying the ozone hole, right. Those things actually,
so either by pollution or if you were trying to
terraform mars, you would purposely pump them into an atmosphere
because they're great greenhouse gases. Actually, so we showed that
even with the James Web Space Telescope, you could detect
(20:36):
chloroflora carbons in the atmosphere of a world that was
forty light years away and if it had levels close
to our level even now. So those that's if we
and chloroflora carbons cannot be there is just no way
nature produces them. They're too complex and weird. Or so
discover those you've discovered there's a technological civilization there on
(20:59):
that planet. If you discovered those in a planet's atmosphere,
city lights, if you know, if a civilization is using
artificial illumination, we may be able to detect the spectral signature,
the signature in light of those cities. The large scale
use of solar panels, you would be able to see
(21:19):
the reflectants, all that light bouncing off the solar panels,
you'd be able to see. And the list goes on
and on. We may be able to detect if you
have a lot of satellites in orbit, in geosynchronous orbit,
you might be able to detect They call that the
Clark Belt after Arthur C. Clark. You might be able
to detect that. So you know, the list goes on
and these we're figuring out now exactly how to look
(21:39):
for those, so once people start doing these observations, they'll
be able to they'll be able to know exactly where
to look. So it's amazing we actually have the technology
now so that over the next ten years, twenty years,
thirty years, we're going to have actual data relevant to
the question, whereas the last two than five hundred years
have been people yelling at each other or burning each
(22:01):
other at the stake.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
It's I think it's fascinating that with the techno signatures,
you're talking about things that have a lot more nuance
to them, I guess arguably compared to what might pop
into a lot of sci fi viewers' heads, not being
something like a Dyson sphere or a diceent cloud something
they've seen on Star Trek.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And so right, yeah, you know, the Dyson sphere is
still ongoing though there's still people looking for, you know,
alien mega structures. Who doesn't love saying alien megastructure. That's
still an ongoing concern. And you know, with one of
the important pieces of the history that I talk about
in the book is boujoyan star or Tabby Star people
called him, and this was a. This was a star
(22:40):
we were looking at with you know, the Kepler space telescope,
which is a planet finder, and rather than the sort
of smooth the clips that we expect when a planet
passes in front of the star, what they were seeing
signals of like they couldn't understand it. It was like
the light from the star was blotting out and then
coming back and then blotting out again, blotting, blotting, not thing.
(23:01):
And for you know, so when people were thinking about this,
they made their list of possible you know what this
was comets, clouds of dust, broken up planets, and at
the bottom list was alien megastructures. And that was twenty fourteen,
twenty seventeen. That blew the doors off of the old
(23:21):
The fact that they even mentioned this in the paper
and that everyone was like, oh, yeah, okay, it could
be kind of signaled that, you know, if you're doing
this work, you can't laugh, you can't giggle about that
possibility anymore. If you're going to stare at hundreds thousands
of planets and you know, look for biosignatures, you can't
ignore the possibility of that some of these are going
(23:42):
to have techno signatures. So that was really that was
an art an apocryphal moment in this study where people
were finally, you know, the giggle factor had was gone,
and it's like, yeah, sure, okay, that's one of the
things we have to consider. It's probably last on the
list because you want to consider things you already know exist,
but it's there, and then you know, at some point
(24:05):
we may have a planet where you really are going
to take that seriously.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Now, I of course have to to ask you about
the various alleged UFO evidence and the recent congressional hearings
on UFOs or UAPs. Do you feel like this had
an impact on like the average person's interest in or
willingness to, you know, give credence to UFO reports or
to give credence to the possibility of alien life. And
(24:30):
how should we logically consider the current state of UFO
UAP evidence or lack thereof.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yes. So that's the reason why about a third of
the book is about UFOs and UAPs, because I really
wanted people to understand how science sees them, how scientists
see them. Because, of course, as you say, because of
pop culture, right, the UFOs have they they you know,
the alien invasion happened in the fifties and they won.
(24:58):
They live in our heads, you know, in many ways.
For me, the prevalence of UAPs and UFOs now is
actually because of what's been happening with the science right
since the nineteen nineties. Every week there's a new story
earth like planet found orbiting other stars. The fact that
scientists have been so clearly been willing to take the
(25:19):
search for life seriously on alien worlds, I think helped
in some way smooth the ground for this, you know,
explosion of interest in UAPs and the whole I document
both the history of you know, UAP or UFOs going
back to nineteen forty seven, the first the first sighting,
and people really need to know that because that shapes
a lot of UFO culture to what's happening now. With
(25:42):
that twenty seventeen New York Times article, right, that's what
blew everything out of the water, with those three videos
which have been you know, cycle endlessly over and over again,
and people sort of think there's lots of videos, there's
really only those three. But the important thing is, I
think that for people to understand where we're at right
and where we're going, and that's what I try and
(26:02):
give people in the book. So the first thing is
that absolutely, for a scientists, there is no evidence, not
even close, that would link anything about UFOs or UAPs
to alien life to something non human. Right, and you
actually and that's why I wanted people to you know,
if you actually look even what has happened since twenty seventeen,
(26:24):
that this that conclusion holds. You know, scientists are brutal.
