0:00

M Hey, everybody, Chuck here,

0:02

I saw a UFO last night. Actually

0:04

that's not true, but it would be a great story

0:06

if I were setting up this episode from March one, twelve,

0:09

How SETI works Search for

0:12

Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Welcome

0:19

to Stuff You Should Know, a production of

0:21

I Heart Radio.

0:28

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:30

Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck

0:33

Bryant, and this is Stuff

0:35

you should Know the podcast. Don't

0:37

get it confused. What

0:41

is that? What was that?

0:43

That was my instation?

0:45

That was burgess, Meredith. Okay,

0:48

thank you, that's pretty good. Thanks.

0:51

It's a good Burgess Meredith. Chuck, you're

0:55

in the mood for alien talk. Sure, this

0:57

is the second

1:00

time we've done something like this. Almost

1:02

a year later, right

1:04

at it? We did? Uh how UFOs work

1:06

live in Austin, Yeah, last March. So yeah,

1:09

I guess once a year we do aliens

1:11

aliens? Yea um.

1:13

But hey, before we get started, may I take a second.

1:16

Yeah, I want to just say special high

1:18

to my wife Umi, right,

1:24

who made me the happiest guy in

1:27

February. Yeah, I could

1:29

just call her on February when

1:32

we got married. Indeed, Yeah, any

1:35

dats Are you just gonna no, that's all all

1:37

right. I was just wanting ever, I wanted

1:39

to share my happiness with everybody out there. Very

1:41

well done, thank you very much. Hey

1:43

Umi, So let's get back to aliens.

1:46

Okay, yes, okay. So we

1:48

are doing this in honor of Are

1:50

We Alone? Month on Science Channel?

1:53

Right, So the month of March

1:55

is are We Alone? Month? And Science Channel Every

1:58

Tuesday, I believe at Tan is

2:00

having a premiere of, um

2:03

some new show that has something to do

2:05

with the search for extraterrestrial life.

2:08

Yeah, it's gonna be very cool. And I

2:10

mean there's some like all shows are gonna

2:13

be awesome, but there's some that are

2:15

clearly going to be really awesome,

2:17

like Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.

2:20

I mean that in the context

2:23

of an are We Alone? Month? Yeah,

2:25

it's big news. Also, um uh

2:27

the Alien Encounters with Nick

2:29

Sagan got to be related to Carl

2:33

Carl Pilkington, yes uh.

2:35

And then if you're in the mood for a contest,

2:38

what would a month be without one?

2:41

There is a set live contest

2:44

where the prize is to go visit cet no

2:46

Way, go to the California to the institute.

2:48

Yes, pretty sweet. Yes,

2:50

So this is all going on on Science Channel all

2:53

month long. And if you want more details watch

2:55

Science Channel pal yeah, or hit him up on Facebook.

2:57

I bet they have info there. Yeah. And

3:00

in honor of this month is very special

3:02

month, we are doing how study works,

3:05

which is an acronym study if you don't

3:07

know, for to search for

3:09

extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes,

3:11

and I joked before we did this, are we Alone?

3:14

Month will be followed by yes We're Alone Day

3:17

sort of a joke. But they haven't really

3:19

found a lot of stuff yet. Well,

3:21

I don't know. Let me let me give you an example of something.

3:25

Have you heard of the wild signal? Yeah, we talked about

3:27

this before we did when I think

3:29

it might have been one of the webcasts. It

3:32

definitely rang a bell that had your

3:35

stank on it. No,

3:37

we talked about the Yosemite

3:40

Sam signal. I know, but I think we talked about

3:42

a couple of years ago. Okay, well, old webcast,

3:45

let me tell you again. Let me refresh your memory, because you

3:47

clearly don't remember. August

3:49

fifty seven, a guy

3:51

who's now known as Dr Jerry

3:54

or Aman e h m A N I

3:56

keep wanting to call him ermine. Yeah he uh.

3:59

He was manning the Big Year

4:02

Radio telescope at Ohio State

4:04

University UM and

4:07

was analyzing some data from it, and so

4:10

basically saw, this is what it looks like.

4:12

It's a it's a bunch of numbers and letters.

