Juxtaposition: All quiet on the SETI front.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
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Speaker 2 (01:16):
Dream Man Gunner test Night Big full Grow name out
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my love it Ici molllevel history story from gold.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
Area fifty one, A whispered name, the beautiful.

Speaker 5 (01:58):
Sieyes to thy.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Love, miss monster, a lot of miss.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
I'm gonna tilaging injuriouxcuse strange.

Speaker 6 (02:14):
Encounter Sun explain.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
To the south and blay chame none went know is
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takes down to believes other forms standing.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
To the firelight. So men logic things s continuus to.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Strange enchounter Sun explain through this out that Brady chain
men went know is posses fall on the leveling mystery
stories on tools.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
Through these out.

Speaker 7 (03:11):
From the bleeding edge of the Great American Southwest, I
bid you get evening, good morning wherever you may be
across the nation, an all over X. This is juxtaposition.
I am your host Ordnance j Packard. Rick is not
with us tonight. He has some family obligations he has
to deal with, So if you can send him your
thoughts and prayers, that would be very appreciated. But I

(03:33):
will not be doing this alone. Joining me tonight is
cal RIM's program director podcast extraordinary host of a cosmic
bard and in the class wonder and in the crease
generally great guy and one hell of a model American.
You know him as a cosmic bard. Jeff, how are

(03:54):
you doing tonight?

Speaker 8 (03:56):
Oh, I've been doing this too many times this week,
but I'm I'm I mean good spirits and good mood,
and you definitely have an interesting topic for tonight. So
I'm excited to get into this and figure out where
it leads us. And you know, maybe a chat will
chime in with their opinions on everything as well.

Speaker 7 (04:14):
Almost as if I custom tailored it for your.

Speaker 8 (04:17):
Ballywick almost almost.

Speaker 7 (04:20):
Yeah, yeah, you've done You've done quite the number of
shows in the last week. You uh, you're you're getting
up to what my status used to be when I
was on five times a week.

Speaker 8 (04:34):
Yeah, I think this is let's see last Friday last Sunday,
last Sunday, Monday, Friday tonight, and then producing two other times. Yeah.
So this is like my eighth time on the network
since last Friday.

Speaker 7 (04:49):
And you're doing it all live now, you're not doing
pre records.

Speaker 8 (04:52):
I know what is wrong with me?

Speaker 7 (04:54):
It's not I told you once you got the live
bug you wouldn't be able to go back.

Speaker 8 (05:01):
That is true.

Speaker 9 (05:02):
It is.

Speaker 8 (05:02):
It is a different, different beast, and especially like with
the show last night, where I literally had to pick
five things, write it down a little index card, and
I can vamp for an hour and a half. That's
definitely enjoyable.

Speaker 7 (05:17):
That was a fun show last night. On Uh you
filled in on he said, She said doing board games?

Speaker 8 (05:22):
Yeah, that was fun.

Speaker 7 (05:24):
Nobody mentions stratigo. I was hurt.

Speaker 8 (05:27):
I had it at my number five and crossed it off.
Damn it.

Speaker 7 (05:32):
It's such a fun game. Yes, So how you doing?

Speaker 8 (05:36):
Man?

Speaker 7 (05:36):
What's the weather like out there? You selling the snow?

Speaker 8 (05:38):
Yes, we're getting three inches of snow tonight and up
to a what are they saying three tenths of an
inch of ice on top of it?

Speaker 7 (05:48):
Oh that's fun.

Speaker 8 (05:49):
So yeah, if we go off the air, it's not
necessarily the subject we're talking about. It could be weather related,
so we'll keep our fingers crossed that the ice comes
in till after the show. But yeah, if we lose signal,
that'll be why.

Speaker 7 (06:06):
Yeah, we're gonna we're getting rain and snow up in
the mountains, so yeah, we're that's coming our way to which,
of course I didn't get to rake my leaves, so
they're all gonna be wet and heavy. That's fucking awesome.

Speaker 8 (06:17):
But don't you love that? Don't you love that?

Speaker 7 (06:20):
You know, I've got I've got a big American gum
tree right next to my house that is a shade
during the summer. But when that thing decides to drop oof.

Speaker 8 (06:32):
You know, living in the wonderful nine months of the
year of winter here in Vermont, you know, it's funny
because our leaf peeping season like ties right in with Halloween.
And with Halloween, you up here, you have to have
a costume that can also be worn over a snowsuit
if needed. So there's that period of like twenty seconds

(06:55):
where you can try to rake every leave up before
the snow hits. It's always a fun challenge.

Speaker 7 (07:00):
No, that's yeah, No, no, I I grew up in
I grew up in Scary, so I had the same
thing with the Halloween costume too. It's like, okay, you've
got your trick or treating costume and you've got sure
we will be having Halloween and need multipurpose room in
the high school.

Speaker 8 (07:15):
Yeah, you know it's it's it. There's two halloweens. There's
Slutty Halloween and then there's Stave Puff marshamallow Man Halloween.
There's no in between's up here.

Speaker 7 (07:25):
You're right, and they're they're they're usually minutes apart.

Speaker 8 (07:28):
Two yeah, yes, yes, So okay, So the.

Speaker 7 (07:33):
Topic tonight, this one, this one's fat because it's something
that's been on my mind for a while and it's
just something you don't hear about anymore. And that is, uh,
where's SETI go? And for those of you, for you
young kids, the SETI is the search for extraterster intelligence.

(07:54):
And I think Jeff can explain it better than I can.

Speaker 8 (07:59):
You know it, SETI is something I've always loved. I mean,
when you think about it, it what everyone kind of
thinks of his quirky little acronym. I actually think it
was kind of like a very ambitious human experiment, kind
of a global attempt to answer the question that's older

(08:22):
than possibly language itself about you know, are we alone?
And you know, it's kind of crazy to think at
its height, just how much of the Earth was covered
with attempts at SETI to search for extra terrestrial intelligence.
I mean you had devices that were you know, picking

(08:44):
up one hurts wide signals what might have been around
five million computers at one point with two and you'll
appreciate this two petabytes of raw Arisibo data alone, right,
ye know, It's it's kind of fascination that this worldwide

(09:05):
attempt to you know, like like you said, get with Reddit,
gather the collective autism of people who are interested in
this and find answers.

Speaker 7 (09:20):
Well, yeah, it was. I mean, the thing was said
SETI was the the old school, drunk black sheep cousin
of astronomy that was always out there anytime there was
a signal, anytime there, you know, in the era of
you know, the Sagan Drake era. You know, it's like
every press release was just this fanfair. The whole world

(09:43):
wondered what did SETI find? What does this mean? You know,
is they had their handcuff to the ear of the
cosmic wind, looking for any thing that could be the
slightest radio signal, whether it's from Arecibo or or joj
Rebank or anywhere. You know, all the radio astronomy telescopes
around the world, if they picked up the slightest anonymy

(10:05):
SETI was right there.

Speaker 8 (10:07):
Yes, yes, and it's SETI was. I think, outside of
you know, the joke of porn, SETI might be the
greatest example of how the Internet can be a good thing,
with how connected it made everyone and how readily available

(10:30):
it made the information it gathered.

Speaker 7 (10:34):
Well, yeah, it was like there were these vast and
you know at the time and you did in the
scientific community, they were these vast open pipelines and where
you know, any you know, everybody was encouraged to, you know,
dig apart the radio data. SETI weaponized that with the
SETI at home thing. If you're not familiar with what
that was, that was something that was one of like
the the proto bitcoin minor where you loaded on your

(10:56):
computer or it's like, you know, I worked at a
computer store at the time. We had a classroom in
there and we had it running on twenty computers all
day long unless somebody needed to get in there to
work on a paper or something. Plus all of our workstations.
I had three computers at home, and what it would
do is it would grab this data from the setting
at home servers and just it was like whenever your

(11:17):
computer was idle, instead of a screen saver popping up,
you'd enable this instead, and it would crunch the numbers.
It would crunch the data looking for anything.

Speaker 8 (11:27):
And I my main server I had at you know,
multiple different locations throughout my life. I had it usually
turned on from one am to six am to to
you know, to give five plus hours of number crunching
and push through. And it was always fascinating to get
the logs off of my server of just how much

(11:48):
processing memory all of that was used during that. And
I'm like, oh wow, I'm actually I'm actually kind of
contributing to this. This is kind of cool.

Speaker 7 (11:58):
Yeah, you have an account, you know, whatever accounts, you know,
computers you put it on, it would all attract to
that account.

Speaker 8 (12:05):
And then you know, in the.

Speaker 7 (12:06):
Time when your RAM was measured in uh megabytes, when
you saw you hit a gigabyte of data, show was
how was that was? Nerd gasm you.

Speaker 8 (12:16):
Know, yes, yes, And I had a spare hard drive
to help with with uh, some of the crunching and storing.

Speaker 5 (12:25):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (12:25):
You know sometimes with SETI, it likes to collect collect
enough information before it sends it out again. So you know,
I had dedicated hard drive space of a let's say,
a larger than normal amounts it I I I love SETI.
It was such and is such a brilliant idea of

(12:48):
really just using all the resources available in that one
one dream of you know, is there aliens out here? Yeah?
Surprise here, Yeah here I am.

Speaker 9 (12:59):
You know.

Speaker 8 (13:00):
It is such an ambitious endeavor and it highlights humanities.
In my opinion, one of its crowning achievements were what
it has done.

Speaker 7 (13:12):
Yeah, I mean it was. It was kind of like
before mapping a human genome project, which was also something
similar that they did. It was it was the thing
where everybody, anybody in the world and a lot of
people did, could do their part to contribute to a
scientific endeavor to answer one of the most fundamental questions

(13:37):
of mankind.

Speaker 8 (13:38):
Yeah, and it's it's what said to me with my
you know, I talk about all this kind of stuff
for with the last five years on Last Wonder and
we I kind of jokingly titled the show all Quiet
on the SETI front.

Speaker 5 (13:58):
And.

Speaker 8 (13:59):
I I I'm not saying set He's dead by any
stret of the imagination, but when you when when when
you think about what was one of the biggest factors
of SETI, I think SETI got pushed aside. I jokingly

(14:21):
call it the red headed stepchild of it now is
when Aricibo collapsed, it feels like a significant part of
the of the story that's being told has ended, you know,
And as I talked about on the show, you know,
we kind of watched the cable snap and then the
dish just kind of tear apart, and you know, we

(14:42):
we we've all seen movies with Aricibo. We've seen some
of the information that's come out of it. And the
fact that Aricibo had survived hurricanes, earthquakes, hell, the most
deadliest enemy of them all, budget fights, you know, and
what six different administrations of the presidents and then yeah, gone, yeah.

Speaker 7 (15:09):
I mean, maintenance was deferred, and I mean the world
watched that cable snap and then it just smashed into
the dish and oh done no more? What yeah, you know,
and around the same time a decade ago, the SETI
at Home project. You know, it would barely an explanation
that filled the paragraph. SETI says, Oh, we've collected enough data.

Speaker 8 (15:32):
Enough of what, enough for who rate?