We're really really mean to each other. You know about
like trying to link a piece of data to a claim, right,
and where we are brutal and nasty to each other,
because that is how we can ensure that we're correct.
If we weren't brutal and nasty to each other, you
and I wouldn't be using these amazing technologies, right, you know,
(26:47):
quantum mechanics, electronics, you know, electromagnetism, all the technology, all
the science that goes into the technology you and I
are using right now was because scientists are so mean
to each other. And the day for UFOs and UAPs
just isn't even close to that. It's either blurry photographs,
which haven't changed over seventy years, right, I mean, there's
(27:08):
still blurry photographs come on or personal testimony and personal testimony,
it's it's not much science can do with that. So
I think it's great that the pilots feel that they
you know, pilots have the freedom to report what they're
seeing because you know, they are seeing something. The question
is what are they seeing? So like Ryan Graves, you know,
he's one of the pilots who's involved with this, and
I was on his podcast. You know, I've had some
(27:28):
really great conversations. So that's great, And I'm all for
an open, transparent, you know, investigation by like they'd say,
the NASA panel or Project Galileo. It's for to investigate this,
right and let's just let's go where the data leads us.
But as of right now, that data does not lead
(27:50):
us anywhere that would point to extraterrestrial So, for example,
at the nat so, the NASA panel held a hearing
and you know, they were talking about their results and
the result of some of the other agencies, and you know,
one of the things that was talked about there was,
you know, of the of the thousand or eight hundred
or so sightings, including those you know from the military
(28:11):
that the government has and announced in that famous report
in twenty twenty one, only six percent couldn't be explained right,
only six percent right, which means that the sky the
other ninety four percent had reasonable explanations. The sky is
not full of unexplainable stuff, which you know, the hype
around UFOs and UAPs makes it seem like, oh my god.
(28:31):
And then even that six percent, you know, some of
those are unexplained because you don't even have you can't
even begin to make an explanation. Now. I will note, though,
and I talk about this in the book, that some
of the ones in the unexplained category are truly when
you hear the stories, you know are truly freaky deeky
right in the sense like a ghost story, it raises
the hair on the back of your neck. But until
(28:54):
you do the research, you know those ones are probably
we'll see, we'll just see where those go. But the
is the vast overwhelming majority are either explainable or don't
have enough data to explain, with a tiny minority that
are like, wow, okay, that's interesting and then we're just
going to have to do the rea. But again, that's
so even with that category, that's not a place that
(29:15):
you're or that's not enough to be make this jump
to this enormous conclusion that that that aliens are visiting
us because you know, again, you need this very solid
data chain, not just personal testimony, not that somebody said, oh,
the radar operator said it was moving at this speed.
I need to see the instrument. I need to know
how that instrument was built. I need to know every
(29:37):
just like I would with the James Webspace telescope.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
So how well prepared are we culturally and or institutionally
to either you know, have that glimpse of of of
some distant world where there's a strong possibility that what
we're looking at is you know, anything ranging from a
techno signature that we can put stock in, or some
(30:00):
sort of a megastructure, or even on the other end
of the spectrum, like actual first contact. Like how prepared
are we for those possibilities.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
I believe that it will be the most profound discovery
in human history. It will it will reshape our understanding.
And again, I don't care if we even if we
find dumb life, even if we detect a planet and
you know, through its study, find that it's got a
biosphere that is equally it doesn't have to be a civilization, right,
(30:33):
And the reason for that is life is so bizarre
compared to every other physical system. So I'm involved. I
have a part of a project from actually the PI
on this other study where we're also just looking at
the physics of life. We're trying to answer why is
life so different from every other physical system? Right? So
for example, you know, black holes are weird, black holes
are crazy, right, But a black hole will never invent
(30:55):
a giant rabbit that can punch you in the face,
which is a kangaroo. Right. Only evolution does that. Life
is the only physical system which invents, which creates, which innovates,
And right now, as far as we know, we're the
only example of life in the entire universe. Like, you know,
are we a one off? Are we an accident? Are
we a mistake? Or is life with all of its
(31:17):
creative capacity common? Because even if it's just life, even
if it's just microbes, it means that we're part of
a community, a cosmic community of life. And because of
life's innovative capacities, who knows, you know, if it's if
life is common, who knows where it's gone. I don't
need to find an alien civilization. I just need to
find a microbe because then I know that evolution is
(31:39):
something that the universe does more than just here, and
evolution is unbounded. Evolution can do anything. So I don't
think we would have riots in the street, you know,
I don't think that's going to be necessary. But I
do think you know, if people want an example, the
Copernican Revolution, right, you know, in fortune hundred, you went
(32:00):
to bed and you were like, oh, the sun's going
to rise tomorrow because the Earth is the center of
the universe and the sun goes around the Earth. And
then two hundred years later you went to bed and
you're like, oh, the sun doesn't come up. The horizon
goes down because the Earth is spinning as it goes
around the Sun. And that was just an astronomical discovery.
