Art Bell

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 24, 2000 - Art Bell

02:40:27

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

Participants

Main voices

01:06:35

seth shostak

01:02:37

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Welcome to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
unidentified		Tonight, featuring Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning, wherever you may be across this great land of ours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is good indeed from the Tahitian and Hawaiian Islands commercially, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the Pole and worldwide on the internet.
unidentified		This is Coast to Costa M and I'm Mark Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, how did it go for you last night with the Ghosties?
		That was some program, wasn't it?
		But tonight, if we're lucky, we're going to be talking with Seth Shostak.
		And he's down at Arecibo in Puerto Rico.
		And if we're really lucky, you see, there are two live webcams down at Arecibo.
		You know what Arecibo is, right?
		You saw the movie Compact.
		You saw the big dish built into a canyon in Puerto Rico.
		The world's largest radio telescope built literally into a canyon.
		It's an amazing, amazing thing.
		It's almost like one of the wonders of the world.
		And there, Seth Shostak, who heads SETI, is listening for you-know-who from you-know-where.
		It's the real SETI program, and they are collecting data that is, by the way, used in the SETI at home project that we have going as well.
		And we'll be interviewing Seth, I hope, if we can get through.
		And we might even talk him into getting in front of a camera and maybe, better yet, giving us a little tour live of Arecibo inside.
		Now, obviously, it's dark at this hour, and so we're not going to get to see the big dish out there unless he has some JPEGs he can send along.
		But it should be pretty interesting.
		And so maybe that next hour, at any rate, we now have at this moment the twin, that's right, two of them, live webcams from Puerto Rico up on the website.
		If you go to my website and you go down into the guest area and you see tonight's schedule with Seth Shostak from SETI, you'll see the webcam, live webcam there, and by gosh, you'll get twin webcams, and you can even manipulate them around a little bit.
		It's really pretty cool.
		So that's coming up next hour.
		This hour, a couple of things.
		For example, Betty Lou Beetz, known as the Black Widow, has departed this world with no final statement.
		She had the shot, made an 11th-hour appeal for a reprieve, but George W. decided not to do it.
		She smiled as she slipped into unconsciousness.
		So she went out with a smile after taking out several husbands, a couple of which they found buried in her yard.
		So Baylou Beeps is a history.
		At least here.
		Gotta wonder how she's gonna be greeted on the other side.
		If she should get to the tunnel, you gotta wonder who'd be waiting for her and what their attitude would be like of her husband's.
		I saw a very interesting interview yesterday morning on ABC's Good Morning America.
		Really interesting.
		It was with Elizabeth Taylor, and I had no idea that Elizabeth Taylor had actually had an NDE and a big one, too.
		All vital signs stopped, heartbeat, respiration, everything for many minutes, and she had a real whopper of an NDE and met, as a matter of fact, one of her ex-husbands during that NDE, and I probably ought to interview Elizabeth Taylor about it.
		I had no idea.
		But when she was interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America, she told the whole story, and they seemed quite fascinated.
		Of course, it's Elizabeth Taylor, so they've got to listen, right?
		Calling himself a proud Reagan Republican, John McCain counted his endorsement by San Diego's GOP mayor today.
		That's an important, a very, very important endorsement from the mayor of San Diego.
		So it may well be that Mr. McCain is making some pretty big inroads on the Bush lead in California.
		But boy, this could actually be an interesting political year if this keeps up.
		Now, don't ask me to explain this, please, because I cannot.
		I called Keith when I got this story from Reuters, and I talked to him about it, and he tried to explain it to me, but I don't understand.
		You know, I watch Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
		I really like that show, as a matter of fact.
		And one of the questions they had the other day on Who Wants to be a Millionaire is, when was the last leap year?
		And the last leap year was four years ago.
		They occur, I think, every four years.
		But listen to this Reuters story.
		Dayline, Washington.
		The United States and about a dozen countries are going to work together to track any automated system failures sparked by a leap year day next week that occurs only once in 400 years, said the U.S. government on Thursday.
		Once in every 400 years.
		Quote, it's a real issue that we feel obligated to keep track of.
		This is President Clinton's chief aide for the year 2000 technology challenge.
		It is a Y2K issue.
		He said he did not expect any major system failures, largely because organizations typically checked for leap year compliance while troubleshooting the so-called Y2K bug.
		The part that I don't get here is that it occurs once, only once every 400 years.
		And I called Keith and he tried desperately to explain it to me.
		And he said, well, it's the exception to the exception.
		In other words, there's a leap year every four years, except at the millennium.
		But I don't get that because every 400 years every 400 years, well.
		I don't know.
		It doesn't make sense to me.
		That seems like more frequently than every millennium.
	So it's some sort of exception to some sort of exception to a rule.
	Now, the following appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times yesterday, and I wonder if anybody noticed.
	The headline is as straightforward as you can get.
	It says, climate is warming at steep rate, study says.
	Weather effects could be severe, federal researchers warn.
	Scientists still debate if man or nature is to blame.
	A new analysis by government scientists indicates the Earth's climate is now warming at an unprecedented rate, suggesting that the future impact of global warming may be more severe and sudden, underline the word sudden, than predicted.
	Such a steep warming rate was not expected to occur until well into the 21st century, according to Tom Carl, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climatologist who led that study.
	Such a trend would probably mean a continuation of the recent three-year string of steamy summers and mild winters.
	Well, have you seen the forecast for New York?
	I believe earlier today it got well up into the 60s in New York.
	In fact, as you look across the nation, with the exception of something that has dipped down into the Western 3rd, maybe it's warm out there.
	I think we tend to forget and we take it a day at a time, but this is January and February, right?
	And we're having temperatures that are simply unheard of.
	Absolutely unheard of.
	And so I know it's nice if you're sitting out there in the middle of a winter somewhere and you don't like snow and cold.
	Not too many people do.
	It feels good.
	But what do you think will happen when summertime comes?
	And what do you think will happen to all the storms that will continue to get more severe?
	And what about those islands that are going underwater?