Speaker 7 (15:34):
According to what threshold? The biggest crowdsource of scientific achievement
in history, millions of home computers turning through the noise,
and just oh, we've got a done.

Speaker 8 (15:44):
Yeah, that's like saying you finished the Internet. You know,
no you didn't. There's always more. But yeah, I try
to think back at just how important Aracibo was, and
like I said it was, Aricibo was. You know, it

(16:05):
had a through rate of one hundred teraflops, right Jesus,
you know it's with those ordinary desktops getting that information
from Araciba. I mean, yeah, we had. I know it's
not called this anymore, but I like to bring it
up all the time, even though we try not to
talk politics here. The Robert C. Bird Green Bank Observatory,

(16:27):
you know, with this one hundred meter dish, it was
capable of scanning billions of narrow band channels. The Allen
telescope array with forty two dishes signed that you know,
the ones that are in Contact, which are still a
great movie. You just think of everything that was utilized,
but Ariciba was one of those big, big contributing factors.

(16:52):
And for I, the best way I can describe it,
Aricibo is like you know, watching Starship launch, You're like
every time they launched, now they're getting a little closer
and a little closer, and it's like it would be
and I know, I'm bringing the sin to an existence
and I apologize, it'd be like the last Starship launch

(17:14):
before you know the Moon and the Mars missions are
going to be possible, having a catastrophic failure and imploding
the entire pro Artemis program. You know, I know, like
I said, I cursed it into existence. Now I apologize,
send all the hate and nail my way. But Ariceba
to me felt like that with the SETI project.

Speaker 7 (17:37):
But I mean it really wasn't though, because I mean
you still had you know, It's like you mentioned Green Banks,
you had the VLA, the very large way, you got Caltech,
Owen's Valley, you got you know, all these radio telescopes
all over the place who do nothing but all day
and night because you don't need it to be dark
for radio astronomy, sucking in data, massive amounts of data.

(18:01):
Study at home. Mean they're done.

Speaker 8 (18:03):
We've got enough that that, you know, and especially with
around the arisibo, you know, first issues and the political issue,
it almost felt, yeah, what happened? What do you mean
with that data? You know, what about the lack of

(18:24):
press releases.

Speaker 7 (18:27):
You know, lack of questions, you know, the odd signals
and the quick plus releases. Even you know, the the
false alarms were part of the fun. You know, scientists
be tripping over each other to explain what they thought
they were seeing.

Speaker 5 (18:41):
You know.

Speaker 7 (18:41):
It reminded the public that the search was alive.

Speaker 8 (18:44):
The Yeah, there hasn't completely been identified yet.

Speaker 5 (18:50):
No.

Speaker 7 (18:51):
Yeah, even if it is a you know, a truck
or CB that got you know, bounced off the I
on a sphere briefly, I mean, that's still it's still
inspired science. Yes, it inspired people to do things. You know,
it's like, you know, it's not you know, even the
reporting of these false alarms around twenty fifteen just stopped

(19:14):
being reported. It's not because there were fewer candidates that
there's more now, yes, there's few or whatever mentioned. You know,
it's the field stop celebrating its near missus. And you
kind of have to wonder who told them stopped to
shut up, to stop talking about it, because Seti it's
you know, Setti is an institution. They shifted from open
curiosity to kind of self preservation. You know, funding appeals

(19:39):
replaced research updates and you know, historical retrospectives and look
how cool we used to be, you know, or the
tone of the conferences, you know, and then once you
centered on interpreting the Loo signal.

Speaker 8 (19:52):
Yeah, yeah, it is for an organization who couldn't keep
its mouth shut too, kind of having its mouth shut.

Speaker 7 (20:08):
I mean, it's so against Setti's culture. I mean they
you know, it's you know, I mean, you had all
of them out there just waving the flag anytime there
was a signal. He is everybody's CNN, Fox News. Everybody
was just racing to get whoever they could get from
SETI on you know, to talk. Yeah, at any moment.

(20:30):
And honestly, I know they're not dead. I hadn't thought
about it until this topic popped up on my radar.

Speaker 8 (20:36):
Yes, and I god, it's probably been two years since
I've mentioned them, And if it's two years since I've
mentioned them on Lost wonder that. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
I mean they really couldn't They really couldn't keep their
their their mouth shut. They were like the high school girl,

(20:59):
you know, having having a sleeper with their best friend
who snuck in a bottle of boons farms, let's talk
about everything.

Speaker 7 (21:07):
They never shut up about it, right, right, So lack.

Speaker 8 (21:14):
Of funding doesn't explain all of it. The government bickering
the six administrations doesn't quite explain it either, you know
it It kind of asked the question, does it brings
it up? Did the universe all of a sudden ghost quiet?

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Well?

Speaker 8 (21:33):
No, did study get told? And if they did, by who?
And I know, I know we were both a part
of the community. We know the number of you know,
hippies and hippie minded like people who are in this
that you you could not get the shut up, you know.

Speaker 7 (22:00):
Yeah, No, I mean it's I mean it feels even
more like you know, it feels like a cultural shift
and force from above. It's not that they suddenly shut
down their curiosity, you know. I mean, you don't need
to see you don't need to conspiracies to see the
institutional fingerprints all over this. You know, a field that
relies on public data, stops generating public data. You know,

(22:25):
every field has its politics, but you know there's something
underlying the power structure that has changed. You know, someone
else is steering that ship now.

Speaker 8 (22:34):
Yes, and for a largely public entity with the sheer
number of hands in the pie for I don't know
how to say it, SETI to kind of quietly go away.
That that's the part that is baffling to me, because

(22:57):
do you remember SETI putting up any rage.

Speaker 7 (23:00):
No, And that's the part about it. It isn't what
SETI has said. It's what it hasn't said.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
You know.

Speaker 7 (23:05):
It's they didn't protest being sidelined, right, They complain about
losing access, and that was the one thing they always
would complain about. We need data. Yes, now you have
giga tons of more data coming in from JWT and
everything else, and they're just like now we're good.

Speaker 10 (23:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (23:24):
Yeah. It's it's kind of like they bought a tesla,
put it on FSD and fell asleep at the wheel.

Speaker 9 (23:34):
And just yeah.

Speaker 7 (23:34):
I mean, they weren't underfunded indo irrelevance, you know, they
didn't age out of usefulness and they just stepped aside.

Speaker 8 (23:43):
Yeah, you know, and I know we're going to talk
about it a little bit later. I mean, there are
and you mentioned with like with James Web, there are
some easy explainable things. Why you know said he did
get pushed aside a little like the red headed step child,

(24:03):
but the universe didn't stop talking. But yet it seems
SETI has.

Speaker 7 (24:09):
Yeah, And that's the weirdest part about all this. I mean,
that's what we're gonna be going into tonight when as
we dig into all the new instrumentation that you know,
SETI would have just creamed itself over a decade ago.

Speaker 8 (24:21):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean from a person, I don't know
what with all the everything that you've done with SETI,
and but you know, part of me was like, God,
you know my servers for years contributed. You know how
cool it would be to have your name associated with
finding the next Wow signal that has no explanation?

Speaker 7 (24:43):
Absolutely, I mean I think that's why we all did it,
wasn't it. That's why millions of us put it on
our computers.

Speaker 8 (24:49):
I mean, I'm gonna borrow a phrase from lou We
all had that little bit of what we wanted to
be a fame fag right in regards to this, We're like, man,
we can get our name in that hundred pages of
you know, special thanks to you know, we were excited
to do it, and now it's just you know, and

(25:09):
the lady mentions in chat. Well we'll touch on that one. Oh,
we'll definitely touch on that one later in the episode
because someone has opinions on that person. But yeah, it is.
It does, like I said, doesn't feel like a eulogy.

(25:30):
It does feel like, Okay, Grandpa, let's let's go put
you in the nursing home. Let's just you know, you
can sit there with your laptop and and your Murray
POVID show. And oh yeah, yes, Grandpa, I remembered when
you used to talk about that signal you heard in
eighty seven. Yes, Grandpa, I know it's kind of entered
that kind of atmosphere in my mind and I don't

(25:50):
get it.

Speaker 7 (25:53):
Yeah, and you know, and I know I've said this,
but it's still the strangest thing is that, I mean,
the universe didn't go quiet, but the organization that built
us in entire identity on refusing to shut up.

Speaker 8 (26:03):
Yes, yeah, and and you know, you look at the
people who funded that, they didn't give up interest.

Speaker 7 (26:14):
No, and they still fund it not as much. But
it's you know, you know, we'll be getting that into
the next segment too, But it's just it's just baffling
on how quietly they went into that good night.

Speaker 8 (26:31):
Yes, agreed.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
So that brings us to the bottom of the first hour.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jeff's position. I am your host,
ordnance packard. I've got with me a cosmic bar Jeff
tonight and we are talking. Why did SETI shut up?
So we're gonna take a quick break here. Everybody, refill
your drinks and smoke him if you got him, and
we'll be back in a few minutes, he said.

Speaker 8 (27:39):
Her voice said to the deer.

Speaker 6 (27:45):
Hoping the dark man asked a bath, searching the stars,
who was weak?

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Keep losing inside, still chasing questions?

Speaker 5 (28:00):
We can leave the key?

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Is there anybody out there.

Speaker 11 (28:11):
To night?

Speaker 6 (28:20):
Just the echo.

Speaker 5 (28:24):
A week.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
So long.

Speaker 6 (28:30):
Ourselves? Is there anybody out there in.

Speaker 12 (29:05):
Sweet chase a flick good drifting out of sight?

Speaker 6 (29:51):
Following that goes another stay try in the name. Why
we carry a lot still reaching out the shadows of
the light.

Speaker 7 (30:59):
Is there help them?

Speaker 5 (31:12):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (31:12):
There is a single man for me.

Speaker 5 (31:17):
Somewhere Yan Ries.

Speaker 6 (31:24):
Is the value you in through the cosmical.

Speaker 7 (31:41):
And we're back. This is juxtaposition. I'm Morden's packard. I
am joined tonight with the cosmic card Jeff, and that
was another original piece by him. Could you stop parting
out greatness? I would kindly appreciate that. No, I don't mind,
help you crush it for this show. Yeah, absolutely do
and your own.

Speaker 8 (32:02):
Well, you know what's hilarious is I actually know the
material for tonight's song. So instead of doing one, I'm
doing three.

Speaker 9 (32:09):
Yeah, and that's what I mean.

Speaker 7 (32:10):
So just to give a little inside baseball on this
is that yesterday, in talking to Rick, it has decided.
You know, first I figured we weren't going to do
it because he's been doing his thing. And then you know,
Jeff volunteered. I pinged it off Rick. He said, yeah,
run with it. And so this whole show came together
in the last literally twenty four hours maybe a little

(32:32):
maybe a little bit more. But so not only did
we compile all the material for the show, he wrote
three songs for it.

Speaker 6 (32:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (32:42):
I won't lie. I cheat. I cheated a little bit,
especially with the Juck songs. Sometimes what I'll do is
I'll write the chorus or if I have a really
couple good lines for versus, I will get some input
to help flesh it out a little bit. So it
does make it it easier. But yeah, I probably spent
uh researching going over everything in the song, probably eight

(33:04):
hours today on everything. So not bad.

