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