	These, ladies and gentlemen, are signs.
	You know, like the canary that keels over while you're down in the mine in its little cage, it's four little feet into the air on its rigid little back deader than a doornail.
	Well, maybe our canary is not yet quite dead, but it's certainly twitching and not looking very well at the moment.
	Anyway, those are a few things that I wanted to get out for you.
	And I've got a little more, and then we will do open lines until we try and get Seth at the top of the next hour at Arecibo.
	In the meantime, if you want to see the webcams at Arecibo, and they show the control room inside, we've got that link up right now.
	As I said, you go to my website, then you go down to where it says Seth, Shostak, and SETI, and you'll see the webcam link.
	It's dual webcams.
	Talk about fancy.
	They've really got it together, so you might want to take a look at that before we get on the air, because then the website will jam up.
	And yes, not to forget, oh my God, the Democrat debate photo.
	Yes, I know.
	A million of you have sent me emails saying, Art, it's the arrangement of the stars and some of the background.
	And it's this, and it's that.
	Well, sure, yes, I know.
	I mean, everything is something.
	But if you look squarely at that photograph between Mr. Bradley and Mr. Gore, there is one evil-looking son of a gun of an entity right in the middle.
	Now, if you don't want to think that, that's fine.
	But I think to a reasonable, even casual observer, that's one mean-looking entity.
	It's got everything but red glowing eyes.
	Well, depending on your age, you may or may not be familiar with the original Carlos Santena.
	I am so proud of Carlos Santena and what he's done.
	It was such a pleasant shock to see Carlos Santana, whose music I loved, come up at his age and whomp them big time.
	I mean, he just walked away with the awards.
	And it's kind of a neat thing to see, and I wonder if any of you feel the same way.
	And by the way, something you might not know about Carlos Anton, he attributes his current success and big time comeback to divine intervention in the form of an angel named Meditron, a mediator, who shows up during his meditations.
	I thought I just dropped out of the name.
	It sure would make an interesting interview, wouldn't it?
	Carlos Antonio.
	I'd love to interview him anyway, but with that added little bonus of why he thinks he's doing so well, it really would make a good interview, as would Elizabeth.
	How does one go about interviewing Elizabeth Taylor anyway?
	I had no idea that she had an NDE, but she did, and it was a whopper.
	Easy to the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		Hi.
		I wanted to say five things and five things?
		Yes.
		I'll go quickly.
		First, I want to say good luck to John McCain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Second, I wanted to explain what you were saying about the leap year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you explain it in a way that makes sense?
unidentified		Yes, I'll give you a very simple explanation without telling you about Pope Gregory and the like.
		Every four years, as you know, there's a leap year.
		There's February 29th.
		Right.
		You said the exception to the exception.
		Every hundred years, though, there's no February 29th.
		There's no leap day in every year ending in 0-0, except if that 100th year is also a multiple of 400.
		So there was a weep year in 1600, and there was a leap year in 1996, and there was no leap year in 1900.
		Do you understand?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
unidentified		Let me put it to you another way.
		Every fourth year that happens to end in Euro zero is a multiple of 100 lacks that February 29th.
		Unless that year, which is a multiple of 100, is also a multiple of 400.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, so anyway, how do you figure it'll go?
unidentified		Well, I thought there would be problems akin to Y2K.
		I think I called you in December and said people checking compliance should look for January 1st, should also check for February 29th compliance.
		I suppose...
		I was afraid of Y2KS, but since there's been no Y2KS, I don't think there will be any February 29th problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, I want to hear the rest of your five, so hold on, all right?
unidentified		All right, I'll hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, stay right there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		And you're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks, tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
		And Marie's remain of his latest plan.
		He talked and talked, and I heard him say that she had all this watching hair.
		The prettiest pretty doll anywhere.
		and the reason ain't of his latest fame though I smiled the tears inside were burning I wished him luck and then he said goodbye he was gone but still his words kept returning what else was there for me to do but cry
		Would you believe that yesterday's go on?
		She'd be mine.
		And the reason they come late is fine.
		Tell me what a heart is, everything is.
		Tell me what a heart is, yeah, that's all the way.
		Tell me what a heart is, I'm such a sin, yeah.
		Tell me what a heart is, everything is.
		Tell me what a heart is, I'm such a sin, yeah.
		Tell me what a heart is, I'm such a sin, yeah.
		Tell me what a heart is, everything is.
		Can I get him?
		I got a lot of those hearties.
		I got a lot of those teardrums.
		Hearties, teardrums all the way.
		Nothing but a heart is, everything is.
		Nothing but a heart is, everything is.
		But I'm not a heart is, everything is.
		I'm such a sin, yeah.
		I got a lot of those hearties.
		You're listening to our bell, somewhere in time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is.
		Top of the morning, everybody.
		Glad to be here.
		And if we're lucky, at the top of the hour, we're going to do something we've never done before, assuming we can connect with Seth Jostak, who runs the SETI program, who's at Arecibo right now in Puerto Rico.
		They've got webcams up, and we might even finagle something where we could get my webcam up and his webcam up and get him on camera, have us both on at the same time.
		That would be a first in the, that would be an actual broadcast first to have both up side by side.
		Or maybe a second.
		I think we did do that once before.
		I don't know.
		Memory fades.
		Anyway, we'll get back to open lines.
		All right, back to my caller, and I think we made it through about three or five.
		How are you doing?
unidentified		I'm doing well.
unidentified		Art, one of the things I wanted to say was that I give you credit for taking unscreened calls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I've always done it, so to me, it's normal.
unidentified		I like your style.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		All right, as I said, I wanted to say good luck to John McCain, and I wanted to clear up this business with the leap years for you.
unidentified		Do you have a pen and paper, Handy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do.
unidentified		All right.
		There are three kinds of leap years.
		So write down 1896, 1900, and 2000.
		I'll try to make this easy to understand.
		1896 is a fourth year and a conventional leap year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		It was a February 29th.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was like 1996 was, yes.
unidentified		In 1900, there was no leap day.
		Because even though 1900 is a multiple of four, 1900 is a multiple of 100.
