Dr. Seth Shostak Friday September 5th

Topic: SETI/ET/UFO’s/UAP’s

Seth Shostak is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and the Director of the Institute’s Center for SETI Research.He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately 60 papers in professional journals. During more than a decade, he worked at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, in Groningen, The Netherlands, using the Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope. He also founded and ran a company producing computer animation for TV.Seth has written nearly 500 popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film, and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at various academic venues, and gives approximately 60 talks annually at both educational and corporate institutions. Seth has been a Distinguished Speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was also Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Committee for a decade.Frequently interviewed for radio and TV, Seth has been seen or heard on Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, History Channel, the BBC, “Nightline,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Good Morning America,” “Larry King Live,” “Coast to Coast AM,” NPR, CNN News, and National Geographic Television. He is the host of a one-hour weekly radio program on astrobiology entitled “Big Picture Science.”Seth has edited and contributed to nearly a dozen books. His first popular tome, Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life (Berkeley Hills Books), appeared in March 1998, followed by Cosmic Company (Cambridge University Press) in 2002. He has also co-authored an astrobiology text, Life in the Universe (Pearson), and his latest trade book is Confessions of an Alien Hunter (National Geographic). In 2004, he won the Klumpke-Roberts Award for the popularization of astronomy.. SETI Website: https://www.seti.org/ Seth Shostak SETI Page: https://www.seti.org/people/seth-shostak/ Seth Shostak Personial Page: https://sethshostak.com/

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/midnight-frequency-radio--6625891/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:28):
From the Ozark Foothills of northeast Arkansas. I'm Carl Richardson
and this is Midnight Frequency Radio. Our guest this evening
is doctor Seth Shostack. Doctor Shostack is a senior astronomer
at the Seti Institute in Mountain View, California, and the
director of the Institute Center for SETI Research. He has
an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and a

(00:51):
doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For
much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on
galax and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals.
During more than a decade he worked at the Kryptime
Astronomical Institute. Seth has written nearly five hundred popular magazines

(01:12):
with web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film,
and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at
various academic venues and gives approximately sixty talks annually at
both education and corporate institutions. Seth has been a distinguished
speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He

(01:35):
was also chair of the International Academy of Astronautics City
Permanent Committee for a decade. Doctor Shostak is frequently interviewed
for radio and TV. He has been seen or heard
on Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, History Channel, The BBC Nightline,
The O'Reilly Factor, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Coast

(01:56):
to Coast AM, NPR, CNN News, and National Geographic Television.
He is the host of a one hour worcular program
on astrology entitled Big Picture of Science. Good evening, Doctor Shelstek,
and welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Great to be with you, Carl.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
The first thing I should ask is if you give
the listeners some information about the SETI and its mission.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I work for the SETI Institute. That's SETI, which
is almost my name, but not quite, and that acronym
stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. So the idea there,
I mean, is to try and find some you know,
proof evidence in any case that there's somebody out there

(02:39):
in space that's at least as intelligent as your next
door neighbor, shall we say. And the way we do
that is exactly what Jodie Foster did in the movie Contact.
We try to drop on signals radio signals. I think
it'd be television or radar whatever. Those are all radio
signals that they might be broadcasting into space for whatever.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Now y'all have some large satellite receiving dish, Is that right?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
We do? I mean they're actually not so large, but
we have a lot of them these days. We use
the radio telescope array because they're forty one two antennas
up there, known as the Allen Telescope Array. It's called
that because Paul Allen, who was one of the co
founders of Microsoft, actually gave the money to build that array,

(03:29):
and the idea is to eventually put several hundred additional
antennas up there, which would of course greatly increase the sensitivity.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Is there any new developments in technology that is making
your job easier?

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Well, fortunately, there's something in the semiconductor world known as
Moore's law. It's named after the co founder of Intel
is Gordon Moore, and he noted this was a long
time ago, many decades now. He noted that the speed

(04:04):
of processor chips used in computers, for example, was doubling
about every eighteen months at the time, and it still
is pretty much. This is the rapid advance in technology,
a tribute to all the engineers working here near where
I am, in the Silicon Valley. And it turns out

(04:24):
that the search for ET if you will, which depends
very much on that technology, also doubles in speed every
eighteen months or thereabouts.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
So I know at one time we all received what
you call I think you call it the Wow signal?
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah? There, it was something called the wild signal. We
didn't pick it up. It was actually picked up at
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, actually, and they had a
big radio telescope there. It was rather an interesting looking
one too, didn't conform to what you kind of imagine
as a big radio antenna. But in any case, they

(05:01):
had this big thing, and they had built it for
astronomy purposes. But back in the nineteen seventies they had
happened to pick up a signal with this antenna that
had all the earmarks of being a deliberately transmitted signal,
and presumably, you know, or possibly at least something that
each team might have launched into the ether. And you know,

(05:27):
back then, the output of your receivers, the output of
your telescope was recorded on paper, with what were called
chart recorders, just a sort of an ink and rolling
paper setup. Many of the younger listeners might not know
what a chart recorder is, but that's what they were.
And so there was this chart recorder record that showed

(05:48):
this big spike suddenly, and the astronomer on duty at
the antenna saw that, and he took a magic marker
and he wrote Wow next to it because he was
so impressed. So that became known as the Wow signal.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Is that the last signal like that that we received
or has anything else popped up?

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Well, obviously they went back after they had noticed the signal,
They went back to that same position on the sky.
They put it the antenna back to where they had
been pointing it when the signal came in, and they
tried to find the signal again. They did not since then,
and it's been a long time, as they say, it's
been many decades since that signal was picked up. But

(06:28):
many other people have looked in the same part of
the sky that the Ohio State Radio Telescope was aimed
at trying to find the Wow signal. Nobody ever has.
So what does that mean? Well, I mean it could
mean that etd paying the Earth back back decades ago
and didn't get a response. So maybe they gave up
on it and that's why we don't find them again.

