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March 13, 1998 - Art Bell

02:48:00

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Seth Shostak - SETI

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01:04:01

seth shostak

01:17:17

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		nights at 9 on AM 1500 KSTP.
unidentified		Music I hear the drums echoing tonight.
		I hear the lonely whispers of some quiet from the Kingdom of Nigh.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
		702-727-1222.
		Now, here again is Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, here I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, everybody.
unidentified		So long forgotten words.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Great to be here.
		We're about to enter the world of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with one of its scientists.
		And I'm going to have a terrible time with his name.
		He's Seth Shossack, I believe.
		I hope that's right.
		So I'm looking forward to that.
		That's coming up here in a moment.
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		Future results.
		That's right.
		All right.
		Seth Shostak, take a while, folks, is the public program scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View.
		It's in California, of course.
		He has an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology.
		For much of his career, he conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, has published about 50 papers, which I guess you have to do in professional journals.
		During more than a decade, he worked at the Astronomical Institute, one of them in the Netherlands, using the Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope.
		We'll have to ask what that is.
		He has also written several hundred popular articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film, and television.
		For more than 30 years, Seth has been producing his own films, many of them popular science pieces used for TV.
		He founded and ran a computer animation firm in Holland that made leaders and short films for networks and other video producers.
		He now lectures on astronomy and other subjects at the California Academy of Sciences and elsewhere.
		He gives about 50 talks annually at both educational and corporate institutions and is a distinguished speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
		His book, yes, he has one, Sharing the Universe, is a book, Berkeley Hills book.
		It appeared in February of 1998, so it's just out.
		Here is Seth Szostak.
		Is that close enough?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's better than I could do, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth, welcome to the program.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's a real pleasure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have long wanted to interview anybody who worked with Jodie Foster.
unidentified		I wish I had, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In spirit.
		In spirit, yes.
		Perhaps the best way to begin would be to give a history of SETI as you know it, what SETI is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, modern-day SETI.
		Of course, you know, the idea of looking for a cosmic company is a pretty old endeavor.
		And there were efforts made certainly in the last century, or at least proposed.
		I mean, you may have read of Carl Frederick Gauss.
		He's a famous mathematician.
		And in the middle of the last century, he suggested that what we ought to do is plant a triangle, a wheat field triangle in Siberia and border it with trees in the shape of rectangles to signal our friends on the moon that we were intelligent and trying to get in touch and knew the Pythagorean theorem and obviously worth talking to.
		There was another scheme actually in the last century too to dig long straight canals in the Sahara, fill them with oil at night and set them on fire to signal our buddies on Mars.
		I've got to say that that scheme was also never carried out, although I guess you could say Saddam Hussein has tried it in Kuwait.
		But as far as I know, the Martians haven't responded to that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the pattern was too difficult to decipher.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Maybe that's the problem.
		But that was all sort of talked about, and that sort of represented the cutting-edge technology of the time.
		But modern study really goes back to 1959, 1960.
		1959, some physicists at Cornell University and MIT pointed out that radar, you know, just radio waves such as we generate here on Earth, and in particular the microwave frequencies used for radar, could easily bridge the gap from one star to the next.
		I mean, you could use them to send a message from one star to the next, and it wouldn't take an enormous amount of power to do so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right, let me stop you right there.
		For years, people have said radio transmissions, all of them, television, radio, all of our electronic stuff, goes firing out into space and just keeps on going.
		Now, that's really only partially true, Isn't it?
		In other words, parts of the spectrum indeed keep going, but parts are reflected for the most part by the ionosphere, reflected back to Earth and don't really do a lot of space travel.
		Isn't that true?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's certainly true.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Unfortunately, AM radio, for example, it's good for your listeners, of course, that it's refracted by the ionosphere and doesn't make it out into space because that means they can pick up an AM station at great distances.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		I've got a lot of 50,000 waters, believe me, that do a great job of getting us all around the country.
		But they do.
		They are reflected back to Earth, thankfully.
		That, of course, for example, is not the case with a shorter wave, for example, in the FM band.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely right.
		So television, which, of course, is in the FM, does just go straight out into space.
		That's why you don't get the TV programs from the next town over if it's 100 miles away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Because those signals are going out into space.
		And what that means is, of course, that the early episodes of I Love Luffy have gone out 40 or 50 light years.
		So that means they've reached on the order of 1,000 nearby stars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have they done it fairly efficiently?
		In other words, would you need more than a pair of rabbit ears on Mars or Jupiter as we go on out?
		By the time you get to Pluto, would you need a real array?
		How far out could you legibly discern our TV signals?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends entirely on how much money you want to spend on the rabbit ears.
		A simple pair of rabbit ears isn't going to do you very much good beyond maybe the moon, possibly Mars.
		if you were at the distances of the nearest stars, you know, Alpha Centauri or something, a couple of light years away, you could still, in principle and in practice, you could pick these things up.
		I mean, you could pick up Mr. Ed at Alpha Centauri You bet.
		Yeah, Alpha Centauri is only about four and a half light years away.
		Sure.
		In fact, if anybody's watching, you know, maybe they're trying to figure out whether it's the four-footed or the two-footed guys that run the planet down here.
		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if anybody's watching and it's Mr. Ed that made it, maybe that's why there's been no contact.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a possibility.
		But, you know, it would take a pretty big antenna to pick up the TV at the distances of the stars because it's, as you say, it's not intended to be broadcast to the stars, so the energy is not very well directed.
		In fact, I worked out how big an antenna you'd need from, say, 10 light years away to pick up I Love Lucy.
		And you'd need to cover a couple of thousand acres of your farmland with rabbit ears in order to pick it up.
		So that would be a bit of an investment, but you could do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you remember the opening scene in Contact, so dramatic, so well done as they pull away from Earth with the sounds going back in time and traveling.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You did see Contact, didn't you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good, good, good.
		And so as we pulled away until finally, entire galaxies were just all kinds of things were going by, and then, of course, there was dead silence.
		Is that realistic?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
		I mean, there's sort of an expanding ball of information about us, which that film was, I guess, trying to portray, showing this cacophony of FM music and early TV broadcasts and so forth going out into space.
		But if you go out beyond, you know, roughly 50 light years, there's nothing more because it's only been in the last 50 years that we've been broadcasting with really powerful, high-frequency transmitters.
		I mean, there has been radio for 100 years, but so it's the last 50 years.
		And, you know, that's something to think about for people who think that the aliens might be trying to get in touch because that means they'd have to be pretty nearby to have any real reason to get in touch.
		Because if they're more than 50 light years away, of course, they won't know we're here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, let's assume they're 50 light years out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That means at 50 light years, the first signals from Earth are just arriving, if I've got this correct.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so if they wanted to answer us, their signal back to us, assuming they could generate one, would not yet arrive for another 50 years.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Also correct.
		Now, take the case where they're only 25 light years away.
		After all, there are stars that close.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so they picked this up 25 years ago, and they sent a message back, say, and we could be picking that up today.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		In fact, I think that was more or less the premise in contact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, the premise that got you here was somebody sent me a fact saying that Wolf359 or something or another, a very popular science fiction star, I understand, had sent you a signal that you had received, that you had a hit at SETI, what is called a hit, and that was totally false, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was false.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		In fact, if we had a real detection, you and I wouldn't be on the phone now, Art.
		I'd be on the Cote d'Azur, and my picture would be on the cover of the Rolling Stone, or my boss's picture would be on the cover of The Rolling Stone.
		I mean, everybody would know about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we have yet to discuss that aspect of your work.
		I have certain questions about that, but let's stick with sort of the whole concept before we get down to the specifics.
		So 50 light years, we're out about that far right now, and it is reasonable that there could be life.
		Why do we presume, is it reasonable, Seth, to presume that any intelligent species that would have evolved somewhere else would evolve eventually using the RF spectrum, radio, television, something?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's really a good question.
		I mean, that depends on, well, in the end, it depends on physics.
		We use radio not simply because we have the technology, as they like to say on TV, but because it's a cheap way to send bits, to send information from one part of the universe to the other.
		And in fact, there don't seem to be any other ways of doing it that are more efficient.
		But, of course, we might be missing some physics.
		I mean, that's always possible.
		Maybe the aliens have physics that we don't know about, and radio looks kind of archaic to them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about light?
		In other words, if you look at the entire spectrum, once you get above radio, you begin to enter the spectrum of light.
		What about lasers, for example?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a possibility.
		Ordinary light, the kind we see with our eyes, of course, it goes at the same speed, of course, as radio.
		Radio moves at the speed of light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		so does light, of course.
		But the trouble with visible light is that you have the confusion from your own star.
		I mean, if you were trying to see a signal from the Earth, for example, from far away, and it was just somebody was flashing a big flashlight at you, you'd have the confusing light from our sun.
		But in the infrared, the sun and other stars are often much dimmer.
		So powerful infrared lasers could be used to signal across interstellar distances.
		That's a possibility.
		And maybe it's one we should be considering, and maybe it's something we will consider.
		It hasn't been looked at too hard up until now, primarily because if you make a big laser, for example, it tends to be very beamed.
		And, you know, if you're going to pick up somebody else's beamed laser, then they have to have some reason to beam it at you.
		Otherwise, the chances that you're going to be in their beam are pretty small.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We are listening now on...
		In other words, we're listening on discrete single frequencies, and many, many, many of them, maybe even millions.
		I think you've got some new technology that allows you to listen to Godzillions of frequencies at once.
		Is that correct?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, except for the Godzillions part, yes.
		You're right.
		Of course, you know, ET hasn't sent us a fax telling us where on the dial he's going to be, so we're compelled to monitor as much of it as we can.
		The receiver we use listens to 28 million channels simultaneously.
		And there are other SETI experiments being run besides the one we run, which, by the way, is called Project Phoenix.
		Other experiments which listen to even larger numbers of channels.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait, wait, wait, wait.
		Why is it called Project Phoenix?
		Phoenix, of course, implies a raising from the ashes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's why the name was chosen.
		This used to be a NASA program.
		Up until 1993, the project I'm involved with was a NASA program.
		It was federally funded.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But then Congress killed it, 1993.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think you were due to receive like $100 million or something like that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the total cost of the project over time might have amounted to that.
		But in fact, it was running at about $10 million a year.
		And, you know, to put that in perspective, that was less than one-tenth of 1% of the NASA budget.
		It was something like $0.04 per year per taxpayer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why did the budget get killed?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, that's politics really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, but it's something that I want to try and understand.
		Why?
		Why do you think it got killed?
		Was it because everybody can relate to the movie Contact?
		And you remember Jody's boss?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is Jodi's boss the one that killed SETI from a government point of view?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, not entirely.
		He was perhaps a cipher for him.
		But in fact, it wasn't a NASA official that killed SETI.
		NASA isn't against SETI at all.
		In fact, NASA was involved with SETI, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, when I said Jodi's boss, I meant it metaphorically.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		No, not so much that.
		It was really, to be honest, it was a congressman from Nevada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Senator Richard Bryan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Senator Bryan, really?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I hang my head.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there you have it.
		And it was in the time of budget reduction.
		And, of course, SETI is kind of an appealing target for budget reduction because...
		Exactly.
		And you don't have, you know, 3,000 aerospace workers who would be out of a job the next day.
		It's a very small program.
		So it's kind of a painless target in some sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How big was the program prior to the cancellation?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, as I say, the very last year it was running, which was 1992 fiscal year, 1992, the budget was the greatest it had ever been, and that was $12 million a year.
		So as I say, it was less than a nickel a year per taxpayer.
		And my next-door neighbor, when he heard he was going to save a nickel, of course, was quite happy about that.
		But it meant that we weren't doing the search.
		Now, the SETI Institute, which is just a private nonprofit organization, of course, was able to at least look for some private money to keep some of this going.
		And they found that money.
		There's some heavy-hitter gentlemen who found it interesting enough to write personal checks to keep this thing going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then again, that's just like the movie.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that is.
		That's right.
		That is just like the movie.
		And, you know, these are people like Bill Hewlett and David Packard and so forth.
		And so the project was named Phoenix because it was rising from the ashes of the old NASA program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ideal.
		All right.
		Now I understand.
		I thought it might be something like that.
		So you've got some sugar daddies out there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I guess you could call them that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, some well-fielded people who believe in your work.
		Yes.
		Are they standing behind you solidly or even today?
		Or what do you expect?
		In other words, are you going to be able to continue?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly hope to be able to continue.
		And that depends, to be quite honest.
		I mean, let's just be brutal about this.
		That depends on our success in getting people to continue to give money to this program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Some people would say, if there is a signal that has been coming our way for a long time, that by now we should have heard it.
		How much of the sky has actually been surveyed thus far?
		Can you tell me that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, only in very general terms, because when you say survey, you know, the question is, well, how carefully have you surveyed it?
		And even if you have looked in the direction of a particular star and spent a day looking at it, well, that star got its day.
		But, you know, it could be that E.T. had the transmitters off that day, or the planet was rotated so the wrong side was facing you or something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that the sun was creating the noise that you were hearing, and anything that might be coming from a planet would be completely blocked.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's not quite so likely because something like the sun usually makes what's called wideband interference, the kind of stuff you were talking about earlier in your program tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you heard that.
		Good.
		I wanted the audience to understand a little bit about what spread spectrum is.
		I did a probably poor job of explaining it, but.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Listen, if I understood it, and if I understood it, you know, anybody could have understood it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so, but again, the question, how much of the sky have you actually surveyed?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Very small amount.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		In this particular project, Project Phoenix, we have a list of 1,000 star systems on our hit list, if you want to call it that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You better be careful with that word.
unidentified		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Targets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Targets.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's the maybe that's a bad word, too.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But anyhow, that's the official Candidates.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Candidates, that's better.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm not sure.
		Okay.
		Now, candidates, we've gone through about a third of the list.
		But even when you've gone through a thousand candidates, you know, a thousand nearby stars, there are on the order of a half trillion stars in our galaxy.
		That's just our galaxy.
		So this has been likened to trying to find a needle in a haystack.
		And, you know, we've taken maybe a teaspoonful of hay so far and not found a needle.
		And so it's kind of early days to say that maybe we should give up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you focus specifically on one star?
		I'm asking you a question about beam width now, in effect.
		In other words, can you be that narrow so that you're looking at one particular star or system?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's not really.
		See, these antennas, these are big antennas.
		I mean, these are your satellite dish on steroids.
		These are big guys.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, okay, hold on.
		We're at the bottom there, and I'm going to ask you about exactly that.
		I want to know what kind of antennas you're using, as a matter of fact.
		A million questions.
		Seth Shostak is my guest.
		He is from the SETI project in Mountain View, California.
		You know, just like in the movie Condact, except for real.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Thank you.
		To realize that I have felt I have been on the path of my hand.
		It's all free to be there.
		The station that launched the broadcasting empire.
		50,000 watts of Twin Cities Radio.
		You're listening to AM 1500 KSTP, St. Paul, Minneapolis.
		AM 1500 KSTP, St. Paul, Minneapolis.
		Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nigh on the Wildcard Line at Area Code 702-727-1295.
		That's Area Code 702-727-1295.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, and I want to talk to you for a second about accuracy.
		How do you feel about it?
		Personally, I am and always have been.
		Perhaps it's not such a good thing, but I've been consumed by accuracy, particularly when it comes to time.