4:14

It looks like the matrix scroll very

4:17

much. So, yes, Um. But

4:19

what that is is a

4:21

burst of radio

4:23

activity transmitted

4:26

on the one four, two oh point

4:28

four or five six mega hurts frequency

4:30

for seventy two seconds W A

4:33

L N right right

4:35

um. And it was

4:38

basically the closest thing we've

4:40

ever gotten to hard evidence

4:42

of a radio transmission from an alien

4:44

civilization. It meant

4:47

like all of the criteria that set he

4:49

follows, which will talk about later UM

4:51

for um radio

4:53

transmissions from intelligent life.

4:56

Right Um. The problem

4:58

is is after searching for for like fifty

5:01

times, specifically, it's never been

5:03

found again. And the reason

5:05

it's called the wow Um transmission

5:07

is because Jerry Ahman Um

5:10

circled it and wrote wow with an exclamation

5:12

point, and that's that's why it's called

5:14

that. So although since

5:17

that time, nothing else has come up in

5:20

that same area and we haven't had anything

5:22

even remotely close to it. Set

5:24

still continues, right, Yeah,

5:27

and CT is both a a

5:29

movement and a group of people.

5:32

It's an institute. Yeah,

5:34

well there's the SETI Institute and there's

5:36

just independent Set Operations.

5:39

Yeah. I mean you can use

5:41

SET as a would

5:43

that be an down because it

5:46

is a search? Yeah, yeah, you're right, just

5:48

a funky nown right, But let's

5:50

talk about it, Chuck, let's talk about set

5:53

the challenges that has. Uh.

5:55

Well, first of all, if you've seen the movie Contact I

5:57

have apparently it's not two

5:59

and accurate from the writer

6:02

of this article who was Freud

6:04

and Lake, wasn't it, He said that

6:06

that movie, if you want to watch that one, is

6:08

fairly accurate and on track. Well, it was

6:10

based on a book written by Carl Sagan and he

6:13

definitely knew his stuff. Yeah, he was

6:15

like, the Sagan Institute is one of the parts of CET

6:17

Institute, very nice or

6:19

the second Research Center, I think. So

6:23

go ahead, and you're saying, oh, well, so

6:27

let's talk a little bit about the origin of it. Um

6:29

SET came about in a time

6:32

when there was a large intellectual

6:34

push towards searching

6:36

for alien life. A lot of very very

6:38

smart people suddenly started

6:41

postulating that there's probably

6:44

other people out there. Yeah, there's gotta

6:46

be two guys, um

6:48

Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cony

6:53

I wrote wrote a paper in Nature and

6:57

they basically said, look, if

7:00

we look, we may very

7:02

well not find anything. But

7:04

if we don't look, we're definitely not going

7:06

to find anything. Point. And

7:09

that came at a time when a guy named Frank Drake,

7:11

an astrophysicist an astronomer,

7:14

was um trying to

7:17

start his own search, and he eventually

7:20

founded CET I think in nineteen sixty

7:23

founded the ct Institute or just

7:25

set said he well, he conducted

7:27

the first st search. Yeah,

7:30

Frank Drake did, and it was based on

7:32

something called the Drake equation, which

7:34

I find just utterly fascinating and refreshingly

7:38

understandable as far as like

7:40

theoretical math equations go. Yeah,

7:43

and and is the number of civilizations

7:45

in the Milky Way whose electromagnetic

7:48

emissions are detectable. So in equals

7:51

are times FP

7:53

times in A, times FL times five times

7:55

FC times L. And then there's the R

7:58

is the rate of formation of ours

8:00

over the lifetime of the galaxy. And that's anywhere

8:02

from like ten to forty a year. Yea stars

8:04

suitable for development of intelligent life.

8:07

That narrows it down. Um. Then there's

8:09

the fraction of those stars with planets.

8:13

Then there's the average number of

8:15

those planets that are Earth type,

8:17

meaning suitable for life as we understand

8:20

it. An, that's about

8:23

of the fifty of stars

8:25

with planets, but we're starting to whittle down

8:28

pretty quickly. Um. And then there's

8:30

the fraction of those planets where life develops

8:33

that's estimated at and as much

8:35

as a dent. And

8:37

then there's the fraction of life that develops intelligence.