(06:50):
But a more likely, more likely laventably, but a more
likely explanation is simply that what it was was what
we call terrestrial interference RFI and ham lingo, which is
to say, it's just you know, diathermy machine down the street,
our radars set up, you know, twenty miles away, whatever.

(07:10):
So most likely what we had detected was homoo sapiens.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah, maybe it was hart limits. Do you think other
civilizations will necessarily use radio waves for communications or do
you think that they could? They could there be other
things like optical lasers or hate signatures that we should
also be looking for.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, I mean, look at it from the point of
view of what these kinds of technologies can do for you.
We use radio because it's an inexpensive way of sending
information messages if you will around from one place to
another at the speed of light, so that's pretty good,
and that will be true on ET's planet too. So

(07:54):
undoubtedly if there are technologically advanced society, they will have
radio the equivalent of radio. Maybe they don't have top forty,
but they will have radio and television. Of course, is
to say basically the same technology has its radar, So
you know, we assume that they will have this kind
of technology. I mean, I think it's like asking yourself, well,

(08:14):
do you think the aliens will have I don't know, microscopes? Well, yeah,
they probably will because they presumably would also have microbes
and if they don't want to get sick, they want
to you know, develop some medicine, so they would have microscopes.
It's not a very daring assumption to presume that they
have that kind of technology. So I think that any

(08:35):
advanced aliens, any that are at least as clever as as,
say as the people in your neighborhood, they will have
radio technology.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
What are the biggest misconceptions that you think the public
has about SETI.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Well, I think they do, actually, I mean maybe on
delusional many many people have said that, but no, I
think that they will because that's kind of like asking
do you think they will have astronomy? Right, why do
we have astronomy? I mean, you know, we don't get
a lot of if you will, practical benefit out of it,

(09:06):
not directly anyhow, right, you know, nobody's making products that
are dependent upon astronomy. But it's what's called basic research
in science. It's doing research, doing science simply because you're
curious about something. You just want to know what the
answer is. Right, Why do people study Mars? They still

(09:29):
study Mars? Why did they do that? Well, I mean,
we're not living on Mars yet. Maybe we will, maybe
we won't, But it's just because it's interesting. Why do
we study galaxies? That's what I used to do for
a living, because it's just goshtarn interesting. Science is driven
by curiosity, and curiosity is easy to ridicule by people

(09:50):
who don't realize that it's curiosity that drives what's called
basic research. Research that's just designed to increase our knowledge,
and that's the kind of research pays off big in
the long term.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Some critics argue that SETI is a long shot compared
to astrobiologies focus on microbia life. How do you respond
to that?

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I think that's probably true. I mean, you know, SETI
depends on the guys at the other end. If if
they are guys right, that they're you know, that they're
technologically adept, that they have science and engineering and so forth.
Otherwise they're not producing radio waves we can pick up.
Whereas if you're looking for microbes, if you'd be happy

(10:37):
just to find microbes, well, I mean, you know, just
send some humans to Mars, have them dig around in
the dirt Earth, or just you know, send more sophisticated
robots to Mars. Have them dig around in the dirt.
Maybe you'll find evidence that Mars has or once had microbes.
So if you're happy enough to just find life, then

(10:58):
the experiment is probably probably a lot easier because there's
probably a lot more, if you will, unintelligent life in
the universe than intelligent.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Life has satellite chained like starlink. Has that made it
more difficult for SETI?

Speaker 2 (11:15):
It does? It?

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Does?

Speaker 2 (11:17):
You know? The biggest problem that we have with SETI
is not so much I mean, aside from funding, that's
always a big problem, But aside from that, the biggest
challenge from a technical point of view is indeed all
the interference that you know, we're bathed in here on
Earth because of our own activities, right, I mean, they're

(11:37):
just you know, endless amount of interfering signals that you
have to deal with, and it's not entirely easy to
know whether a signal you're picking it up is actually
what you're looking for, which is et signal, or whether
it's just you know, more man made interference. So we do,
you know, simple checks. If we pick up a signal,

(11:58):
You pick up signals all the time. By the way,
when we pick up a signal, we try moving the
telescope around the sky a little bit to see if
the signal's really coming from one spot on the sky,
one location on the sky, and that's a pretty good
indication that it's really astronomical and not just the terrestrial interference.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yes, sir, has the concept of extraterrestrial intelligence influenced the
philosophy fee of religion?

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Well, I'm not a I'm not a theologian. I don't
know if it's affected the philosophy of religion, but it
certainly has affected some theologians. I mean they're people who
are members of the American Astronomical Society, that sort of thing,
you know, international research organizations who are you know, they're

(12:48):
interested in astronomy. I mean, the Vatican has its own observatory, right,
it's not a huge observatory, but they they're interested in
all this stuff, even though they were burned in the
sixteen hundreds by Galileo. They're you know, they're interested now,
they're interested in astronomy. And I think I've never talked
to a theologians. Put it this way, We've never talked

(13:09):
to a theologian who didn't find it interesting to what
we were doing. That it wasn't interesting to them. They
found it very interesting. And of course that immediately leads
me to ask them, well, suppose we picked up a
signal from ET, you know, would you want to know
if ET had any religion or not? They would, they
would want to know.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah. At one point day Allen telescope paray was supposed
to expand to three hundred and fifty antennas by this year.
Has that taken place yet?