		I talk a lot about time.
		The Zeit radio-controlled clock is here.
		When I say radio-controlled, what do I mean?
		This is a 12-inch wall clock operates on a single AA battery, and six times every hour, it receives a signal from the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado.
		They transmit it there now at about three times the power they were, by the way.
		I've got one on my wall, and because they're transmitting from the National Bureau of Standards, their clock, the atomic clock, and your clock, the one on the wall, are going to read exactly the same.
		Put another way, your clock will be accurate to within one second in a million years.
		Ain't technology wonderful.
		Now, this brings an additional benefit.
		For example, when daylight savings time comes, your clock on the wall, happily sitting there ticking away, will suddenly get a different signal, and like the H.G. Wells time machine, it'll start going around like crazy until it reaches the correct time so that when you wake up in the morning, you don't have to touch your clock.
		That's how accurate and how interesting this clock is.
		Traditionally, only scientific laboratories could afford to have this kind of a clock around because they cost too much.
		But guess what?
		This German-made Zeit clock is now $79.95.
		It is some of the best money you could spend.
		See, Grain Company has got them.
		Call them in the morning at 9 o'clock, 9 to 1, Saturday, and then 7.30 Monday morning, and get one on the way, because they are going fast.
		The number is 1-800-522-8863.
		1-800-522-8863.
		My guest is the real thing.
		He is Seth Shostak, and he is a program scientist at SETI in Mountain View, California.
		Now, I say the real thing because actually he has a doctorate.
		So really, he's Dr. Shostak, aren't you, Doctor?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but please call me Seth, aren't you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth, all right.
		Well, I'll try.
		Seth, you were starting to talk about antennas, and again, because so many Americans have seen the movie Condact, I think they can relate to what we're going to discuss.
		The movie opened down in Puerto Rico with a big Arecibo dish.
		That's correct.
		And our heroine, Jodi, had access to Arecibo for at least periods of time.
		That's a gigantic dish.
		How big is that thing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		1,000 feet across.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it really 1,000 feet?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's by far the largest radio antenna in the world, radio telescope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's astounding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, it's so big that if I understood what I saw correctly, the dish itself does not move, but the feed horn moves?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's what happens, indeed.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The dish sits there and the receivers move back and forth at the focus.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's remarkable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I suppose there's a slight sacrifice because you're not always at the center of the parabolic point, is that correct?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		In fact, this is an endless discussion, of course, but the dish itself is, in fact, not Parabolic, it's spherical.
		They've just upgraded that telescope, by the way, to try and minimize some of these problems that you're alluding to.
		And the whole thing has gotten a factor of two or three times better because of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, but you obviously are not in Puerto Rico.
		Where are our present SETI efforts concentrated?
		Where is your antenna farm?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, our antenna is...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We have to use somebody else's farm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We're using an antenna at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in lovely Green Bank, West Virginia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that antenna's 140 feet across.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a pretty big thing, but...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's good size.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, we'll be using that through the spring here, but then we'll be moving the equipment down to Puerto Rico.
unidentified		You're kidding.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, we're going to go down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, you're going to get to use Arecibo?
unidentified		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, when this was a NASA program, that's where we began observations, was at Arecibo.
unidentified		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So it's not the first time this equipment has been there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's the first time it's all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But how in the world have you suddenly regained access to Arecibo?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we, you know, make a request.
		There's a long history there, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that this was an ASEAP program.
		But, you know, we, generally speaking, rent time on these telescopes.
		We pay the observatories for the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just like Jodi.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Just like Jodi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's exciting.
		That's very exciting.
		Now, getting use of Arecibo with the improvements that you just mentioned, how much of an improvement over your present 140-foot dish does that represent?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, you know, minute for minute, the Arecibo telescope is much better simply because it's a bigger ear, if you will.
		I mean, it's a big hunk of metal.
		It's something like 18 acres of mesh there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Twice as good as you have now?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, very crudely, you could say, look, it's 1,000 feet across.
		The one we're using now is 140 feet across, so that's six times the diameter, and what's that 36 times the area.
		So, you know, depending on how you want to look at it, you could say it's 36 times better, or put it another way, you could hear the same transmitter six times farther away.
unidentified		So depending on what you think E.T. is doing, got you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's remarkable.
		All right, now, I'm going to try to keep it technical but non-technical because I am familiar with the field.
		Now, remember I asked you, could you look at a specific star system?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This relates to what's called bandwidth.
		In other words, how narrow an area can you look at?
		When you point at a star system, say, 50 light years out, or Alpha Centauri, when you point at that, which is close, how much are you hearing?
		You're hearing Alpha Centauri, and how much more?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you can look at it this way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It depends on which of these antennas you're using, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Where on the dial you're listening, because it also depends on the frequency and so forth.
		But typically, the system we're using now, for example, that antenna is looking at a, it sort of has a target area, if you will, on the sky that's something like a quarter of the full moon, if you will.
		You can picture that.
		That's, for the listeners, that's like taking a dime, having somebody hold a dime 15 feet away from you and see how much of the sky that covers.
		Another way to look at it, it's sort of like looking at the sky through a cocktail straw, if you will.
		Now, you can imagine if you're pointing that at a nearby star, of course, you know, you'd be sensitive to any signals coming from the star, but nobody expects ET to be on a star, of course.
		It's a little toasty.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me try another approach.
		Quasars emit very powerful radio signals, right?
		Mm-hmm.
		So you could focus generally on a quasar, correct?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You could, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you'd hear this whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh sound.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a pulsar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm sorry, pulsar.
		Right.
		How far, how many degrees would you move the dish you've got right now before you lost that signal?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, you just, see, those things are all like little pinpricks, and you're covering it with a big splot of a beam, as it were.
		So you have to move them sort of the diameter of your own beam.
		So what that means is the antenna we have now, if we were to pick up a signal now, suppose we picked up a signal that we thought maybe this is it, maybe this is a big one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thump, thump, thump.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We want to know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So we move the antenna, well, a half a degree, and then the signal should go away because if you move it a half a degree, it's no longer in the beam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, so that finally answers my question about beam width.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is really rather narrow.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Very narrow.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		As I say, it's like looking at the sky through a cocktail straw, so you don't have to move that very much before you see a different part of the sky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There would be two schools of thinking here.
		One would be to use a very, or relatively, I should say very, a relatively low-gain, wide-beam antenna searching over many, many frequencies, looking for something interesting, versus the argument of getting something like Arecibo, which would be very specific.
		I mean, you'd be looking for a long time.
		That's right.
		And I guess you folks have thought that one through.
		Do you listen both ways?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the old NASA program was going to use both strategies, actually, but, you know, we don't have enough money to do both.
		So we have what's called this targeted search.
		In other words, you might look at it this way.
		It's sort of like trying to find life in the Sahara.
		You know, you're going to look at the whole thing, the whole desert, or you're just going to zero in on the oases on the assumption that there's maybe more happening there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Makes sense.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, there are SETI experiments that sort of scan the whole sky, that just systematically sweep the whole sky.
		But our experiment actually just sort of zeroes in on the oases, as it were, the nearby stars.
		And who's to say which strategy is the better one?
		Because nobody really knows where ET is hanging out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Though there are people who speculate, frequency-wise, there are places more likely than others.
		And I've heard it said, I don't know why, maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, that somewhere in the 21 gigahertz range, no, 2 gigahertz range, there's a high likelihood, 3 and 4 gigahertz in those areas.
		Is there any area that more likely would accommodate a long distance signal?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Art, I hope you're right because 2 gigahertz is right smack in the middle of where we're looking for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I figured that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You know, the argument goes something like this: the microwave frequencies, those are the frequencies you're talking about.
		Now, you know, most people will know microwave frequencies as the ones they use to eat up old meatloaf and so forth.
		But they're also used for radar.
		And it turns out that radio waves at those frequencies penetrate the gas and the dust hanging between the stars without any difficulty.
		So they are, you know, they're a pretty good way of getting messages across really long distances.
unidentified		I mean, really DX.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Now, where in that dial would you put the signal?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, that's a little tougher.
		There are literally billions of channels in there that you might have to check out.
		And that's why we have a receiver that listens to so many millions of channels at once, because we don't know which one's better.
		But there are some natural markers between 1 and 2 gigahertz, in fact, that, you know, they're just caused by gas between the stars.
		Now, we know about those because we have radio astronomers that study them.
		I was one of them.
		And ET will know about them, too.
		So you might say, well, gosh, maybe that's a universal hailing frequency.
unidentified		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		To borrow a term from Star Trek that the aliens will use to get our attention.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So it's worth looking near those frequencies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that is, in fact, then where you are looking.
		Now, what technology allows you to listen instead of on one frequency?
		For example, we were talking about KOMO on 1000 on the dials right in the middle, so I picked that.
		What allows you to listen instead of just to KOMO to every single frequency in the broadcast band all at once?
		How does that get done?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a big hunk of digital electronics, of course, is the way you actually do that in a practical sense.
		But you could think of it conceptually as essentially building lots of receivers and sort of connecting them all together, and each one is tuned to the next channel up the dial.
		It really amounts to that.
		It's sort of having a multi-filter receiver that has, you know, it's 28 million receivers in one.
		That's really what it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's not like a scanner which is running through a lot of frequencies, scanning through them, but rather actually looking at all these frequencies simultaneously.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All the time, simultaneously.
		Wow.
		And the reason you do that, by the way, I mean, you could build this scanner, but if you're going to cover a couple of billion frequencies, and we do, we cover two billion channels for each start.
unidentified		Wow.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And if you were to listen to each channel for a few minutes and then move on to the next one, well, I mean, your scanner would be sitting there for thousands of years before it got through the dial once, and you'd get bored.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, in the movie Contact, Jodi Foster has a pair of earphones on to pick up this signal, but really she'd be wearing tens of millions of pairs of earphones, so that would mess up her cough here, no doubt.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, although, I suppose from time to time, your computers cough up an interesting sound or signal, and that gets a human being's attention, doesn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		Yeah, that's true.
		In fact, I had to say we pick up signals all the time, Art, because you've got one of the world's largest antennas connected to a receiver that's whistling to 28 million channels.
		So, of course, you pick up signals.
		And, in fact, it's a big problem because they've all been man-made so far.
		I mean, they've all turned out to be man-made, but you have to sort out all this chaff from the wheat you're looking for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, what are the problems?
		In other words, I would presume in West Virginia, even though it's fairly a rural area, there's still a lot of RF flying around in the air.
		And so you've got to worry about that.
		And then you've got to worry about noise out there like bulsars and that sort of thing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, the natural noise emitters you don't have to worry about too much because even pulsars, which have this very strange signal, you've imitated it well, a click, click, click, click, click type thing or a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
		But, you know, they're, in fact, they're what are called broad spectrum sources.
		They're spread out all over the dial.
		They're like the static you get on your car radio.
unidentified		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So we're not looking for those kinds of signals.
		We're looking for a squeal that's very narrow band of hertz or so, the kind of signal that's called a carrier here on Earth, and that accompanies all these AM radio stations that are broadcasting our voices right now.
		Now, nature doesn't make a signal like that, so that's not such a problem.
		But the problem that you do have, even in West Virginia, which, as you point out, is pretty secluded, is telecommunication satellites.
		I mean, they're overhead all the time, and everybody wants to have their cellular phone, so they keep putting up more of these telecommunications.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All the time.
		And if anybody doubts that, go outside on a nice, clear night, just before sunrise, about a half hour before sunrise, and just look straight up and keep looking straight up, and you will soon see all of these satellites crossing and crossing and crossing.
		How many are up there?
		Do you have any idea?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, there are on the order of 10,000 active satellites up there now.
		They're not all telecommunications.
		Some of them are, who knows?
		But it's thousands.
		And, you know, some of them are just making weather maps and others are DOD projects.
unidentified		Who knows?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But there are literally thousands of these things, and every three days, or every two days, they launch another one.
		So really, the best thing to do for SETI is to move the whole project to the far side of the moon.
		But that requires a big check.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the more they put up, the more unknowns that you have to worry about encountering.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		In fact, this is such a problem that we've resorted to a fairly clever but somewhat complicated scheme where we have a second antenna, a second telescope, a few hundred miles away from the first one.
		And when the first one finds signals that look pretty suggestive, it sends the information on those signals to a second antenna, which checks things out within 10 minutes.
		And by using that second antenna, you can get rid of virtually all the interference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's remarkable.
		That's interesting.
		All right.
		And then there's this.
		There have got to be a lot of, in other words, you certainly know about a lot of the major communications, telecommunications satellites.
		But you and I both know that the Department of Defense has a lot of satellites Up there that are transmitting on all kinds of frequencies, probably a lot of the ones that you're listening on, that they won't tell you about.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, how do you deal with that?
		Do you identify the fact that it is a satellite, even if it's unknown and unreported?
		You say there's a satellite and try to establish the emphasis for it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, pretty much.
		In fact, you know, we pick up this signal and it turns out it's a satellite.
		We just add it to the database of known interference.
		But, of course, we don't know what it's taking pictures of.
		We don't see the pictures or anything like that.
		All we do is signal.
		So, you know, all cats in the dark are gray, I guess.
		And it's just another cat we add it to the list.
		You know, it may be a top-secret satellite.
		It may just be a weather satellite.
		It may be a commercial telecommunications satellite.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So actually, in a way, a lot of the information that you have compiled would be of interest to other nations, actually.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's possibly, but they could do the same experiment as far as that goes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I suppose.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Put an antenna in their backyard and get that kind of information.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is of some interest to other radio astronomers, of course, because they're troubled by the same interference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So do you share your information?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that we do occasionally.
		Mostly comes the other way around.
		When we get a signal that's looking really good, we'll sometimes call up our friends at the radio astronomer friends and say, hey, have you ever had interference at this frequency?
		Just try and nail it down to find out whether we're getting the real thing or just yet more interference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, there are two different sorts of satellites to worry about.
		One would be exemplified by the NOAA series.
		I monitor the NOAA satellites here.
		I've got an antenna and get the weather photographs.
		And they're polar satellites.
		They cover different territory all the time.
		They're all over the place.
		You can track them, but it takes a lot to track them, and they're constantly going to be changing.
		Then there are geosynchronous satellites that sit out there relative to Earth stably and above the equator.
		So you have to deal with both, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You do.
		The geosynchronous ones aren't quite as much trouble because they're, to begin with, they're all along the equator, as it were.
		They're all in one spot on the sky or a big circle across the sky.
		So you know where they are.
		But they're also, they're there all the time.
		They're like transmitters on giant phone poles, 22,000-mile high phone poles.
		But because they're there all the time, you get the interference all the time.
		So you can just put that in the database and tell the computers that are scanning, they're scanning, or listening to these 28 million channels, they say, hey, look, if you get a signal that's at this frequency, that's a known source of interference and just kick it out of the queue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Almost like a lockout on a scanner, just locking that one out.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You got it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the satellites you really have to worry about are these polar orbiters that are all over the place and the defense satellites and no doubt Russia's and China's and everybody else's satellites that are crisscrossing all over the place.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's the trouble.
		Yeah, those are the kinds of things that the ones that come and go, those are the hardest ones to discriminate against.
		Although, as I say, with this two-antenna scheme, we've been fairly successful.
		In fact, unlike the early experiments that used to be done in this field, we don't end up after a year of observing with a drawer full of interesting candidates, you see.
