ET is probably out there get ready Seth Shostak

was easy out there well I work at the

SETI Institute that’s almost my name

SETI search for extraterrestrial

intelligence in other words I look for

aliens and when I tell people that at a

cocktail party they usually look at me

with a mildly incredulous look on their

face I try to keep my own face somewhat

dispassionate now a lot of people think

that this is kind of idealistic

ridiculous maybe even hopeless but I

just want to talk to you a little bit

about why I think that the job I have is

actually a privilege okay and give you a

little bit of the motivation for my

getting into this line of work if that’s

what you call it this thing whoops

can we go back hello come in earth there

we go alright now this is the Owens

Valley radio Observatory behind this

year in Nevada’s and in 1968 I was

working there collecting data for my

thesis now it’s kind of lonely it’s kind

of tedious is collecting data so I would

amuse myself by taking photos at night

of the telescope’s or even of myself

because you know it at night I would be

the only hominid within about 30 miles

so here are pictures of myself

the observatory had just acquired a new

book written by a Russian cosmologists

by the name of Joseph Schillaci and then

expanded and translated and edited by a

little-known Cornell astronomer by name

of Carl Sagan and I remember reading

that book and at 3:00 in the morning of

reading this book and it was explaining

how the antennas I was using to measure

the dispense of galaxies could also be

used to communicate to send bits of

information from one star system to

another now three o’clock in the morning

when you’re all alone haven’t had much

sleep that was a very romantic idea but

it was that idea the fact that you could

in fact prove that there’s somebody out

there just using the same technology

that appealed to me so much that 20

years later I took a job at the SETI

Institute now I have to say that my

memory is notoriously porous and I’ve

often wondered whether there was any

truth in this story it was just you know

miss remembering something

but I recently just blew up this old

negative of mine and sure enough there

you can see the Schloss key and sagan

book under

that analog calculating device so it’s

true all right now the idea for doing

this it wasn’t very old at the time that

I made that photo the idea dates from

1961 a young astronomer by the name of

Frank Drake used this antenna in West

Virginia pointed it at a couple of

nearby stars in the hopes of

eavesdropping on et now Frank didn’t

hear anything actually he did but it

turned out to be the US Air Force which

doesn’t count as extraterrestrial

intelligence but Drake’s idea here

became very popular because it was very

appealing I’ll get back to that and on

the basis of this experiment which you

didn’t didn’t succeed we have been doing

study ever since not continuously but

ever since we still haven’t heard

anything we still haven’t heard anything

in fact we don’t know about any life

beyond Earth but I’m going to suggest to

you that that’s going to change rather

soon and the part of the reason in fact

the majority of the reason why I think

that’s going to change it’s that the

equipment’s getting better this is the

Allen telescope array about 350 miles

from whatever seat you’re in right now

this is something that we’re using today

to search for et and the electronics

have gotten very much better - this is

Frank Drake’s electronics in 1960 this

is the Allen telescope array electronics

today some pundit with too much time on

his hands has reckoned that the new

experiments are approximately a hundred

trillion times better than they were in

1960 hundred trillion times better

that’s a degree of an improvement that

would look good on your report card okay

but something that’s not appreciated by

the public is in fact that the

experiment continues to get better and

consequently tends to get faster this

little plot and every time you show a

plot you lose ten percent of the

audience I have 12 of these but whatever

what I plotted here is just some metric

that shows how fast we’re searching in

other words we’re looking for a needle

in a haystack we know how big the

haystack is it’s the galaxy but we’re

going through the haystack no longer

with the teaspoon but with a skip loader

because of this increase in speed in

fact those of you who are still

conscious and mathematically you know

competent will note that this is a

semi-log plot in other words the rate of

increase is exponential it’s

exponentially improving now exponential

is an overworked word you hear it on the

media

all the time they don’t really know what

exponential means but this is

exponential in fact it’s doubling every

18 months and of course every

card-carrying member of the digerati

knows that that’s Moore’s law so this

means that over the course of the next

2,000 years we’ll be able to look at a