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Well, no, it hasn't. We still are stuck with what
did I say? Probably the wrong number, but I think
it's forty two antennas we have now, And why don't
we have the three hundred and fifty? Well, Carl, the
answer is quite simple.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Money.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
You know, yes, money, cabbage, kaloe, mullah, pound notes, that's
what it is. And if we had you know, the money,
we start building telescopes again. And try and increase the
size of the array. What's the advantage of doing that,
I mean, aside from making for more interesting photographs where
the antennas are situated. The big advantages that you could

(14:15):
in fact look for far weaker signals. You'd have much
more sensitivity.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Oh yeah, yeah, beyond a traditional electromagnetic radiation. You've mentioned
the possibility of detecting alien engineering our messages via particle beams.
Are there any ongoing or planed SETI experiments exploring these alternatives.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Well, particle beams might be some way to communicate that
the aliens might want to deploy. But you know, to
make a particle beam that takes a lot more energy.
You know, to to send one bit of information with
a particle beam is much more expensive from an energy
point of view than to use a light beam, you know,

(15:04):
a laser or a radio beam. Those are far less
expensive because they require far less energy. It's one of
the great things about radio I don't know that anybody
really thinks about it much, but it doesn't take very
much energy to send information on a radio beam, whereas
you know, even with just a laser it already takes
quite a bit more. So, yeah, people have talked about

(15:26):
particle beams, but you know that would be hard for
us to detect. In any case, you have to have
the right kind of detector. That's a technical issue. But
beyond that, you know, if you fired high energy particles
in a planet like the Earth, well we have an
atmosphere and it's going to scramble those particles, you know,
scatter them around. So yeah, you know that'd be a problem.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Where does city get most of its funding? Just mostly donations.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, when I joined the SETI Institute, that's a long
time ago. Up until the I don't know, I think
it was nineteen ninety two, SETI was funded. It was
a NASSA program, so it was funded by American taxpayers.
And by the way, it wasn't terribly expensive. It cost

(16:17):
each taxpayer about three cents per year to fund SETI,
so it wasn't a terribly expensive thing. But that was
killed by a Nevada congressman in nineteen ninety two. I
believe guy to the name of what was it, Richard Well,

(16:38):
be better not to not say his last name anyhow, Yeah,
it was a senator from Nevada, as I say, which
is kind of odd because of course Nevada has a
lot of interest in astronomy. But nonetheless, yeah, he killed
it because I don't know that he was again SETI,

(17:00):
he certainly wasn't interested in us going to visit him
and talking to him about it. But I think that
he was looking for an issue on which he could
run for reelection. Of course, he could point to Seti
and say, well, see how you know these guys are
wasting your tax dollars and they've not yet found a
single green little guy, which was true, of course, But

(17:23):
you know, so he killed it. I don't think he
appreciated that this was maybe one of the most interesting
science results if we found a signal, one of the
most exciting discoveries of all of human history. I'm quite sure.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yeah, so forget I like to start, and I normally
do the breaks at the bottom of the hour. I'm
going to go ahead and run our first break, and
then we can come back and continue.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Absolutely the time.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
This is dark matter News. I'm Joshua Stark. In the
Trappest one system, seven Earth sized worlds orbit a cool
red dwarf some forty light years from home. Among them,
three planets lie within the so called habitable zone. Where
liquid water might exist, but recent observations from NASA's James

(18:52):
Webb Space Telescope are rewriting the script. All three of
the innermost planets, trappest One, B, Z, and D, now
appear to be barren and airless, dashing hopes of discovering
Earth twins in its nearby system. Once thought to be
prime candidates for life, these planets have now shown no

(19:13):
detectable sign of atmosphere, not even thin ones reminiscent of Mars.
Trappest One B, closest to the star, is confirmed to
be atmosphere free. Its neighbor, trappest One C, also reveals
no thick envelope of gases, and now even trappest One D,
perched on the edge of the habitable zone, seems to

(19:36):
have nothing more than a bare rocky surface with no
traces of water, vapor, methane, or carbon dioxide. These findings
suggest that these planets have struggled to hold onto their
atmospheres under the intense stellar environment. Yet the story is
an over. While these three have been ruled out as
Earth like in the traditional sense, the outer members of

(19:58):
the system, Apps, one, EF, G, and possibly H remain
under investigation. Researchers remain hopeful that these distant worlds might
still harbor atmospheres and perhaps even water, offering a second
chance to find life friendly conditions around this intriguing red dwarf.

(20:20):
Catch up with us at darkmatternews dot com.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
The Skywave SSB two is a Swiss Army knife for
portable radio. The Skywave SSB two has wide and accurate
band coverage in a small size, which makes it an
excellent travel and emergency radio. Single sideband is a reliable
way to get long range information after an earthquake or
hurricane when normal communications are down. The SSP twoing is

(20:46):
accurate to ten hertz resolution. It also covers civilian aviation
VHF with ten aviation memories that can continuously scan for activity.
It also covers AM FM and weather Alert. To get
your cc Skywave SSB two call one eight hundred five
five two eight eight sixty three our visit us on

(21:09):
the web at ccrane dot com. That ccrane dot com.

Speaker 5 (21:15):
Now you can discover the mysteries of ham radio. Using
modern transceivers, you can make friends all over the world,
even talk to astronauts in space, ships on the high
seas and flying aircraft thousands of miles away. Unlike phone users,
Ham radio operators talk absolutely free and provide vital communications
during disasters or emergencies. To find out more about HAM radio,

(21:37):
visit us at AARRL dot org. And remember, unlike the Internet,
we chriss crossed the entire globe wirelessly.

Speaker 6 (22:00):
I've got no stop.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Welcome back to midnight Freguancy Radio. We're back with our
guest doctor Seth Showstack and excuse my voice. I had
COVID last week and I'm still having some of the
effects of it.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, it's probably not contagious over this land line.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
No, no, I think we're good here, but I'll be
glad when all the effects are are gone. Jill Tarder,
I think I'm announcing that right highlighted the shifts toward
techno signatures beyond just radio and optical signals. What specific
techno signatures other than direct communication signals are currently being

(23:28):
prioritized or explored by SETI.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Well, to be honest, there's very little being done looking
for techno signatures because the assumption is that you know,
they're undataly societies out there that are you know, millions
of years, billions of years more advanced than we are
here on planet Earth, and they may have you know,
built something that's remarkable enough that we could detect it,

(23:56):
that we could see it. For example, they might build
you know, I don't know, giant solar panels orbiting in
their own solar system to click a lot of energy
to improve their gusto grabbing lives, and that might be
something that under the right circumstances, we might be able
to see. So, if they're really advanced societies out there, yeah, yeah,