		We checked everyone out, and we've been able to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everyone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is this going 24 hours a day?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, I wish it were.
		It's not.
		It goes 24 hours a day when we're on the telescope, but there in Greenbank, we can only afford to pay for about a quarter of the telescope time that's available on that antenna.
		So that means that every couple of months we get a couple of weeks worth of observing time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my.
		Oh, my, I say again.
		Why, as a society, a civilized technological society, are we not looking full-time with the best we have, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a good question, Art.
		I have really no answer to that.
		I think that people are interested in this.
		I think they're possibly misinformed in the sense that they think that that is happening, but it's happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I thought it, Seth, I thought it was happening.
		And you're telling me you can only afford to buy about a quarter of the antenna's time.
		Now, when you do, you're at it 24 hours a day, but this is not an ongoing everyday, 24-hour day process by a long shot, huh?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Not yet, nope.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Live and learn.
		All right, Seth, hold on.
		When we get back, we're going to talk about what hits they have had.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		AM 1500 KSTB.
		Yeah.
		AM 1500 KSTB.
		If you have a fax for Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nine, send it to him at area code 702-727-8499.
		702-727-8499.
		Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Here again is Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sorry, Ross.
		My guest is the real thing.
		Setty.
		Just like in contact, except my guest is the real thing.
		Seth Shostak is his name.
		He actually has a doctorate, so we should be calling him Doctor.
		Undergraduate degree from Princeton University, a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology.
		And it's Project Phoenix, that which actually rose from the ashes of the NASA SETI program, though is now limited to, it was shocking to find out, about a quarter of the time on a large dish in West Virginia.
		Although the good news is they're going to soon have access to that gigantic telescope you may have seen in the movie Contact, Arecibo, Down in Puerto Rico.
		Very, very exciting indeed.
		And so we'll get back to Seth in a moment.
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		Gold traditionally has been a good hedge against the market.
		Market goes up, gold goes down.
		It's a good time to buy.
		And to make it easy for you, they have a very special offer right now.
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		That means they don't make a dime on the transaction.
		I guess, you know, it's like a loss leader.
		And they're only going to be doing this for a little while longer.
		But it does apply whether you buy an ounce or 100 ounces.
		They just want to get you into gold, I guess.
		What a good opportunity.
		The number is 1-800-359-4255, North American trading at 1-800-359-4255.
		Now, there are obviously some people it will not work for, though so far the majority have been very happy.
		But if it doesn't work, if you perceive it doesn't work, you get your money back.
		Period.
		The number is 1-800-232-5665.
		All right, back down to Seth.
		Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got a letter here for UFAx from Jodie Foster's boss.
		It says, Dear Art, I think this guy, read you, Seth, is a liberal, money-sucking dog.
		Ask him if there are any other scientific benefits to his, in quotes, research.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's from Mike in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's, you know, Mike has a point of view there.
		And one could say that until we succeed, the benefits are going to be simply the spin-off technology that might be developed here.
		And in fact, there has been some spin-off of benefit in terms of diagnosing cancer and things like that.
		So there is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's some technological spin-off, and Mike might find that interesting and possibly even worthwhile.
		But we have to look at it this way.
		Imagine talking to Chris Columbus a week after leaving Spain and asking him, well, Chris, you know, you've been on this trip for a while, and have you found anything new?
		And Chris would say, well, just water.
		And, well, you know, maybe it wasn't worth the money that Isabella put into these three ships here.
		We're not getting much benefit out of this.
		And that's going to be the case with SETI until you succeed.
		And after that, the benefits, you know, the sky's literally the limit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All you need to do is find one real signal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, there are rumors all the time about SETI.
		And you will occasionally hear, oh, SETI's had a big hit, or SETI's had a hit.
		And in fact, SETI has had hits, hasn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've had signals that have looked interesting for a while, that's for sure.
		And in fact, I think the most dramatic of those was less than a year ago now, was last June, late in June.
		And we were observing using the telescope at Green Bank in West Virginia, and a signal came in that was looking good to the system.
		In other words, it was passing all these sort of automated tests that are designed to throw out the interference that we get so often.
		Unfortunately, our second antenna down in Georgia was not working that day.
		There were some mechanical problems, and that would have saved us a little bit of, well, heightened blood pressure anyhow.
		But it was interesting to see what happened because it took 24 hours to find out that this was, in fact, the SOHO satellite.
		Now, SOHO satellite's a European research satellite designed to study the sun.
		And it's a million miles from where you're sitting in the direction of the sun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you knew that it was not a geosynchronous satellite.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You eliminated that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You eliminated anything that was polar because it would have been there and gone real quick.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And, you know, we did a simple test that we kind of talked about in the last hour.
		You know, after all the automated tests, the computer begins to beep at you when a source is looking good, as it were.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How frequently does that occur?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, every couple of days you get a source that passes a lot of the tests.
		And in fact, that kind of sets the threshold of sensitivity for the experiment, because if it was too much more often than that, you'd probably go batty.
		So you kind of crank up the sensitivity until it beeps at you that often.
		But it happens every couple of days.
unidentified		And then what the telescope does is it moves off the source.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you're pointing at some star system, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Some nearby star, 50 light years away or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And you're getting this signal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So you say, well, now if that's ET, then I can prove that by moving the antenna half a degree or a degree away and make sure that the signal goes away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly what Jodie Foster did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, and that's not coincidence, of course, because, you know, Warner Brothers spent a lot of time talking to us.
		But then you would move the antenna back onto the star system.
		You're scrutinizing it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're trying to reacquire the signal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And try and reacquire it.
		And in this case, in late June, the signal came back.
		And then we moved the antenna off again, and the signal went away.
		We moved it back, it came back, and we did that half a dozen times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was the nature of the signal?
		Modulated carrier?
		What was it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have to keep in mind that we average the signal over 10 minutes.
		What they say, we integrate it.
		It's sort of like making a time exposure with your camera.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, because that builds up sensitivity, but then you lose all the short-term information like flashing lights or moving cars.
		You just get this, they all turn out to be streaks.
		So that's what we do in the radio.
		We sort of average the signal for 10 minutes to build up the sensitivity.
		So, okay, but you have this signal that's passing all these tests.
		Everybody gets very excited for about 24 hours.
		Then it turns out it's this satellite, which, as I say, is a million miles away.
		It has a 10-watt transmitter on board, which is more than enough to get into our system even though we weren't pointed anywhere near its direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What were you reading?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A data stream coming from it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you actually look at the output from the computers, you know, you're sitting there in front of a bunch of computer workstations, a bunch of video screens, if you will.
		And they're just covered with mostly numbers and text.
		They don't change very fast.
		It's not like in the movies where it's very Dramatic because, you know, who could take that after all?
		So it's slowly changing text, but it does beep at you when it finds something so that, and it remembers it too.
		So if you're out getting a tuna fish sandwich, you won't miss E.T., you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nevertheless, if you're sitting there and it is only a once-in-two-day event, I'm sure when it starts beeping, there's a slight rise in blood pressure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There is.
unidentified		There is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Not so much, you know, after it's happened to you a couple of times, the rise is pretty minimal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But this thing last June survived all these tests, you see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you actually thought you had it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have to say, I personally had seen something similar about a year earlier, so I was a little more skeptical perhaps than some of my colleagues.
		But I was sitting there all night long until 8 in the morning, along with everybody else.
		We were just crowded around those terminals, getting quite excited.
		And, you know, an interesting thing happened about 8 or 9 in the morning.
		I got a phone call from one of the science writers for the New York Times who called up to say, hey, Seth, I understand you guys are following an interesting signal there.
		You want to tell me about it?
		And my first reaction was, well, how the heck do you know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And indeed, you know, that's sort of interesting because I think a lot of people feel that if we do get a signal that turns out not to be the Soho satellite, but really E.T., that somehow that information will be buried, it'll be covered up, that sort of thing.
		But, you know, this shows you there's no secrecy in this business.
		There's no policy of secrecy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure that shows us that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, how did he find out?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the way he found out was, in fact, that one of the people that work at the Institute, one of the support people, had called a friend and said, hey, you know, we got this interesting signal, and that person had called the New York Times.
unidentified		That's impossible to see.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You have to picture it this way.
		I mean, you're sitting there, it's late at night.
		Maybe you're the only guy on duty, right?
		And, you know, you're sending emails to your girlfriend or whatever, and the signal comes in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Beep, beep, beep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now, you're not sure whether this is just more interference or maybe this is a big one.
		So you send an email to your girlfriend.
		Hey, you know, Matilda, don't tell anyone, but we've got a signal here.
		Now, why do you do that?
		You do it because, you know, you want to establish a paper trail.
		If it turns out that this is the signal from space that you've been waiting for, you want history to remember you as the guy who found it, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, so you document it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With your girlfriend.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, for example.
		And she has a cousin who was always interested in astronomy, so she sends him an email, and within two hours, and I've seen this happen, and I'm sure you have as well, it's all over the net, all over the web, and there are thousands of people that know.
		So even if there were a policy of secrecy, it would be hard to keep it quiet.
		But in fact, there is no policy, so it'll be very confused.
		That information gets out there right away.
		And if you find something that's looking good, what you do in the end is you call up somebody at another observatory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You call up somebody who's maybe in another country.
		They had their own telescope, and you tell them, look, we got something here that looks interesting.
		Will you look at it?
		We won't tell you the exact frequency because we don't want to bias you, but here's the range of frequencies.
		Tell us if you find something because you want to rule out the possibility that it's just a prank or a bug in your system.
		So now people in two countries know about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you do that with the Soho thing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We were getting close.
		We've actually made some phone calls.
		Yeah.
		But as it turned out, in the end, it wasn't necessary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there, should you get a signal?
		A real one.
		E.T. Is there a specific procedure that you would follow?
		Now, I understand you've already given us some of it.
		You would eliminate as much as you could.
		You would contact another facility or two or three.
		Once you had all those confirmations and you realized you're listening to the real thing, is there a procedure?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		In fact, you know, this is another one of those documents that people think must be top secret, but in fact, I think it's on our website, the SETI Institute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, by the way, we've got a link to your website, and I hope your website can handle a lot of traffic because, folks, if you go to my website right now and just scroll down to Seth's name on the guest list and click, you will go bouncing over to the SETI site.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So get ready for a lot of traffic.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we can torture test our computers over there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, there is this document.
		Now, it's called a Declaration of Principles for following the detection of an extraterrestrial signal.
		I'm sure I'm leaving out 10 or 20 words there.
		And this is not a legal document.
		I mean, there's no body of law behind this or anything like that.
		It's just about a five or six page document that all the people who are doing sort of professional SETI experiments have signed on to and said, yeah, okay, this seems reasonable to us, and we'll do what it says here.
		Now, if you read through all that thing, what you find is that most of it is concerned with how you confirm the signal, how you make sure that it's not just a University of Nevada undergraduate prank or something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so that's what a lot of it is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And then the rest says, if you find it, what you do is you notify the astronomical community, let the astronomers know so they can all get their telescopes aimed in the direction of this thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And notify whatever government is, you know, whatever country you're in, notify the local government, and then notify the public.
		Now, and then there's a little bit about what happens should you reply.
		We could get into that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's hold on the reply for a moment.
		I like your chain of command, in effect.
		The public, of course, would be at the end.
		Now, what a lot of people, including me, believe is that, again, just like in the movie, once you confirmed you had the real thing, Seth, and you got to the government notification part, I don't think there's any question about it.
		You would have military guys all over you.
		Well, I know that a lot of people do think that, but, you know, sure, and why shouldn't they?
		it would be a matter of national security.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Possibly, but you know, the fact that...
		I mean, the fact that I pick up Art Bell on the radio, for example, if I'm driving in my car, doesn't mean that I've got something to fear from Art Bell, and he's going to jump into the back seat of my car.
		I mean, he doesn't know I picked him up.
		Well, It's not such a threat to pick up somebody's radio broadcast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not all of my listeners feel that way either.
		But okay, anyway, so you would notify the government before the public.
		And Seth, it is realistic to assume that the government has their own what-ifs for this situation, assuming you would call them.
		And I doubt, you know, the highest on their list would be, oh, quick, call the New York Times.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Probably not, but our experience has been that the people that find out about it first are, you know, if not the New York Times and the local papers here.
		I honestly think, in fact, not only do I think this, but I've even said it in publications, that the real scenario isn't going to be anything like this document.
		It's not going to happen this way.
		I saw what happened when they found out that the Hubble Space Telescope was flawed, for example.
		The news of that spread like wildfire.
		Everybody's wired.
		Everybody's connected together now.
		And just as we saw last June 23rd, I mean, we weren't telling the astronomical community or the government or anybody else about our signal because we were still trying to determine whether it was even real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me tell you what blows a hole in this, though.
		Our government, for so many years, maintained all kinds of secrets very well, and they still do today.
		I mean, they had plutonium experiments.
		That's so scandalous, you would think one whisper of it to anybody would have gone around the world even ten years ago, almost instantly feeding plutonium to children and pregnant women and all the horrid little stuff they've admitted to now.
		How did they keep that secret, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know, but I'll tell you, what can I do?
		I can bet you a cup of coffee it isn't going to happen that way.
		That doesn't sound like enough for you, but it's, as I say, if you really think that they could keep it secret, one, the government would have to pay some attention to what we're doing.
		And, you know, if they don't pay any attention to what we, that's point one.
		But the second thing is the people involved would, at some point, be told, hey, look, you're not supposed to tell anybody about this.
		And they're told quite the opposite.
		There's no secrecy.
		Now, there's another point here, and that is that the Americans aren't the only ones doing SETI, of course.
		In fact, in particular, now there's a new experiment being fired up in Australia, which is a darn good one, and they've got half the universe to themselves down there because they're the only guys doing this in the southern hemisphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They might find it first.
		And, you know, it would surprise me if the Australian government was also nefarious, as it were, and shut this all down.
		And the other thing is, if you want to confirm this signal, if you want to be sure it's real, you need telescopes on the other side of the world because, you know, the Earth is rotating, and for 12 hours a day, probably, this signal is going to disappear.
		And you don't want it to disappear.
		You want to monitor it 24 hours a day.
		So you've got to involve somebody on this other side of the world.
		And I just think there's going to be hundreds of people involved right away.
		And to shut them all down, shut them all up, seems to me not likely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So the most excitement you've had has been SOHO.
		And then you mentioned an incident some months earlier.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there was one when we were observing in Australia.
		We had our equipment down there ourselves, actually, in 1995.
		And that was a false alarm that was mostly a matter of pilot error, as it were.
		But the people down there got very excited.
		They had a signal that looked good.
		Again, it was one of those signals where you could move the telescope around and the signal would go away and then come back.
		And I got a call from my boss at the Institute at about 10 o'clock at night.
		And normally when you get a call from your boss at that hour, you know, it's usually not good news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But in this case, he said, look, you know, the Australians are reporting something here.
		And it was interesting.
		My reaction was that I couldn't sit down.
		I just kept pacing around, kept pacing this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
		In fact, if I didn't have the job I have now, I would like to have yours.
		What a great job you've got.
		I love it.
		Anyway, so you were that excited?
unidentified		I was.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And it turned out that what happened is that the star they were looking at at some point set.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You know, it just went below the horizon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		As a lot of stars do in the evening.
unidentified		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		At some point.
		And although the star set, the signal was still there.