Speaker 7 (33:07):
Yeah it's good for snowy Sat. Snowy Saturday.

Speaker 8 (33:11):
Why not more like I was going to go outside.

Speaker 7 (33:15):
Right, Yeah, it was raining here, so I was like,
you know what I mean, I can put together some
material for a show tonight and here we are. Yes,
So if you're just joining us now, we have been
discussing what happened to SETI. They used to be the
loudest kid on the block in the scientific community, and

(33:36):
then they just quietly stepped aside, almost politely, as if
they were set the memo. But SETI never checked their inbox,
you know as well. Their dishes were winding down after
the tragedy at Arasibo. There's still a lot of radio
astronomy dishes out there, but it's not like their access

(33:57):
was lost to it. It's just science started to go
and completely different set of instruments, optical infrared spectrographic. Yeah,
and these were wrapping up with ferocity that made radio
feel like can't you know radio telescopes feel like ham
radio by comparison, and Stroutmer's just seemed to stop asking

(34:17):
is anyone transmitting and started asking what does the air
look like on that planet?

Speaker 8 (34:23):
And it was.

Speaker 7 (34:24):
The shift was subtle enough to miss, but seismic enough
that the entire field changed without saying a word.

Speaker 8 (34:32):
Yeah, And I know some almost say that it started
with Hubble, but I really, in my gut, I think
James Webb's face telescope. Thank god they never changed that name.
I think that was the game changer because all of
a sudden, instead of you know, trying to find that
seven and what's supposed to be zeros and ones, scientists

(34:53):
could peer into what makes the composition of an atmosphere
of an exoplanet with probably better accuracy than a breathalyzer,
depending on what state you're in your thinks, such as oxygen,
methane and worse, you know, those chemical footprints that could

(35:14):
all of a sudden, instead of hearing that symbol, they're
now whispering technology or perhaps more importantly biology from oh,
I don't know, hundreds of late years away. And let's
face it, you know, optics tends though to respond quicker
than radio signals, so that helps. But yet SETI really

(35:35):
did say basically nothing with this. You know, Yes, the
James Webb Space Telescope made SETI feel a little bit
even with SETI at home, you know, like one of
those old rotary phones that you know, if you're under
twenty five or thirty, you may not know how to
operate it. It is interesting to know that I believe

(35:58):
James Webb's was that first win of something about this
search might outpay SETI a little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (36:10):
But on the other end of that too, I mean,
you've got the the VERA Rubin Observatory, and that laid
it laid another layer onto this too, that that observatory's
entire mission revolves around catching anomalies, you know, the transiits,
the outbursts, objects that move, objects that shouldn't move, the
exact sky events that SETI built their entire structure around

(36:32):
would hold entire conferences about. And instead of SETI leading
the charge on the anomaly detection, Ruben's team just quietly
absorbed that role and went under a much bigger umbrella
and just general astrophysics. A little by little, the weird
just stopped being in Seti's.

Speaker 8 (36:52):
And it's weird that this happened because you have something
like Breakthrough. Listen that. God, this should have been like
what is it? O? Positive blood? It should have been
like a lifeline for SETI. Was it a billion billion
dollar infusion telescope time, a tension of the entire globe

(37:13):
and honestly a roster of scientists that could have revitalized SETI,
But kind of instead of reinvigorating it, it kind of
pushed it aside, eclipsed it. Breakthrough has kind of become
the the new de facto search, you know, with the

(37:33):
money and probably more importantly, the political backing. But it
still doesn't quite make sense because Seti's role has shrank
to commentary into silence, and I don't know, it's it.
It's kind of hard to see that startup getting outpaced

(37:54):
by basically its own spinoff.

Speaker 7 (37:59):
That's a great adow.

Speaker 8 (38:00):
Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 7 (38:02):
Mean what really shook me and this was when I
was like, SETI, where the fuck are you? Was China's
fast telescope? The fast damn it?

Speaker 8 (38:14):
I don't have as whole music cleak cute.

Speaker 7 (38:16):
You didn't have that. I was waiting for that, but
it detected a possible alien narrow band signal, the exact
thing that SETI was built to investigate fast an then
fast retracted it, then fast locked down the data SETI
didn't say a word. They didn't challenge him, they didn't

(38:37):
ask for access, They didn't even acknowledge it. Beyond the
thinnest possible statement. The community that once poured over every
anomaly now stood plightly in the corner. Just you know,
it's like, it's like the meme. They don't even know
why I'm here.

Speaker 8 (38:53):
Right right, and and it should have spread, like what
was that thing that came out of China from the
wet market? You know it? The classified parts of the
raw signal, the pause for a review thing, it doesn't

(39:14):
quite hold water to me. The fact that papers were
withdrawn and set. He once again that that cosmic hippie
that won't shut up about anything and is curious about
every little thing. That well, let's face it, if said
he could find a way to to to research Skywalker Ranch,
you know they would have done it. It it's that

(39:37):
silence that I don't know it. It kind of forms
when someone decides certain people don't need to know certain things.

Speaker 7 (39:48):
Yeah, I mean that silence didn't come from a silence
like that doesn't form spot nanasy. It forms when someone's
decided certain people just don't need to know another. It's like,
you know, NASA's creation of the U A P Reporting Division.

Speaker 8 (40:03):
Right, I'm sorry. Wasn't that about the same time you
quit hearing from SETI? That was?

Speaker 7 (40:10):
Yes, pretty much exactly, you know. And it kind of
goes with that joke from a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
What point is believing in a god when this machine
is just gonna give you his phone number in the morning.
And that with the NASA U U A P division,
it gathered great our data, infrared data, censor data, all
types of information that would directly overlap with technological signature

(40:35):
searches and for decades. This is the kind of access
that SETI argued it needed to have for its proof.
Not only would it need a radio signal, it would
need it argued that the atmospheric anomalies, the infrared signatures,
the non gravitational accelerations could be a real techno signature candidate.

(40:55):
And when NASA finally agreed building a fucking office for it.
They didn't invite SETI, they didn't. They just they use
Seti's model and said, you know, two, I just lifted
two fingers, like everybody can.

Speaker 8 (41:13):
Yeah, your camera is not on. Sorry we can't. So
it's like the you, yes, well, and it's not just
NASA you have. The Apartment of Defense has kind of
really made you know, it's it's not you, it's me.
Kind of an argument. The d o D, you know,
controls really, when you think about it, the most sensitive

(41:36):
skytracking systems on Earth and probably elsewhere. But that's another episode.
And you know you have ever read satellites, missile warning arrays,
space based telemetry. I mean, but the d o D
has satellites and things that contect minuscules debris in our orbit.
You know, so all of this type of data that

(41:58):
could flag possible interstellar or objects or even artificial techno
signatures doesn't make sense. And when the Pentagon's reports began,
you know, what was the term non non ballistic objects
or unknown entities from deep space? Where was SETI?

Speaker 7 (42:19):
Instantaneous accelerations?

Speaker 8 (42:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was another one. I liked that one.
It we were mute.

Speaker 7 (42:27):
Talking about timing though, you when did SEMI shut up
in relation to the DoD when they announced Space Force.

Speaker 8 (42:36):
Yes, yes, which I'm still I'm still glad they did,
but it is weird they went really quiet after that.

Speaker 7 (42:47):
Yeah, I mean it was like within I don't know,
we put the timeframe of SETI shutting up around twenty fifteen.
Space Force was twenty sixteen, twenty seven, But it's all
in this narrow cord or where you know, it was like,
you know, it wasn't like SETI was out there every day,
but at least once every year or two years, every
three years, they would remind everybody they existed and wouldn't

(43:07):
shut up about it for six months. But the thing is,
it's hard to ignore this pattern when it forms so
neatly that every time a new detection method rose spectral optical, infrared,
military telemetry, SETI wasn't elevated, it was bypassed, it wasn't consulted,
it was ignored. And you know what first looked like

(43:28):
bureaucratic oversight. This looks like a strategic exclusion. Yeah, and
it looks like a structural realignment that someone decided SETI
was not part of the search anymore.

Speaker 8 (43:38):
Yeah, they started using like we're phrases. What was the
one I like adjacent work? Yeah, that one made me last.

Speaker 7 (43:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (43:48):
Yes, you know, euphemisms that sound polite until you translate them. Quote.
You know, we aren't being given any good data anymore.
I mean, even though they still had the infrastructure, it
still seemed weird. They seemed like they did. They weren't
getting the raw feed anymore, but yet they were still
having access of things that you know, I I talk

(44:08):
about it on Lost Wonder we had last episode. I
think it was a twelve year old kid found a
new comment because of public acts. So if this twelve
year old can pour through old data, so can SETTI Still.

Speaker 7 (44:23):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's one of the strangest
things about seti's marginalization is how little they talk about
techno signatures. Now, you know the term exploded in act, circles,
engineered atmospheres, energy leakage from megastructures, dice in spheres, industrial
byproducts of extra planet air.

Speaker 9 (44:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (44:41):
A decade ago, SETI would have branded itself percent Today
others publish the defining papers, you know, while SETI is
publishing historical retrospectives. Yeah, it's the it's the academic equivalent
of watching somebody else dry.

Speaker 8 (45:00):
Your car and bang your wife.

Speaker 7 (45:04):
Yeah, Seti's sitting in the cup chair right.

Speaker 8 (45:08):
Right, you know, And yes, I know, SETI really used
to concentrate on radio waves, and other institutions now do
spectral lines, infrared maps, optics, even you know, Einstein drink,
gravitational lens sequencing. But the search didn't just die, it upgraded.

(45:35):
So the pre existing technology is still there, but the
people who built the search weren't invited to the ride along.
But admittedly they do kind of feel like they were
left standing in a museum, but the museum is still operating,
still functional, can still find out information that, let's be honest,

(45:57):
the new technology doesn't completely observe.

Speaker 7 (46:03):
Yeah, you know what's weird about Seti's position and all
of this is that it feels strangely ceremonial. Yeah, it's
like the issue statements about the importance of searching while
others are doing the searching. You know, they'll host conscious
conferences about data that they don't have answer.

Speaker 8 (46:22):
Yeah, it's like watching Star Trek, the original series. Cons
that's kind of where they've been relegated in my mind.

Speaker 7 (46:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's like you know what it's like. It's
a lot like watching a king perform royal duties while
the real power is shifted to the advisors and the
military and the bureaucrats.

Speaker 8 (46:40):
Oh, that sounds like a shot to King Charles.

Speaker 7 (46:46):
No, I would never say that, but.

Speaker 8 (46:51):
You know, if we were to say the silence it
was a matter of budgets, and I don't completely believe that.
Wouldn't SETI be protesting the f out of this. Wouldn't
they be trying to get more airtime to get more funding.
I mean, how many times when PBS during Red Green
reruns or new episodes, will we see the pledge marathon

(47:14):
or pledgethon or whatever they used to call it. Scientists
have this knack of complaining loudly when they're cut from
the greenbacks, you know, the money hand. So typically they
would write the op edds, give way too many interviews
where you would get sick of them, and of course

(47:35):
try to rally support and funding.