(24:19):
maybe you could detect things that way. But because you
don't quite know what you're looking for, that you know,
makes it a kind of a difficult experiment.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Yeah, but do you think the maximum distance since you
would ever detect So we know stuff takes light years
to get here, any guesstimations.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Well, it doesn't matter how long it takes a signal
to get here. In fact, in general it might indeed
take years, maybe tens of years, hundreds of years, even
thousands of years. But on the other hand, you know,
setting up a conversation is going to be difficult anyhow,
because even if you do pick up et and you think, oh, gosh, Bob,
you know, we just picked up this signal coming from

(24:59):
that star system one hundred light years away. Let's talk
back to them and see if they're interested in, you know,
becoming pen pals or whatever you might do that. But
of course, you know, if they're only one hundred light
years away, which in astronomy is not a terribly long distance, Uh,
that means that your shout out to them will take

(25:20):
one hundred years to reach them, and their response, assuming
they give one, their response will take another hundred years
to get back to you. So two hundred years will
have gone by before you started this little exercise, and
your personal interest in it might be somewhat less by then.
So uh yeah, it's you know, this is the this
is the curse, if you will, of astronomy, that you're

(25:43):
always looking at the past. What you're seeing is not
the way things are, but the way they were. I mean,
you know, look look at the look at the sun.
You know, you're not seeing it the way it is now.
You're seeing the way it was minutes ago. So the
sun probably hasn't changed much in the meantime. But if
you're talking about somebody that's light years away, you know,

(26:04):
you're looking back in time and you just have to
be happy with that. I mean, I go to the
library and I pick out books that were written, you know,
dozens of years ago, but they might still be interesting.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Jill Tater Tarter has brought up in the past the
Drake equation. She's called it a way to organize our ignorance.
Which specific terms and the Drake equation do you believe
have seen the most significant updates of refinements in our
understanding of the its inception.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, for those who don't know what the Drake equation is.
By the way, this was actually an equation cooked up
by astronomer Frank Drake back in nineteen fifty nine, nineteen
sixty and he, you know, he was going to have
a conference to discuss the possibility of trying to find

(26:55):
et by you know, looking for signals, looking for radio signals.
This is a long time ago, now, right, sixty some
years ago, but in any case, that was a fairly
novel idea. And when he was thinking about this, he
he needed some agenda for his meeting, so he wrote
down this very simple equation, which later became known as

(27:17):
the Drake equation that you know, was trying to estimate
how many societies are out there right now that are
broadcasting signals we might pick up. And it's just, you know,
the product of a whole bunch of terms for those
who are mathematically inclined, but you know, it just considers, well,

(27:38):
you know, how many stars are out there, what fraction
of those stars are the kind that could have planets,
what fraction of them have planets, what fraction of the
planets actually might have generated life, and so forth and
so on. So it's a string of seven terms. You
multiply it all together and it gives you the number
of communicating communicating civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. That's

(28:03):
what the equation is supposed to generate. Now, of course
you can't actually use it for that because we don't
know the value of many of those terms. But it's
a good way, as Jill Charter said, it's a good
way to organize our thoughts about this. I don't know
about our ignorance. I don't know that my ignorance could
be organized.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
But mine neither.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, But that's the point of the Drake equation, and
to Frank Drake's credit, it has been considered the second
most important equation in astronomy. Are really in science, after
E equals mc squared Einstein's famous equation relating mass and energy.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Given the great vastness of our search space as described
in the nine dimensional space, how does sety prioritize it's
gets in search strategies to maximize chances of success?

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Well, you know, it would be wonderful we could or
organize things to maximize our chances of success. But because
we have no idea how many societies might be out there,
and which directions are the best ones to look at,
and what frequency on the radio dial should we tune to,
and what would be the bandwidth of those signals, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. Since we don't know any of that,

(29:27):
we do the very simplest thing, and we aim our
antennas in the direction of nearby stars that are somewhat
comparable to the Sun, and know tho's the kind of
stars that might have planets that might be somewhat like
the Earth planets that might have, you know, fomented life
billions of years ago and might have some aliens on them.

(29:49):
So you know, that's what we do. It's as they say,
the Drake equation, you know, relates all these things, but
you can look it up. The Drake equation is in
just about every astronomy one on one textbook. If you
ever took astronomy in college, you know, grab your textbook

(30:10):
off the shelf and look up Drake equation, and I
think it's pretty safe to assume that you'll find something
in there about it.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
As artificial intelligence started playing a role in SETI.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
It has, it has and we use it in a
limited way, but we do use it to examine the
radio noise collected by our antennas the Allen telescope of
ray antenna's because artificial intelligence might be better at looking
for signals that we can't OPRIORI say, well, it's going

(30:42):
to be this kind of bandwidth and at this frequency
and whatever. So artificial intelligence helps with that kind of problem.
It's for us an engineering tool.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
If a signal was detected, and of course seti's pretty
transparent about everything beyond the initial media frenzy. What are
the established protocols for verifying a potential extraterrestrial signal?

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, this was an interest of a guy who was
originally involved with the NASA SETY program, guy by the
name of John Billingham. He was a British physician's actually
medical doctor. But he got interested in said he because
he had read something about it somewhere. This is a
long time ago, but you know, he he was interested

(31:30):
in what would happen if we picked up the signal?
You know, would we even tell people that kind of stuff?
So he developed with other people a protocol for what
you should do if you picked up a signal. And
you know, the protocol is not terribly interesting, I know
in people on the outside think that this protocol must
be something that's kept in a lock safe somewhere. You know,

(31:54):
it was written in Swahili or something. Nobody can read it.
It isn't very complicated. You can find it online and
basically it boils down to this. It's a couple of
pages long, but basically it boils down to if you
find a signal, confirm it. Well, of course you're going
to do that, and then you know, tell everybody, just

(32:15):
let the world know, so that people at other radio
observatories and other kinds of observatories for that matter, can
also look in the direction of whatever star system is
sending the signal and you know, get their own data
and maybe you'll learn.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Something Stephen Hawking's expressed concern about the potential dangers of
contacting advanced civilizations, but Jill Tarter suggests older civilizations might
be kinder and gentler. What is your personal perspective on
the potential risk and benefit of a successful SETI detection?