		So that told them that, well, this is interference.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I guess I'm going to soon turn you over to the audience, but I've got several more questions.
		For example, here's a factser who says, perhaps the strongest evidence for the reality of the alien presence on planet Earth is that they have made no effort to contact us.
		Now, strongest evidence of alien presence on Earth.
		There are a lot of people who believe they are here now.
		So what are we doing looking out at the stars for some weak pounding signal of evidence when they're already here?
		I take it you take issue with that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would.
		Yeah.
		Now, it's true that, you know, something like half of the American public, a little more than half actually, does believe that the aliens are, you know, they're here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And in that case, you know, we're kind of barking up the wrong tree looking for them 100 light years away now, aren't we?
		But it's true.
		I don't believe that.
		I mean, I would like to believe it.
		If it were true, it would be, you know, hard, it'd be job security for me.
		So I'd be the first one to be excited by that idea.
		But I don't see the evidence myself.
		Nobody, you know, provides me with physical evidence.
		And to be honest, in the astronomical community, I know very few, very few people who give that too much credence.
		There was a British astronomer who said to me, and a fairly eminent one actually, who said, you know, Seth, if I thought there was a 1% chance that they were here, I would spend 100% of my time working on that, because after all, that would be the most important thing I could possibly work on.
		And by the way, he's not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, fairly said.
		Hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		We'll be right back.
		I'm Art Bell, and this, of course, is Coast to Coast A.M. Steady.
		Excuse the topic.
unidentified		All the thoughts are given me.
		I was walking in your shoes, I wouldn't be wearing them.
		For you and your friends are worried about me, I'm having lots of fun.
		Gouting flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all.
		Playing solitaire alone with the deck of 51.
		Smoking cigarettes and watching champion.
		Hey, the room don't tell me.
		I'm the...
		You can die, you can die.
		You can die, you can die.
		You can die.
		Ooh, see that girl.
		Watch that sea.
		Be a dancing queen.
		the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		From east of the Rockies, call ART at 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, at 1-800-618-8255.
		First-time callers may reach ART at Area Code 702-727-1222.
		And you may fax ART at Area Code 702-727-8499.
		Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		Now again, here's Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, here I am.
		We've got the real thing with us tonight, Seth Shostak, actually Dr. Seth Shostak, from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
		And just so you know, though we're not using the formal manner of address, he does indeed have a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology.
		So as I said, you're listening to the real thing.
		The parallels so far to the movie Contact are absolutely remarkable.
		And I've got some news for Seth in a moment.
		3572.
		All right.
		Back now to our guest.
		Seth, I've got some rather remarkable news for you.
		Even though you got that very mean fax, I've got a million faxes sitting here that are supportive.
		Moreover, we do a guest credibility poll on our website, and you're scoring the highest of any guest we've ever had so far who's taken this test with like an 88.
		So I mean, they really, really like you a lot.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I appreciate that, and I'm sure that my mom appreciates it as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there's all of this public support, Seth, for what you're doing and the whole idea of SETI, even crippled, in a sense, as it is at the moment.
		The public wants you to be doing it.
		The public pays taxes.
		Why, Seth, aren't we taking some of that money and doing what the public obviously would like done with it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think you've hit upon a good point there, Art, and I'm afraid I don't have the answer to that because that requires, you know, somehow discerning the inner workings of politics, what goes on inside the beltway, and what's politically possible and what's not.
		I will say this.
		You know, NASA has its own budgetary problems, of course.
		For the past couple years, the NASA budgets have really been going down, and you've got this International Space Station coming up and running over budget and taking a lot of the money that should be used for other projects.
		And the public, meanwhile, is showing a lot of interest in things like the possibility there may be life on Mars or was life on Mars.
		Maybe there's life under the ice of Europa.
		So people are interested in that.
		And the NASA administrator, Dan Golden, he realizes that.
		He makes speeches about building telescopes that can be fired off beyond the orbit of Jupiter that could find Earth-like planets around other stars.
		So he paints this picture.
		Look, we're going to do this.
		We can't do it next year because we don't have the money or the year after that.
		But sometime in the next 5, 10, 15 years, we're going to find Earth-like planets.
		And if you can analyze the light coming from those planets, maybe you can see a little bit of ozone or methane or something that might tell you there's life on those planets.
		But he's got a story without a punchline because in the end, what he wants to say is, and we might actually find that we have some intelligent cosmic company, too.
		And he can't say that because Congress said, NASA, you don't do SETI.
		And I, and with you, I think it's a nutty situation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You're an astronomer, much like Jodi was depicted of being.
		And the other astronomers, even at Arecibo and elsewhere, had a rather low view of Jodi.
		Oh, she's the one looking for the little green guys.
		Do you, doctor, suffer the same sort of, I suppose it's polite ridicule from your colleagues?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, actually not.
		You know, SETI in the past, particularly when it was a NASA program, was kind of reviewed by these panels of professional astronomers that decide, you know, what should the government be sponsoring in terms of astronomical research?
		Because the government does sponsor a certain amount of research.
		And it's always scored well if you talk about scores.
		You know, a lot of them say, well, I don't know if you'll succeed or not.
		But it's well-grounded.
		I mean, the basic ideas are good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then there is peer support.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the real problem then is political, not scientific.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think it is.
		I mean, there are people who, you know, obviously don't support it, but they're a distinct minority.
		I mean, distinct in many ways.
		But they're a small minority, put it that way.
		And so, you know, the science is good.
		It's a long shot.
		Let's face it.
		It is a long shot.
		We might succeed tonight.
		We might succeed next week.
		And we might not succeed for 500 years.
		But if you do succeed, the consequences of that are, you know, it's worth the bet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you familiar with the name Dr. Michio Kaku?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's at New York City University.
		He's a theoretical physicist, and he is a frequent guest on this program.
		And he's commented on SETI in a somewhat derogatory manner, in the sense that he feels that any civilization that was trying to communicate with us would not do so on any discrete frequency, even looking at billions of them at once.
		He views it almost as a waste of time because he thinks for a signal to get here, it would almost have to come using what I described earlier as spread spectrum technology, that that would be much more powerful.
		It would have a much better chance of getting here intact, going by other noise sources, effortlessly, and so forth and so on.
		How would you respond to that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, there's some point to that.
		You've already pointed, but you yourself have noted that spread spectrum is a better deal for your cellular phone or portable phone or for lots of communications on Earth.
		We're going that direction now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		ETs, the ETs were likely to hear are not going to be at our level.
		They're going to be ahead of us.
		So they've presumably done this centuries, maybe millennia ago.
		And if ET is broadcasting spread spectrum, the experiments we're running today aren't going to find them.
unidentified		It's that simple.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I'll admit it right up front.
		But you also pointed out something, and that is that you need sort of the algorithm, the key to decoding spread spectrum.
		Otherwise, what keeps you from hearing everybody else's cellular phones?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that the way they would probably do it is to put up some sort of beacon frequency or pilot frequency that would be transmitting the key to the algorithm.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		For example, yes.
		That's the kind of strategy we hope is being used.
		Obviously, it's a little dangerous to kind of second-guess strategies from a civilization that might be 500,000 years more advanced than we are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And maybe you can't do that.
		But it's true that the simplest kind of signal to get is, in fact, the kind of narrowband signal that we're looking for.
		And if E.T.'s not helping us out, as it were, by saying, hey, look, here's the hailing frequency and the hailing signal, and all it does is tell you where to find the real info, if he's not doing that, then it's going to be very hard to find him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		What do you think would be the most likely kind of signal that you would find?
		Again, I'll go back to contact.
		It was that which was only what you and I were just discussing, essentially the pilot frequency.
		Then they found, oh my God, there's television.
		Oh, my God, in between the scanning lines, there's more information.
		Is that how you think if you discovered the real thing, that it would develop, that you would be only at the surface level, and then you would dig deeper and deeper and deeper and find more and more?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
		Yeah.
		Now, it probably won't be like in contact.
		I mean, that was a great sound effect.
		It sounded to me like a pile driver hitting a pot of whales.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, it's really dramatic.
		But, you know, we don't hear sounds or anything like that.
		We're just, you know, we get numbers.
		And mind, if you get that hailing signal, I mean, I think the scenario is most likely to go like this.
		If you do get the hailing signal, as it were, let's call it that.
		There's not much information there.
		It may be very slow changes, sort of like a ham radio operator with a slow fist.
		Okay, very slow changes.
		But as soon as you get that signal, money is probably not going to be your big worry anymore.
		And you'll be able to go back and build the very much larger antennas it would take to pick up the modulation, the message.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So then you go back and you begin to look at the signal in detail because you've got the antennas to do that.
		And at that point, you begin to worry about, well, are we ever going to be able to understand this?
		Is there some real information here?
		Or is it just the output of ET's modem and we're never going to understand it?
		You know, that kind of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it sure would be a lot of fun to start trying to dissemble some real signal, wouldn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it would.
		It would.
		People occasionally will ask me, well, you know, what does your cryptographer do during the day?
		On the assumption that we have a cryptographer sitting around waiting to be cozy signals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Waiting for a phone call, probably.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Waiting for a phone call.
		We don't have that.
		Obviously, we don't have that because the kinds of signals we can find are so simple.
		You don't need a cryptographer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's a better way to ask it.
		Let's say that you weren't SETI listening, but you were a well-funded government project transmitting.
		If you were to transmit the ideal signal to space, what would you transmit?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think we're probably biased by the experiment we're doing, and we probably try and submit the kind of signal that we can receive.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, let's be honest about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm with you there, but I mean, would you transmit an interrupted carrier?
		Would you transmit prime numbers?
		What would you transmit as a beacon?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, as a beacon, I think you would just send, you know, maybe a picture, as it were.
		That happened in contact.
		Because a picture, everybody can decode.
		It's just a bunch of bits that you turn into what's called a bitmap.
		People who do graphics at home know what a bitmap, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So you might send that.
		And the contents of the bitmap would be to tell you how to get more message, as it were.
		It's sort of the key to the time capsule, which is somewhere else, might be at infrared frequencies or somewhere else, other radio frequencies, maybe even spread spectrum, whatever it is, that this signal is merely to get your attention and to tell you how to unlock the rest of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's what you would transmit?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
		That's what I would do.
		Because you know, and probably a lot of the listeners know, that you can get a lot more information, a lot more bits per second, at higher frequencies like infrared, for example.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We sent out a probe long ago, and I can't remember.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it Voyager?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we sent out the Pioneer and the Voyager.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One of them had a CD on it, I think, or maybe not a CD, but no, a record.
		Yes.
		And it told a whole bunch about us.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that was a wise idea?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it was a very interesting thing to do.
		And, you know, it didn't cost much money or anything.
		The Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques were the first to go out.
		And they had these, you know, these sort of license plates glued onto the side, sort of a greeting card to any aliens, you know, Hey, look, this is what we look like.
		There's a picture of a couple of nudity cuties on there and so forth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But wouldn't it, in effect, I guess we have to back up a little bit.
		In the movie Contact, you may recall that there was a debate raging about whether anybody with technology sufficiently advanced to make us look like we're an anthill would be, by definition, a friend or foe.
		Is it fair to conclude that with scientific advancement far beyond ours, there would be social advancement in what we would consider a positive direction?
		Is that reasonable to conclude, or is that unsafe to conclude?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't know.
		A lot of people have said that.
		Carl Sagan himself has said that, but it may just be whistling in the dark.
		I mean, I think that a lot of people of the 19th century, for example, if you could suddenly transport them to the end of the 20th century, contemporary times, they might be amazed by our technology, but they would probably think that our manners and general cultural behavior were considerably inferior to their own.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about the days of the family unit and children supporting their parents and doing all the things that you would think would be civilized.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I'm not sure that they get more civilized, but I think maybe what you're getting at is, you know, maybe it's dangerous to send greeting cards into space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I'm getting at.
		Yes.
		In other words, if you were to assign a probability, would you say the odds of them being friendly, if they're far advanced, are 50-50?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that there's probably a range.
		I'm sure that there are aggressive people.
		The trouble is that when you meet them, if you ever meet them, see, we're not in the business of meeting them here.
		We're just trying to pick up signals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Understood.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But in the movies, you know, the aliens always come here, and of course, a lot of folk think that they have as well.
		The ones you tend to meet are usually the aggressive ones.
		I mean, think of the Incas in 1532 when they met their first Spaniards.
		They didn't meet your average, friendly Spaniard selling fish on the streets.
		They met the very aggressive guys who got into ships to come over and, you know, check out their gold supplies.
		So I think that you have to keep in mind that the aliens that might come to you probably aren't the typical aliens.
		So there's that.
		But we're not in that business.
		I mean, we're just trying to pick up radio signals.
		And I think that signals which have to be deliberately sent for you to hear are more likely to come from a sort of an enlightened society.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, one would hope so.
		But if you look at all of our world's history, every time a very advanced civilization has encountered a very much less advanced civilization, they have either killed them, enslaved them, or in some other way done harm to them or ruined their culture or absorbed them.
		In other words, not much good historically has occurred in that arena.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		And people have occasionally made that point that contact with another civilization, even if it is only over the radio, might be devastating.
		I mean, suddenly you're in contact with a civilization, say, that's 100,000 years more advanced, and your job is to work on some research problem here.
		And suddenly they come in and they say, oh, yeah, well, we got the answer to that.
		I mean, it kind of kind of demoralizes you, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		And then there's the Brookings report, and I should get your take on that.
		I mean, that report generally suggested that if contact were made, religious, particularly even scientific institutions, all kinds of institutions, socially, politically, would be perhaps disrupted to the point where we would have anarchy.
		And so that information then should be, under those circumstances, with that conclusion withheld from the public.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, let me give you my take here on this, Art.
		I think there are two points.
		One is, I personally think that if we pick up a signal, I doubt that we'll be able to get a heck of a lot of information out of it.
		I mean, I think it's going to be pretty much like giving a television signal, a modern television signal to the Neanderthals.
		You know, they got the signal, but that's about it.
		They can't really do much with it.
		And that may be our circumstance.
		So in that case, there's not a heck of a lot of danger, but there's a lot of knowledge in the sense that you know that intelligence is out there.
		And that's kind of important.
		But the other thing is you might consider the example of Japan.
		I mean, you know, in the 1860s, Japan was opened up to the West, and Japan is still Japan.
		They've kept their own culture, and yet they've adopted the science and the technology and many other things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They certainly have.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, leaping 100,000 years into the future might be a good thing for us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think that...
unidentified		I have, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Recently?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Last October, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you are.
		All right.
		I was there about two years ago.
		And strange things are beginning to occur in the Japanese culture, I can tell you.
		Looking around Tokyo is like looking around New York City or any other major world capital.
		I mean, it's as modern as modern can be.
		In fact, per capita, they probably have more people walking and talking on cell phones than we do.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that was my impression, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And their family structure is now beginning to change.
		The old rule of jobs for life, that's beginning to change.
		So with modern civilization, though it has been a slow process, is now beginning to speed up, and the Japanese, socially, are on a line that will intersect at some point with our society.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Fair enough.
		Well, that may be, but I mean, I just offer that as a, you know, that's another way of looking things at things.
		The Japanese are still there.
		They're doing very well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And their fate has been somewhat different than that of the Incas, for example, when their contact with an outside civilization meant that their culture really went away.