		So there are two exceptions.
		The first exception is every fourth year that's also a multiple of 100.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Okay, you're with me so far?
		Yes.
		Because 1900 ended in 0, 0, because it was a multiple of 100, there's no leap date that year.
		Okay.
		2000 is a multiple of 4.
		So 2000 is like 1996.
		However, 2000 also is a multiple of 100.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		But there's a second exception.
unidentified		Because 2000 is a multiple of 400 also, that every hundredth year exception doesn't apply.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's like triple wedging.
unidentified		I suppose so.
		So 1996 was conventional.
		1900 was a multiple of 100, so there was no leap day in 1900.
		And even though 2,000 is a multiple of 100, because 2,000 is a multiple of 400, it's just the regular.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I actually have it.
unidentified		I'm glad you understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's very weird.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The next question is, since this snuck up on everybody, again I ask, what do you suspect will occur?
unidentified		I suspect what occurred on January 1st will occur on February 29th.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not much anything.
unidentified		Yes.
		Actually, I was watching a Super Bowl commercial in January 1999, and Apple ran a commercial about Macintosh systems being Y2K compliant while the rest of the world went to hell.
		The commercial was humorous, not apocalyptic.
		So I actually found out about this every hundred year business in January 1999.
		Huh.
		Okay, I wanted to say two other things as well.
		I went to DrSky.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes?
unidentified		I'm planning to be a physics major.
		And even though I'm not a great astronomer, I like astronomy for its artistic beauty.
		Things fit together.
		And while it's easy to understand second derivatives and hadrons, astronomy is science on a large scale.
		I can really see how science is applied to the world through astronomy.
		Gravity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you'll be the guy who will begin anew the study of near-Earth orbiting orb crossing objects and save the world.
unidentified		I don't know what can be done to save the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, noticing it enough ahead of time, you know, allows you to get to do whatever you're going to do.
unidentified		You're right.
		I suppose you're right.
		You're right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, thank you.
		And have a good morning.
		Maybe I've seen too many movies, you know, but I have this vision in my mind of this, and I think the movies have put it there, even NASA's put it there, of this giant, tumbling black rock about the size of Manhattan.
		That's what the movies have done to me.
		Of course, they've got that new little thing in an orbit around one of these black rocks, and that's what it looks like, is a giant black rock.
		Tumbling through space, coming head-on for Earth.
		Since we've now recognized, they say what, about one out of ten of these things that would potentially be headed for Earth, identify their orbits and so forth, what are the odds?
		Well, they're not in our favor, if there is one tumbling in our direction.
		The first we'd probably know of it would be when we looked up and saw a bright flash in the sky.
		A really bright flash in the sky.
		That's what I think.
		But that's me.
		West of the Rockies, you're on there.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		The last guy with the explanation for the leap here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Well, here is an easier one for you.
unidentified		It's a mathematical thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I got that much.
unidentified		Well, but not the way he said it.
		The Earth doesn't travel around in exactly 24 hours.
		It's either...
		Well, but the same thing goes for every 400 years.
		Every 400 years, they have to add in a little bit more time because it's not enough to do it every four years over the span of all that time.
		So this leap year is the leap year, again, where they have to add more time than normal to make up for all those hundreds of years that they've only taken or added on only so much time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		So it's a mathematical thing.
		It's pure and simple.
		I don't even understand all those ways that he was trying to figure out how you do that.
		And I read this in the newspaper.
		It's you do it because you can only add so many times every four years and then every hundred years and then it goes to 400 since that's when they first did it.
		And looking back, they say now this year we have to have more time to make it right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well any thoughts on what's going to occur on this day?
		In other words, are computers ready?
		Will they mess up?
		Will it be bad for one day?
		Would they potentially go down and stay down?
unidentified		Nah, I don't think so.
		There's another date, though.
		There's another date, March, I think, that's even more compelling.
		But I can't remember what date it is.
		But this, I don't think, is going to be a problem any more than the Y2K was.
		I figured that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's certainly interesting, anyway.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, I guess we'll all see, like, Y2K.
		But I suppose we can be surprised in one way.
		We can be surprised in another.
		You know, Y2K not being a problem.
		And then all of a sudden, some stupid thing like this coming along and getting us, or whatever it is, coming in March.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Hi, this is Mike from Encino.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Mike.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Good.
unidentified		I'm a regular listener?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I sent you a fax today regarding the debate demon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And did you get it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know, Mike.
		I got a lot of faxes about the debate demon.
		I got, to give you some rough idea, about 950 emails on it.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I got faxes until I finally had to turn off the machine to save it.
unidentified		So I'll tell you what it was about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stars.
unidentified		I was listening to the show last night.
unidentified		I'm a regular listener, as you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And it rather freaked me out listening to that about a demon between the two candidates.
		And this morning I woke up and brought up the picture on my computer, which was a little bit distorted, because I don't have a real high-resolution computer.
		So I took it.
		I went to a customer of mine and had her bring it up on hers.
		Very high-resolution.
		And believe it or not, Art, if you will look very closely at that image, it is actually five stars on the flag.
		Yeah, I know.
		You know this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		I know that.
		But it doesn't change a thing.
		In other words, it's so clearly there.
		You can call it an accident of the stars combined with the background and the lighting.
		And you'd be correct.
		But you'd also be correct if you stood back and looked at it and said, hey man, look at the demon.
unidentified		But that's not the beauty of it, but that's the irony of it.
unidentified		Is that although it is comprised of physical stars on a flag, it does make up a demon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, doesn't it strike you as odd that the stars would arrange themselves so in the middle of two candidates for the presidency?
		I mean, of course, we can sit here and we can say it was laid over this way and that way and this way and that way.
		And, you know, all of this came together to produce the face of a demon.
		Or we can look at the picture and say, yo, that's the face of a demon.
unidentified		Well, no, I completely agree.
unidentified		You know, there are also pentagrams turned on their side that make up the face of a demon, which has to lend itself to some thought about what's really going on here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's one of those things, thank you.