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, well, I hope Jill's right. But on the other hand,
she's speculating too when she says, oh, they're going to
be kinder and gentleal, I mean they might be hostile.
Who knows. There's some benefit in nature to being aggressed, right,
If you're aggressive, you might have a better chance of surviving.
That's you know, that's at least true on Earth. But

(33:07):
you know, on the other hand, I just I don't
worry too much about those sorts of things. Could it
be dangerous, Well, we If you think it's dangerous, then
the first thing you should do is not worry about
SETI because SETI isn't broadcasting anything. We're just listening. But
on the other hand, you know all those radars and

(33:29):
the the Arctic for example, that are designed to look
for incoming Soviet bombers, right, those are those radars are
broadcasting into space as all the other radars right. You know,
every airport has a bunch of radars and they're all
broadcasting into space. I mean that if you think there's

(33:49):
some danger, then you should shut all those things down.
But I don't think that'd be a good idea. I
don't think i'd want to fly at night if they
shut all the radars down.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
No, I don't believe I would eat there. You've often
emphasized that explore the exploratory nature of SETI, liking it
to historical explorations. In what ways do you believe the
ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence, even without confirmed detection, contributes
to humanity's understanding of itself in its place in the universe.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Well, if we don't make a detection, I think that
the you know, the consequences are not so great, but
it is. I think it's valuable a in terms of,
you know, the development of new technologies, receivers, better receivers.
Obviously we depend a lot on compute power, so you know,
computing configurations, so forth and so on. But I think

(34:44):
that maybe from my point of view, this is probably
just a lot of nonsense. But from my point of view,
I think that the greatest value of SETI is not
because of the technological spinoff. It's because of the fact
that it appeals to so many people, and in particular,
it appeals to a lot of kids. If I go
into a school and I talk to, you know, fifth

(35:07):
graders or whatever, they're very interested in city. They want
to know about the aliens. They want to know if
I've ever met an alien, and some of them want
to know if I am an alien, but I'm not.
But any case, I think that there's a lot of
value in that because it gets kids interested in science,
and you can hardly say that that's a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
I'm curious. This wasn't one of my questions that I
have jotted down. But what volunteers do You Just can
anyone off the street approach y'all and say, hey, I
like to it's a volunteer to help maybe with monitoring
for received signals or yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
I mean, we do get people who write that sort
of thing, and you know, some of them are very
technologically or technically I should say, technically accomplished. But on
the other hand, you know, we have trouble because it's
such a small operation and so strapped for money all
the time, we have a hard time just dealing with
the day to day challenges we already have. And if

(36:09):
you also have to manage, if you will, a citizen
science project, that's a real burden. I mean, just ask
the people who have done that, you know, had citizen
science projects. It takes I was told by a guy
who did this in Europe. He said it takes at
least one full time employee to manage a citizen science project.

(36:32):
And one full time employee might not be very much
or I don't know general Electric, but for something like
the Seti Institute, that's a really heavy burden.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, I think there would be issues too, people coming
in and pushing the wrong button or twisting the wrong knob.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, yeah, that doesn't happen too much. I mean. The
radio telescopes, as I say, are up in northern California,
about three hundred miles north of San Francisco, in a
very raural area. There is life around the antennas, but
it's all bovine life. It all cows, So there are
very few people who actually show up. And if they do,

(37:08):
you know, they want to see what's inside. You know,
just let them come in talk to us if they want.
But that's that's not really an issue. This all takes
place in a very rural place.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, you shared your personal journey into SETI and stemming
from your PhD in research and astrophysics, what continues to
be your primary motivate motivation for dedicating your career to
this search?

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Well, yeah, yeah, you've already pointed out the fact that
it's not what I was studying in school, And in fact,
I've had many jobs, but for the last you know,
three decades and more, it has been in SETI. But
as a kid, I was always very interested in the
idea of aliens. Every weekend, I know, my buddy and
I would go to the local movie theater and watch

(37:56):
some yet some other cheesy sci fi film in which
the aliens come to Earth and flatten in American City
or whatever. So I was interested in alien from the
get go. And when it looked like there might be
a possibility for me to participate in that search for
the aliens, obviously I thought that was a great idea.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
I was probably right alongside you in a theater somewhere
watching the same cheesy special effects.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
And yeah, yeah, yeah, I've continued to consult for some
sci fi films. They're a little less cheesy now because
the effects are much more sophisticated than they.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
Used to be, oh much more.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, that's a technological development. But you know, the ideas
in those old films were just as good as the
new ones, and in many cases perhaps better.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah. For young scientists interested in astrobiology are setting what
advice would you give them?

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Well, yeah, I think that if you are interested in this,
the thing to do is, of course, go to school
and when you get to college. When you get to university,
study things that would be relevant to SETI, and that
would be you know, physics, astronomy or you know engineering, right,
computer engineering, electronic engineering, something like that. When you get

(39:19):
to grad school and then you have more opportunities to
sort of zero in on this subject and maybe even
do a SETI experiment for your thesis. But the important
thing is, you know, you need a background in one
of the relevant sciences. I didn't mention biology. I should
because you know, if you're going to kind of speculate

(39:40):
on what ET might be like, if you think ET
is going to be a living thing, then the knowing
some biology might help.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Where is it located? It is all a satellite dishes
and everything located in California.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah, yeah, they're up in the UH. I don't know
the listeners might know where where they're located. They're not
too far from where is it. Yeah. I mean if
you go up to Sacramento and you keep going for
another three hours and drive into the mountains, then you'll

(40:14):
come across the antennas and by the way, you know,
it's a beautiful place by the way, UH and you
and you can actually, you know, to take a look
at the antennas and you know, walk into the observing
room and you know, abuse the astronomers or whatever you
want to do. But that's where it's located. And it's
not located up there for reasons of secrecy or even