million star systems a million star

systems looking for signals that would

prove somebody’s out there well a

million star systems is that interesting

I mean how many of those star systems

have planets and in fact sorry we didn’t

know the answer to that even as recently

as fifteen years ago and in fact we

really didn’t know it even as recently

as six months ago but now we do recent

results suggest that virtually every

star has planets and more than one

they’re like you know kittens you get no

you get a litter you don’t get one

kitten you get a bunch okay so in fact

this is a pretty accurate estimate of

the number of planets in our galaxy just

in our galaxy

okay and I remind the non astronomy

majors among you that our galaxy is only

one of a hundred billion that we can see

with our telescopes that’s a lot of real

estate but of course most of these

planets are going to be kind of

worthless like you know mercury or

Neptune Neptune is probably not very big

in your life okay so the question is

what fraction of these planets are

actually suitable for life we don’t know

the answer to that either but we will

learn that answer this year thanks to

the NASA’s Kepler space telescope and in

fact the smart money which is to say the

people who work on this project the

smart money is suggesting that the

fraction of planets that might be

suitable for life is maybe one in a

thousand one in a hundred something like

that well even taking the the

pessimistic estimate that it’s one in a

thousand that means that there are at

least a billion cousins of the earth

just in our own galaxy okay

now I’ve given you a lot of numbers here

but they’re mostly big numbers okay so

you know keep that in mind there’s

plenty of real estate plenty of real

estate in the universe and if we’re the

only bit of real estate in which there’s

some interesting occupants that makes

you a miracle I know you like to think

you’re a miracle but if you do science

you learn rather quickly that every time

you think you’re a miracle you’re wrong

so probably not the case all right so

the bottom line is this because of the

increase in speed

and because of the vast amount of

habitable real estate in the cosmos I

figure we’re gonna pick up a signal

within two dozen years and I feel

strongly enough about that to make a bet

with you either we’re gonna find et in

the next two dozen years or I’ll buy you

a cup of coffee okay so that’s not so

bad I mean even with two dozen years you

open up your brows and there’s news of a

signal or you know you get a cup of

coffee now

let me tell you about some aspect of

this that people don’t think about and

that is what what happens suppose that

you know the what I say is true I mean

who knows but suppose it happens suppose

sometime in the next two dozen years we

pick up a faint line that tells us we

have some cosmic company what is the

effect what’s the consequence now I

might be at ground zero for this I

happen to know what the consequence for

me would be because we’ve had false

alarms this is 1997 it’s a photo I made

it about three o’clock in the morning in

Mountain View here when we were watching

the computer monitors because we picked

up a signal that we thought this is the

real deal all right and I kept waiting

for the men in black to show up right I

kept waiting for yeah I kept waiting for

my mom to call somebody to call the

government to call nobody called nobody

called I was so nervous that I couldn’t

sit down I just wandered around taking

photos like this one just for something

to do well at 9:30 in the morning with

my head down on my desk cause it

obviously hadn’t slept all night the

phone rings and it’s the New York Times

and I think there’s a lesson in that and

that lesson is that if we pick up the

signal the media the media will be on it

faster than a weasel on ball bearings

it’s gonna be fast okay

you can be sure that no secrecy okay

that’s what happens to me it kind of

ruins my whole whole week because

whatever I’ve got planned that week kind

of out the window but what about you

what’s it gonna do to you and the answer

is we don’t know the answer we don’t

know what that’s gonna do to you’re not

in the long term and not even very much

in the short term I mean that would be a

bit like asking Chris Columbus in 1491

hey Chris you know what happens if it

turns out that there’s a continent

between here and Japan where you’re

sailing to what will be the consequences

for Humanity if that turns out to be the

case I think Chris probably would offer

you some some answer that you might not

have understood but it probably wouldn’t

have been right and I think that to

predict

what finding et is going to mean we

can’t predict that either but here a

couple of things I can say to begin with

it’s going to be a society that’s away

in advance of our own you’re not gonna

hear from alien Neanderthals they’re not

building transmitters they’re gonna be

ahead of us maybe by a few thousand