8:40

So it's not just enough to be in am but you have

8:42

to be an amiba capable of

8:45

creating a radio. Right. Um,

8:48

that's pretty low as well, um about

8:50

ten percent um,

8:53

and then another ten percent as

8:55

the fraction of planets where intelligent life develops

8:57

technologies such as radio. Okay,

9:01

So you've got life and then

9:03

l intelligent life and

9:06

then technology, and

9:08

then you have the lifetime of that communicative

9:10

civilization in years. So

9:12

boom, multiply that on

9:14

out. You got your Drake equation and

9:16

you have as little as one as

9:19

much as billions, well

9:21

plus it's it's as

9:24

little as one or billions because it you

9:26

know those are it depends on what value

9:28

put in there, and everyone's gonna put in different values, So the

9:30

Drake equation is going to have a wide swath. Yes,

9:33

it makes sense. Um,

9:37

so you've got this. This is the framework. Then,

9:39

the Drake equation created by Frank Drake,

9:41

the founder of CT. This is the framework

9:45

that CD conducts its research

9:47

with. Like one of the things they do is try to figure

9:50

out exactly how many

9:52

stars out there have planets with

9:54

that are suitable for life. Um,

9:57

to really kind of plug in the best possible

10:00

data into the Drake equation and

10:02

to help them figure out where to look. Because

10:05

there's three main challenges for

10:07

SET that they face just as

10:09

a concept and an organization, and

10:13

they are, Um, you have

10:15

a really big sky out there, right,

10:18

you have a lot of frequencies

10:21

that could that. You have a lot of radio

10:23

frequencies, and um,

10:25

you have a limited amount of telescopes, not

10:29

much equipment. No, Because it's very expensively

10:32

and while CT is funded to a

10:34

large degree, it's not funded

10:36

to a large degree compared to like like when

10:38

it was part of NASA. I think it's only like one

10:41

percent of their budget. Even

10:43

still, that was like the most money cet

10:45

He has ever had. But they're they're pretty

10:47

well funded, the SETI Institute is. So as far as private

10:49

funding goes, they're doing okay. Yeah,

10:52

I mean they're nonprofit obviously, so they're not

10:54

getting rich, you know what I mean. No, they're they're kind of

10:56

hurting right now. All

10:58

thought they were doing all right. No, the

11:01

they also received federal funds and that's all

11:03

but dried up right now because of the economic

11:05

downturn. Yes, said, he's the first

11:07

to go, isn't it all right?

11:09

So you proposed the three problems. Um

11:13

here a couple of approaches for the large

11:15

sky problem. A

11:17

lot of area out there, so they have two approaches

11:19

there. The wide field search basically

11:22

casting a wide, non specific

11:24

net over uh, you

11:26

know, a low resolution over a

11:28

long period I'm sorry, a short period of

11:30

time over a wide area could

11:33

get you some nibbles if you were

11:35

fishing, let's say, but it's going to be difficult

11:37

to find out exactly like where this stuff is coming

11:39

from, right, Or a targeted

11:42

search, which is what my money would be on, which

11:44

are limited

11:47

to sun like stars

11:50

like they basically factor in more of Drake's equation

11:52

in this one, say, let's look at places where

11:54

we might find uh,

11:56

you know, target these things where we might find E. T. S.

12:00

UM. And they do both of

12:02

those depending They have various projects

12:04

going on ongoing UM.

12:07

And some are targeted, some are wide

12:09

field search. UM. So they're

12:11

kind of covering their bases as much as possible.

12:14

UM. The next challenge was you know

12:16

what frequency to listen for

12:19

to listen to you know, like it's not a radio

12:21

no, but even with a radio, even

12:24

with like a walkie talkie, Like if you've ever used

12:26

one of those, if you're not on

12:28

the right frequency, you are going to

12:30

miss everything that's being told to

12:32

you. So there's

12:35

like you said, it's not a radio dial. It doesn't go from

12:37

like eight eight point five all the

12:39

way to one or seven point five. They're billions

12:42

from alternative to country exactly. Um,

12:45

there are billions of radio frequencies

12:48

and they UM, I

12:50

mean, which one are you gonna listen to? You? You can listen

12:52

to them all, but again you're cycling

12:54

through them. Uh, You're not able to spend

12:57

a lot of time as much like the same

12:59

dilemma with the sky you have

13:01

with the radio. Frequencies plus are full of noise.

13:04

Yep, that's another problem occurring

13:07

stuff right. Um, But

13:09

there is a window in the radio

13:11

frequency that's called the water hole, which

13:14

is pretty cool. UM. It's a natural

13:17

place in the radio frequency spectrum.

13:19

UM. And by the way, radio is their

13:22

light waves. It's a type of light

13:24

wave UM, but they're very specific.