(40:37):
for the you know, the the cuisine. The cuisine up
in that part of the country is not particularly noteworthy.
But it's located up there because there aren't many people.
You know, it's a rural area, and that obviously helps
us because there's less interference to deal with radio interference.
But also, you know, the Island Telescope array was build

(41:00):
to do astronomy. Radio astronomy, and the same things apply
to that. You don't want any powerful transmitters nearby. And
the way to sort of guarantee that is to put
your intendents in a place where there are very few people.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
In SETI used to offer community college internships. As that's
still a case.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
We don't offer them ourselves, but there are people who
We do have a program in which, you know, we
have students come in in the summer and some of
them are from community colleges, not all, but they that
program takes in I don't know, somewhere between fifty and
one hundred students every summer. And if you're interested, if

(41:40):
you happen to be a student, this is for undergraduates,
by the way, college undergraduates. If you're interested in that,
just go to the SETI Institute's website, which is really easy.
It's just seti dot org and you know, look up
the internships and so forth, and you know, you can
apply for one. We usually require that you bring your

(42:01):
own money, though, I mean, you know, you have to
get have to get sponsorship from somebody.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
If someone I can my listening audience wanted to donate
to SETI, how will they go about that.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Well, that's not hard either. I mean again, just find
the SETI Institute online and you'll find a mailing address there.
That's an obvious way to do it, just for a
check in the mail uh and our alternatively, I'm very
easy to find too, So if you're having any difficulty,
you can call me up and I'll give you directions
on how to do it. But the you know, the

(42:34):
normal thing to do is just a mail at check.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
That's the easiest.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah, if anyone wants to visit the side, it's at
SETI se t I dot org and that's a great
deal of information there. And I even sometimes get news
items for our dark Matter news off the SETI side,
So yeah, we try to.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Keep that up at Again, you know, it's it's all
a manpower problem. Are a woman power problem. We don't
have enough people.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
I can understand that. I'm besides Josh be and my
producer and then the other Josh Josh Stark taking care
of dark Matter News. I'm a one man show. I
deal with my website and everything else.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah. Yeah, you've got to be a renaissance.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Man most definitely. Well, I'm going to do my second
break and then we can come back and I can
take questions to chat to the different platforms that I
offer and I can also take questions on discord if
any of the listeners have questions for you.

Speaker 6 (43:56):
I could see a set of how could it be? No,
that happened to me? Youtub said to myself, what's it?

Speaker 4 (44:27):
This is dark matter News. I'm Joshua Stark. In a
recent milestone for space exploration, scientists use the iconic earth
Rise crater on the Moon to calibrate a radar instrument
aboard the European Space Agency's Juice spacecraft, officially named Anders
earth Rise in honor of the Apollo eight photo. The

(44:50):
crater provided an ideal testing ground for RHYME, the radar
for icy Moon's exploration. During a lunar flyby, Juice shut
down all of their instruments to provide rhyme eight minutes
to map the crater's terrain. The data helped engineers identify
minor electronic interference, which they resolved with the software update,

(45:12):
fine tuning the radar's precision. Now fully calibrated, RIME is
ready for its main mission, probing the icy crusts of
Jupiter's moons in search of underground oceans and possibly life.
This is dark matter News.

Speaker 7 (45:29):
Hi, This is Jessica with Seacrane tired of spotty radio
reception and static sea Crane cci Fi three Internet Radio
offers a crystal clear solution with audio guaranteed to outperform
any smartphone speaker with an Internet connection. Tune in to
over thirty thousand radio stations from around the world, all
conveniently accessible without needing any apps providing personal information or

(45:53):
additional monthly subscriptions. Enjoy complete privacy with no microphone or eavesdropping.
Pc wi Fi three boasts a user friendly interface with
a full sized remote for easy control. It also doubles
as a Bluetooth speaker for your favorite music and podcasts.
Ready to upgrade your listening experience, You can get the
cc wi Fi three by calling c Crane at eight

(46:16):
hundred five two two eight eight sixty three or by
visiting us online at ccrane dot com. Once again that
ccr ane dot.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Com a beautifully intricate INCA recorded keeping device known as
a keipoo has been studied, and its origins may upend
what historians thought about who held the power of the
ancient system. The keepoo in question, radiant in design, with
precise breeding and varying chord sizes, conjured the idea of

(46:49):
elite craftsmanship until researchers look closer. At its core lies
a one hundred and four centimeter long strand of human hair, folded, twisted,
and woven into the main cord. Radiocarbon dating pens the
knot system to roughly fourteen ninety eight, placing it squarely

(47:09):
in the heart of the Inca Empire. But the true
surprise came from chemical traces within that very hair. Isotopic
analysis reveals a diet composed mainly of tubers and greens,
with scant meat, maize, or seafood. Such a diet aligns
not with noble bureaucrats, but with commoners from the Andean highlands.

(47:35):
In Inca tradition, embedding one's hair in a kipu suggested authorship,
making it likely that the maker of this kipou was
a commoner, yet skilled enough to weave a device often
thought to be the province of an elite few. The

(47:55):
findings cast doubt on long standing assumptions. Perhaps that's literacy
in the naughty record keeping extended beyond privileged scribes to
include common folk as well. That's it for Dark Matter news.
Catch up with us on the midnight frequency Facebook page

(48:16):
from Memphis, Tennessee. I'm Joshua Stark.

Speaker 6 (48:29):
I was a highwayman along the coach roads.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
I did ride.

Speaker 6 (48:36):
The sword and the stool by my side.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Many a young man lost ter bobles to my trade.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Many a soldier shit his lifeblood on my bleeve.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
The Master's hung me in the spring of twenty mine.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
But I am still a.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
We're back with doctor Seth Shostack. Not to show stack.
I've covered most of the questions that I had for you.
Are there any other information bits that you would like
to bring to the audience.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Well, I mean, obviously we could talk on infinitum, and
it probably sounds like infiniteum some of the listeners. But
we could talk, you know about the technology, maybe the science.
I think one of the things that's maybe worth pointing out.
It will be obvious to some but not necessarily to others.