years maybe by a few million years but

substantially ahead of us and that means

if you can understand anything that

they’re going to say then you might be

able to short-circuit history by getting

information from a society that’s way

beyond our own now you might find out a

bit hyperbolic and maybe it is but

nonetheless it’s conceivable that this

will happen in you know you could

consider this like I don’t know giving

Julius Caesar English lessons in the key

to the Library of Congress it would

change his day all right that’s one

thing another thing that’s for sure

going to happen is that it will

calibrate us we will know that we’re not

that miracle right there were just

another duck in a row we’re not the only

kids on the block and I think that

that’s philosophically a very profound

thing to learn we’re not a miracle okay

the third thing that it might tell you

is somewhat vague but I think

interesting and important and that is if

you find a signal coming from a more

advanced society because they will be

that will tell you something about our

own possibilities that we’re not

inevitably doomed to self-destruction

because they survived their technology

we could do it too normally when you

look out into the universe you’re

looking back in time right that’s that’s

interesting to cosmologists but in this

sense you actually can look into the

future hazily but you can look into the

future so those are all the sorts of

things that would come from a detection

now let me talk a little bit about

something that happens even in the

meantime and that is SETI I think is

important because it’s exploration and

it’s not only exploration its

comprehensible exploration now I gotta

tell you I’m I’m you know always reading

books about explorers I find exploration

very interesting Arctic exploration you

know people like Magellan almonds and

Shackleton you see Franklin down there

Scott all these guys it’s really nifty

exploration they’re just doing it

because they want to explore it and you

might say oh that’s kind of a frivolous

opportunity but that’s not frivolous

that’s not a frivolous activity

because let me think of ants you know

most ants are programmed to follow one

another along enough in a long line but

they’re couple ants maybe 1% of those

ants that are what they call pioneer

ants and they’re the ones that wander

off they’re the ones you find on the

kitchen countertop you get got to get

them with your thumb before they find

their sugar or something okay but those

ants even though most of them get wiped

out those ants are the ones that are

essential to the survival of the hive so

exploration is important I also think

that exploration is important in terms

of being able to address what I think is

a critical lack in our society and

that’s the lack of science literacy the

lack of the ability to even understand

science now look a lot has been written

about the you know the plural state of

science literacy in this country right

you’ve heard about it well here’s one

example in fact polls taken this is this

poll was taken 10 years ago it shows

like I’m roughly 1/3 of the public

thinks that the aliens are not only out

there we’re looking for them out there

but they’re here right sailing the skies

and their saucers and occasionally

abducting people for experiments their

parents wouldn’t approve of well that

would be interesting if it was true in

job security for me but I don’t think

the evidence is very good that’s more

you know sad and significant but there

are other things that people believe

that are significant like the efficacy

of homeopathy or that evolution is just

you know sort of a crazy idea by

scientists without any legs or you know

evolution they all that sort of thing

our global warming these sorts of ideas

don’t really have any validity that you

can’t trust the scientists now we got to

solve that problem because that’s a

critically important problem and you you

you might say well ok how are we gonna

solve that problem with SETI well let me

suggest to you that SETI obviously can’t

solve the problem but it can address the

problem it can address the problem by

getting young people interested in

science

look science is hard it has a reputation

of being hard and the facts are it is

hard and that’s the result of 400 years

of science right I mean in the 18th

century in the 18th century you could

become an expert on any field of science

in an afternoon by going to a library if

you could find a library right in the

19th century if you had a basement lab

you could make major scientific

discoveries in your own home right

because it was all this science just

lying around waiting for somebody to

pick it up well that’s not true anymore

today you got to spend years in grad

school in postdoc positions just to

figure out what the important questions

are it’s hard there’s no doubt about it

and in fact here’s an example the Higgs

boson finding the Higgs boson ask the