13:26

They exist on a specific frequency.

13:29

But UM, in this

13:31

the spectrum, the band, there's this

13:33

thing called the water hole UM, which

13:36

goes from the one to tend giga hurts

13:38

range and it has

13:41

very little UM natural

13:43

background noise, like very few things

13:46

you know broadcast on this frequency.

13:48

And the reason being, UM, they these

13:51

frequencies are caused by hydrogen atoms

13:53

and hydroxyl ions, both of which

13:56

are constituents of water, which is why it's called the

13:58

water hole. And they

14:00

suspect that for a couple of reasons,

14:02

alien civilizations would be aware of

14:04

this one, that

14:07

it's just so profoundly unique

14:09

in the radio spectrum that if you had any

14:11

kind of awareness of the radio spectrum,

14:13

you would stumble upon this, and that you would

14:16

intentionally broadcast in a low noise

14:18

frequency exactly because you want to be

14:20

heard. Yeah, I mean anybody who broadcast

14:23

on the radio wants to be heard, right um.

14:25

And then the other reason they think that alien civilizations

14:28

would know about it is because water, with

14:30

which it's associated um, is

14:33

considered a an essential

14:35

to life and therefore universal among

14:37

intelligent life. It's not geocentric. The

14:39

concept of water is so

14:42

aliens would be familiar with water and

14:44

would thus be familiar with the water hole in

14:46

the frequency spectrum as well, So

14:48

that this is probably where they're

14:50

putting most of their research

14:52

or their effort into this waterhole band

14:55

of frequencies. Yeah, I mean they search all over,

14:57

but pretty much all set operation

15:00

will search the water hole as

15:03

part of their problem, as part of their ops. Then

15:05

there's magical frequencies to like

15:07

basically, they're saying, like, where on this

15:09

band of billions of frequencies is

15:12

there some sort of universal pattern. And

15:14

one of the things that they figured out is prime numbers

15:16

might be a good place to look because prime

15:19

numbers are part of math and their universal

15:21

constant. So an advanced civilization

15:24

might be aware of prime numbers, and if they're trying to communicate

15:26

to another advanced civilization, they may

15:28

be broadcasting on prime number channels.

15:31

That's a magical frequency. I

15:33

wonder if they've searched pie the Pie station.

15:36

So so far we've got to We've

15:38

got two of the big

15:40

problems tackled. Yes, generally.

15:43

The third one is the most

15:45

down to earth problem. Yeah. No,

15:48

no equipment. Basically, these radio

15:50

telescopes are expensive to

15:52

build and so there's not a whole

15:54

lot of them. So they said,

15:56

you know, there's a few ways we can handle this. We can

15:59

UH conduct limited runs

16:02

on ones that are already out there, basically rent space

16:04

from other dudes. Uh.

16:07

We can conduct analysis of

16:09

data are already acquired by

16:11

other dudes, so like, hey, you've

16:13

been listening in on all these frequencies,

16:16

let us see your data and we'll just work from that. Or

16:18

we can build SETI dedicated

16:22

radio telescopes, which is clearly

16:24

the least popular because

16:26

it's so expensive and it's the

16:28

most popular but least feasible. Yeah, and

16:31

like the UM, like the

16:33

projects that they have ongoing for wide

16:35

target search UM or wide

16:38

field search or targeted search. They have different

16:40

projects dedicated different types of

16:42

radio use, like UM Project

16:44

Phoenix. UH rents time

16:47

at some of the better radio telescopes

16:50

around the world, Australia, Aricibo,

16:53

Yeah, in Puerto Rico, U. The

16:56

one in West Virginia, Green Bank, West

16:58

Virginia has a huge radio telescope. But that's

17:00

where the first city conference was held over

17:03

teen sixty, I believe. Yeah. Um.

17:05

And then there's the serendip project,

17:09

which piggybacks cracks me up

17:11

for some reason. Why serendip I don't

17:13

know, just because it's

17:15

short for serendipity. It sounds like your

17:18

friend Adam that shortens everything, like

17:20

he would say, yeah, we met up. It was a bit of serendip

17:22

Yeah, he would say that, total serendip

17:25

um. Yeah. So they

17:27

piggyback by basically saying like

17:29

hey, like you said, let me see your

17:32

dad, and once you're done with it, we want to go

17:34

over it too. Yeah. It's like, hey

17:36

man, it's like the hippie rob version of

17:39

Astronomy Boy. He had made an appearance in a while,

17:41

he just did. I didn't expect him to pop up in set

17:45

if he didn't pop up in Magic Mushrooms, you know. Uh

18:18

So Project serendip like you said, it takes

18:20

um, takes advantage of a lot of telescope

18:23

time, but they don't have the

18:25

control to say, hey, pointed over there, So

18:28

they have a lot of hours, but they're just basically

18:30

that's the wide search being cast.