		But in the case of the Japanese, they were able to import what they wanted, and they're importing more and more if you will.
		But that may be our situation.
		But all of that assumes that we can understand what the extraterrestrials are saying and we can somehow fit it in.
		I don't know that that's true, but I, for one, if they got on the radio and told us, look, here's how you can cure death and here's how you can get along and stuff like that, I'd listen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are well aware, though, that there is a slice of the religious world out there that views humanity as the only intelligent life out to the 15 billion year starting point or the Big Bang point.
		And they would be extremely disturbed by information that there were others.
		You do well understand there is that group.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There is.
		But, you know, there are more stars we can see with our telescopes than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth.
		And, you know, there are some people who like to think this is the only grain of sand that's got anything interesting going on around it.
		But gosh darn, that would be mighty dull.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, we're right up against the clock here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But recent discoveries with regard to planets that we have found around some stars extended out, multiplied, what then are the odds, how many Earth-like planets are there out there within the look-back distance we can presently see?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, probably, you know, you've got to make an estimate of what fraction of, never mind.
		I'll cut to the chase.
		The chase is this, probably in our galaxy, the number is tens of billions.
		And for those who care, there are at least another hundred billion galaxies, tens of billions of Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that'll do it.
		Stay right there.
		We'll be right back to you.
		AM 1500 KSTP.
unidentified		AM 1500 KSTP.
		To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye.
		From east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		1-800-618-8255.
		First-time callers may reach art at area code 702-727-1222.
		And you may call art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
		To rechart from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA.
		Then, 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nye with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we are blessed with an astronomer this morning, Dr. Seth Shostak, and we are, for the purposes of allowing you to communicate with him, going to call him Seth, but make no mistake about who he is and what he does.
		He's a scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and we're about to get the lines open.
		So if you have questions about SETI, about what Seth does and what SETI does and where it's going, why we're about to get to it.
		Back to Seth.
		Are you there, Seth?
		I am.
		All right.
		I've actually waited years and hoped for years to be able to interview somebody for SETI.
		When you got involved in this program, it must have been pretty exciting for you.
		How long have you been in SETI?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've been working for the Institute for about eight years now, but I have to say that I did a SETI experiment in Europe when I was at a university there with Jill Tarter, who, by the way, is the prototype for the Jody Foster character in contact.
unidentified		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think we did the only experiment ever done in the Netherlands.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There's a big radio telescope there, and we used it to look at the center of our galaxy, thinking that any really sophisticated aliens might put a beacon down there.
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's been a long time now for you.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It has.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you first got in it, were you wide-eyed and very excited and thinking probably next month or at least the month after, you're going to hear that signal?
unidentified		Well, God, it's hard to look back that far, but sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But I think I still am wide-eyed.
		Maybe that's naivete.
		I don't know.
		But, you know, in this business, the equipment keeps getting better.
		It's like the computer on top of your desk there.
unidentified		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The one you've got there now is as powerful as all the previous ones put together, probably more so.
		And the same thing's true in SETI.
		The equipment you're using today is better than all the equipment that was used previously put together.
		So it's always a new experiment, and you can stay enthusiastic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you a ham?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I am, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you are a ham.
		All right, so am I. And I can remember when I was about 12 years old and got my novice license, the first one you get, and I had my first CW, read code contact here, folks.
		And it was magic.
		It was magic that almost can't be described, hearing from somebody two or three states away.
		It was incredible.
		And I still feel a good portion of that magic, either when I'm operating ham radio or when I'm even on the air here, because your voice is winging its way all the way around the world, courtesy of all kinds of mediums.
		And it's magic.
		And there's some sort of adrenaline thrill to it.
		And I think there always will be for me.
		And I guess it's the same for you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that's true.
		In fact, I was observing, we were on the telescope, well, I was on the telescope, what was it, day before yesterday, or maybe it was yesterday morning.
		I'm a little bit confused about what morning we're on here.
		And the signal didn't come in.
		I was telling the engineers I was hoping it was going to come in on my shift.
		It did not.
		But it's still interesting to do.
		There's still that appeal that this might be the big one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We're going to go to the phones now.
		I've hogged you long enough.
		I've got to ask you to stay good and close to that phone and yell at us because for some reason we don't have the best of connections.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's better.
		That's better.
		Here we go.
		Wildcardline, you're on the air with Art and Seth.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		Honolulu, Hawaii.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Totally amazing.
unidentified		I got the inner voice told me, call now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yum, and here you are.
unidentified		Ingo.
		Okay, Seth, this is Jonathan.
		I've previously had personal meetings with Stephen Greer of CSETI, and I'm familiar with their protocols for going out to actually make contacts directly and physically on this planet.
		And I'm also aware of their situation relevant to funding for their field groups that are going out all over the planet to actually have contact of fourth, fifth, and sixth degrees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, do you realize, Caller, that you're talking to somebody in the SETI project, not CSET?
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		And here's the link, or here's the comparison.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Can I ask you, Seth, how much dollars have been spent on the SETI program and engage you in a response as to why some of those dollars aren't directly going into programs such as Stephen Greer's?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can tell you, well, the amount of money that we spend, we're by far the biggest of the SETI experiments going on now.
		And it's between $4 and $5 million a year.
		That's what it costs.
		You have a couple of dozen people, engineers, scientists.
		You've got this expensive telescope.
		You've got some sophisticated equipment.
unidentified		How many field investigation teams do you think that would fund for one year, and how many points of the planet could be covered?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know the answer to that.
unidentified		You may know better than I. Well, look.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First of all, in the world of budgets for scientific work, $4 to $5 million a year, despite what that caller might have thought, is a trivial, insignificant amount of money.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'm starting to lose you again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you away from the phone?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not.
		I'm not.
		I'm here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you're okay.
		You almost got to stay right on there and touch it.
		It's just one of those things.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'm about to swallow it, aren't you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's good.
		All right.
		So it's not a lot of money.
		And, you know, there are going to be a lot of people, no doubt, calling like this man, who thinks that they're already here and that we ought to be listening to signals here on our own planet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, I mean, I've already said that I don't think they are here.
		And I think perhaps more to the point, the people that are supporting SETI kind of concur with that.
		And so, you know, they're voting with their checkbooks, as it were.
		They think that this is a better bet.
		But, you know, there are other people who believe that, gosh, you know, we just have to look in the backyard or someplace like that.
		And they're free to do their thing as well, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And here's what I would say, that you are an incredibly important portion of the bet.
		And without you, it wouldn't be much of a bet at all, in my opinion.
		In other words, SETI is very, very important.
		And I don't think we can conclude that contact will occur in any specific way.
		And listening for contact seems to me to be a no-brainer.
		I mean, whatever else you do, optically looking for things, even assuming they might be here, looking for them here, you still listen.
		Why would you do only one thing to the exclusion of others?
		Wouldn't make sense, would it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I agree with you 100%.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, okay.
		I hope I'm loud enough.
		Hi, Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		New York, upstate New York.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Not to say downstate New York, upstate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's a difference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
unidentified		And Art, I gotten those flowers for my wife.
unidentified		They were all over the house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
unidentified		Fantastic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You took them to people with a great deal.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Well, you know, if your program would be looking for if they're already here, they'd be talking back home, wouldn't they?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you wouldn't pick them up if they were broadcasting from Earth because their antennas are not.
unidentified		No, but they would be broadcasting back to them on Earth.
unidentified		So there's one way to look at it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I suppose that's right, yes.
unidentified		So by finding a signal to them, you know.
		But my question is, two questions I have.
		One is on the receivers you're using, and the other is on the frequencies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Now, if you're looking in the 2 gigahertz range, if I'm not mistaken, in fact, we're all hams talking here, by the way.
		Okay.
		There isn't an awful lot of stuff on 2 gigahertz that's not point-to-point communication on this planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
unidentified		Other than some deep space probes and so on.
		Now, if you're looking, you'd be looking at other planets, and they would be having to direct their signal on that frequency to us, which means they would be looking to contact us.
		Wouldn't some lower frequencies be better?
		Yeah.
		I think if it's too low, you get into a lot of junk and noise and everything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're talking about UHF frequencies.
unidentified		Yeah, more in the UHF, at least below 1,000 megs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there may be something to that.
		I think the caller's point is that, doggone it, at these frequencies, it's really a very tightly beamed transmission, and you just might not luck out and be an EP's beam.
		And why not go to lower frequencies where there's less of this beaming effect, where the broadcast kind of spreads out a little bit on these original solutions?
		Right, exactly.
		Well, there may be something to that.
		It's just that at the microwave frequencies, there are these natural markers, these natural emissions that nature has made that sort of draw everybody's attention.
		And you can imagine E.T. could beat the beaming rap by either having a really powerful transmitter, you know, pumping out the kilowatts there, and thereby being able to spread it over a big chunk of space, or you might have a rotating beacon, for example, that just sort of sweeps along the Milky Way and, you know, sweeps out tens of millions of stars every.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Kind of like a radar sweep.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you could do that too.
unidentified		So that would be so quick that it probably wouldn't be noticeable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but it would be repetitive.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It would be repetitive, and you could just average it if there's enough power in it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The fact that it's quick, it's sort of like those xenon flashing lights on the wingtips of airplanes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You know, you can see them from a great distance, and they're not on very long.
		They're on for maybe a thousandth of a second every second, and Yet you have no trouble seeing them.
		So, you know, that's a possibility.
		There are some SETI experiments that have looked at lower frequencies, by the way.
		But do recall that once you get way down the dial, you have problems with your own ionosphere and so forth.
		And E.T. might want to make things a little easy for you.
unidentified		Yeah, because I've seen signals all kinds.
		I mean, if you're getting down, whatever frequency you're looking at, there's so much junk floating around today.
		I'm just surprised you can get by with that.
		So many, even a TV booster can be oscillating, you know, on somebody's rooftop.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's why the antennas in West Virginia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		But I'm out in the country where I am, and I occasionally hear all kinds of crazy things.
		But what kind of receivers are you using?
		I think you touched on it, but I didn't quite understand for all these frequencies, is there one central oscillator in different IFs?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, what you do is it's all digital, in fact.
		You sample the incoming signal in time, and then you do what's called a Fourier transform on it.
		And that produces a spectrum.
		You can go into the stores and buy what's called a spectrum analyzer.
unidentified		Okay, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And that's really what this is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And it works very much the same way.
unidentified		Okay, you answered my question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you very much, and take care.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		I am phoning from Hawaii.
unidentified		My name is Scott.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Scott.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, well, I guess you guys kind of answered my question.
		I had originally wanted to know why our ears weren't pointing towards the Earth.
		So I guess I'll carry it a little further.
		And, you know, with all the evidence that our government, and I know there's no genuine proof, but it seems like there's so much talk nowadays from people like you and me, just the average Joe who lives on planet Earth who's seen things and, you know, talk of abduction.
		Why are we not spending this great amount of money on listening and viewing and honing in on planet Earth where all the action is supposedly going on?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		John, just speculatively, I mean, you said abductions and the rest of it.
		Sure.
		If you were to put together a program of the kind you're talking about, how would you go about looking?
		How would you spend your money?
unidentified		I'm not sure I'm following the question.
unidentified		I don't know anything about radios or...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm saying if you obviously believe that there's something going on on Earth now, right?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so my question is, if you had a budget and you were going to try and uncover whatever you think is going on, how would you spend your money?
unidentified		Geez, that's a good question.
		I first think I would like to investigate more thoroughly the government and its cover-ups.
		If I was going to use something like SETI, I think I would tilt it more towards the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all you would hear is a bunch of Earth noise, man-generated noise.
unidentified		I thought about that.
unidentified		I didn't know if there was a way to separate all the mumbo-jumbo, because there sure is a lot of noise here on Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it seems like there's...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you want to buy a good communications-grade radio and start listening, buy a scanner that goes up to two gigs and begin listening, you'll hear so many birdies and signals that you'll soon be utterly out of your mind.
unidentified		So maybe they're communicating with us.
		Maybe they're not.
		As you know, I believe they are.
		So maybe their approach is never going to be the way that we think that it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We have, let me answer it this way, and then I've got to go.
		We have researchers that are doing hypnosis, a regression, that are looking into the abduction syndrome.
		We have researchers that go out every time there's a crop circle, and lots of people looking at things that occur here on Earth.
		True.
		That should not take the place of looking for a signal from out there where it is so likely.
unidentified		Point well taken.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, thank you.
		And again, Seth, let's cover it a little bit.
		There are, in the observable look back time, in observable look back time, there are how many stars, perhaps, best guess?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, within 15 billion light years, which is as far as you can see, it's a number called 10 to the 22.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's one followed by 22 zeros.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stars.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, stars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we now believe that planets are a common rather than uncommon thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that correct?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
		Common, of course, a relative term.
		But even in the limited searches that have been conducted so far, 3% or so of the stars looked at have planets.
		So if you say, well, maybe the real number is 10% or something like that, that's still, what is that?
		That's 1,000 billion, billion planetary systems in the universe.
unidentified		Wow.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very quickly, first time caller line, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, how are you doing tonight, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, where are you?
unidentified		In Tennessee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you're going to have to speak up good and loud, too.
unidentified		Okay.
		Okay.
		Sorry about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a question?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Hey, Seth, back in the 70s, we had the Voyager series, the spacecraft there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'm going to have to take your credit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you hear them, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I can barely hear them.
unidentified		Okay.
		Okay, you know, we had those, we launched those Voyager series back in the 70s.
		And did one of them have a disc on there about what the human, the mankind looks like in all that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we discussed that a little while ago.
unidentified		You did?
unidentified		Okay, did we implement that in there to have the ETs transmit on predetermined frequencies?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's an interesting question.
		In that data, was there any suggested contact frequency?
		If there wasn't, why not?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, in fact, those are, you know, as I say, kind of greeting cards.
		And do keep in mind there in Tennessee that those things are about 6 billion miles from Tennessee right now.
		They're about one and a half times as far as Pluto.
		But the time they will take to get to the nearest star is about 70,000 years.
		And by the way, they're not aimed at the nearest star.
		So, you know, don't expect them to actually establish contact.
		But at least on the Pioneer plaques, now you're talking about the Voyager records, but the Pioneer plaques did have a reference to the hydrogen atom, and that implies a natural radial frequency, which turns out to be at 1.4 gigahertz, just the frequency that Art named earlier in the program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		1.4.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's where it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I said two, so you're looking between roughly what, one and three?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		One and three.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One and three.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You're right in the middle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Huh.
		All right.
		Very quickly, maybe we've got time for one more before the bottom of the hour.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
unidentified		High.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		New Orleans, Louisiana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a question?
unidentified		Yes.
		What about a beacon in the solar system that would take and retransmit a signal back to the Earth?
		I understand that perhaps back in the early 20s when radio was just being invented that they found something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, now this man just suggested to me, if I'm interpreting correctly, he set a beacon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But Seth, wouldn't a natural extension of the SETI program be to launch something that would, in fact, set down on the moon or who knows where else and set up a listening post that would then repeat its results to you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You would, in the best of all worlds, all right, you would move all these antennas to the far side of the moon where you wouldn't have all this terrestrial interference, and you'd send that data right back to us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But that would take a hell of a budget.
		All right, we'll be right back.
		Sus, stay where you are.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		The only day turns to the only night.
		The only day turns to the only night.
		Take away to the city lane.
		Take a long way to the city.
		Take the long way.