(49:37):
When SETI began with Frank Drake's original experiment, you know,
so many years ago, it wasn't clear whether there were
even a lot of planets out there in the universe. Right.
The only planets we knew about back then were the
nine that eight or nine opinion on how you define
a planet, the nine that orbit the Sun. The ones

(49:59):
that were we're all, you know, in our own Solar
system and very nearby, and essentially none of them, with
the exception of Mars and maybe Venus and some of
the moons of Jupiter Saturn, you know, none of them
look very promising for life, let alone sophisticated life. But
now we know something we didn't know then, namely that

(50:21):
most stars have planets. Planets are not rare. Planets are
very commonplace, and maybe eighty percent of all stars that
are somewhat similar to the Sun have planets. And well,
most of those planets might not be terribly interesting from
the standpoint of aliens, some of them will be. So

(50:42):
I think that that's the big to me, that's the
big story of the last few decades, the discovery that
planetary systems are very very common.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
I know, every week I see something new about a
possibly habitable planet in other systems, So that's getting the
be almost a weekly avan.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
I think, yeah, yeah, well we found something like I
don't know what the current tally is, but something like
five thousand extrasolar planets have been found, and that number
is probably wrong too because it keeps going up. So
but that's not the interesting thing as so much as
the percentage of stars that have planets, and you know,

(51:23):
close to one hundred percent of all stars seem to
have planets if you look closely, and you know some
of those planets, maybe one in ten or one in
fifty or one in one hundred will have oceans in
an atmosphere and might support life and maybe even intelligent.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Life, possibly more intelligent than here.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Well, I think the next town over has more intelligent
life than you're sitting in this room.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Here where I am the same here. What are some
of the equipment that you'll use, receivers and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah, it all tends to be customer designed and built,
because you know, we're Our requirements are that the receiver
work in the correct frequency range, and we tend to
look in the microwave part of the radio spectrum close
to the twenty one centimeter line, which is emitted by

(52:18):
neutral hydrogen atoms. And it's not because we're interested in
mapping the neutral hydrogen, although I did do that once
as a job, but it's because that's a frequency, that's
a wavelength that everybody that's technically competent, everybody in the
universe will know because it's very useful for astronomy, so

(52:40):
they'll all know about the frequency of that hydrogen line
transition as it's called. And consequently, if they're you know,
interested in getting in touch with new civilizations or whatever,
they might broadcast a signal near that frequency, knowing that we,
we and every other technological society will look at you know,

(53:04):
that part of the radio spectrum, and maybe all the
signal is is just an instruction to go to some
other frequency where the you know, where the real deal
is or whatever. But it's it's a good haling channel,
as they would say in Star Trek.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
So you don't run down to the latest Ham local
Ham store and picked up a Ham radio rig for this.
It's specialized.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
It is a little specialized. Yeah. And also, by the way,
Ham radio can stuff operate at much much lower frequencies
than the SETI searches do.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, I think the highest my I got a TS
two thousand do one point two gig. But that's the
that's the highest I've got, so.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Yeah, well that's not too far away. Most of the
SETI searches are at about one point four gigahertz.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
I'm the dishes, I'm sure, they require a lot of
maintenance too.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Well, I mean they're mechanical, so they do require maintenance.
They have motors, and you might wonder, well, why do
they need motors. They need motors because, of course the
Earth is rotating, So if you're pointed at, you know,
a particular star system, you have to keep moving the
antenna because you know, the Earth is rotating, that star
is parading across the sky. So they do have motors.

(54:21):
They're you know, they're not very complicated motors, but you
need the motors, and of course you need the computers
to drive them, and then you need the receivers, which
are where the real technology is because they have to
be abable not only to tune into the right part
of the radio dial microwave part of the dial, but
they have to be very low noise themselves. You don't

(54:42):
want to swamp any incoming signal with the static from
your own receiver.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
You mentioned the movie Contact earlier, that antenna ray shown
in Contact. Where's that one located?

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Well, the one that Jody Foster was using that movie
is the very Large Array, which is in New Mexico. Actually,
it's about an hour hour and a half at most
drive out of Albuquerque, So anybody who's going to that
part of the country again, you know, commended to you
drive out to see the very large array. You can

(55:18):
look it up on the web. And they have a
bit of a display area too. They have a building
where they have some exhibits and that sort of thing.
But I mean, you know that aside just looking at
all these antennas. They're twenty seven of them there by
the way, but they're bigger than the ones we use
to see them splayed across the desert there. It's pretty impressive.

(55:39):
It's kind of kind of nifty looking.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
Are you is your array directional? Can they be made directional?

Speaker 2 (55:47):
H they are going?

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Well, I mean using multiple at the same time, are
you able to?

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Yeah, that's a technique. It's called aperture synthesis and radio
astronomy where you try and get the example, the resolution,
the ability to see find detail that you would get
from a very very large antenna by you know, ganging
together a whole bunch of smaller antennas, which turns out
as a lot cheaper. So yeah, r RAY has forty

(56:15):
two antennas. Because if you're using it for radio astronomy
or even for SETI, you can sort of hook them
together in such a way that they're sensitive from only
a tiny patch of sky, which is obviously a good thing.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Do you rent out the antennas for other scientific organizations
to use?