		It's one of those things where you can believe what you wish to believe and what you are comfortable believing.
		But explain as you will about the stars and the lighting and the background and all the reasons that you think that image is apparent to people who see it, you've still got to sort of sit back and say, yeah, but that happened.
		I mean, there it is.
		There's the picture.
		It's startling.
unidentified		It's demonic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then you can get down into being a pixel person and arranging the stars and all the rest of it.
		Well, sure, true.
		Absolutely true.
unidentified		But awfully coincidental.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, really coincidental.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello, Art Bell.
		This is Kawasi calling from West of the Rockies, and I'm fumbling for my radio.
		My radio is a little bit more.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm turning it the wrong way, too.
unidentified		Yeah, okay, I got it now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I was calling to talk to you about the death penalty.
unidentified		I would like to explain to you why I stand in my position.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is your position?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, first tell us what your position is, actually.
unidentified		All right.
unidentified		I am against it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're against it.
unidentified		I feel that it is inherently evil to kill someone, regardless of the reasoning.
		Taking someone's life is wrong.
		The whole golden rule, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.
		So I would like to know what you're saying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I feel differently about the golden rule than you do.
		In other words, argue with this.
		If I went out and, I don't know, robbed a 7-Eleven, right, and killed the guy behind the counter as I left, sort of for good measure, And I got caught and I was charged with murder.
		I would expect the death penalty to be levied upon myself.
unidentified		I see.
unidentified		Because you killed him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So argue with that one.
unidentified		Well, you're you did and you did invite it on yourself, uh doing onto others.
unidentified		But but I the way the the way that I see it as being evil is they they you do as you will as long as you harm none.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll tell you what I think borders on evil, and you can agree or disagree with this.
		They have now, you know, adopted the needle instead of the electric chair.
		I think that when you are aware that the method of death or a life for a life or you know no matter how you want to talk about this, if it's cruel, if it's a painful death, then I think it's wrong.
		In other words, I believe in a life for a life.
		I believe in that.
		Even down to my very own self, should I do something that awful, I believe in a life for a life.
		Or the golden rule extended that far.
		But I don't believe the difference I think there should be between a criminal who kills and takes a life wantonly and perhaps in a very cruel manner.
		I don't think society needs to repay in precisely that manner.
		We don't need to make somebody suffer with cyanide or the electric chair or whatever.
		You know, putting them to sleep is sufficient in my mind.
		And it's not a big line between what society does and what the criminal does.
		Both take lives.
		But in one, there's justice involved.
		Yes, revenge.
		On behalf of those left and the person departed.
		There are those aspects.
		But there's also a slight difference, and that is that, in my opinion, society simply does not need to torture people.
		The taking of the life is enough, and it'll be sorted out on the other side.
		I'm firmly convinced of that fact, that it will be sorted out on the other side.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello, Mr. Arbell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Hey, my name's Wally.
unidentified		I'm calling from Olive Branch, Mississippi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir?
unidentified		I was calling about something that I'm kind of excited about in my life.
unidentified		I have a mental illness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And I'm treating it with shamanism and magic and things like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it working?
unidentified		Yeah, it works real well.
		I called a few weeks back and talked to Barbara Simpson about it.
		And she had a show about divination.
		And anyway, I've had a lot of real bad problems in my life.
		I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenic when I was about 15.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How old are you now?
unidentified		I'm 43.
		And I'm married now.
		And I have two stepchildren.
		I have a full-time job, and I'm celebrating four years sober in AA Sunday.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, congratulations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll tell you, as difficult a time as modern medicine has with paranoid schizophrenia in terms of treating it, if you are doing anything at all that's working, then you're doing something that medical science is not having a lot of luck with otherwise.
unidentified		Yeah, that's right.
		Well, you know, it's just, it's something that is hard to deal with.
		One thing is, you know, when they talk about it on TV and so, I mean, a lot of people don't have a lot of sympathy for it.
		they don't understand it a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the point I was trying to make.
		Modern medical science doesn't really understand very much about it.
		Or, let's put it this way, enough to, in many cases, actually successfully treat it.
		There are some really new, good new drugs they're trying, but it's a tough one, all right?
		So if you're having luck yourself, then you may be on to something.
		All right, in the next minutes, we're going to try to connect to Arecibo in Puerto Rico and Seth Shostak, who directs the SETI program.
		It's really something.
		I'm going to go to Puerto Rico, and I am going to see that dish.
		I really want to stand there, where Jodi Foster did in the movie, and look at that dish and think about the world.
		That's something I'm going to do.
unidentified		You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 24, 2000.
		Music Music Music Music Music Music Music
		I can be shy my way in my dreams.
		In the ocean dark, I'm a virgin youth, I'm trapped in ribbons here.
		Be inside of the sand, the smell of the touch, there's something inside that you need so much.
		The sight of a touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak moves deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again, or to fly to the sun without burning a wing, to lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing.
		All these things in our memories we saw, from the used-men to come to fall.
		Fly, fly, take it home, take it away.
		I'll be afraid of me right, I'll be.
		It's all free I've been holding a swing for years It's so hard to do with my fears And to end my life in all my life But by now, by
		now, I'm a shivering cross Oh, oh, oh Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell somewhere in time.
		Tonight's program originally aired February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are about to try something really new.
		My guest coming up shortly is Dr. Seth Shostak.
		He is the fellow who runs the SETI program.
		We'll sort of do an in-depth request for a short biographical sketch here in a moment.
		And you know what SETI is, right?
		And you know what Arecibo is, don't you?
		That great big dish that you saw in the movie Contact built into the side of a, well, between, I don't know, between two hills and a giant valley.
		It's the dog-gaundest thing you've ever seen, the largest radio telescope in the world.
		And you know what they're looking for.
		And you know what they're listening for.
		And we have made connection with Puerto Rico.
		It was quite a job.
		It's like I got it done the last three seconds before I had to come back on the air.
		So we'll see how the audio is here in a moment.