Speaker 7 (47:39):
Letters.

Speaker 5 (47:40):
No.

Speaker 13 (47:41):
Yeah, it.

Speaker 8 (47:43):
It is this quiet sort of acceptance that I don't
know about you, but to me sounds like a boundary
that they some reason can't cross. A limit that maybe
they themselves didn't fully set that, maybe someone else did
it for them.

Speaker 7 (48:05):
When strangers. How this normal? How normal the shift looks
from the outside, you know, if you're not really paying attention,
the transition seems like progress. Bigger telescopes, more advanced disciplinary teams,
shit like that. But underneath that, the veneer is simple,
especially if you were you know, into SETI, you know,
the unsettling true to the people who used to lead

(48:26):
the search are no longer trusted on that frontier.

Speaker 8 (48:29):
Yeah, and you know me, no, my shows, I try
to be fair. So you know, some of the things
that quote unquote replaced them are institutions that well don't
really like sharing all of their data publicly. So yeah,

(48:49):
so I do get some of it, but I get,
you know, government restrictions in this, especially with the newer technology.

Speaker 12 (48:57):
But it.

Speaker 8 (48:59):
You don't need a conspira to explain the silence. What
you need to understand how modern scientific powers work. But
when the tools change, the owners of the tools changed too.
But still it's not like someone remember in the movie
Saw the first one, the good one, where where oh god,

(49:19):
the guy from shield I can't remember agent comes in
and steals Natalie Portman's work. It's not like the government
came in and took everything away from SETI.

Speaker 7 (49:37):
Yeah, I mean, I mean the tools changed, but the
owners of the tools I mean, yeah, I guess changed tool.
But so I guess the rules did it? Who gets
asked the big questions? You know, SETI didn't lose his relevance.
I just lost jurisdiction.

Speaker 8 (49:54):
Yes, but they still have, you know, admittedly the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence once again. Hello, I'm here, easy to find.
I'm willing to be paid for being studied, just saying
you know it Groves, but you know, yeah, we outlawed
that in twenty fifteen for some reason. But while it

(50:17):
does seem like everything has moved behind doors, Seti's public
voice didn't. It didn't get quieter it. You know, you
know when you break a role in school and you're
told not to talk or or reference that person again

(50:38):
because they didn't like the way you were teasing them
or said something. It really feels like now SETI has
that little bit of masta can I can I speak yet? Masta? Masta?
Am I allowed to say anything yet?

Speaker 7 (50:54):
Yeah? Yeah, the Unions verse didn't stop being interesting. Someone
just to say that SETI no longer needed to know
about it, I guess. I mean, you know, it's the
silence that feels that the gaps. Yeah, yeah, you know,
it's more like a door that was quietly closed from
the inside. And you know, SETI was out, you know,

(51:17):
I don't know getting the mail.

Speaker 5 (51:20):
And and what.

Speaker 8 (51:25):
What really is confusing to me? I mean, you know
the amount of work I put in Lost Wonder with
research and gathering stories. Yeah, the universe isn't hasn't stopped
giving us all this stuff. But I cannot tell you
the last time I mentioned a radio signal other in retrospect.

Speaker 7 (51:52):
Yeah, it's a reference now than anything else. It's like,
this is the biggest thing since the Wow signal. Yes,
and and for you, you kids, we got to explain
what the Wow signals. Well, first we have to explain
radio shot me and then we have to explain yes.

Speaker 8 (52:07):
Yeah. But at the same time, I just you know,
a lot of people will say, oh, you know, and
and trust me, I've said these articles and had to
read through them. God three times an episode. Oh, starlink
is blocking this, Darlink is blocking that. Yes, but that
doesn't mean the signals the radio signals we're getting from

(52:29):
all these observatories are still not being received. It's we're
just no longer hearing about anything.

Speaker 12 (52:37):
You know.

Speaker 8 (52:37):
Admittedly, listen, you know, listening to radio signals, it can
be boring as as as fuck. I mean, we've had
some shows on Kailer and that we're like that. But
you know it, I go back to the movie Contact
where Jody is sitting out on the hood of her
car when the signal finally comes through, but it only

(53:00):
hints at how many days, weeks, months, years she's been
doing that right in that hope that that radio signal
will break through. I'm sorry that was a lot.

Speaker 7 (53:14):
Of artistic license, but I mean because I mean, she's
not just sitting there listening to you know, the background
by way, but it's obviously been you know, hey, she's
listening to the more interesting signals to see, you know,
waiting for waiting for you know, drifts, you.

Speaker 8 (53:29):
Know, waiting for something to be flagged as hey.

Speaker 7 (53:35):
But you know a lot of people argue, well, you know,
with five with two point four gig and five gig propagation,
but that's that's a false argument because those don't propagate.
If five g propagated, then you would be able to
walk more than fifteen feet from your router before your
phone loses its Wi Fi calling.

Speaker 8 (53:52):
You know, and not only that, as someone that works
in IT and has dealt with phones and up until
three years ago still dealt with facts line, there are
ways to filter out. We know frequencies, we know repetition,
we know patterns, and with the advancement of technology it

(54:12):
you should be seeing the information actually fine tuned coming
from institutions like SETI. They you know, they have ways,
you know, and let's face AI is not perfect, but
there are ways to feed feed signals through an AI
device that will read it ten times faster than a
human can right now to pick up Oh hey, here's

(54:35):
an interesting Oh hey wait a minute over here, you know, yeah,
uh oh look eminem oh look, eminem oh look. You
know it has that ability. We should I'm sorry, with
everything we're seeing, we should. I don't know about you.
I think we should be hearing more from SETI now.

Speaker 7 (54:53):
Well, we should at least be getting in you know.
I think it's like, hey, you know what now, with
the uh, the advancement of AI, We're going to take
all of our old data that you all collected during
SETI at Home and we were going to reprocess it
through AI, or we're going to give you a plug
in that you can use with your GPT or your
GROCK or whatever to where you can do that in
your downtime. Yes, all these things are doable. It's like,

(55:16):
I mean, obviously you have how long will say you run?
So you have almost forty years of radio astronomy data?

Speaker 8 (55:24):
Yes, go.

Speaker 7 (55:29):
Right, but so you've got all of that. Hey, you
know what, computers have gotten better. Maybe we missed something
with the SETI at Home project. We're going to make
a plug in for GPT and we're going to do
SETI at Home two point zero where we're going to
be using all of your AIS when you're not using
them in the background to crunch signal data.

Speaker 8 (55:50):
Yeah, set up your set up your AI, whichever one, Yeah,
whichever one you want, whatever account you have authorized SETI
to to, you know, a kid for you know, the
hours of one to four. You know you have access
you know to to my GPT account, right.

Speaker 7 (56:11):
Yeah, yeah, and that's something I mean even then you
can do it.

Speaker 8 (56:15):
You know.

Speaker 7 (56:15):
It's like, I mean, I know you've run long, long projects.
On GPT, and I have too, where you know, you'll
do one project, you'll send it on a deep research
and then you're off asking for fucking butternuts squash recipes
or something and then or.

Speaker 8 (56:30):
Hey, GPT, how how long does chocolate chip cookies last
in the refrigerator? Right?

Speaker 6 (56:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (56:37):
You know it's you know, hey, can can cats eat pancakes?
You know? And then you know when it's when it's done,
you get this pop up on GPT saying we've completed
the research, so you would take that, you paste it
in an email or whatever, send it off to SETI,
go download your next chunk of data or you know whatever.
I mean, this is something that could very easily be done,
and the one who should be doing it, the one

(57:00):
who should be coming up with this idea, are not
two assholes on an X podcast right right. And that's
what's most maddening about it is that Seti's silence with
all they have all these new tools at their disposal,
and they're just like, now we'rek it, We've got enough data?

Speaker 8 (57:23):
What does that mean? Yeah? You know, especially in an
age where computers are cheap, Internet speeds are increasing every
single day, and you know, thanks to things like starlink,
where there's hardly a spot on Earth anymore that can't
utilize internet speeds. Right, you know, this should be a

(57:44):
golden age of SETI well pimping and hoaring themselves out
to every possible bidder to try to get more FaceTime,
more and availability. And they're quiet.

Speaker 7 (58:03):
And that's what's actually deafening, is how quiet SETI is.
All right, wow, another half hour flew by. We are
at the bottom of the earth. We're at the top
of the next hour. This is just a position. I
am your host ordinance packard. We've got a cosmic bard
with us tonight, and we're going to take a brief interlude.

Speaker 8 (58:19):
So everybody, oh, this one, this one might be a
little more extended. This one might be you know, five
or six minutes, so everyone can stretch, you know, your
your your guest. Guest host can maybe refill his long
island iced teeth.

Speaker 7 (58:32):
Yeah, go feel refill your drink, Go outside, stare up
at stars for a minute. We'll be back and what
about six minutes about that? Yes, all right, cool, we'll
see y'all's very soon.

Speaker 13 (59:16):
I pressed my ear against the dark, listens for the homeless, needs,
the Christy, mister buried, stand your something. Some are trembling
on the ram.

Speaker 5 (59:35):
With every night the silence.

Speaker 13 (59:42):
Listen the gust of the edge, the real memories you
have buried dead and want to.

Speaker 6 (59:48):
Rip the quiet and nose me.

Speaker 5 (59:53):
I have the parson.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Just always stop.

Speaker 5 (01:00:10):
Only does what kind of you hear it? Because you
need it.

Speaker 6 (01:00:20):
Inside every day the numble.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
It's a conflict in the step with the voice fadly
by rember.

Speaker 5 (01:00:31):
The voice.

Speaker 6 (01:00:36):
Fun people doesn't mean what is second.

Speaker 5 (01:00:42):
Basted sound.

Speaker 10 (01:00:46):
Lost doesn't mean.

Speaker 6 (01:01:10):
There's a pulse inside the shadows. It's your own art.
Beata going back.

Speaker 10 (01:01:15):
Too faint to shape a meaning, shape meaning out of
emptyin a the truth and half ooosion, truth always content,
half a fear.

Speaker 6 (01:01:26):
I can't contain. It's just a message days ago.

Speaker 13 (01:01:31):
I breathing you here.

Speaker 14 (01:01:33):
You're still catching up the same by molding closer.

Speaker 11 (01:01:38):
Having closed this whole time. I don't know how he
keeps said it away still side. You're so joys started

(01:02:02):
the same that saying, because you're never at kind of
the death.

Speaker 6 (01:02:08):
Of cradial things hold the deepest dr rog.

Speaker 11 (01:02:13):
S.

Speaker 5 (01:02:18):
I race across the distance.

Speaker 6 (01:02:21):
The boys fairly fine.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
I had your voice, boy.

Speaker 10 (01:02:28):
Really proposively empty spaces.

Speaker 14 (01:02:33):
Acquiet signal, says.

Speaker 10 (01:03:28):
Ashmed to hear the final answer.

Speaker 6 (01:03:31):
You already know what but fear, he writes.

Speaker 11 (01:03:35):
The word here is just your past speaking louder sky
is full of thinking silence all the he reppus to trust.