And yet the Copernican Revolution figures in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
(32:26):
the Protestant Reformation. It was, you know, it was a
game changer. It actually rewired how all of humanity understood
itself and what was possible. So you know, these astronomical
discoveries don't just sit out there in some egghead's brain.
You know, they matter, and they always have mattered. So
finding life in the universe one way or the other
(32:48):
would change everything. Finding a civilization would that Now that outright,
that takes us even further. And I think the most
important thing there is, you know, we are so horrible
to each other. We're such a messed up species. And
though we're capable of so much, and it's not clear
whether or not, through nuclear war, climate change, or AI,
whether we're going to still be around in one hundred
years or five hundred years. Finding a civilization, as I
(33:11):
discussed in the book, because we did research on this,
would mean we would Finding a civilization means finding an
older civilization. That's what the probability tells you. Anything you
find will be older, and that means somebody made it right.
It would be It would be like an existence proof
that long lived civilizations are possible, and without we don't
have to have contact with them, we don't have to
talk to them. Just knowing they were there would be
(33:33):
proof that, yeah, you know what, it's possible to get
through all of that evolutionary baggage and you know, make
it last for a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
That's a wonderful way of looking at it. I don't
think I quite thought about that spin on it before. Now,
another thing you talk about in the book I wanted
to ask you about here is getting beyond sort of
the mirror image idea of what alien life consists of.
You know, it could be because as everyone always discusses,
like life on Earth and our model of intelligent life
(34:04):
is the only model we have when considering what might
be out there. But what else is possible?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Yeah, the most fun parts of the book for me
were the last you know, third or so, where I
started asking, you know, using what we understand with the
science we have, what might aliens look like and what
might they be like? So the first part of that
is understanding how evolution works. Right, So we know the
laws of physics and chemistry are universal, they're going to
(34:31):
occur anywhere, and we also Darwinian evolution is really a logic.
It's a logic that anything we'd want to call alive
probably has to follow. So that means you can use
those as kind of guide rails. You know, remember when
you were bowling when you were a little kid and
had those bumper rails that kept your ball. That's what
science is, right, Science is constrained imagination. You want to
(34:53):
use your imagination, but you also don't want to just
write science fiction story, so you can use those three
principles physics, chemistry and Darwinian evolution. And the cool thing
about that is is you see an evolution there are
two forces. There's convergence. Physics and chemistry is going to
give life problems. How do you move around? How do
you find food? You know? Are you on a are
you in a water world? Are you you know? Are
you in a world that has a surface and then
(35:14):
an atmosphere. Evolution will probably find the same kinds of
solutions to those problems, like, for example, wings right. If
you have an atmosphere, then you know, passing air over
a curved surface great way to get around, right wings.
But it doesn't mean the wings look will look anything
like what has happened here. Could be like some kind
(35:34):
of weird bony frame with like mucus, a gooey mucus,
you know, in between them. That was just something I
have to think of some ideas. So, but evolution also
works by accidents, like a trillion accidents. So this battle
between accidents and sort of the the you know physics
and chemistry means that you know, legs well, you should
(35:56):
expect to find legs being you know, evolved in lots
of plays, but don't expect them to look anything like
what we have here. And in fact, accidents are so
important that Stephen J. Gould, the great evolutionary biologist, said
that if you rewind the tape of life on Earth
and allowed it to start over again, you wouldn't have
any species of the kind that we have today. Everything
(36:17):
would be different. And this leads to a startling conclusion,
which is that in spite of Star Trek and in
spite of Star Wars, we are the only humans in
the entire universe. We are the only humanoids in the
entire universe. So we should not expect to find, you know,
little grays, little green men. You know, the idea of
a head on top of shoulders, with two arms and
(36:40):
two legs, you know, maybe with an antenna on the forehead.