18:33

And then you said, like the most desirable

18:35

one was having their own telescope.

18:37

Well, yeah, that'd be great, staid he figured out

18:40

something. Rather than making a

18:42

huge or paying for a huge radio

18:45

telescope. Um, they

18:47

figured out that they can take a bunch of backyard

18:50

satellite dishes, which I'm sure are really easy

18:52

to come by these days. Um,

18:54

you know the kind like from the eighties. Oh

18:57

yeah, put a bunch of those together. They're like eight

19:00

eat wide right. Yeah, you put a bunch

19:02

of those together and connect their signals using

19:04

a process called interferometry.

19:06

Nice, thank you dude, well done.

19:09

First try and uh, you

19:11

can basically simulate a

19:13

huge, large telescope for a fraction

19:15

of the cost. Yeah, it's like linking a network

19:17

of computers, which, um

19:20

is actually something also being done. We

19:22

might as well get into that the cet at

19:25

symbol at home project

19:28

and uh, that's actually the SETI

19:30

Institute, isn't it. Yeah, So

19:32

they decided that hey, instead of building

19:34

a couple of supercomputers to

19:36

analyze this data, because that's one of the big problems

19:38

is there's so much data. It's not like you can just plug

19:40

it into your laptop. But you can plug

19:43

a tiny chunk into a laptop and

19:45

network a bunch of laptops together to

19:47

do the power of the supercomputers. And that

19:50

is what they've done, and you can participate.

19:52

Yeah, it's pretty ingenious UM.

19:54

And there's there's other things that I think Seti

19:56

at home started it and now there's things like folding

19:58

at home really to UM simulate

20:01

protein folding for cancer research. Same

20:03

thing UM. And I'm

20:05

sure there's other ones that I didn't get a chance to look,

20:07

but Setty at home started it. Where you

20:10

it's a screen saver UM,

20:12

but it's also a program and while

20:14

it's running, it's it downloads

20:16

a chunk of UM data from

20:19

the air CBO radio telescope

20:22

and that's like your little assignment And it's like a hundred

20:25

second chunk maybe something like that. It doesn't

20:27

seem like much, but it takes like ten to twenty hours

20:29

for the normal UM computer

20:31

to process it. But like

20:33

you said, if it's if you have thousands of

20:36

computers doing this, you have a thousand

20:38

times the processing power. All of a sudden

20:40

for free. Pretty cool. Uh, And while

20:42

your computers analyzing it, it's making

20:44

notes of all this stuff using studies

20:47

algorithms, and then it uploads

20:49

the results to set and then downloads another

20:51

chunk for an analysis.

20:53

And dude, I bet this is a very popular thing

20:56

to do for stargazers,

21:00

for stargazing nerds of the world. There's a guy I

21:02

remember, um who was in Arizona

21:04

I think, and he uh was fired

21:07

from his job as like the i T head

21:10

for the Department of Education in this one community.

21:13

Um, because he he

21:15

booted, said he at home onto all

21:17

the computers without

21:19

asking. But I mean it's not a big

21:21

deal. It doesn't take that much processing power

21:24

and it just kind of runs in the background. Um.

21:27

Well, he was made a mockery of by

21:29

the local news like that he was fired

21:31

because of his search for aliens. Yeah

21:35

it was pretty bad. But yeah,

21:37

some poor guy got fired for that. Said

21:40

he at home got him fired.

21:43

I bet he got a job with STI or something,

21:45

though, I'm I don't bet that, you don't

21:47

think so they just

21:49

said sorry thanks anyway

21:51

pretty much. Um, well,

21:54

you talked about building your own and the alien

21:56

telescope array. I'm sorry the

21:58

Allen Telescope Array. Yeah. I kept

22:00

taking it like that until I found out it's named

22:02

after Paul Allen, the co founder of Microsoft,

22:05

who donated all of the money for it.

22:08

Well, that is still underway.