Speaker 2 (56:35):
We do not. We do not, But I mean, if
somebody has a good radio astronomy project, right, I mean,
we do give you know, telescope time. The way radio
astronomy is conducted in this country, and for that matter,
every country that I know about, is that you know,
the institution that has the antennas, they essentially never charge
for telescope time. You know, I been a fair amount

(57:00):
of time using the telescope down in Puerto Rico at Aricibo,
which had the bad form to collapse a couple of
years ago. But anyhow, this is a huge antenna. It
was a thousand feet across. It was built by Cornell
University for the army actually, But you know that antenna
was used by lots and lots and lots of radio

(57:23):
astronomers over the course of its lifetime, and they were
never charged to use it. You might have to pay
for your own lunch, but you didn't have to pay
for your your lodging or anything. Like that you had
to pay for your airplane ticket to Puerto Rico, that
you did have to pay for.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Okay. One of the users just asked, how tall is
your tallest antenna.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Well, they're not very tall. I mean, the antennas themselves
are I don't know. They're like forty or fifty feet
across in diameter, so they're at least that height above
the floor of the desert there. If you stand next
to it, you're not gonna be able to reach to
the top. But they're not enormously tall. Theer you know,

(58:05):
maybe if the height of a two or three story building.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Most of them are dish shaped like the old settler. Yeah,
satellite TV type dishes, just a whole lot bigger.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yeah. Yeah. They're parabolic antennas, so I mean you can
just go online and type in all and telescope array
and you can see what they look like.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
I've thought about getting into amateur radio Earth Moon Earth
dish type stuff, but my finances, yeah, moon Bounce, but
my finances right now do not support that.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Well there's always the lottery.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Yeah yeah, I just just bought a ticket this afternoon.
Well yeah, well, if I get it, I'll donate some
up to you. Oh, okay, I don't have any other
listener questions. You've written a number of books, I believe too.
You want to tell our listeners about some of those.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
Yeah, do you have written well four books now, and
you know they all address the question of SETI largely.
I mean they also talk about other things in astronomy,
but basically they're about SETI. And the most recent one
is called Confessions of an Alien Hunter, published by National Geographic.

(59:27):
So if anybody can remember that name, well, just type
my name into Amazon Books and you'll find some books
by me. You know, writing a book. I'm sure there
are plenty of listeners who've written books or even try
to write a book. Writing a book is a big
deal in the sense that it's going to take you, you know,

(59:50):
many many evenings or weekends to do it. And the
payback is that you had this book, which is great
because you can give a copy to your mom, But
you're not gonna get rich on it unless you know,
you write a totally different genre fiction, you know, something
like that. Popular science books essentially don't ever make money.

(01:00:13):
Maybe Carl Sagan's books did, but in general they do not.
So you don't do it for that. You don't do
it for the money. But you know, it's kind of
nice to look at your bookshelf and see a book
there that has your name on the spine. There's that,
But I think again, the real payoff is not even that.
The real payoff is that, you know, you've had the

(01:00:35):
opportunity to speak, even if only with a written word,
to speak to a lot of people and to tell them,
you know, what we do and why it's interesting, and
you know, what's the science background for the whole search
and that sort of thing. And you know, I hear
from people who've got a copy of one or the
other of my books, and I always appreciate that, not

(01:00:57):
because they bought the book, you know, I get like,
I think it's like fifty cents for every book that
they saw, but it's it's just nice that somebody was
interested enough in the topic to get a copy of
one of the books.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Also, I've got your links up to your books and
your personal site and the SETI site and everything listed
on my site. So if the listeners want to go
to NWDN dot net, all the links are there to
pull up. Mister shows tax information, terrific, anything else you'd

(01:01:32):
like to cover this evening?

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Well again, to me, the most interesting things to discuss
are those that listeners might find interesting to discuss, because
at least then I know that they're interested in whatever
it is that I'm about to say. But I think,
you know, I try and step back from the day

(01:01:55):
to day worries every now and then and ask myself, well,
is there any anything special about the time we live in?
And of course there is. I mean, that's obvious. If
you live five hundred years ago, you probably didn't have
a car, that kind of thing. But I think it's
going to prove true. I might be wrong about this,

(01:02:15):
but I don't think so in the long term, that
the history of Homo sapiens will be divided into two eras,
the era before we pick up a signal and the
era after, because at this point, you know, we think
that they're aliens out there, and there are certainly plenty
of planets, but we don't know it. We don't know

(01:02:35):
because we haven't found any. And if we do find them,
then that changes things in a very subtle way, but
it does change how we regard our own place in
the cosmos. And I've bet everybody a cup of Starbucks,
continue to take on those bets a couple of Syrubucks

(01:02:56):
that will find et by twenty thirty five or something
like that. So here's the deal for you, the listener.
You know, either sometime between now and ten years from now,
you'll read in the papers about a signal that was
picked up, you know, coming from a society you know,
fifty light years away, whatever it is, or you get

(01:03:16):
a cup of coffee from me. So I can hardly lose.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Well, I was going to ask if you thought we'd
received contact within the next couple of decades, but I
think you just asked answered that one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah, And you know, maybe that's just wishful thinking, but
I honestly based that not so much on you know,
what i'd like to be true, although I would like
it to be true, but based on the rapid improvement
in the technology that's used for SETI. We discussed that
a little earlier that you know, the equipment keeps getting
better and more sensitive. To what better means, but not

(01:03:51):
only more sensitive, it's also the case that we examine
more and more of the radio dial, if you will,
a wider range of frequencies looking for signal. So that
both of those factors increase the chances that we'll find something,
and that's why I'm willing to gamble that couple of Starbucks.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Oh yeah, I want to let the audience know too,
if you want to know where technology is at. They've
released some chips that cover very wide swaths of the
radio spectrum and it's all all one hip and they've
started using these in some handheld receivers and whatnot. Doesn't

(01:04:30):
necessarily cover what SETI is monitoring, but yeah, they're pretty
wide received.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Yeah, yeah, wide man.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Oh yeah, Well, sir, I appreciate you being on the
show with us.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
It's been my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
And I know we're done a little early, but this
has been a wild week for me and uh still
recovering from COVID and everything, and I didn't have time
to actually sit down and do as many questions for
you is I wanted to. And I apologize for that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Well, we can do it again another time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Oh yeah, I was gonna ask. I'd like to have
you back on in the future, even if signals still
aren't received. We can discuss other things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Sounds good to me.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Alrighty, sir, Well, I will let you get on with
your evening, and if you need a copy of this recording,
I'll make it available to you and i'll send you
an email on where to get it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Great. That sounds terrific, Carl.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
All right, thank you sir, and you have a good
evening you too.

Speaker 8 (01:05:30):
Thank you, say

Speaker 6 (01:06:50):
The B.