		Never see what you wanna see.
		Never played to the sky.
		Take a long way.
		Take a long way.
		When you're up, what you say is all unbelievable.
		Oh, and forget I know.
		I may have told you.
		But then you ask me to think.
		Oh, and the sanity.
		Oh, and the sanity.
		This is an old way.
		Oh, my God.
		To talk with Arcel in the Kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.
		If you're a first-time drummer, call ART at 702-727-1222.
		From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		Call ART at 1-800-618-8255.
		Or call ART on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
		This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nigh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, and we have a real SETI astronomer as a guest, Seth Shastak.
		And he is answering questions for you.
		So if you have one, come now.
		Hey, you own a Snappy.
		Call Play for upgrade details at 1-888-888-PLAY, P-L-A-Y.
		See Snappy for yourself and discover the company behind this amazing technology.
		They're on the web now at www.play.com.
		That's P-L-A-Y.com.
		All right, back now to Seth.
		And Seth, I know you have a book.
		You have written a book called Sharing the Universe?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's the name.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's it all about?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's Sharing the Universe Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life.
		So it gives my take on things like what E.T. might be like.
		Is he really out there?
		And how we can find him.
		So it's a lot of what we've been discussing tonight, but also things like what might motivate the aliens.
		Can you say anything about what they might physically look like and stuff like that?
		And a lot of it is kind of compared with what we see in the movies so that people have a frame of reference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that sounds like a very interesting book and is going to provoke more questions from me almost immediately.
		But in the meantime, where can people get your book?
		Is it in general release or is there a phone number?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I'm told, now, mind you, I haven't been to the bookstores here this last week and it's sort of come out more or less now, but I'm told that it's at the major chain.
		So people should check their local bookstores.
		And of course, there are a number of companies that sell books via the web.
		So people who are wired into the web can find it without too much difficulty.
		They should just look for sharing the universe and they'll find it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I presume there is information on your website.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Also, yes, they can always go to the SETI website at www.seti.org.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's easy enough.
		That's right.
		It would be a non-profit organization, so it's .org.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At any rate, we also have, folks, a link so you can go to my website and jump right over and take a look now at the SETI website.
		And sharing the universe, it's out on Berkeley Hills Books.
		And I suggest you grab it.
		Now, is there a phone number?
		Do you have any phone number set up people can call and order it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'm afraid that, yeah, boy, you got me at a bad time, Art, because I don't know that phone number.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There is a phone number for Berkeley Hills Books, but I just recommend that people call their local bookstore and they should be able to find it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, almost all of them have computers, and if they know your name, that's going to be hard.
		It's better they should ask for Sharing the Universe.
		They can look it up by title.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely so.
		And they could also, in fact, look up Berkeley Hills Books on the web as well.
		And they have links to the various web distributors of books, but all the big ones have it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		A very sort of 101 on what E.T might look like.
		I guess you have considered that what E.T might look like physically would be determined by the planet and the conditions on the planet that E.T. came from.
		Do you imagine life forms evolving in very unearth-like, and I speak now, of course, of intelligent life forms, on very unearth-like planets?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's no doubt in my mind that life could probably evolve in habitats that we personally wouldn't want to claim as a vacation spot, for example.
		I mean, you see that in our own solar system.
		There may be life, for example, under the ice sheets of the moon Europa around Jupiter.
		And if there's life there, it's in the dark.
		It's pretty dark underneath that ice.
		It's probably pitch dark.
		And it's quite cold.
		That water is just above freezing.
		And it's a very special kind of life.
		It obviously doesn't use photosynthesis and so forth.
		I mean, that's a habitat that might have life, but probably not intelligent life.
		You're not going to have swimming intelligent life there.
		So there are probably a lot of weird places where life could get started.
		But if you talk about intelligent life, the kind that might ultimately build a radio transmitter so that we can hear them, then, you know, there's a tendency to be fairly conservative and say, well, it's most likely to happen on a planet that's not too different from our own.
		It certainly won't be identical, but it won't be too different.
		And that tells you something about E.T. right away.
		E.T.'s probably going to have eyes.
		I mean, he's going to have a star in the sky, a sun, that's not too much different from ours because stars that are very much different from our type of star aren't really great for spawning, for cooking up life.
		So, you know, you could make all those arguments.
		But, you know, that's, as I say, that's pretty conservative.
		Maybe that's the way intelligent life gets started.
		But once it gets started, who knows what it does?
		I mean, it could spread out.
		We're probably going to spread out.
		We're not going to stick on this ball of Earth for very much longer, I don't think.
		And they probably won't either.
		They'll spread throughout their solar system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could transmission through the air be a natural evolution of civilization?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		When you say, you mean...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would that be a natural evolution?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think so, insofar as, for example, science is.
		I mean, you know, not everybody on this planet invented science.
		There was a lot of civilization around that never got around to science.
		But if one society on a planet does do that, they're going to find radio because it's in the physics of things.
		So I think it is natural, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would like to ask you the question they asked Jody Foster, the $640 question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you were sitting in that chair, the machine was already designed long after the signal had been intercepted and you were a candidate, and they asked you, as they asked her, do you believe in God?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I personally do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And you know, that's a question that comes up a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God of the Bible?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Pardon me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The God of the Bible?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I'm a member of one of the atomist religions.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But I don't take the Bible very literally, I have to tell you that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-oh.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think it was written by humans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-oh.
		Now you have just lost your seat.
		And I guess one machine is going to have to blow up, then maybe you get the ride.
		I don't know.
		All right, let's go.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Art and Seth.
		Hi.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Art.
unidentified		This is Dave in Tampa, Florida.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi there.
unidentified		Hey, Seth.
unidentified		How are you doing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Fine, Dave.
unidentified		I got two real quick questions for you.
		One was, I remember back in the late 80s, maybe early 90s, there was a really large radio telescope in West Virginia when I was staying up there.
		I remember seeing an article in the paper down here in Tampa that it had literally collapsed in upon itself, and that they had never found out why that happened.
		And my other question was, I also remember reading an article in the paper in the, I believe it was late 70s, maybe early 80s, about, I think it was Houston, Texas.
		The whole, a very large area of their televisions had received television transmissions from about 15 or 20 years before.
		It was complete with commercials and everything.
		It was about 10 or 15 minutes of programming.
		And they never found out where or how it was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I heard about that.
		I heard about that.
		Both grand questions in their own way.
		Do you know anything about a dish in West Virginia that literally collapsed on itself?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Dave.
		I think I can help you there.
		That was the 300-foot telescope.
		You know, radio telescopes always have these really romantic names like 140-foot telescope.
		This one was a 300-foot telescope.
		That guy used to use that one a lot.
		And when it collapsed, it was actually being used by a guy I used to share an office with.
		But they know why it collapsed, in fact.
		The fish plate gave way.
		In other words, it was metal fatigue.
		That particular telescope was built kind of on the cheap.
		It was sort of an afterthought to the telescope we're using, which was built for $30 million.
		This thing was built for about $300,000.
		And it collapsed very slowly, so the operators and everybody had plenty of time to watch it happen and get out of the way.
		But they later asked the guy who designed that telescope, a guy by the name of John Finley, and said, well, Finley, what do you think about the fact that your telescope collapsed?
		And he looked at the reporter and he said, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, now, you know what?
		He mentioned Houston and a bunch of people picking up a broadcast that had been made many, many, many years earlier.
		I vaguely remember that story.
		Have you heard stories like it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I haven't heard that particular story, so I'm not going to be able to help Dave there very much.
		It's true that in particular, you know, guys like Nicholas Tesla, 100 years ago, exactly, 100 years ago, was picking up signals that were coming from what he thought was Mars.
		And these were ionospheric effects, you know, whistlers, things like that.
		There are such things as long-delayed echoes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now I'm going to stop you.
		We're both hams, so I'm going to discuss something that I hope doesn't go too far over the head of the audience.
		Okay, but I spent a lot of time talking to some regional friends of mine on 75 meters.
		And I've got a big antenna, Seth, like 175 feet out each side of the desert, you know, way above the desert floor here.
		So I've got a lot of wire out there.
		And I run a kilowatt.
		And so it's a pretty big signal on 75.
		And there have been a half dozen times since I've been a ham on 75 meters, an unlikely frequency for this, when, you know, when you'll say something and you'll let up on the microphone, and I'm telling you, Seth, I have heard my last syllable and the key click come back at me like 10 and 20 over 9.
		Absolutely incredible.
		How can that be?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that's, you know, you know that at those frequencies, the ionosphere, the upper atmosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is reflective, yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		It's like a mirror.
		So your signal, I mean, the listeners can consider this, is a signal sort of bouncing between the ground and this mirror in the sky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And it bounces around the Earth a couple of times, and it can be delayed by, you know, a fraction of a second or even a second if it bounces around the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pretty unusual conditions in the 3.8 megahertz range.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That is, yeah, 3.8 megahertz.
		That's right.
		That's pretty unusual.
unidentified		But that's what comes to the top of my head.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There are such things as moon bounce and stuff like that.
		It goes to the moon, comes back.
		That's three seconds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, we're talking here, Seth, we're talking here about a signal that would be delayed.
		I would guess the totality of it would be at least a half second after I unkey that I hear the last of the echo at 10 or 20 over 9.
		Now, that's not something that's going around the world on that frequency.
		I don't think so anyway.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, Art, maybe we got a mystery there that's going to require a little bit more thought and investigation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever had that happen?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I have not.
		I have not, I have to tell you.
		But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning, Art.
		Good morning, Seth.
		This is Tom from Streamload, Illinois.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Tom.
unidentified		I have an astronomy-astrology question for the doctor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I was wondering how Pluto and Charon related to the Oort cloud and how the Oort cloud gave rise to a theory on our sister's supposed star Nemesis, and if it was possible, or if he thinks they'll find, any planets that orbit two celestial bodies, namely Zacharias Sitchin's 12th planet, or Planet X. All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that last one's probably got me stumped, but I can maybe attack some of the others.
		Yeah, Pluto, you know, of course, it's the ninth planet.
		It's the farthest one out there, and it's got this big moon, which is almost as big as it is.
		Carry on.
		But those, you know, we call them planets, and you could say, well, maybe they're just big asteroids that got captured into an orbit that makes them pretty much like a planet.
		The orbit of Pluto is a little bit unusual compared to the other planets.
		So there's some possibility that Pluto, I mean, it's even been suggested it was an escaped moon from Neptune and so forth.
		But let's call it a planet.
		If you go out beyond Pluto, there are other big rocks out there, okay, and something like a dozen have been discovered in the last 15 or 20 years.
		When I say big rocks, they're on the order of the size of a football field or a couple of miles across.
		Now, you're going to call those planets?
		Yeah, it's almost a matter of definition.
		We don't.
		We call them asteroids.
		If you go further out, you hit the Oort cloud.
unidentified		Now, you can't really see the Oort cloud, but you know it's there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		This is a big cloud of comets.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		When I say big cloud, I mean there are like maybe 100 trillion comets out there, small things to big things.
unidentified		This comet that was visiting us last spring.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hail Bob.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Hail Bob.
		That came from the, you know, pretty far out, probably not the Oort cloud, but occasionally things will come from the Oort cloud.
		Now, there's one more point here, and that is, it seems, when you look in the historical record here on Earth, that just about every 30 million years, you get a big extinction of animals on the Earth.
		You know, 65 million years ago, the dinos bought it, and 75% of all the other species did, too.
		That seems to happen on a regular basis, and people have speculated that, well, that's because something is out there shaking up this Oort cloud and kicking comets in our direction every 30 million years, and some of those hit the Earth and cause these extinctions.
		And they've proposed, for example, a companion star to the sun called Nemesis that might be doing that.
		The only trouble is, when people look for that star, they never find it.
		So there's still some mysteries there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		East of the Rockies, you're on there with Seth and Art.
		Hi.
unidentified		Oh, you know, Art.
unidentified		I started listening to you in April 97, and in 11 months, I finally hook up with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You made it in.
unidentified		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm Richard from Freeport, Illinois.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I'd like to ask your SETI astronomer, is there some possibility that perhaps what we see as the northern lights here on Earth could be a special type of artificial space beacon in our galaxy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, actually, I would translate that question a little bit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can go out and answer that if you wish, but that would make me ask you about crop circles.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Sure, but I'm willing to, well, let's take them one at a time.
		Richard, the northern lights are a pretty local phenomenon.
		They're particles that are shot out of the sun because, you know, the sun's a big hot body.
		It boils off these small particles, bits of atoms and things like that, that fly through space.
		And some of them get trapped in the Earth's magnetic field.
		They spiral on down that magnetic field like dirt going down a bathtub drain.
		But when they go down, they don't go quietly into that pole there.
		They light up, and that's the northern and southern light.
		So that's just a phenomenon right here on Earth.
		It's unlikely that it's any signal from aliens.
		I think it's just particles from the sun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They are beautiful.
		Now, crop circles, not so easily explained.
		Certainly not Doug and Dave with chains and boards.
		They did a few of them.
		But there have been some staggering, remarkable, obviously not human-made crop circles that have appeared in all sorts of areas in the world.
		And you look at them and you just know you're looking at either a natural phenomenon or something that has been done by somebody, not us.
unidentified		Well, I've got to see those art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, then you've got to get to my website.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'll check that out.
		I do recall when the BBC sent a camera crew with some low-light equipment up onto a hill and, you know, just film fields of weed every night until one day a crop circle appeared in one of them.
		And then they got some of these crop circles, these serologists, as they're called, one of them to come in and say, all right, now, is this one of these Doug and Dave boards and ropes FACO crop circles, or is this the real thing?
		And the guys, you know, look at it and they look at it some more, and then they said, this is the real thing.
		And then they ran the videotape and showed some guys with boards and ropes that had made it the night before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		But, I mean, you might want to consider this.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Just imagine this scenario on some planet 100 light years from here in their parliament where the guys are considering a motion on the floor to spend 100 zillion galactic cruise seros to send a spacecraft this way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And so, you know, so what's this motion again?
unidentified		We're going to send this spacecraft at an enormous cost to this distant planet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		When we get there, we're going to have our crew carve patterns in their wheat.
		Now, everybody in favor of this idea, raise your hand.
		It seems pretty far-fetched to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		I know it does.
		But is it not at least possible that we're dealing with a natural phenomena of some sort, a magnetic anomaly, some sort of...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you know, I can imagine some sort of weather conditions might be able to do things, but they wouldn't make those in the farm around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I interview frequently Dr. Levengood.
		Yeah.
		You know that name?
		I don't.
		He examines at the molecular level crop circle, in other words, the actual crops themselves.
		And the only way he can duplicate in what appears to be a real crop circle is by microwave.
		And even that doesn't quite duplicate the molecular changes that occur in this wheat that's laid flat.
		So there is the distinct possibility of some sort of natural phenomena.
		Listen, we're at the top of the hour again.
		I said I'd let you go, but I would really love to keep you for one last hour.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's okay by me, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		There's just so much to talk about, and you're such an interesting person.
		How far out in look back time with Hubble can we look back now?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, they just discovered, it was in the papers today, they found a galaxy that's about 90 to 95% of the way back to the Big Bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my gosh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you're estimating that to be, what, about 15 billion years?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's a good number.
		Yeah, somewhere between 10 and 15 billion years.