		But we have webcams up, or I should say, Arecibo has twin webcams up right now so that during the course of the interview, if you go to my website at www.artbell.com and scroll down to the guest area, you'll see Seth Shoztak's name and SETI, and you'll see the webcam there.
		You click on that, and I think, now I say, I think we've got Seth seated in front of one of the webcams or in front of one of the webcams.
		I'm not sure.
		I'm seeing a little boy there, and I'm seeing a fellow in a green shirt and a pair of Levi's and a whole bunch of computers.
		And now the photograph is changing a little bit.
		Ooh, that must be Seth, because now he's on the telephone.
		So in other words, we're going to have live webcam available for you on the website, not just from Seth, but from myself as well.
		You'll be able to see both sides of the interview underway, and we can even arrange it perhaps so it's done at the same time.
		I don't know.
		We're going to try.
		So that's the plan.
		And we'll see how the plan goes in a minute.
unidentified		The End All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can now see, I'm looking at the SETI cam from Puerto Rico, and I think I'm seeing Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth, welcome to the program.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's good to be here.
		All right.
		I'm sort of curious, actually, which of the SETI cams you're looking at, because there's one sort of a frontal view, and there's one sort of a back view.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'm going to tell you what I see.
		I see you, I believe.
		Do you have a green shirt on and jeans?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I definitely have a green shirt and jeans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's you.
		I see you from behind, and then I see a lady next to you in one frame.
		In the other frame, I see a kind of a, well, I wouldn't call it a frontal view.
		I'd call it a kind of a side view of you, and you look great.
		And then I see the lady next to you in a, oh, what would that be?
		Kind of a blue coat, it looks like?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A blue or even almost purple, I would say.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, you've got both views, so there's nothing more to be seen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, this is amazing.
		It's amazing for me.
		I guess my audience has done it a lot because, you know, they've been watching me on the webcam for years, but I have never been able to sit and watch the person I'm interviewing.
		This is really cool.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I should explain who this second person is, by the way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Please.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, please.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		This person sitting behind me is Jill Carter.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And for anyone who saw the movie Contact, and I'm sure you have because you often ask people if they want to take a ride.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe 10 times, 15 times, something.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, 10 times.
		They should give you a bulk discount for that art.
		But Jill is very much the person that the Satan character Ellie Arrowway is based upon.
		In fact, she's showing her shirt.
		She's wearing a contact shirt tonight.
		So when you see Jodi playing the young radio astronomer who wants to make contact with our cosmic brethren.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There she is, huh?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There she is.
		She's right here.
		It's actually her shift from midnight to 6 a.m.
		I take the early shift from 6 to midnight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is absolutely cool.
		I mean, it's really neat.
		I guess I'm experiencing what the rest of my audience.
		Well, all right, so what I see you sitting by are three gigantic monitors and computers all over the place.
		Computers, computers.
		Oh, I heard a beep.
		Computers everywhere.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		That's right.
		Well, that's the way this is done.
		Not to make too many allusions to contact, but you may recall that the way Jodi got in touch was by sitting on the hood of her sports car with a pair of earphones on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And all she had to do was wait about 30 seconds, and the aliens checked in with a signal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's be fair.
		I mean, that was a scene, right?
		She'd been at it for a long time, after all.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
		You're right.
		We ought to give her credit for perseverance there.
		But in fact, of course, this system that you're looking at here is monitoring not one pair of channels, as Jodi was doing, but 28 million pairs of channels simultaneously.
		So, of course, we told Warner Brothers that they really ought to have put 28 million pairs of earphones on Jodi, but they refused to do that, saying that it would mess up her coiffure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen here now.
		You know, I understand how that makes it sound, but remember that people come here close to where I am in Las Vegas and they hit megabucks and they walk away.
		It does happen with millions and millions and millions of dollars, maybe $50 million.
		Who knows?
		Tremendous amounts of money.
		It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, fair enough.
		She might have been able to do it with one channel, but that's a bit of a long shot.
		So that's why we try and monitor as many channels as we can.
		28 million is not a magic number or anything.
		It just happens to be the number that this equipment can handle.
		But the consequence of that is we don't sit around with earphones because there's no way you could do that, to keep tabs on that many channels.
		So that's why you see all the computers here.
		They're actually doing the listening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're not going to believe this, and you never know what has happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But guess what's come up on the SETI cam?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		Is it gone bonkers?
		Let's see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It says, forbidden.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your client is not allowed to access the requested object.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Is that right?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I imagine what's happened, Seth, is that, well, you tell me, Seth, when hundreds of thousands of people, potentially, at one time try to access your SETICam, I guess we now know what happens.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think we do, Art.
		I was sort of wondering how you had done this, whether you had simply sort of copied our SETICAM on a regular basis over to your site or whether you just sent them to our URL.
		It sounds like you did the latter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we're sending them to your URL so that we could watch you live.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I noticed that we have a system here monitoring SETICAM as well, and it seems to be hung up with half a picture being displayed.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So this has been a good test, and maybe the rest of this conversation will be done blind on this side.
unidentified		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, Seth, we've done that to a lot of sites in the past, including our own.
		Is that right?
		So we'll just hope that maybe you can do a reset on that end.
		Maybe your internet provider is currently bleeding out.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		We have, you know, this is done from a series of computers back at the SETI Institute, which is located in California, of course.
		And unfortunately, it's about 11 o'clock at night there, so I don't know what's going to happen, but as you say, it's a good test.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, we might have destroyed what's in California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was great for about 10 minutes, I'll tell you that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was good, yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Jill is now worried that all the computers back in California have been brought to their knees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, these are not the same servers, I hope, that do other important things for SETI.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's not for analyzing the data.
		That's all done right here on the site, actually.
		That's something that many people don't realize.
		All the data are analyzed right here, real time.
		So you don't have to worry about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What else is on the server that would be important if the server is potentially not working anymore?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it stopped Jill's email, put it that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It stopped her email?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so your communications back there are gone.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		We're isolated.
		This place is pretty isolated anyhow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How, yeah, the movie, of course, depicted it virtually in the middle of a jungle or with a jungle very close by.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that accurate?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's pretty accurate.