You know, I talk about the whole idea of prosthetic foreheads,
in the prevalence of prosthetic foreheads in sci fi. That's
just not going to happen, you know, the odds are
you know, it's pretty remote. So when we think about
life in the universe, we should expect to be surprised,
and we might also expect to be grossed out by
(37:01):
what we find. So that's the first point, and then
we can talk about alien ethics and alien minds. There's
always this idea that, oh, you know, we're gonna be
able to figure out a way to communicate because they'll,
you know, like Carl Sagan thought, oh well, we'll teach
them our math and then we'll translate our math to
their math, and that will be the beginning, you know.
And then very soon after you know, figuring out that
(37:23):
pie you know is involved with circles, we'll be sharing
knock knock jokes and cures for cancer. But that may
not be possible at all. And my favor one of
my favorite science fiction movies is a Rival, right with
that great you know, they send in aliens arrived, They
send in a Carl Sagan kind of character and a linguist,
and the Carl Sagan character, with his you know, using
math to communicate fails spectacularly. And it's the linguist who
(37:47):
understands that language is not about mathematics. It's about the
experience of being in a body and living, and she
makes contact to find out that they actually have a
very different kind of physics even they live or experience
of physics. They live past, present and future at the
same time. So I think, you know, the beautiful part
about this study, the scientific study, is how we can
(38:08):
use science to systematically explore or imagine the unimaginable. Right O.
What we have to do now is get beyond the
terrestrial and imagine life as we don't know it. And
there's a bunch of different projects by different people. You know,
we're trying to do this in our own project, but
to really break past the boundaries of Earth life. And
(38:30):
that's really exciting because you know, it's great to go
places where you know, you want to be surprised. The
universe is much more imaginative than we are.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Yeah, And of course I can't help but think of
various sci fi visions we've had they try and get
into this, like the differences and in what a potential
extraterrestrial civilization could want compared to us. And I guess
like this more basic, sort of Twilight Zone era version
of this is like, well, we we want to explore
and they want to eat us, right, But you know, the.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
More a cookbook that's a Cookbook's episode. Ever, it's still
a waterful episode.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
But then you have all these other, you know, visions
I instantly think of, like Iimbanks's culture novels. We're listening
to the idea of, like it, very advanced civilizations just
ending up with fundamentally different goals and ambitions to the
point where they just like sort of blink out of
existence and so forth. And yeah, it's I feel like
(39:27):
those kind of examples kind of help us expand our
horizon on imagining what aliens could want. And then also
of course just sort of brings us to a limit
and realize, oh, there are all these other things we
can't even imagine.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Right right, And then but that's what's cool is we
have to then sort of try to imagine them. We
have to figure out how to work our way like
because the first so then what that means is and
this was the fun part of exploring this in the
book and people hopefully you know, will take this journey
along with us, is you have to sort of the
first thing you do is figure out, Okay, where am
I blinded? Right? So the first job is to say,
(40:00):
what are the constraints that I've been operating my where
are my biases? What have I what have I been
blinding myself to identify those, and then you can see like,
oh oh, I got to go around those, you know,
and begin to work on that. So, uh, you know,
the science fiction writers. I've always wanted to have a
meeting between scientists and science fiction writers because I, you know,
(40:20):
I'm a I read a lot of science fiction, and
I find often a lot of my best ideas that
I want to pursue in research come from you know,
science fiction writers as storytellers have a kind of imaginative
capacity that I think we lack in science because of
these biases that we've put on for ourselves. And so
but then they're systematically doing it right in the sense
(40:41):
that they have to write a story that has, you know,
challenges and obstacles, et cetera. So I think that could
be really fruitful. And that's part of this frontier that
we're on. We're going to look for life, and as
we look for life, we have to look for things
that are not just replicas of life here on Earth.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Adam, thanks for coming on the show. This is this
has been a treat. This is a great way to
start my Wednesday morning. Here November first, the book, The
Little Book of Aliens is available in all formats. I
think it's going to be a great stocking stuff for,
if you will, for anybody on the spectrum of interest in,
or skepticism about, or enthusiasm for alien life.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Thanks Rob, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for
having me on.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Thanks once more to Adam Frank for coming on the
show again. The book is The Little Book of Aliens,
available now in all formats. You can read more about
his work at adamfrankscience dot com and his Facebook author's
page is Adam Frank Author. Thanks as always to the
excellent JJ Possway for producing the show. A reminder that
(41:50):
we are a science podcast here at Septa Bow your
Mind with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays
we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do a short
form Artifa Monster Fact episode, and on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema. And yes, we have been
meaning to discuss Forbidden Planned and maybe this islander for
(42:11):
some time, so I don't know, Maybe this conversation will
encourage us to go ahead and view one of those selections.
As always, you can follow us wherever you follow your
various shows online where on. All of our social media
accounts are now reactivated. I recommend you check them out.
We are STBYM podcast on Instagram, so follow us there
(42:33):
if you're not already following us, and if you want
to get in touch with us, you can email us
directly at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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