22:10

UM. As far as its construction, I think they

22:13

they were down for a little while because of a lack of funding,

22:15

and it's a twenty six million dollar

22:17

deal. But I think as of two

22:20

thousand eleven they were up

22:22

and running again and part of it

22:24

is complete to the extent I think where they

22:26

can use it for for things right,

22:28

But they're still not finished with them. No, they're not.

22:30

They have enough money to construct

22:33

it, but they didn't have enough money to run it, so

22:35

they have like a skeleton crew on it right

22:37

now. But it is operational. I think it is

22:40

UM. They're hoping that they're they're going to be

22:42

able to fund it by UM

22:44

releasing some time on it to the Air Force who

22:46

was interested in using it. They

22:49

should try a bake sale. I don't know, you

22:51

know, you know, it'll be a great day when schools

22:55

have all the funding they need and the Air

22:57

Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a stealth

22:59

bomber. That'll be the day, somebody should

23:01

put that on like a bump or stick or something that's

23:03

we could shorten it. But yeah, agreed,

23:07

Uh, should we mention

23:09

the Fermi paradox? Yes,

23:12

as good a time as any. I mean. One of the

23:14

things that happens to set is that

23:16

they're constantly pummeled by critics

23:19

and a lot of them cite the Fermi paradox

23:21

too. Well, here's what SETI Institute

23:23

says, because I dug into their

23:25

f a Q a little bit on

23:27

one of the questions is why do we think that there might

23:29

be life out there? Quote? And

23:32

SETI said, you should keep in mind that

23:34

we are one planet around

23:36

a very ordinary star, and they're

23:38

roughly four hundred billion other stars and

23:41

nearly one billion other galaxies,

23:44

and they think it would be extraordinary if we

23:46

were the only thinking beings in

23:48

all these enormous realms. Faremi

23:51

Enrico Faremi said

23:54

that, Uh, if it takes life billions

23:56

of years to develop intelligence and

23:58

signal or travel to the stars, and

24:01

there are billions of the worlds in the universe,

24:03

and the universe is thirteen billion years

24:05

old plus, then why haven't

24:07

we been visited yet? Yeah, when

24:09

you look at it, like that the odds are makes sense.

24:12

They just increase exponentially. It's

24:15

kind of like a perverted version of the Drake

24:18

equation used to disprove

24:21

the existence of life, the anti drake.

24:23

Yeah, interesting, anti Drake. So

24:54

what happens if we get a signal? What

24:57

happens if they're sitting around one day and

24:59

they your phone home come over the radio

25:01

waves. Well, they have a

25:04

a strict set of protocols that

25:06

start with, you know, the first person

25:08

who finds it, to the

25:11

um the you

25:13

know who gets told first, what

25:15

what agencies learn of it? And um,

25:18

it's pretty cool. Apparently contact

25:20

follows the course of it pretty pretty

25:23

um accurately. Yeah. But

25:25

so it signals detected, right, And

25:27

the first thing they do is they move the radio

25:30

telescope away from the signal, and

25:32

then they move it back. I bet that's nerve

25:34

wracking. I'll bet too, because you probably just want to stay

25:36

locked on it, you know, right, you're gonna lose your signal.

25:39

But you can't do that because you gotta prove that's genuinely

25:41

coming from there, right. Um, So

25:43

if you move it and then move it back

25:46

and the signal wanes and then comes back, you

25:48

know that you have an extraterrestrial signal.

25:50

Right, that's a big one. The next step

25:53

then is to figure out whether you're

25:55

getting it from like a satellite or

25:57

from elsewhere on Earth. Right

26:01

after that, you're starting to

26:03

shake, your palms are sweaty um,

26:06

and you start to rule out

26:08

extraterrestrial sources like pulsars,

26:10

quasars, other things that broadcast

26:13

radio frequencies. By

26:15

this time you may have tinkled

26:17

a little bit in your pants, um,

26:20

and you are on the phone with another radio

26:22

telescope, hopefully one on another continent,

26:25

saying, hey, can you go check these

26:27

coordinates and see if you're getting this frequency?

26:29

Point your little machine that way, what

26:31

do you see or here? And if they come back

26:33

and say yep, you say,

26:35

well, it's time to announce it

26:37

to the world. Now I gotta get out my book.