Speaker 6 (01:03:43):
So for what I've never heard, You're heard me.

Speaker 11 (01:03:49):
I'm calling against sience, I'm calling you a whole science.
My name always has just.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Your part that travels through the reading pure reasons.

Speaker 14 (01:04:11):
It's across the side from the noise through the night.

Speaker 11 (01:04:17):
This side, but my friend God still waiting for the.

Speaker 5 (01:04:25):
Light cream.

Speaker 9 (01:05:00):
The night, big full role.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Out of side, government shadows, secretstique, conspiracy on full well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Sleech, straight encounter Sun ex flame through this out that
really shame not my mother's voices fall level.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
History stories untold, the real fifty one whispering.

Speaker 6 (01:05:37):
Beautiful society, haunting flame, miss monster a watering.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Mystciology Injuriouski straightencounter Sun explain.

Speaker 5 (01:05:56):
Through this out and really say, then went.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
No fason fall on leveling mystery stories untold. He takes
down believe as your forces into the fire, so logic
suspontine stays and Chun Sun explained to days out that

(01:06:27):
Blaly say, then win know is bosses, fall out of
Love and mystery stories, Untold.

Speaker 5 (01:06:36):
Truth is out.

Speaker 9 (01:06:37):
The truth is out, and we're back.

Speaker 7 (01:06:54):
Thank you all for joining us. This is our two
of juxtaposition, and I am your host Ordinance Packard. Rick
is out tonight dealing with some family troubles, so if
you could send him your thoughts and prayers, we would
really appreciate that. I'm sure he would too joining me tonight.
And the second chair is a cosmic bard. Jeff, how
you doing? Jeff? You hanging in there?

Speaker 8 (01:07:15):
Hi, guys, Hi, Yeah, I'm hanging in there. I got
my second long island ready for the second.

Speaker 7 (01:07:22):
Hour, Absolutely fantastic. Yeah, it's uh, the just go quick,
don't they?

Speaker 8 (01:07:29):
Yes, And I figured I needed that second island for
what we're going to cover at the top of this hour, because.

Speaker 7 (01:07:35):
Yeah, don't hit him with both barrels, but yeah, I
will wait.

Speaker 8 (01:07:42):
Until you say the magic word AVI.

Speaker 7 (01:07:46):
All right, So tonight our topic is why does SETI
go silent? You know, they were the loudest kid in
the room. They would not shut up for forty years
almost and then for some reason in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,

(01:08:06):
they just quietly stepped aside, and at probably the time
they most likely shouldn't have. You know, in the first
hour we talked about you know what SATI was. Why
you know, there's sudden departure and you know what has
replaced them, But they can't really be replaced because it's

(01:08:30):
not like there's no more data. There's just tons more
data coming in, and they're completely silent about it. I mean,
you know, when Amamau came zipping through the Solar system,
written in a language that we weren't ready to read.
You know, it slipped in from above the elliptic, you know,
coasted out a trajectory too calm, too precise, and too

(01:08:54):
ancient to be a chaotic kick of a rogue asteroid.
It's brightness curve flickered like some thing long, flat and tumbling,
not cigar shaped, not pancakeshit right. It was something stranger
than what we were used to, something geometric, and when
accelerated without out gassing, the universe kind of broke its

(01:09:15):
own rule as we understood it, and the rule book
didn't know how to respond. Scientists panic, and not because
they had answers, but because the answers they needed didn't exist.
Yet you know, the official explanations were piled up like
excuses after a crash, hydrogenized nitrogen shards, fractal dust bunnies,
and the theories sounded less like silence and more like

(01:09:37):
wish casting, a desperate attempt to avoid the explanation. Nobody
wanted to say out loud. The pace of publication about
it was frantic, you know, nobody wanted to be the
one who hesitated. And yet beneath all the storm of
PDFs and web pages and blog posts, there was this
quiet tremor. No counter theories matched to the data. MAMO

(01:10:01):
behaved like something controlled or once control, or it was
once controlled, and drifting in some kind of you know,
like a technological relic might follow after it was abandoned
for for a thousand years, you know.

Speaker 8 (01:10:17):
And it's it's funny because that's when the silence really hit.
I got it, because that was what right at the
beginning of Lost Wonder. Yeah, information was like, oh my god, everywhere,
and then crickets, paper stopped, interviews evaporated. Mau's wiki. Wikipedia page,

(01:10:39):
you know, as Wikipedia tends to do, grew longer with
you know, more professional commentary. You know, all of a
sudden disappearing. It was an event that should could have
sparked a golden age of exotic object research, but a

(01:11:01):
lot of people bunker down for it. Within was it
eighteen months, the loudest voices transitioned from what the hell
is that? To you know, let's all please agree that
it isn't Aliens. And the fear wasn't that it was artificial.
The fear was that people who I won't mention might

(01:11:22):
believe it was.

Speaker 7 (01:11:24):
Well, and that's kind of you know, as you talked
about it, you know, it was early in Lost Wonder,
it was early in this show too. By the time
we were ready to do a show on it, pretty
much everybody had sucked all the fun.

Speaker 8 (01:11:37):
Out of it.

Speaker 7 (01:11:40):
Mm hmm, yeah, it's just yeah, it was like, please
don't say that it's aliens? Well why not?

Speaker 8 (01:11:49):
Well, I I I'm I'm going to cue myself and
segue myself. Well, kind of like you know, when Neil
de grasse Tyson goes on a subject, you know, he's
speaking out of his ass. The umimau maybe aliens fell

(01:12:09):
short when one individual started speaking about and unlike SETI
of Yesteryear, he stepped into where SETI should have stepped
in and was pimping himself and whouring himself out to
anyone and everyone that would listen. I on the early
episode of The Lost Wonder even dit for a few
seconds before I started snipping something so knowing that we

(01:12:34):
were going to do what you know radio behind the
turn behind the screen terms, but is basically Act three
of the show was about I decided to write an
official response to a certain individual about how this could
or could not be an alien vessel. No, stay with

(01:12:58):
me here, going to read a little bit Alpha Centauri report,
but please please allow me. Sure humans, you are so adorable.
You got these little apposable thumbs, you discovered Wi Fi,
and you almost figured out how to use your blinker
depending what kind of car you drive. But you have

(01:13:20):
no relationship with interstellar objects. And that's when I don't know,
you get all precious because every time I weard Rocks
drifts through the neighborhood, you have at least one Harvard
astrophysiness immediately stands up in Clare's it's aliens. Obviously, let

(01:13:41):
me be clear, and I say this as you know,
a resident of Alpha Centauri who's just stranded on Earth.
For now, I've been screaming into the void while everyone
mislabels every cosmic paper airplane that drifts through the atmosphere.
I will go on record boom, I'm out. Was not
an alien span. It wasn't It wasn't a probe, It

(01:14:03):
wasn't a reconnaissance gift. And it wasn't that Centaurian pizza
delivery drone I ordered that got lost in the weight
to Vega. It was just a rock, A weird rock,
A rock that tumbled through our solar system, kind of
like a drunk tourist, doesn't Marty Graw when fast moving

(01:14:24):
pebbles from the deep dark, Oh my god, things exist
outside of our solar system drop into the backyard. Most
good scientists tend to do the right thing, not always,
but tend They like to measure them, classify them, scratch
their beards thoughtfully. But not one astrophysicist from Harvard. He

(01:14:52):
looks at strangely shaped potatoes drifting through space and immediately concludes, Oh, yes,
this must be a light sail from an ancient civilization.
Perhaps the parking break was left, you know, Aliens watching
these interviews are kind of like the way we look
at raccoons breaking in the gas station dumpsters at two am.

(01:15:13):
It's fascinating, absolutely, but it's a little bit concerning because
if Umumal was a ship, let's be honest, they would
have been. It would have been the worst design shift
in the galaxy. It had no real apparent heat shielding,
where were the communication ports, There was real no thrust signature,
no real identifiable navigational shifts. Let's just face it. Even

(01:15:39):
the worst GMV would not license this. Okay, it not
everything has to be aliens. And I know I'm saying
this on a conspiracy show, and yes, I know I
pretend air quotes to pretend to be an alien, but god,
we don't have to jump to this when one Harvard

(01:16:00):
astrophysicist gets his dick caught in his own zipper and
goes when every show to just faut at all, Let's
take time and let's examine it. And I'm not saying
the sudden quiet like we SA always said, he isn't concerning.
But perhaps in the case of at least OMAMAO. And

(01:16:22):
we're learning once again because the same people are spouting
up with thirty one Atlas, maybe sometimes scientists shut up
because a rock is just a fucking rock and there's
nothing interesting about it other than it came from outside
of our solar system. So if it doesn't have engines,

(01:16:42):
doesn't emit power, does communicate? Does it qualify as a
quote unquote ufo UAP. I don't. It's just one guy
warning himself out to get airtime like SETI used to
and why aren't they doing it in more? And the
fact that this guy maybe is trying to fill those

(01:17:03):
shoes just frustrates me. And I I admit I am
a mildly frustrated and definitely patient neighbor from Alpha Centauri.

Speaker 7 (01:17:18):
You know, I say what you will about LOWB than
I have, but I am going to give him credit
with and you know who about I was a big
blow to city. I mean, they should have been all
over that too. If anything, they should have been the
ones who's spearheaded the maybe and then followed.

Speaker 8 (01:17:33):
Up yes, yeah, and and and Lobe is the worst
celebrity voice on this matter. Yes, he is one keeping
it engaging, keeping it entertaining, and keeping the possibility alive.
So I don't want to completely this you know this him,

(01:17:58):
but yeah, the fact SETI didn't comment on this, why yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:18:10):
Right, and that's you know, like I was gonna say,
where I'm gonna give low credit is that it was
with I AM two. Now and this was another blow
to city. You know, it's and this was from it,
you know, came from a direction nobody really expected. I
AM two was a classified folder and a Pentagon archive.

(01:18:34):
The meteoroid that became known as i AM two slammed
into the Earth in twenty fourteen, and for eight years,
the DoD sat on it. It sat on its telemetry.
It's a loss. It's faster than ninety five percent of
the stars in the Milky Way. It's trajectory interstellar confirmation
ninety nine point nine to nine, repeating that it was

(01:18:55):
an interstellar object per the military, not academia. Yeah, Wobe
only got the data because he forced it through the
classification pipeline. Yah. He pried opened a door that the
Pentagon want had shut and once again said he had
no comment. The first confirmed interstellar object to hit the Earth,

(01:19:16):
and the field dedicated to finding alien signals treated it
like the weather.

Speaker 8 (01:19:22):
Yeah, and what's that mean? The worst person you know
just made a good point. So I agree, Abby was
on point with that one. So I will give credit
where credit is due.

Speaker 7 (01:19:36):
And you know, if I am Too was the classified secret,
then I Am one was the classified embarrassment. It a
burst of fire over the Bismarck See in twenty fourteen,
left behind fragments that shouldn't exist, sphereals of bizarre metallic alloys,
extreme material strengths, and fingerprints that did not match any

(01:19:58):
cataloged meteorit. Lobe's team dragged a magnetic sled across the
Pacific sea floor and pulled up glittering grains that behaved
less like comic dust and more like the shredded remnants
of an of engineered material. Yeah, the critics didn't contest
the findings. They contested the tone. You know. Their objections

(01:20:20):
were emotionally brittle and defensive. It's as if he stepped
on a pressure plate. In the academic psyche they met,
people really disliked Globe.