next 10 people you see on the streets

hey do you think it’s worthwhile to

spend billions of Swiss francs looking

for the Higgs boson I bet the answer

you’re gonna get is well I don’t know

what the Higgs boson is and I don’t know

if it’s important and probably most of

the people wouldn’t even know the value

of a Swiss franc okay and yet we’re

spending billions of Swiss francs on

this problem okay so that doesn’t get

people interest in science because they

can’t comprehend what it’s about

SETI on the other hand is really simple

we’re gonna use these big antennas we’re

gonna try and eavesdrop on signals

everybody can understand that yes

technologically it’s very sophisticated

but everybody gets the idea so that’s

one thing the other thing is it’s

exciting science it’s exciting because

we’re naturally interested in other

intelligent beings and I think that’s

part of our hardwiring I mean we’re

hardwired to be interested in

beings that might be if you will

competitors or if you’re the romantic

sort possibly even mates okay

this is analogous to our interest in

things that have big teeth right very

interesting things that have big teeth

you can see the evolutionary value of

that and you can also see the practical

consequences by watching watching Animal

Planet you notice they make they make

very few programs about gerbils it’s

mostly about things that have big teeth

okay

so we’re interested in these sorts of

things right and not just us it’s it’s

it’s also kids this allows you to pay it

forward by using this subject as a hook

to science because SETI involves all

kinds of science obviously biology

obviously astronomy but also geology

also chemistry various scientific

disciplines all can be presented in the

guise of we’re looking for et so to me

this is this is interesting and

important and in fact it’s my policy

even though I give a lot of talks to

adults you give talks to adults in two

days later they’re back where they were

but if you give talks to kids you know

one in 50 of them some light bulb goes

off and and I think gee I’d never

thought

that and then think oh you know read a

book or a magazine or whatever they get

interested in something now it’s my

theory supported only by anecdotal

personal anecdotal evidence but

nonetheless that kids get interested in

something between the ages of 8 and 11

you got to get him there so alright give

talks adults that’s fine but I try and

make 10% of the talks that I give try

and make those four kids okay I remember

when a guy came to our high school

actually Rose actually my junior high

school I was in sixth grade and he gave

some talk all I remember from it was one

word electronics there’s like Dustin

Hoffman in the Graduate right when he

said plastics whatever that means

plastics all right I think I sell

electronics I don’t remember anything

else in fact I don’t remember anything

that my sixth grade teacher said all

year but I remember electronics and so I

got interested in electronics and you

know I got a study to get my hand why

since I was wiring up stuff here I am at

about 15 or something doing that sort of

stuff okay that had a big effect on me

so that’s my point that you can have a

big effect on these kids

in fact this reminds me I don’t know a

couple years ago I gave a talk at a

school in Palo Alto where there were

about a dozen 11 year olds that come to

this talk I’ve been brought in to talk

to these kids for an hour 11-year olds

they’re all sitting in a little

semicircle looking up at me with big

eyes and I started there was a

whiteboard behind me and I started off

by writing a one with 22 zeros after it

and I said I’d now look the number of

stars in the visible universe and this

number is so big there’s not even a name

for it okay and one of these kids shot

up his hand and he said watch e there is

a name for it it’s a sex toy a Quadro

Hexter something or other right now that

kid was wrong by four or four orders of

magnitude but there was no doubt about

it these kids were smart okay so I

stopped giving the lecture all they

wanted to do was ask questions in fact

my my last comments to these kids at the

end I said you know you kids are smarter

than the people I work with now

they didn’t even care about that what

they wanted what they wanted was my

email address so they could ask me more

questions so let me just say look my job

is a privilege because we’re in a

special time previous generations

couldn’t do this experiment at all right

in another generation down the line I

think we will have succeeded so to me it

is a privilege and when I look in the

mirror you know the facts are that I

really don’t see myself what I see is

the generation behind me these are some

kids from the Huff School fourth graders

talk there what two weeks ago something

like that I think that if you can

instill some interest in science and how

it works well that’s a payoff beyond

easy measure thank you very much