26:40

The SETI Institute, the Declaration

26:42

of Principles concerning Activities following

26:45

the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence

26:48

and SETI Institute says,

26:51

no one's keeping anything a secret. No,

26:54

they wanted disseminated quickly and widely,

26:57

but they want you to follow the proper channels

26:59

first and all the

27:01

astronomical community

27:04

gets first DIBs on learning of it. Then

27:06

after that you go to the u N. Oh,

27:10

yeah, the u N a lot of other international

27:13

bodies, and you say, hey, guys, we have confirmed

27:16

extraterrestrial contact and

27:19

um they say awesome, and

27:22

the astronomer goes along and says, okay,

27:24

we're moving on in the next people. Eventually

27:26

you get to the public and the person who discovered

27:29

it UM is meant

27:31

to have the honor of announcing it to the world,

27:34

according to the protocols. Jodie

27:36

Foster uh and CETI

27:38

is on record, by the way, the SETI Institute is

27:40

saying that they don't think that there

27:42

are aliens that we've been hiding in

27:45

Roswell, New Mexico. They

27:47

said that, you know, the presence

27:50

that would be like the biggest discovery in the

27:52

history of science and a you

27:54

wouldn't want to keep it a secret and be there

27:57

would be thousands and thousands of people

27:59

working on it, and they said it would

28:01

just be impossible. So they're

28:03

not, you know, they're not these crackpots that think,

28:06

oh, we've got aliens hidden away working

28:08

on a farm in the desert of New Mexico harvesting

28:12

on water farms. That's

28:14

where we got our microwaves from exactly.

28:17

Uh. And I also looked at their f a Q under

28:19

the are we sending signals? Because I thought that

28:21

was kind of interesting because obviously close encounters

28:23

they sent messages out and

28:26

they said they are completely passive experiment.

28:28

They're only looking, they are not sending.

28:30

However, we have been sending

28:33

signals ah, unintentionally

28:36

for fifty years or more. Yes, it's the

28:38

thirties, since we started broadcasting on

28:40

the radio. Yeah, in television. Uh,

28:42

this is the early TV broadcast reached out

28:45

about to about one thousand

28:47

nearby stars and

28:49

uh. But they said it's very unlikely that

28:52

any any alien civilization

28:54

could have picked up on that. But

28:56

we are inadvertently broadcasting

29:00

probably in the water hole too, I would think.

29:03

And the other reason we don't send out signals is because

29:05

if the nearest civilization they said, is a hundred

29:07

light years away, it would be two hundred

29:09

years to get a reply, and it's

29:12

just not a very good way to spend your time. Well.

29:14

Plus also it's in the protocols that

29:16

UM we decide

29:19

through like the u N and other international

29:22

bodies, whether or not to respond to

29:24

a signal. That's like one of the last

29:26

steps. Well, they said that we've sent

29:28

UM

29:31

symbolic messages before, like,

29:33

hey, here's what our solar system

29:36

is like, here the compounds important

29:38

for life. Here's the structure of our DNA

29:41

in the form of a human. They

29:43

say it's symbolic, but I think they're like, oh,

29:45

you never know, you know, so they're

29:47

liars. Then when they say they're passive, well,

29:50

they are passive. They have done that in the past. They said it was

29:52

like the seventies. They're passive

29:55

as far as astronomy goes, active

29:57

as far as lying on their f a Q go. Now

30:00

they they I think it was Sniking seventy four was the last

30:03

time they sent out a message. There was what the

30:05

Viking or some I can't remember,

30:07

the spaceship we sent into orbit or

30:09

into outer space that had like UM

30:12

gold records containing all

30:14

sorts of information like

30:16

the world's great information and knowledge

30:18

on them. Oh yeah, do you remember that sort

30:20

of Viking? Yeah, yeah,

30:23

yeah, I think it's let's probably

30:25

get that wrong though. So what's

30:27

in the future for CET right now? Uh,

30:30

well, the future with

30:32

the programs like SETI at home could

30:35

uh get more

30:37

people active and that they're

30:39

interested in their home. The

30:41

future could be good there. They said they might be

30:43

UM sending

30:46

are looking for light at some point because

30:49

it may not come via radio, it may come via

30:51

light. Uh you know, you never know. Yeah.