Speaker 8 (01:20:31):
Yeah, and I mean I hate them from a different angle.
But yeah, this, this should have been Seti's golden opportunity
to become relevant again. But yet, no papers, no real
analysis was released. There was no call for urgent collaborations,

(01:20:54):
not even the Oh god, was it the obligatory We
look forward to further studying the findings that were found
by AVVY. You know, it was I know we're not
saying said he's dead, but really it feels like it
at times. You know, when the first object from another
other star burned up in our atmosphere, did it raise

(01:21:18):
its hand to be invited to the party.

Speaker 7 (01:21:22):
No, it remains statue still. I don't even think that
they win it. I don't even think they released, you know,
a statement on it. You know, it was that the
DODS owned admissions made the silence even stranger. Between twenty
nineteen and twenty twenty four, multiple reports referenced fast movers
objects entering in from deep space with the speeds and
trajectories that defied conventional orbital mechanics.

Speaker 8 (01:21:43):
It's the bugs. It's the bugs. We know, it's the bugs.

Speaker 7 (01:21:47):
It's a dirty planet, a bug planet.

Speaker 8 (01:21:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:21:50):
And some of them arrived on near linear paths, you know,
as if guided. You know, some change velocity mid entry,
which should be physically impossible for rocks. Some exhibited non
ballistic behavior and consistent with any natural body. These reports
weren't sourced from UFO or if they were pulled from
military briefings and intelligence assessments. The Pentagon acknowledged events that

(01:22:14):
SETI did not.

Speaker 8 (01:22:16):
Yeah, and you would. The more, you know, the more
interstellar objects that should have appeared and did appear, the
less SETI seemed to be curious. It was an inverse
correlation at a universe and cosmic scale. If you will,

(01:22:42):
oma Au shut them down. I am too probably sealed
the door I am one made, made their air toxic
to them. And we haven't even touched on thirty one Atlas,
you know, the third confirmed interstellar object, right and for

(01:23:03):
those of you who.

Speaker 7 (01:23:04):
Haven't been paying attention, thereyone at last. It's it's just
come up in this year, you know, and with the
same quiet confidence that you know Google mouth carried.

Speaker 8 (01:23:13):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:23:13):
It's got a hyperbolic trajectory, combat like activity, but behave.
It behaves like a disguise. Brightness changes, ablation changes you
know that don't track with its rotation outgassing is inconsistent
with any known composition. It's it's weird in the unknown

(01:23:34):
ice species way. It is weird, you know, And you
know this this object is behaving like it has an
internal script and NASA issues minimal commentary, mostly bloiler plates,
stuff papers, installed SETI not a fucking word, not even
were monitoring developments.

Speaker 8 (01:23:55):
It's one thing for SETI to be quiet on obvious
all the arms, like I truly believe Omama was. That
was in my mind of false alarm. So I understand
SETI being quiet on that. It's another for SETI to
be siglent when the universe is settling peppering the Solar

(01:24:15):
System with interstellar to prene grantitede. It has been doing
that probably for a while, but we're now able to
confirm this. And I might touch on a little bit
of that and Act four. But we have three objects
in a row, all breaking different rules and and for
those unaware, technically coming from three different locations, and the

(01:24:36):
organization found it on listening to the universe. I don't
want to say they're refusing to acknowledge any of them,
but they're sure are keeping quiet. And this isn't scientific caution.
That's paralysis.

Speaker 7 (01:24:54):
Yeah, you know it's behind closed doors. When the shots
again describing things with this new term interstellar transience, you know,
a phrase design to be technically accurate while avoiding the
implication of technology. The wording matters is scientist. When scientists
coined euphemism. It's because they're uncomfortable with the natural one.

(01:25:17):
You know, nobody robes, but data keeps nudging it closer
to the possibility, especially with them one and M two.
You know, I am one a M two. The mythic
parallel here is almost too clean. Ancient color cultures used
to tell stories of sky messengers arrived on the nouns,
moved with intent, and vanished before explanations could catch up.

(01:25:39):
Comments were taking his own ends. It just you know
things you know, not because they were supernatural, but because
they were disruptive. You know, something that breaks the rhythm
of the heavens becomes a message by default. Mal Mao,
I am one and two Atlas they followed the same
article pattern. And we get really nervous when things come

(01:26:01):
off the ecliptic. That's what Star Trek has ruined us
to think that everything is linear. So off the the elliptic,
we were just like, holy shit, what the fuck is this?
But it's like these sudden arrivals that tilt the world
a few degrees off its axis.

Speaker 8 (01:26:18):
Seti's nowhere to be found, and and what I what
I find fascinating relating back to SETI is as more
of these. God, I hate using this word, but it's
accurate visitors, because I don't know about you. I go
back to the TV show me when I hear visitors.

(01:26:39):
Something is becoming clear. With all the technology that we have,
the solar system looks less like the empty real estate
that we used to believe it to be and turning
into more of a crossroads. It's all of a sudden,
it's that place where objects pass through, Like we don't

(01:27:00):
have a fence, so the kids are using our back
backyard to cut well, you know, from their way from
the school back to their owns. That in itself is
not necessarily destabilizing. But for a field such as SETI
that's spent half a century exploring radio signals, the idea

(01:27:23):
that physical artifacts might be drifting through that backyard is
almost too much to metabolize it. What it shifts it from,
you know, listening to the narrative to intercepting. I don't
get it, because what really makes us all more unnerving
is how certain institutions respond to each arrival. You have

(01:27:49):
things like NASA. Admittedly, with some of the budget talk,
some of it makes sense. I don't you know. Once again,
I try to be fair, try to be accurate. So
while NASA is retreating, I can underst and especially the
last one is it thirty some days or so? But
you have things like the Department of Defense ducking fasteries
reclassify it. Reuben is asking you kind of like, ah, sorry,

(01:28:12):
we're down for this, and SETI is absolutely pretending nothing happened.

Speaker 7 (01:28:24):
Yeah, And you know, and to Delandy's point in the chat,
you know, it's you know, especially when you get like,
you know, NASA and d O d and fast you know,
you know where were they just immediately reclassify you Yeah, dodge,
dodge and dive. You know, at least when everybody is saying,
can't be, Lobe's assisting, well, it could be.

Speaker 8 (01:28:44):
Yeah, And and that is another point. That's another point
I want to give lib credit for he is asking
the questions, but he is asking the questions in my
mind that SETI used.

Speaker 7 (01:28:55):
To what and SETI should be. And that's where I mean.
I hate the way Lobe does ship, yes, but I
will give him credit in the fact that I'm drawing
the blank. I'm drawing this whole show, and you think
I would have put it in the notes, But It
didn't occur to me until we started talking about sty
and everything. SETI had a mouthpiece, they had a dude.

(01:29:17):
They would trot out all the time on Coast. You'd
be on you know, the spiritual you know, professor of
the show Coast Coast Coast a mull time.

Speaker 8 (01:29:28):
Yes, and you know.

Speaker 7 (01:29:29):
Exactly who I'm talking about. He would be the SETI guy.
And anytime something weird like U mau mauth m one,
you know, I am one, I am two at everyone else,
he would be the guy that would bring out he's
fucking nowhere.

Speaker 8 (01:29:43):
He's still alive, right, And I'm sorry, Harvard Astrophysicist doesn't
hold the same weight as it used to. We've seen
people who've gone the Harvard and allegedly graduate. It doesn't
hold the same water it used to.

Speaker 7 (01:30:00):
So if I gave the help, if I gave you
my word as a Spaniard, No, I've known too many.

Speaker 8 (01:30:05):
Spaniards yet, right right, you know when when? And I
am going to tie it in when we first introduced
Bill Nye the science guy, to the world, and then
we heard the clusterfuck that is Neil de grasse Tyson speak.
Now we're on the Abby Low the the the trilogy

(01:30:27):
of I don't care if you make good points. Even
when you make good points, I'm going to quit listening
has been reached and at least in my opinion, But
that doesn't mean, you know, like I, I, as many
in everyone knows, I hate NDT, but I give him
the utmost respect of all things on the calendar. On

(01:30:51):
his stance on the calendar A, D and DC, he
still does it because he believes the Catholics who invented
the Gregorian calendar got it's so perfect that he respects it.
So I can hate the individual but still respect the
points they make.

Speaker 7 (01:31:07):
Well, right, And that's the same thing, you know I
talk about. You know, I do like Mitchell Kaku. Yeah,
but the fact of the matter is that he has
moved from astrophysicist to futurists and still clings to string
theory like grim Death. Yeah, you know, it's and that's
where I look at Lobe. Lobe is Lobe is more

(01:31:28):
cocku than Tyson. Yes, and I hate Tyson too, But
the fact is the one thing with Tyson, he is
the wet blanket. But when he's in his wheelhouse, oh yeah,
it's mostly right. It's when he steps out his wheelhouse
and he's an insufferable twat, But when he's in his wheelhouse,
he's pretty good, as much as it pains me to

(01:31:52):
say that.

Speaker 8 (01:31:52):
And then he's a good showman on this subject.

Speaker 7 (01:31:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And Lobe is like that too. It's a
it's I I respect him. I wish he didn't have
I wish he didn't have the fervor of Richard C. Hoagland.

Speaker 8 (01:32:07):
Yeah, an N. D. T or Abby Lobe would do
amazing things as a spokesperson of SETI.

Speaker 7 (01:32:14):
Absolutely they'd be great. Yeah, but the thing is that
they're they're just out there wilding. Yes, holy shit, we
slammed the bottom of that hour pretty quick.

Speaker 8 (01:32:24):
Yeah, that might have been my fault. Sorry, no, no,
it's I was. You know, there's two of us, and
I might have opinions.

Speaker 7 (01:32:34):
Yeah, I have thoughts. So we're gonna take a break
right now. Thank you all for joining us, all ship,
almost seven hundred of you. We're gonna we're gonna take
a quick break once again. Refill your drink, go stretch
your stretch your legs, look at the sky, wonder where
the fuck SETI is. And we will be back in
five minutes.

Speaker 8 (01:32:55):
Uh, give or take?

Speaker 7 (01:32:56):
Yeah, all right, cool. This is Juxtaposition.

Speaker 6 (01:33:47):
The dark. Do you call him? Message space stayed quiet.

Speaker 5 (01:34:06):
Cold flas you don't s.

Speaker 9 (01:34:19):
Stone sound.

Speaker 6 (01:34:24):
Bull start no, Tian Steady you saw it, soulth.

Speaker 5 (01:35:15):
Just cheat him the brain cheap ron storm, sun.

Speaker 6 (01:35:40):
Ootcot, wishful gravity, I speak.

Speaker 5 (01:36:03):
So siss.

Speaker 11 (01:38:16):
Stone and sand.