		So this is 95% of the way back to that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if we could look past that Big Bang point, which someday I presume we'll be able to, I'll hold that one until we get back.
		Stay right there.
		I'm Art Bell, and this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast to Coast AM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The talk station.
unidentified		Oh, they believe, oh, they believe watching me.
		But then they send me away, teach me how to be sensible.
		Logical, oh responsible, practical.
		But then they show me a world I could be so deep, friendlier.
		Open it up, all teleactible, scenic gold.
		From the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		From east of the Rockies, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, at 1-800-618-8255.
		First-time callers may reach Art at Area Code 702-727-1222.
		And you may fax ART at Area Code 702-727-8499.
		Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		now again, here's Art.
		What did you say?
		They'll be calling you a radical.
		A liberal, a liberal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
		My guest is Dr. Seth Shustak, and he's a scientist at SETI in Mountain View, California.
		The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is indeed a rare opportunity and very much of an honor for me to speak to him.
		And now you can speak to him.
		We've got the lines open, though they are utterly jammed.
		If you can get in, we'd love to hear from you.
		And we'll get right back to him.
		Are you zero?
		Tell them you want the ignition system Art Bell has on his Hot Rod Metro.
		It's like a heart transplant for your car.
		That's 1-800-627-8800.
		And check out their webpage at www.jacobselectronics.com.
		If you are fascinated by what you are hearing, intrigued, then go on up to my website right now.
		Make it on up there.
		It's www.artbell.com.
		Scroll down the list until you get to the guest area.
		You will see the name Seth Shostak there.
		Click on it, button-click on it, and you will go whizzing over to the SETI website.
		And there you can read about and learn much more about what SETI is doing.
		It is certainly a fascinating endeavor.
		And as I said earlier, if I wasn't doing this, definitely would be my second choice.
		So you've got a good job, Seth.
		You said that we just looked back about 95% of look back time.
		That means 95% of the way to about 15 billion years, roughly.
		Yeah.
		If we were able to look back past the first, or excuse me, well, I guess the first object, which, or you could think of it as the last object that could be seen, what would be there?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we can see farther back than that galaxy that was reported in the news today, yesterday, whenever.
		We can look back to the glow left over from the Big Bang.
		You know about that.
		That was found in the 1960s.
		And when you're looking at that, you're looking at the universe when it was only 300,000 years old.
		And given the fact that it's on the order of 15 billion years old now, that's a lot more than 95% of the way back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It sure is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, there's a limit to how far you, in principle, could look back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I said I'm familiar with it, but only vaguely.
		You said a glow.
		Yeah.
		That implies that that was the glow from the explosion?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		When the universe was very young, I mean, you've got to imagine, you know, the universe is a big expanding thing right now.
		I mean, the galaxies are flying apart from one another and so forth.
		But in your mind, sort of like maybe like a hand grenade explosion were just bits of shrapnel.
		You could imagine.
		So I think what you want to get at is who pulled the pin, perhaps.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have a very hard time comprehending the whole explanation of how the Big Bang occurred.
		I just read a really neat book by Richard Preston entitled First Light, which is kind of a love letter to Palomar Observatory.
		And it was all about Palomar, its construction and use.
		And, you know, it was suggested in there that at one time there was nothing and that there was something smaller than the size of a cork, which then exploded into everything that now is that we can see.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just can't buy it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just can't buy it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		not something you see every day.
unidentified		Well, let me I don't know if you can see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess the conclusion is how do you buy it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, all you can do is, you know, in astronomy, astronomy is an old science, but it's a peculiar science in one sense in that it's mostly observational.
		You can't go out there and bring all this stuff into the lab and try it there, a lot of it.
		So all you can do is go by what you see, and what you see is the universe expanding.
		You can run that backwards.
		You can run that film backwards in your mind.
		That you can do, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you run it back seven billion years or so, and how is the universe different?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, all the galaxies are more or less half as far away as they are now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's all as crowded.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It gets a little more crowded, not a heck of a lot more crowded.
		I mean, if Andromeda was half the distance it is now, instead of being two million light years away, it'd be one million light years away, and that's not a big deal.
		But, you know, then you run the film back a little farther, and things are getting more crowded, and you run it back to the point where the galaxies begin to intersect.
		You know, well, that isn't going to happen.
		They're going to get formed in reverse, as it were.
		You can just imagine running this picture backward.
		You can run it backward until the universe was the size of a grapefruit, and you still understand what's going on, because physics tells you what the universe would be like if you squished it into the size of a grapefruit.
		You can run it back farther than that until it's about the size of an atom.
		You can run it a little bit farther back than that.
		But there comes a limit when the universe is very tiny, very young, when the old uncertainty principle comes into play, and the physics doesn't work anymore.
		And now, that turns out to be about a number.
unidentified		I'll give you the number.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's 10 to the minus 43 seconds after the Big Bang.
		So that's a decimal point, 42 zeros, and then a 1 second after the Big Bang.
		Anything earlier than that, the physics doesn't work anymore.
		Okay, so we're kind of stuck.
		We're up against the wall there.
		And, of course, a lot of people are kind of interested in what happens at zero, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
		Or a millisecond before.
		So this is where you either embrace the concept of a creator or wait until physics finds out something that it doesn't know now.
unidentified		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Art, I know we are listening.
		Seth and his colleagues are listening.
		But does Seth know whether we are actually sending any signals out trying to contact anybody from Tom in Austin, Texas?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a good question from Tom, actually.
		We don't broadcast deliberately in this space, actually.
		Now, of course, the TV stations do, but that's not a very easily found signal.
		You need a big antenna to get that at the other end.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Plus, there's a lot of collective noise.
unidentified		There's a lot of noise, and the TV signals, you know, go on and off.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The station on a rotating Earth, so for 12 hours a day, you don't see it at all, and so forth.
		We don't deliberately broadcast, although there have been occasional attempts.
		There was one in 1974 using that big antenna down in Puerto Rico, the Arecibo telescope.
		And there was a message sent for three minutes into space, but it was sent to a big star cluster in our galaxy, a globular cluster called M13.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why M13?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They must have had some great, interesting suspicion about M13 as a prime candidate.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suspect it was more just the fact that M13 has a lot of stars in it, and it was easily, the Arecibo telescope could point at it.
		It has about a third of a million stars in it, but it's darn far away.
		It's about 21,000 light years away.
		And, you know, just for comparison, that's, what is that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long ago did we send it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That was 1974.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		74, 87.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So it's going to take 21,000 years, minus, what, 24 years, to get there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Darn.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And if there's anybody there who deigns to reply, that's another 21,000 years for the answer to get back here.
		42,000 years will go by before we get any answer from those guys.
		And by then, you know, my personal interest in the project will be...
		Yeah, so, you know, all right, but that was just to show that it could be done.
		You could broadcast to the nearest stars, and then the round-trip time for an answer might only be 10 years or 20 years or 30 years.
		But even then, nobody's interested in success 50 years from now.
		They want success next week or next year or something like that.
		So that's why we don't broadcast.
		It isn't a matter of it being dangerous or anything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maury, and one last, and we'll go back to the phones.
		It is as follows.
		I'm seeing all sorts of traffic on the internet suggesting that people with home computers can actually participate in some way in SETI.
		What can you tell me about that?
unidentified		Well, that's a, yeah, it's something called SETI at Home.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And this was a proposal by, in fact, a fellow I know up at the University of Washington.
		And the idea was that you would buy a screensaver for your computer.
		And when you're not using the computer, the screensaver takes control, as it were, and dials up a phone number somewhere and downloads some SETI data into your computer and crunches away at it and sends the results back.
		And you can participate in the search.
		That's the idea.
		But I have to say, at the moment, it's vaporware.
		They have to find some money for somebody to develop this software.
		So there is a website, www.bigscience.com.
		People can go check it out, but it doesn't exist yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so it's not running yet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's not running yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it a good idea?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a very intriguing idea.
		If for no other reason, it gets people involved in the search.
		They want to be involved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it a practical idea?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, with that much additional Computer power, would there be an advantage?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there would.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You would be able to look for signals of a type that you just can't look for now simply because you don't have enough crunch power in your computer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then this is a very important question.
		Then I promise back to the phones.
		If you're a non-profit organization and you're starved for money and you're only using a portion of the telescope's money in West Virginia, and it's probably going to cost a lot of money to use Arecibo soon, you can use donations at SETI, I would imagine, can't you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		Yeah, we depend on the public's interest in this.
		If everybody loses interest, this project just goes away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if somebody wants to contribute to SETI a few bucks, whatever they can afford, how would they do it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the easiest thing to do is just look us up on our website.
		And there are phone numbers and addresses and email addresses and all sorts of things like that.
		And that's the easiest way to get a hold of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you have a computer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, if I wanted to sit down right now and write a check to SETI, there must be an address.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There absolutely is.
		I'll give it to you right now.
		It's the SETI Institute, and that's at 2035 Landings, as in aircraft landings, Drive.
		And that's in Mountain View, which is two words.
		Mountain View, California, 94043.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The zip code again?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		94043.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'm going to repeat it, folks.
		If you want to put a few bucks in an envelope percentage check, SETI Institute, 2035 Landings Drive.
		That's a great address, Landings Drive.
		Mountain View, California.
		Zip code 94043.
		Correct?
unidentified		That's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I hope you get a lot of money.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We'll put it to very good use.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
unidentified		This is Steve in Juneau, Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Juneau, Alaska, Capital of Alaska.
unidentified		It's a very real honor to speak to your guests there.
		I think you were up here last summer, Art.
		I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to meet with you then.
		About seven years ago, I received a letter from Carl Sagan, and I must say that I feel the same way tonight that I felt when I opened that letter because of the honor I feel being able to address your guests there.
		I do have a couple of questions.
		The first, I would refer to the movie Contact when the galaxies were colliding back into a single point.
		That's always impressed me as being very illustrative of the principle of what is within is without.
		And I wonder if your guest could elaborate on that.
		I know Carl Sagan had mentioned at one point he theorized that the entire observable universe could actually be a single oscillating electron.
		Also, we hear a lot about the Drake equation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
unidentified		Hold it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sir, hold it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold it.
unidentified		Hold it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sir, hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, sir.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's not listening.
unidentified		I wonder if Seth could elaborate on that equation and if there's been any recent update to that calculation.
unidentified		Sir?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you hear me?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Please pause and let him answer your first question, all right?
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm already on to the second question there, Steve.
		But the first question you were asking about, you know, what does it all mean?
		I mean, could all the whole universe be somehow part of a simpler entity, like a giant oscillating electron?
unidentified		Well, heck, you know, you could conceive of models like that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		People often note that atoms look like solar systems, and so maybe our solar system is just an atom in something larger.
		But, you know, the physics is a little different between solar systems and atoms.
		So I think that, well, that's a kind of a fanciful idea.
		It doesn't get you very far with the science.
		Now, your second question was, if I heard it right there about the Drake equation, Frank Drake, who was the first guy to do modern SETI, and he's the president of the SETI Institute, by the way, he did forgiate this equation.
		The idea is to just try and estimate how many civilizations are out there on the air right now.
		Okay, I mean, we know that, you know, Art's on maybe 400 stations right now.
		Well, how many alien stations are broadcasting right now?
		And that depends on things like how many stars there are out there, for example, but also what fraction of them have planets, what fraction of those planets have life, what fraction of that life has got intelligent life, and so forth.
		And the bottom line there is that nobody knows the answer to that equation because what you don't know is how long do they stay on the air, right?
		I mean, even if there are 10 million civilizations that have been born in the galaxy that built transmitters, maybe they all blow themselves up right away and you'll never hear them because they're not on the air long enough.
		So nobody knows.
		But if you ask Crank himself, he would say the number of broadcasting civilizations right now is maybe 10,000 in our galaxy.
unidentified		One more question, Seth.
		What would be your thought in terms of being able to send or receive a signal faster than the speed of light?
		I imagine that we're hung up on the speed of light and that I think advanced civilizations are using a technology that would be far more advanced to being limited by the speed of light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now, that is a really good question.
		There are many physicists who think that space and time, Seth, could eventually, with enough power, be either bent or warped so that in effect you jump across, not really traveling faster than the speed of light, but a sort of jumping across.
		So you would seemingly be arriving at faster than the speed of light.
		Now, you talk about that in the physical forum, but translate that to communications.
		Anybody thinking about that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, there are people thinking about that.
		So far, you know, let me just say that Jerry's kind of out.
		We don't have any physics that suggests that we can, for example, build some sort of superduper radio that can communicate faster than the speed of light, even using these quantum effects.
		But there is the possibility of, I guess they're called wormholes is the term I'm looking for.
		Like you saw in contact.
		You know, in the end, that's what Jodie Foster did.
		The aliens told her, build this machine.
		She built it.
		Somebody built it.
		She gets into it, and she can jump from one part of the galaxy to another in essentially no time.
		And it is true that the equations of relativity suggest that if you really do warp space and time the way you do around a black hole, for example, that maybe that provides a wormhole to another place in time or another place in space.
		You might jump to the other side of the galaxy or maybe even jump to another universe.
		That's what the equations say.
		But whether there's physical reality in that or whether you could actually ever do that, those questions are still open.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, because that kind of communication, if you could ever discover that medium, might be a very busy place indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We might be surprised.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's right.
		And if that's the way to do things, then we're, of course, barking up the wrong tree.
		We'll say that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildguardline, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		Thank you very much for having the doctor on.
		And Seth, I'm not going to refer to you by your last name because that's too hard for me to say.
		But thank you.
		And I want you to know that it's an honor, and I appreciate all your diligent effort in this setting.
		It means a lot to all of us, including myself.
		My question is a basic one that I thought of when I first heard you speaking.
		That is, when you run into signals from satellites that you have basically either programmed in to skip over because you know what they are, or distant traveling Voyagers such as that that you've run into, don't you often wonder or aren't you concerned that maybe because they are so close as opposed to what you would be looking for,
		that they could be taking up such a wide spectrum that it might be doubling over many other signals that that might be covering?
		Is that a valid question?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, I can tell you it is, Seth.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		QRM from satellites interference.
		Well, actually, I'm sorry I didn't get your name, Carler, but it's not such a problem because, in fact, the satellites might indeed block out, at least for a few minutes, a channel or two, or even three or four.
		But remember, we're listening to 28 million channels, so the chances that that signal happens to block out ET for those few minutes are pretty small.
		When you only lose a couple of channels out of 28 million, you're not really losing very much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we'll be right back.
unidentified		Her hands are harlow gold.
		Her lips, sweet surprise.
		Her hands are never cold.
		She's got better days inside.
		She's held her music on you.
		You won't have to thank her twice.
		She's pure as New York snow.
		She's got better days inside.
		Send your camel to bed.
		Shadows faint in our faces.
		Traces of romance in our head.
		Heavens holding our hands.
		Show us just for us.
		Let's live off to a second.
		Kick the bell.
		Come on.
		Can't give up.
		To Trump with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nine.
		From east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		1-800-618-8255.
		First-time callers may reach Art at area code 702-727-1222.
		And you may call Art on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
		To reach Art from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nye with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I never thought I would see it, but we have a sale on the Beijing Radio.
		Actually, we have a sale on both forms of the Beijing Radio.
		The Beijing is an AM-FM shortwave radio.
		It covers seven shortwave bands, weighs seven pounds, full-size portable.
		It doesn't use batteries and doesn't plug into the wall and doesn't have solar panels.