		In fact, people often wonder why the world's largest radio telescope is located here.
		Now, the first thing I have to mention is that Puerto Rico is the most densely populated country.
		It's not a country, it's a commonwealth, of course, of the United States, but the most densely populated area in the world.
		It's equivalent to the population density of Holland.
		Wow.
		Because, yeah, it's a small island.
		This island's maybe 100 by 60 miles or something, and there's something like 3 million people, if I remember correctly, that live here in Puerto Rico.
		So, sure, we're in the jungles, but jungle is kind of a relative term because there are houses all around, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Right, but still, the jungle, where the houses are not, you are in that country.
		It's tropical.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We are.
		We're in a part of the country that it's sort of a pockmarked topography, a bunch of hills here.
		See, Puerto Rico is just a bit of limestone, some ocean bottom that's been tilted up because of tectonic activity.
		And so you've got this sea bottom topography, if you will, that gets washed away.
		It's just limestone.
		It gets washed away by rain.
		So you've got all these hills here.
		And about 40 years ago, somebody was flying over these hills in a private airplane.
		They looked down and they said, you know, there's one valley down there that's pretty much a perfect bowl.
		And if we just cover that bowl with chicken wire, we'd have one heck of an antenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		covering the bowl with chicken wire.
		Is that in fact...
		because when you look at at the arisibo dish it looks like more than chicken wire looks like it has It is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the original incarnation of this thing, the first telescope they built was made in a fairly simple way with fairly crude mesh.
		You know, something like chicken wire.
		It wasn't chicken wire, but it was a better grade of chicken wire.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, they were just probably trying to prove the concept at that point.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And you know, you're a radio amateur.
		You know that at low frequencies, the surface doesn't have to be that perfect.
		Right.
		But this telescope has been continually upgraded.
		And in fact, the dish now, the big reflecting surface, the big radio mirror, if you will, is aluminum panels, 18 acres of them.
		And they're pretty darn accurate.
		You're not allowed to skateboard on this antenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		18 acres, did you say?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		18 acres.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's almost impossible for me to comprehend.
		18 acres.
		I really want to come to Puerto Rico and see it.
		I want to stand where Jodi did up there and look down.
		Is that possible?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you should definitely do that.
		Actually, I recommend to anybody who comes to Puerto Rico, of course, given our experience here with the SETI cam, maybe we shouldn't invite the listeners to do too much here.
		But the next time that anybody comes to Puerto Rico, they should take the hour and a half drive that's required to come on up here.
		They have a wonderful visitor center, and it's an impressive thing.
		But I have to say, Art, curiously enough, when you sit up here in the control room, we have a view of the antenna.
		But it just doesn't look that impressive when you're up here.
		You have to walk down to the edge of the dish, and then you look over this thing.
		It's 26 football fields in size, more or less, and then you really get some sense of how mammoth this antenna really is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask you a sort of a technical question?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With an antenna that size, how much gain is there?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the gain, you can work it out, but at the frequencies that we use.
		We look at microwave frequencies, which are...
		That's right.
		That's 21 centimeters.
		So that's at 14, 20 megahertz for the propeller heads in the audience.
		And this experiment runs between 1,000 and 3,000 megahertz.
		So hydrogen's kind of right in the middle there.
		Anyhow, at those frequencies, the gain of this antenna is about 70 dB, which is to say 10 million.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		People need to understand that every time, when you're talking about dBs, we're talking about measurement of gain, every time you have a 3 dB additional gain, you essentially double the power either in transmitting or in receiving.
		So every 3 dB, you double the power.
		And you said 70 dB.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And for people in the audience for whom decibels are not their cup of tea, what it means is that if you were to put, say, a one-watt transmitter here, it would be the signal that would be radiated would be the equivalent of using a transmitter of 10 million watts if you were just broadcasting in all directions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Effective radiated power.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right, that's right, exactly right.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is really impressive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you were to put a serious transmitter up with, oh, I don't know, about 100,000 watts, say, you would have a really strong signal, wouldn't you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That'd be the equivalent of 10 billion watts.
		But in fact, there is a transmitter here.
		Because one of the reasons they built this antenna was not just to listen, but also to broadcast.
		Now, not to broadcast to aliens, although that's been done on one occasion, but to do radar mapping of Venus, to do studies of the upper atmosphere and so forth.
		So they have a...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can actually...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can do that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You can do it with incredibly fine detail, believe it or not, incredible accuracy with this thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's unbelievable.
		Seth, listen, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour, so you've got a break coming up.
		You're not even on camera, so just relax.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM, and we've broken another one.
unidentified		You're listening to Arch Bell somewhere in time on Premiere Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 24, 2000.
		Coast to Coast AM
		Coast to Coast AM
		Coast to Coast AM from February 24, 2000.
		And you better take my baby.
		There's no one to take your place And if you get hurt, if you get hurt I'm a little bit baby.
		I can put that smile back on your face.
		When it's all right and it's coming on, we've got to get right back.
		You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks, tonight An encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, everybody.
		I guess for most of you, it's morning out there.
		My guest is Seth Shosak, and he had the program called SETI.
		We're going to be talking all about that tonight and the big dish down at Arecibo.
		And now you may have an idea of how really big the dish at Arecibo is when you're talking about the number of acres of reflective.
		It's just astounding, and I am definitely going to go see it.
		We'll get back to Seth in a moment.
		Here we go again.
		My guest is Seth Shostak.
		He's at Arecibo, actually at Arecibo right now, and I am now getting a picture again.
		So if just a few of you would go up there and take a look at a time, I'd be very thankful.
		Kind of stagger it, you know.
		Think that somebody's doing it now.
		Try it in 10 minutes, and maybe we won't kill it.
		But I am indeed getting a photograph again, which is really cool of Seth, which will probably result in it getting killed again.
		But I think I'm getting a live photograph again, Seth.
		Welcome back.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It seems to be working.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good.
		Yes, oh, indeed.
		Yes, the picture is changing.
		And all right, so here I am looking at these computers, which are, I guess, actively processing data as it's being received.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's what they do, in fact.