Speaker 6 (01:38:22):
Post cards, never.

Speaker 7 (01:38:27):
Did, never will, and welcome back. This is Juck's position.

(01:39:04):
I am your host tonight, Ordnance. J Packard, attorney at law.
Joining me is the resident alien from Alpha Centurion, a
cosmic bard Jeff Three bangers Tonight, my bird.

Speaker 8 (01:39:16):
Thank you, thank you. I'm getting pretty good at this
if I I know, I'm not normally bragging on myself,
but yeah, those I like those three.

Speaker 7 (01:39:26):
You know, I've You've been showed me what your the
album your released has been doing. And it's gonna get
to the point where you're gonna have to make a
compilations of Juxtaposition season one, season two, season three for
your own music too.

Speaker 8 (01:39:40):
Once I get the password again for our store, I
can release it digitally. Will be good. But yeah, I
just looked up my album that I put out right
before we go, the same day that we did the
play I've had one hundred and thirty thousand listens.

Speaker 7 (01:39:57):
To That's fucking amazing. That's that's fantastic. I know you've
got a lot of use of it in TikTok videos too.

Speaker 8 (01:40:06):
Yes, And in the last week Apple Music, I I've
seen a massive increase into there. So now I'm scared
because I would normally see one or two and I
yesterday I had one hundred listens on Apple Music. So
so is promoting it?

Speaker 7 (01:40:24):
Yeah, the word is getting spread out there somewhere, and
that's fucking amazing. Did you think you'd be there two
years ago, three years now?

Speaker 11 (01:40:32):
No?

Speaker 7 (01:40:33):
Did you think you'd be here when you were just
swear counter on fu Bar?

Speaker 5 (01:40:37):
No?

Speaker 8 (01:40:38):
No, you know how we normally say blame Ordy my
whole existence on tailor or in we can blame one.

Speaker 7 (01:40:44):
Fo Yeah, I mean for those going on the way
back machine. When Sam and I had fu Bar, Jeff
was hanging out in the name.

Speaker 8 (01:40:55):
That's a name I've not heard since.

Speaker 7 (01:40:59):
That's a name I loved a long time. Uh Ye,
Wood and I would get into swearing contest inadvertently, and
one time we actually did it for charity for Saint
Jude's and Jeff was the residential swear counter, and then
we had him as a guest on the show once
and the bug took, which is what happened with me?
Who had me as a guest on the show once?
And then here I am? Yeah, different podcasts, I'm on.

Speaker 11 (01:41:23):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:41:24):
It was.

Speaker 8 (01:41:26):
The Thanksgiving episode that I was one and I remember
I have the unique uh I claimed the fame. I
guess to getting the artist formerly known as Beaker to
swear on a podcast. I know you am. I supposed

(01:41:49):
to follow that.

Speaker 7 (01:41:51):
Yeah, another claim to fame. We hear him here on
Calor and is remember the heavy days of two years
ago when and Aggie would never drop an F bomb? Now, yes,
now she's reading porn on Spirited Right, Hey Erotica? Not sorry,

(01:42:11):
sorry you hadn't written form it to erotica.

Speaker 8 (01:42:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:42:15):
So, if you're just joining us for the last segment
of the show tonight, where the hell you been? We
have been talking what happened to SETI, why did they
go silent? And in segment three we laid out the
evidence of things that they should have been the loudest about.
In this last segment, we're going to talk about the
consequences of it the part where everyone realizes that the

(01:42:36):
silence isn't by accident. It's not a budget cut, and
it's not generational shift. It's a policy. It's a posture.
A decision was made somewhere above the level where scientists
get to vote. Seti's quiet isn't the quiet of a retirement.
It's the quiet of being replaced. It's it's getting moved

(01:42:58):
down to the basement with your red swing line state work.

Speaker 5 (01:43:00):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:43:01):
And the unsettling question hanging over the field is why
that replacement happened so quickly, so cleanly, and with so
little resistance.

Speaker 8 (01:43:11):
Yeah, yeah, I I.

Speaker 5 (01:43:18):
Know.

Speaker 8 (01:43:18):
The simplest explanation for this is SETI is obsolete. Some
will say radio waves or the model T of Technico
signature hunting I call BS. You know, why shout into
the cosmic void when you know, we do have things
like James Webspace telescope that can read the atmospheric chemistry

(01:43:39):
of an exoplanet like a medical chart. But I like
to embrace one of your sayings, let's embrace the power
of hand here. Why not utilize both? You know, why
use aersibo style dishes when military satellites Seymour Sky more precision.
But what about the radio signatures? About yeah, the the

(01:44:02):
the part where they say said he didn't fail at
age out. I call push it on because radio waves
moved slower. Just because we've advanced doesn't mean the signal
that was sent forty years ago from forty light years
away that I will not name because I mean, granted,

(01:44:23):
mine's only four light years away. But if the radio signal,
you know, it was sent, say twenty light years away,
we haven't quite picked it up yet, why abandon it?
It could be in the same stage we were twenty
to forty years ago. I don't get it. I know,
it's a companying version of bedtime story that wraps everything

(01:44:43):
in the inevitability.

Speaker 11 (01:44:45):
I just.

Speaker 8 (01:44:47):
I just don't get it.

Speaker 7 (01:44:49):
Well. And you know, the thing with radioways you can
say that that's you know, the cosmic contagion. You know,
it's the uh, the measles and months of every you
know type heuro civilization where they you know, they bleed
out a whole bunch of RF and then they weren't
shut up. But the thing is is that with all
the extra planets, the fact that oh, you know, radio
radio tele telescopes are obsolete, at least.

Speaker 8 (01:45:13):
In that matter.

Speaker 7 (01:45:14):
I'm sorry, But with JWST finding you know, Earth like planets,
near Earth like planets, hot Earth, shit like that on
a daily basis, this isn't a whole sky survey anymore.
This is giving you a targeted region to look for
propagating signals in the kind of signals that only SETI

(01:45:37):
had the infrastructure to find.

Speaker 8 (01:45:40):
And here's what frustrates me as a quote unquote alien
from another planet. The part that pisses me off about
how we approach this and I'm seeing it possibly with SETI,
depending on why did they go quiet is the assumption

(01:46:03):
that other civilizations other planets are at the same level
or above us, without continuing the fact to understand that
any message we receive from Alpha Centauri is four years
in the making. We are constantly four years behind from

(01:46:25):
my home planet. We we love to look to the future,
but we can't ignore the fact that time exists, that
this is a golden place for SETI to exist in.
And I know the one of the explanations is, you

(01:46:47):
know a SETI has become politically declawed and I don't know,
because yes, NASA began formalizing a u UAP division and
the DoD acknowledged unknown injuries from deep space. I get
that the rules have changed today, but rules from another planet,

(01:47:08):
say fort light years away, haven't caught up to us.

Speaker 5 (01:47:13):
It.

Speaker 8 (01:47:15):
Yes, the military owns really sensitive sky facing instruments on Earth.
In the military. Well, they tend though to you know,
of scain from you know, open science. I just don't
set he has become a spectator in this when I
think there's still could have been a fighter in the ring.

Speaker 7 (01:47:41):
Yeah, and you know, the transition was almost invisible from
the outside.

Speaker 11 (01:47:45):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:47:45):
I talked about you know, new review committees, new interagency groups,
new reporting pathways, and suddenly, without ever being formally announced,
SETI lost access to the raw materials that once defined
its entire mission. Yeah, it's not because they weren't trusted
as scientists, but they weren't trusted as the gatekeepers of
public narrative. You know, SETI always spoke loudly military programs don't.

Speaker 8 (01:48:12):
No, they don't. And I know there's another explanation one
that well, let's face it, institutions fear perhaps more than
you know, aliens or conspiracies or secret ships and hangers
in area fifty one. It just requires one discovery, small, yes,

(01:48:33):
but perhaps consequential enough to scare the most important people unfortunately,
the funders, the boards, the governments tightening their grip it.
And it wouldn't need to be a say, a signal,
It wouldn't need to be a crap. It really could
be as mundane as that repeatable pattern that we saw

(01:48:56):
in the movie Contact. It creates that line, a spectrum
line that shouldn't exist. Maybe, maybe, just maybe, the James
Webspace Telescope had a basin like heat profile that was
dismissed publicly, but internally privately. It was flagged as you know,

(01:49:18):
OMG instead of wow er Maybe WTF may have been
a better acronym for it, something that hinted at intelligence
that most people would easily bypass so they didn't actually
have to confirm it something Yeah, I was just gonna say,

(01:49:40):
something that maybe scared the b Jesus out of those
in power, but didn't actually reveal to anything to anyone
because they didn't quite have a complete set of data.

Speaker 7 (01:49:54):
Well yeah, you know, discovery like that could absolutely freeze
the public facing research instantly, you know, not because panic,
but because of uncertainty. Institutions hate uncertainty more than they
hate danger, and the fastest way to restore control is
to silence the program's accustomed to speaking first.

Speaker 8 (01:50:11):
Yeah, and I know you and Rick have talked about
this a lot on this show and on your Wednesday
night show, But you look at something. Was that movie
Armageddon where the guy find the asteroid that was coming
to destroy Earth and named it after his wife, right,
And even in that movie they talked about how they

(01:50:32):
had to keep it as silent as possible, but they
admit it eventually the public entity would discover it and
word would get out. So you add in the weight
of Atlas to this entire equation, you have to wonder
if each interstellar visitor starts yielding more anomalies, more questions

(01:50:54):
than there are answers, with each anomaly now being met
with more and more caution. And maybe the kabash was
put out and going SETI stop it, you know, or
maybe it wasn't our people doing it, And each way
of a caution corresponds with SETI stepping that one inch
further away from that microphone from those telescopes almost as

(01:51:18):
you know, maybe maybe public information with SETI doesn't need
to exist.

Speaker 7 (01:51:27):
Yeah, you know there's a cultural current beneath all of
this too. Yeah, and this is what it's harder to measure,
but it's impossible to ignore. You know, humanity has always
chased meeting in the sky. Comments were omens, meteors or messages,
you know, strange lights were science. SETI wasn't just a
scientific program. It was a mythic venture framed in scientific language.

(01:51:48):
It carried the promise that something intelligent was out there. Yeah,
and we would know it, and we would know together.
And the communal hope is dangerous in a bureaucratic system.
You know. It can't be managed, it can't be contained,
It can only be shared and suppressed. And for the
first time in its existence, SETI feels suppressed, you know I.

(01:52:09):
I guess the deeper question is one that makes you
know the silence really disturbing, is that who benefits from
the silence? You know, governments benefit from information monopoly. Sure,
space agencies benefit from narrative control. Defense programs benefit from
you know, reduced public scrutiny. You but no one benefits

(01:52:30):
from telling the public the interstellar objects are behaving strangely
and maybe maybe artificial or that the fast movers are editing,
or it's the neighborhood in ways that defy the usual
playbook of mechanics. And that's that's the thing. It's not
a matter of who profits, is that nobody.