30:53

Frank Drake is all about that one now. He says

30:55

that this is like the hot new field for

30:58

study is optical UM

31:00

astronomy, and of

31:02

course finishing up things like the Allen telescope

31:04

array is important. And

31:07

then they're city at home. I

31:10

mean, if you want to go do that, it's pretty easy to go download

31:12

UM folding at home. I've never had steady

31:15

at home. You did folding, uh huh

31:17

cool? Uh? And then

31:19

my computer crash and I was just like, maybe

31:23

that crashed it. I don't know. Maybe

31:25

I could tell the difference when it was processing

31:29

UM and that's steady.

31:31

So if this kind of piqued your

31:34

interest, there's plenty more information

31:36

out there. UM.

31:38

You can also check out sets

31:41

stuff on Science Channel

31:43

UM during are We Alone Month

31:46

in March, premiers come

31:48

on I think Tuesdays at ten starting

31:50

March six, every Tuesday. Yep,

31:52

like Moonlighting, UM

31:56

was it was that on Tuesday? I think so I seem

31:58

to remember being drawn

32:00

to the television on Tuesdays. I think it was Moonlighting and

32:02

eighteen nice Or was it Moonlighting

32:04

and love Boat? Now it was love Boat Fantasy Island.

32:07

Yeah, yeah, those two were definitely together. Let's

32:09

see recap. Everyone else is at the beginning, I'm

32:11

married? Do you mean and I are married?

32:14

Um? And I guess that's it. If you want

32:16

to read set, you can type that

32:18

word into the search bar how stuffwork dot

32:21

com s E T I and

32:23

that will bring up this very nice article

32:25

including cool graphs and

32:28

screenshots from CETI at home for some reason.

32:31

Um. And since I said search bar, I think I

32:33

said handy search bar even Um,

32:35

it's time for a listener and mail. All

32:39

right, Josh, I'm gonna call this uh Luca Libra

32:41

slash American wrestling from Zack

32:45

uh Chuck. You suggested that wrestlers

32:47

carry fake blood packs. Not quite true,

32:50

or at least usually not true. Instead,

32:52

most wrestlers carry a razor blade in order

32:54

to blade their foreheads. I've

32:56

heard this actually into that they'll cut, make

32:58

a little cut and bleed uh

33:00

right around the hairline after being hit in the head of a chair

33:03

or a cage or another hard weapon.

33:06

You were also talking about the big companies in America.

33:08

The w w E is the biggest right now,

33:11

with ten as the second biggest, and Ring of

33:13

Honor is the third. W

33:15

w E and t n A are on big TV

33:17

networks, while the Ring of Honor is

33:20

only on the air in certain markets, and there are

33:22

many many independent leagues, including

33:25

Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan's Resistance.

33:27

Bro. Did you know that? No, I

33:30

guess so, dude, he's got his own wrestling league.

33:32

I wonder if he's still on the dope. I

33:35

don't think so. I

33:38

saw him one day. He's really tall, which

33:41

surprised me for some reason. I think I noticed

33:43

that when the Cubs were in the World Series and he's

33:45

saying the uh, the national anthem.

33:48

You know, he's saying the taking out to the ball game,

33:50

it's stretch. Yeah, he's all

33:52

those guys. Uh.

33:55

So Zack says, when talking about the rules, you're saying

33:57

that weapons are not allowed. And

33:59

I think I might have said that it's different with American

34:02

wrestling, but not true. He said. The chair

34:04

was just really popular in the late nineties because

34:07

they book matches specifically to be more violent.

34:10

So they would knock the ref down and people would

34:12

use the chair when the ref wasn't watching, but

34:14

you would still get de Q if the ref was

34:16

to see that. And he also said Raymond

34:18

would get dairy queen. Oh

34:21

man, that'd be great. Uh. And

34:23

then he said, ray mystereo is

34:26

out with injury, but there's a good chance he we'll

34:28

be back soon, so he's still kicking

34:30

it. That was a heck of a dispatch from the wrestling

34:32

world, and dude, I redacted

34:35

about half of it. Thanks Zack. That is Zack

34:37

from I don't know where he's from. He's from Billy

34:39

Corgan's basement. Well,

34:42

wow, if you have some supplementary

34:45

information, not even necessarily

34:47

correction. I think Zach handled that very well.

34:49

Sure. Um, we like to

34:51

hear that stuff all the time and

34:54

we frequently read them as listener

34:56

mail. So please feel free to go ahead

34:58

and send us something. Um. You can tweet

35:00

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35:02

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35:05

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35:08

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35:10

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35:13

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35:17

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