		We get these, you know, we get signals all the time here, as you can imagine.
		People often ask me, got any signals?
		Well, we got signals, you know, at the rate of a few every minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		But you occasionally...
		As usual, I got what seemed to be a really authentic message saying, announcing to the world that SETI got a hit.
		And so, as I usually do, I wake you up in the middle of the night out there in California and ask you if it's the real thing.
		And you always tell me, uh.
		But when I called you this last time, you kind of paused like something had happened, but it wasn't what they were saying.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true, Art, because what I was trying to remember was the name of the star you were referring to, and it was HD51, blah, blah, something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And I can see I can't remember it now.
		But that had been an issue earlier this year when we started getting all sorts of emails from people saying, hey, what about a hit on this particular star system?
		And it took me a while to recall what the story on that thing was.
		It's unfortunately a fairly prosaic story.
		There was a reporter here when we were observing last March, and he was writing stories for the Florida Today newspaper, but it doesn't matter.
		In any case, he wrote some story about how one signal came in, and for a while it was looking like a good candidate, but after a couple of minutes of checking, it turned out to be just another telecommunication satellite or some other source of interference.
		It kind of looked like a satellite, actually.
		But in any case, it was terrestrial, not extraterrestrial.
		It wasn't AET, it was AT ⁇ T. Okay, so but this fellow wrote up the story, you know, he made it somewhat dramatic.
		And the first half of the story described how everybody was getting excited, getting excited, this really looked good.
		And then the last paragraph of the story said, but in fact, it turned out to be yet more earthly interference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, what happened in the fall, this last fall, around November, December, was that some online newspaper in New Jersey re-ran that story.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, because it had been put on the wire service by Gannett.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And let me guess, they left out the last paragraph?
unidentified		Yeah, they left out the second half of the story.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's how that one happened.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's how that one happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, I've got something I really have to ask you about.
		SETI is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
		And you guys, I guess, have to rent time.
		You pay for time on that gigantic dish down there.
		Is that correct?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, more or less.
		We actually don't have to pay.
		We were granted time.
		If you want to use this telescope, you can use it if you put in a proposal that meets scientific criteria.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's a nationally funded facility.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		This telescope is funded with tax dollars, so it doesn't cost the astronomers money to use the telescope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Aha, so somebody at least in the scientific community obviously feels seriously enough about the search that you're doing to allow you time on the telescope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there's some pretty mainstream people that have to say yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		Although I have to say the time on this telescope was granted back in the days when our project was still part of NASA.
		You know, that was ended in 1993 when a senator from your home state there, Nevada, killed the NASA SETI program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		This time had been granted under the aegis of NASA, and that time was still ours, so we're using it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe he just hasn't gotten around to that part yet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That could be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I surely do hope that they fund you instead of continually defunding you.
		If there's anything we're doing that's important, this is sure it.
		Anyway, here's a big one for you.
		I'm sure you're going to know what I'm referring to, but there was a report about a week ago, Seth, from a group of scientists who made the case that in all probability, we are the only complex life form there is.
		They suggested, well, there may be molecular level stuff and very low level stuff on some planets around some suns.
		But they sort of tried to make the case that we might be it.
		We might be the only life in all that we can see and all there is, Seth.
		You heard about that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I did.
		In fact, I know what you're referring to.
		This is a book written by two fellows at the University of Washington, as a matter of fact, Peter Ward and Don Brownlee, I believe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And they've written this book, I think it's called Rare Earth, not to plug their book, but in any case, in which they do exactly what you've said.
		They say, look, if you examine carefully the properties of Earth in our solar system and so forth, you might come to the conclusion that it's pretty darn special.
		And consequently, maybe we're pretty darn special.
		And if that's the case, then we can sit here until the cows return home and not pick up a signal.
		That was their argument.
		But needless to say, I don't really agree with that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Based on what?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you, you know, what they did was they sort of made a laundry list of things that are special about Earth.
		For example, I'll give you a couple of examples.
		They point out that Earth has a big moon, something you've no doubt noticed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've seen it, yes.
unidentified		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, and that's a little unusual for an inner planet.
		I mean, Mercury doesn't have any moons.
		Venus, no moons there.
		Mars has a couple of moons, but they're so small you could walk around them in an afternoon.
		Only Earth has this, you know, pretty hefty moon.
		Now, it turns out that that big moon does us some good other than providing a subject for songwriters and stuff like that.
		It stabilizes the spin of the Earth.
		In other words, the Earth's north and south poles don't change very quickly thanks to the presence of that big moon.
		If it weren't there, they point out, the Earth's spin axis would constantly be flopping back and forth, ruining the weather and kind of making Earth somewhat uninhabitable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For life as for our life, human life.
		Yeah, yeah.
		I'm accepting so far.
		I understand that.
		It would be not acceptable for human life.
		But what if the argument is that life is eternally adaptable and that there might be life on a planet that would be disagreeably rotating and some life form could evolve in a complex way, even under such conditions?
		Who knows what it would look like, but it would be complex.
unidentified		Well, I happen to agree with that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Actually, there are two points here.
		The first point, of course, to finish their argument, is to note that the moon is probably the result of a big accident that happened here on Earth on the order of 4 billion years ago.
		And I doubt that many of the listeners remember this, but roughly 4 billion years ago, there was a big hump of rock, a big asteroid.
		I mean, this was the mother of all asteroids.
		It was about the size of Mars or larger that slammed into the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's not an asteroid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a collision of planets.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you could call it that.
		That's right.
		That's kind of a semantic argument at that point.
		But that's right.
		And the consequence of this ungodly collision 4 billion years ago is the moon.
		Now, that was just chance, of course.
		And what these gentlemen are saying is that, look, that means that planets with big moons like this, you know, rocky planets with big moons like our own, are going to be rare because this accident isn't going to happen very often.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		May I ask a question?
		Stupid one probably, but one that a lot of the audience would ask.
		If something that big smashed into Earth, okay, a big piece of Earth kind of breaks off, I guess, and it becomes a moon.