		So, how in the world then does it work?
		Well, it's got a remarkable device.
		The Beijing has something called the Bayliss Clockwork Generator, invented by a man named Trevor Bayless in Great Britain.
		It is manufactured in South Africa, and the bottom line is as follows.
		There's a crank on the side.
		You turn the crank for 30 seconds, and this radio plays at full room volume for 30 minutes.
		I repeat, 30 seconds gives you 30 minutes.
		That is Bajin A. Usually 119.95.
		Right now, and for a short time, 109.95.
		109.95.
		And then there is Bajin B. This is the Bajin with a light.
		And they have done a remarkable conversion on this radio at the Sea Crane Company, this little receptacle on the back.
		And when you buy the B-size radio, you get a mag light with it.
		And inside this mag light are LEDs, actually three LEDs together, light-emitting diodes.
		And now when you plug this in and crank the radio for 30 seconds, you get 30 minutes of radio and 30 minutes of light.
		Enough light to light a room and to read by.
		So this is a serious no-brainer.
		If the power goes out, and we're getting a lot of storms lately, El Nino-driven storms, and we've had hundreds of thousands of people without power, believe me, you run to the Beijing right away.
		I think it should be in every single American home.
		If you want one called the C-Crane Company between 9 and 1 on Saturday or very early Monday morning before they're all gone, it's this price.
		It's at a remarkable price.
		The regular Beijing now, $109.95.
		And the Beijing with a light, $139.95.
		That's one I recommend, by the way.
		The number to call in the morning is 1-800-522-8863.
		That's 1-800-522-8863, the Sea Crane Company.
		The magic bullet.
		You got the signal.
		No doubt about it.
		You've got it.
		You've confirmed it.
		You said the protocols would suggest that you would first confirm, which I'm assuming you now have already done, then you would contact the government.
		You would contact the public.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Actually, first you contact the astronomical community.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Which, in fact, probably means that the public knows it before the government, because the astronomers will simply tell everybody they know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's my take on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But let's say the secret was held, and no astronomer wanted to go and announce to the press that Yaw had found E.T. They didn't want to be the first.
		I mean, that is a possible scenario, so they'd keep their mouths shut.
		Who would you call in the government?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure whom I'd call.
		You know, I really don't know.
		I suspect that I would call NASA headquarters and leave it up to them, but that's my personal take on it.
unidentified		There may be people who are better connected with the government than I am.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, there's another question.
		Suppose you're not observing it, you know, in West Virginia, but you're observing in Australia, or for that matter, even Puerto Rico, although Puerto Rico is part of the United States.
		But, you know, if you're observing in Australia, well, call the Australian government.
		What do you do?
		I suppose you just, well, I mean, you'd call somebody in Washington, you'd call your congressman and tell them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You'd certainly want to be really sure before you made a call to the press.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And that's why I think that the scenario depicted in these protocols is probably unrealistic, because it takes time to be really sure.
		It takes, you know, a couple of days worth of confirmation.
		I mean, we've seen that.
		It took 24 hours to track down that signal we got last year that was due to a satellite.
		And, you know, it may take a couple of days before you're really sure, and you don't want to cry wolf.
		You don't want to say you found it, and it turns out you haven't.
		But you can see what's going to happen.
		You know, halfway through that confirmation process, some paper is going to decide, well, this looks close enough, we're going to run with it anyhow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take the SOHO incident, since it's such a good one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You were a couple of days before you decided that was Soho, and for a while you thought, well, it could be E.T. Assuming that confirmations had continued to come in and that it wasn't Soho, How much more time than two days would have gone by before there would have been a general sort of announcement?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, an official announcement.
		Okay, actually, it wasn't two days.
		It was only one day.
		And it was a half a day into it that I got a call from, as I say, the New York Times saying, hey, we heard you guys are following a signal.
		Now, what are you going to tell them?
		You're going to say, you know, you can't lie to them and say, no, we're not following the signal.
		What you have to tell them at that point is just the truth, namely that, well, yeah, we're following a signal.
		Now, we don't know whether it's E.T. or a satellite, as it turned out to be.
		But now that the ball's kind of in their court, what do they do with that information?
		They say, well, we're going to run a story or not.
		And, you know, it's a reputable newspaper.
		And they say, all right, well, give us a call back in a couple hours and let us know what the situation is then.
		As it turned out, within a few hours of that call, we knew that it was most likely a satellite and they could, you know, kind of relax.
		But suppose your scenario took place and, you know, the signals continued to look good.
		I think that what would happen is that long before we had gone through the procedure of making sure that somebody somewhere else had checked it out, some even reputable newspaper would say, FETI scientists are following an interesting signal, which they think may be our first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, would that be big news.
		Really, really big news.
		And it's hard to even imagine how the world's press and then the people who would read that press and hear it in broadcast medium would handle it.
		Okay, first time caller line.
		You're on the air with Seth and Art.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
unidentified		Is this Art and Seth?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		This is Donna from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Donna.
unidentified		And it's raining, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's raining here today.
unidentified		My question is extremely pragmatic.
		I'm going back to funding and monies.
		Seth, I heard you say that you're working on a budget of $4 to $5 million a year.
		Is that correct?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That is correct, Donna.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		I'm wondering what your two major sources of your funding are, and is the government involved in funding your research?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		Can you kind of see where I'm going with that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the second question is no.
		The government's out of it now.
		It's private funding, and I don't know if Seth wants to identify the...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I can tell you the major funders.
		Obviously, there are many people who send us money.
		But the people whose names you may have heard of and who've contributed a lot of money are Bill Hewlett and David Packard of Object Affiliation.
		You've heard of those guys.
		Oh, yes.
		Gordon Moore, who's the co-founder of the Intel Corporation.
unidentified		You've probably heard of the corporation.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And the fourth guy up your way actually got by the name of Paul Allen.
unidentified		My goodness.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation.
		So those are four big hitters, if you will, that think that this is worth writing some personal checks.
		The money does not come from their companies, it comes from them personally.
unidentified		Do you think they have some ulterior motive in funding your projects?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I really don't.
unidentified		But, you know, you think it's just curiosity?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think that indeed.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think that these people who are interested in sort of the big picture kind of experiments people can do and that they see that this is something for the first time in the whole history of humankind, we might be able to answer the question of whether we have cosmic company, and they find that an interesting question to answer.
unidentified		You don't think somebody like Paul Allen is going to go to his best buddy, Bill Gates, and say, hey, Bill, guess what?
unidentified		Well, yeah, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe let's go back to the movie Contact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You remember, of course, the very aged benefactor that ended up on the Russian satellite where he croaked?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, the John Hurt character.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have anybody like that that you don't name?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, we don't.
		We don't.
		That's the ultimate sugar daddy, indeed.
		And if there's somebody listening tonight who would like to be the John Hurt character.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The address is.
		Exactly.
		And yeah, let me give it again.
		The address is the SETI Institute at 2035 Landings Drive, as in whatever kind of landing you might imagine.
		Mountain View, California.
		Zip code 94043.
		And my guest has a book.
		And if you've been intrigued tonight, you're certainly going to want to read his book.
		It's available nationwide.
		If it isn't demanded, it's called Sharing the Universe.
		Sharing the Universe.
		It's Berkeley Hills Books.
		And that should do it for you if you go into a bookstore.
		If they don't have it, they can get it.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Is this East of the Rockies?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, only you know that for sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I presume you're East of the Rockies.
unidentified		Okay, I'm sorry.
unidentified		I'm a first-time caller.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But all right, where are you?
unidentified		I'm Dave from Goshen, Indiana, between South Bend and Fort Wayne.
		Okay.
		And Art, I would like to say, first of all, that you have a very interesting show, and I've been listening off and on for about two years now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		And you have a very interesting guest tonight.
		Astronomy, physics, and geology are three of my favorite sciences.
		And I have four brief questions for your guest.
		First of all, although you're not discussing this subject in detail tonight, I'm just curious.
		I'm a Christian, and you mentioned a while back you alluded to the fact that you believe in God and that you were religious, but I was just wondering what the name of your religious system or philosophy or belief system is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't have to answer that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't mind.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'm Jewish.
unidentified		Oh, I see.
		Okay.
		Okay, next.
		Next, I was wondering, has there ever been any kind of attempt to send a radio signal, a beam out into space using like a tachyon, you know, a tachyon pulse type source?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Dave, you know, tachyons were sort of hypothesized.
		Tachyons, for those who don't know, is a kind of particle that would go faster than light.
		So they would be great if you could find those guys and somehow harness them for transmitting messages.
		The trouble with tachyons is, as far as I know, nobody's ever found a tachyon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they stopped the accelerator that might have.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so tachyons are not in the picture at the moment, Dave.
unidentified		Are you referring to the super collider?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		I see.
		Okay, and my next question is, if you had an unlimited budget, and if you, since NASA just found ice on the moon and the north and south poles, if you had an unlimited budget and so money was no object and you were put in charge of establishing the first lunar colony base,
		whatever you want to call it, what would you put up there and what would be your order of priorities as far as I know you'd want to have a radio telescope up there.
		You mentioned that earlier.
		But what do you think about also like having a big opticals telescope that would be as big or bigger than Mount Palomar or that one in Russia that has like a 270-inch mirror?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, all of that sounds good.
		I'm going to try and twist your question a little, Caller.
		And it is, if you had an unlimited budget, wonderful words, I'm sure music to your ears, Seth, and you could apply this unlimited budget toward SETI, where would you pour the money?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, it depends on how limited unlimited is, I guess.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Unlimited.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Unlimited.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, if it's really unlimited, you would build a very large collecting area on the back side of the moon.
		That's the first thing you'd do.
		And maybe you'd build it out of these small satellite dishes that are made in such enormous quantity now because they're inexpensive and you can just cover acres and acres, square miles worth of real estate with those things and make a huge antenna that way.
		That's an obvious thing to do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And again, referencing the movie Contact, Jodi Floster was using such a lash-up with larger dishes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, she did.
		She moved from Puerto Rico, actually, to a real telescope in New Mexico called the VLA, the Very Large Array.
		And although that was pictorially a good move, it was, in terms of the science, not such a good move.
		All those 27 antennas put together would get lost in the Arecibo telescope.
		So they moved her there mainly because it made pretty pictures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		I can only imagine the problem, though, with having 10,000 10-foot dishes trying to coordinate in azimuth and elevation.
		All those motors trying to operate together would be a nightmare.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's probably not even the big problem.
		You have to lash them all together electronically, too, electrically, if you will, to add up all the signals.
		But, you know, you could do that.
		You said unlimited budget, so I didn't make it easy.
		But you could also build, there are other kinds of antennas that are made out of little tiny pieces, so they're kind of omnidirectional.
		They're pointing in all directions at once.
		And you just sort of cover your backyard with these things and then use computers to connect them all together and then sort of steer them electronically the way the military sometimes does with radar.
		And that way you might be able to look at the whole sky at once.
		And that would be really very good for SETI.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on there with Seth and Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		I've been waiting a long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, here you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Flagstaff, Arizona.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		This is Lynette.
unidentified		And my question for Seth was: this is really an amateurish question, I'm sure, but couldn't an extraterrestrial civilization transmit a message or a signal via one of the quasars or pulsars, kind of like piggybacking that signal, a natural signal?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, La Lette, that's not such a crazy idea at all, actually.
		I mean, the quasars, quasars are, you know, really distant galaxies.
		They're typically billions of light years away, and they're just galaxies that are eating things in their central regions.
		But the pulsars aren't so far away.
		Pulsars are just stars that have blown up and died in our galaxy.
		So they're just sort of corpses sitting around.
		And they're very natural things.
		But you could imagine that a sophisticated civilization might say, hey, look, we want to get somebody's attention.
		So why don't we send a space probe over to this pulsar over here and put a big transmitter in front of it.
		And we know they're going to be looking at this pulsar because it's an interesting astronomical object.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's like a lighthouse.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's like a lighthouse.
		It's a tourist attraction for astronomers, so they'll be looking at it, and we'll just put our signal there on top of it, and so they'll see us by looking here.
		You know, that's a good idea.
		Maybe we should be looking in the directions of pulsars.
unidentified		Are you not already?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It hasn't been done too often, no.
		In fact, to my mind, there really hasn't been a systematic search in the direction of pulsars, but it has been suggested.
		I think it's a good idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, how about that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There you go, Lynette.
unidentified		Well, thank you.
		That was it.
		It was a pleasure listening to you this evening and talking to you.
		And I thank Art for that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you, Lynette, and good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, without a whole lot of time, you're on the air with Seth and Art.
unidentified		Hello, this is Art.
unidentified		I'm calling from Georgia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
unidentified		I recently read a book called The Sirius Mystery by Robert Temple, I think his name was.
unidentified		I was wondering if the doctor had ever read that book and what he thought about it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I haven't, Art, so give me a one-sentence synopsis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		He just talks about the star system Sirius and about an African tribe that knew about the dark companion like thousands of years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Sitchin thing, I think, is what he's talking about, and that postulates that there is a rogue planet that every so often 10,000 or 12,000 years or whatever it is, returns, bringing with it great changes and disasters here on Earth and all the rest of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there are people that have theorized that there may be such a planet on a very long return cycle.
unidentified		Well, that's fairly similar to this nemesis hypothesis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There's something shaking up the comets in our own solar system, causing a couple of them to slam into the Earth and wreak havoc and destruction here and ruin your whole day, particularly if you're a dinosaur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How frequently, Seth, do you make the trip from where you are in California back to West Virginia?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it used to be a couple of times a year, Art, because, of course, when we're observing, you know, we would go there.
		But the wonders of modern technology, we now can observe by remote control.
		So when I was observing here, what, 48 hours ago, whenever it was, I just had to walk downstairs right here in Mountain View, California.
		And we can do it by remote control now.
		So we don't go to the telescope quite as often as we used to.
		And while that's convenient, it's also much less romantic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Will that be possible when you get your access to Arecibo?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It will be, yes.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You always need somebody at the telescope.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, there are telescope operators at all these observatories, and they can handle most of the routine stuff and take care of a lot of the repairs that are always necessary as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, in fact, a very, very romantic job that you have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you see the funding and the interest continuing at a level that will let you continue your romance?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think so.
		Maybe you should just call me Pollyanna, but I honestly do see that.
		I think that the American public realizes, I think they're way ahead of the Congress on this sort of thing.
		They realize that this is the first generation that has a chance of answering this question.
		It's a question that everybody's interested in.
		And so I'm sanguine.
		I'm optimistic that we'll continue to get that support.
unidentified		I certainly hope so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think there's at least a fairly healthy percentage chance that this question will get answered in your lifetime, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I do.
		Now, mind you, most SETI scientists will say that things are going to be answered in their lifetimes for obvious reasons.
		But, you know, Art, the equipment is so much better now that I think that to say that we'll hear a signal within the next five, ten to ten years is not totally without basis.
unidentified		I think it may happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Listen, what an honor it has been, my friend.
		I really thank you for sticking with us through the morning.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's been a pleasure, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, thanks a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bye-bye.
		All right, that's it, folks.
		I am sorry.
		We are flat out of time.
		There may be a very interesting debate next week between Jim Dilla Toso and an old nemesis of mine.
		You're going to want to look forward to that Tuesday if it occurs.
		Right now, that's it from the high desert.
		Good night.

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