Speaker 8 (01:52:48):
Does, agreed and from us, right I? I know you're
inevident list er of I TC, and I truly do
appreciate that. Of course, I thank you. I love asking
this question as I start to wrap up, what if

(01:53:12):
so what if SETI was told to shut up? What
if you know these interstellar objects, admittedly from you know,
three or four different trajectories and locations, and or or
you know origination locations could be alien. I love the

(01:53:34):
idea of game theory this out. So if you will
bear with me for a moment, I want to present
a game theory of plausibility that will make me agree
with Abby Lobe. And I hate that the the idea
that these are the first you know, three or four

(01:53:55):
interstellar objects are obscene. These are just the first three
or four we've detected. And once again pointing back to
movies and entertainment, when when you look at Star Trek
next generation, first contact, it was the ability to go

(01:54:15):
to warp speed that caught the attention of Vulcans. Right,
what if in another solar system, another location, people are
sending pros with detectors to see if they the object
can be seen. It's not about first contact, it's not
about doing anything. It's about okay, where where you know

(01:54:38):
the bug planet is firing? Can be idiots on Earth
see it? That's all we need to know is yes,
And it's it's a a enable strategy. You know, you're
basically measuring out where your opponents and not saying they're
necessarily adversaries, but you're you know, they are your opponent

(01:55:00):
least on a technological Carl Sagan scale. How far have
these individuals advanced? Because as much as we look out
to them in the universe, using the Drake equation, you know,
the sheer number of civilizations that exist out there, what
we're doing to them? What's that you made it? Put

(01:55:24):
it up? Okay, So there's a Drake equation for any
math nerds in the in the group. So we have to,
I believe, logically assume that whatever we're doing to them,
they are doing to us. And if a big if
there are any civilizations that were advanced than us, they

(01:55:44):
would have already detected the signatures that the Jame Web
Space telescope has done. So if you were to plan out, okay,
how do we how do we understand? Okay, we're seeing
the chemical composites of our atmosphere that they have a
stage point eight technology planet. Are they going to survive

(01:56:07):
to stage one? We don't know. Well, let's send out
some interstellar devices and observatories to see if they're out
there and see what if they can detect us, and
the moment they detect it, we know they've reached maybe
point eighty five or point nine. It's a good way
to test where we are on our ability to identify

(01:56:28):
things outside of our own little blue ball.

Speaker 7 (01:56:34):
Yeah, there's another possibility in all this too, and it's
the one that most people avoid because it hits too
close to the bone. Maybe SETI silence is indifference, Maybe
it's dread. Yeah, maybe these people inside these institutions saw
something not definitive, not dramatic, but unsettling enough that they

(01:56:55):
realized that they were out of their depth. You know,
a repeating signal wouldn't do it, natural anomaly wouldn't do it,
but a.

Speaker 8 (01:57:02):
Pattern a pattern, And what's what's imply intention that and
what's worse is you and I are both avid computer gamers.
We love game theory. To hear one signal is interesting,
To hear forty in unison is frightening as fuck.

Speaker 7 (01:57:26):
Well, yeah, the thing was absolutely, I mean that's usually
when the dramatic music kicks in.

Speaker 8 (01:57:33):
Yes, let's upload a virus now, right.

Speaker 7 (01:57:37):
But you see, you know, like I was saying, patterns
imply intention and intention implies intelligence. Intelligent implies implies the
one thing humanity isn't ready to face, and that's that
we're not alone, yes, and we're not the ones initiating
the conversation to your point, you know, shooting one across
the bow, that's an asteroid, shooting one end of the planet.

(01:58:03):
That's yeah, that's well not even really an attack, it's
that's an attention getter. Yeah, yeah, that's and that's when
when you're looking at I am two and I am one,
that's your attention getter.

Speaker 8 (01:58:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:58:14):
Now we got thirty one outlets screech screeching in. Yeah,
acting just as weird as umau mau. Yes, yeah, this
may just be something about universal you know, interstellar objects
that you know, because when you think of another interstellar object. Yes,
we're four light years away from Alpha Centauri. That is

(01:58:34):
an eternity.

Speaker 8 (01:58:36):
Yes, for a rock.

Speaker 7 (01:58:38):
So it's picking up you know, it's getting cloaked in
dark matter. It's picking up all this ship along its way.
That will behave in ways that we don't understand because
it's not in our backyard.

Speaker 8 (01:58:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:58:51):
It's like when you're going down the street and you're like, wow,
what's that tree. I've never seen that tree before. I
like to have that in my backyard. Yeah, I don't
have that tree. You know that kind of thing. It's like, Wow,
that's a wholly different kind of foliage on that tree.
That's kind of cool. We just don't understand it. But
the implication is the fact is that when these and
like you said earlier, it's not that these are the
first three objects, it's the first three that we've noticed.

(01:59:14):
And to your point that, okay, do they start noticing
these things, Well, we shot one across the bow. They
didn't really. They freaked out about that for a second. Earlier,
we shot one into their atmosphere. They kind of didn't
react to that until later when they were forced to.
You know, let's let let's just track another one through

(01:59:37):
and see what they do see. And this is okay,
we got all the data from a mau mau as
it were rocketing through our system. Yes, we should again
a curious species. We should have been may this is
something that happens. Let's be ready for the next one.

Speaker 8 (01:59:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:59:54):
Land we can land probes on asteroids now, yeah. Yeah,
there's things that they're They're called quick movers for a reason.
They're moving really fucking fast.

Speaker 9 (02:00:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:00:06):
And what what horrifies me is as the skeptic will
often point out an eye reference that they came from
three or four different aspects, and people are too quick
to poo pooh that. And god, I'm gonna sound like

(02:00:29):
Abbelope here. Oh God, I hate this.

Speaker 7 (02:00:32):
But person, you know, I know.

Speaker 8 (02:00:37):
If you are, say a member of the United Nations
and twenty countries decide to say, hey, we knew and
we need to investigate country why because they may be
doing something. They're not all going to take the same
frontal attack and gathering information. They're going to attack it
from all sides. So it's kind of a fascinating thought,

(02:01:01):
at least to me, to try to piece together why
are they all coming from trajectories and going back to
star Trek again, I apologize, but this isn't manorama, so
I'm allowed to talk about it. What if there is
a union or federation of something that does go out
and search for civilizations and planets that are say above

(02:01:26):
a point seven on the Coral v scale, and you know,
maybe are above the J on the Sagan scale. That
Oh wait, we may need to start paying attention to.
Let's send out, you know, little test subjects. Let's send
out little you know, rubber ducks down the river to

(02:01:48):
see if Penny one notices, you know, just to see
if they notice it in the moment.

Speaker 7 (02:01:54):
Use to use a really obscure analogy. Let's throw a
coke Moodel out the window of the airplane.

Speaker 8 (02:02:01):
Yes, yes, and if you get that, yes, yes, God,
don't remind me I'm eight months older than you. But
you know it is. As this is a conspiratainment show,
we have to at least explore the possibility that these

(02:02:21):
are our tests that we're trying to see where we
stand among everyone else. And I know I reference a
lot on other shows when we talk about aliens that
the scariest thought in the entire universe is that we
are the most advanced civilization ever, which is absolutely horrifying

(02:02:43):
in my opinion. But if we ignore that and understand
that maybe there is civilizations one, two, or three, you
have to understand how how would you test that rat
and the maze. Would you let it smell the cheese
and rub the cheese across the maze to so it
easily finds it? Or would you just send a shot,

(02:03:05):
you know, the width above the board and put the
cheese down and see if the mouse can detect it.
There is a possibility. Things like umamau at list I
AM one and two are kind of that at that
test for us, and it's part of that actually makes
me excited that they could.

Speaker 7 (02:03:25):
Get But what's bringing the show to a close. What's
disturbing about that is while you and I are excited
about umam mau, I AM one and two and thirty
one out lists set, he isn't yes.

Speaker 8 (02:03:45):
And the question remains, and that's the one thing.

Speaker 7 (02:03:48):
We have to keep coming back to is why are
they not interested because they don't get to play with
the toys anymore and they're pouting? Or are they not
interested because they have been told not to be?

Speaker 8 (02:04:03):
I want to reference a juxposition from God. I think
I want to say two maybe two and a half
years ago. All right, why did we not go back
to the moon because we were told not to? This
is the exact same behavior that SETI is now demonstrating, right, and.

Speaker 7 (02:04:25):
For the old show, that is the question is it's
not that you know, we didn't go back to the
moon because we couldn't. We didn't go back to the
moon because we were told not to. Nobody got the
bored And that's the thing, the same thing with this
Nobody is bored with space. If that was the case,
then SpaceX wouldn't get a million views on X every
time that they want no no I. So nobody is

(02:04:49):
bored with space, nobody is bored with thirty one Atlas.
Nobody is, but SETI is. And I think that's the
most damning thing about it is that you have to
ask why. And that's the one answer we don't have tonight.

Speaker 8 (02:05:08):
Agreed, And that's that is perhaps the most horrifying aspect
of this show is there is no answer to that
question of why, and it leads to speculation. It leads
to so much opening of what could be the reasons

(02:05:29):
and and all of them, unfortunately make sense of the
possibilities and the fact that one impossibility is they were
told to shut down or shut up as being a
valid explanation is I think what makes it interesting.

Speaker 7 (02:05:46):
Right, And that's because their silence was quick and it
was deafening. Yeah, I guess that brings us to the end. Jeff,
Where can we find you this week?

Speaker 11 (02:06:02):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (02:06:02):
Same place. You can find me tomorrow with you at
six pm Eastern Time with Vincent Charles Project, and ironically enough,
at eight o'clock I'll be doing my space and science
show Lost Wonder. Then I am taking a long long break.

Speaker 7 (02:06:21):
How about your safe are you?

Speaker 8 (02:06:24):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (02:06:25):
Excellent? Well that's what you think now wait till later,
right I say that, And as we can find you
as a cosmic bart on.

Speaker 8 (02:06:35):
Ex Twitter, whatever you want to call it, Yes, right
with me? And I guess well, I guess I should say.
And you can find me on all music and streaming
as a cosmic Bart as well for any of my
songs in my album.

Speaker 7 (02:06:48):
Yes, definitely, he's on I know, I know for a
fact he's on Spotify, Like you said, he's on Apple,
and yeah, he's starting to get all over the place.
He's like Elvis. He's going to be opening up a
pigli legally in Dayton soon.

Speaker 8 (02:07:00):
Yeah, maybe on another planet with the unusual beast.

Speaker 7 (02:07:04):
That too, so hey for me. You can find me
as Ordnance Packard on Twitter. Surprising I know I still
have that account. You can find me tomorrow on the
free aforementioned Vincent Charles Project at three pm Pacific. You
can find me not this week on manoranicas they are
doing a comic book writers. You can find me Wednesday

(02:07:25):
on Rick and Ordy. If Rick is coming back this
week and I'm not on it's not a culture shift week,
so that'll be it for me the rest of the week.
I'm choking myself out here. I want to thank all
almost what nine hundred of you listening tonight. Yes, fantastic.
You guys are awesome. I don't know what to do

(02:07:47):
with myself. I am beside myself. Thank you very much,
have a wonderful evening, your great weekend, and we will
see you in two weeks on Juxtaposition