		But the moon is round.
		And it doesn't seem logical to me that something smashing into the Earth, blasting something out into space to orbit the Earth, would be round.
		It would be really irregular.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Quite right.
		In fact, it's more than irregular.
		What you get is bits.
		You get bits and pieces.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There ought to be all kinds of bits and pieces.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's mostly sort of like dust.
		I mean, it's, you know, it's like sand grains.
		But what happens is that these sand grains then go into orbit around the Earth, and then they begin to, you know, some of them begin to coalesce and make bigger lumps just at first by random collisions.
		But once you get a lump that's about as big as the mountain outside your house there, then it's got enough gravity to pull in more of these sand grains, if you will, and make itself bigger and bigger.
		Okay, and if you build a body big enough, it tries to get all of its stuff as close to its center as it can.
		That's just gravity.
		And the shape that has all of its stuff closest to its center is a sphere.
		So anything that's big enough will be spherical.
		You may have noticed all the planets in the solar system are spherical, but little things like asteroids and so forth often are not.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So their argument was, look, you've got to have this moon, otherwise you've got really awful weather on the Earth and probably not very interesting life.
		And since the moon was a big accident, maybe we're a big accident.
		All right, with me so far?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, as Howard Hughes would not say, I don't buy it.
		Because, to begin with, it turns out that the Earth was spinning a lot faster before this big rock slammed into it to make the moon.
		And so if that hadn't happened, if that asteroid had arrived at Earth 20 minutes earlier and missed our planet, so we didn't have the moon, the Earth would be spinning faster, which would be, you know, bad news for the working man because that means there would be maybe only 15 hours in a day or 10 hours or something like that.
		But it means that it would be spinning so fast it would act like a pretty good top and the pole wouldn't wander very much.
		So there's that.
		But beyond that, in addition, your argument really comes into play.
		I mean, if the moon weren't there and the Earth really had a 24-hour day, I mean, just take the worst case.
		So occasionally the North Pole tips over toward the equator.
		But it doesn't tip over from one moment to the next.
		It takes typically 10 million years to do that.
		Now, in 10 million years, if the climate's kind of changing where you are, no matter what you are, whether you're a salamander or a lobster or a human or an elephant, you can just sort of walk out of the way.
		You've got plenty of time to adjust.
		So that doesn't strike me as a very strong argument.
		This one is one of the many arguments they have in the book.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so yeah, there are many arguments.
		It would be, personally for me, really sad to start to buy into that argument and imagine that we are all that is.
		I don't know Why I'd be sad, but I would be very sad if I thought that was true.
		So you read the book?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I haven't got the book yet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, we were all, everybody at the Institute ordered it en masse, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can imagine.
		I can imagine.
		I'm sure in some future funding hearing, that book's going to come out, isn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's a possibility.
		But, you know, I mean, these arguments, to be honest, have been made in the past, and that's the nature of science.
		You know, some people say yes, some people say no, but it's also the nature of science to say, look, you know, we can sit around here like sitting around in the bars of Spain in 1491 arguing about whether there might be another continent between Europe and Japan.
		And that makes for an interesting discussion, and maybe you could sell a few books about it, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But in the end, somebody ought to build the ships and do the experiment, and that's what Chris Columbus did.
		And so, in a sense, that's what we're doing.
		but nobody's going to know the answer to this question unless we try and experiment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that experiment is...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Because it's really impossible to prove that we're alone.
		I mean, I don't know how you would do that.
		How could you possibly prove we're alone in the universe?
		But what you can prove is that we're not alone, that we have company.
		And so that's what SETI is really all about.
		Sure, it's a long shot.
		And maybe, maybe there are reasons to think that we're the smartest things in the universe.
		I know a lot of my neighbors would agree to that.
		But in fact, you know, it's the purpose of SETI to prove that that's not true by finding that intelligent life isn't extremely rare.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much of what is to be surveyed has legitimately been surveyed?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you attach a percentage to how much of, again, the only way I can phrase it is what could be surveyed has been surveyed?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a little tricky because it depends on how sensitive an experiment you want to do.
		Now, this particular experiment, Project Phoenix, does the most sensitive search of any of them.
		I mean, it's by far the most sensitive search ever been done.
		We've looked at 500 nearby stars.
		And, you know, that's a pretty impressive number until you consider that there are 500 billion stars in our galaxy.
		And, by the way, there are 100 billion other galaxies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've looked at 500 stars out of 500 billion.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's about the size of it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So this is early days to say that it's up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		really is.
		And how long have you been...
		In How many years?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the first modern experiment was done almost exactly 40 years ago by Frank Drake in West Virginia.
		But, you know, the experiments keep getting better because they're largely based on developments in computer technology.
		It's kind of like that PC you've got on your desktop there is probably more powerful than all the previous PCs that have ever sat on that desktop, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You put them all together and it wouldn't equal the power of what you've got there now.
		Well, the same is true with SETI.
		The experiment we're running here is really, you know, it just blows away all the previous experiments put together.
		And five years from now, I'll be able to make the same statement that the experiment we're running there, it's in, will be better than all the previous ones.
		So it keeps getting better in some sense.
		And within five, ten years, we hope to build a telescope that can be used 24 hours a day, seven days a week for this, that will look not at 1,000 nearby stars like we're trying to do now, but it'll look at 100,000 or maybe 1 million nearby stars.
		Wow.
		And when you begin to talk about surveying a million nearby stars, then I think that gets quite interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It really does get interesting because the other numbers that have been band-aided about by scientists would indicate that at that rate, you really are going to run into something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or you should run into something, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		It depends on how many civilizations you think are out there.
		And of course, we don't know.
		But if you figure there are 10,000 in our galaxy, then examining a million good stars nearby should turn up one or two of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would only take one, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would only take one.
		Why are we not actively transmitting?
		We've talked about this before, and you said there was this little brief transmission made some years ago, and there's been a lot of sentiment, Canadian scientists and others, who say, ah, no, no, no, we should not be transmitting.
		It's dangerous.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, yeah, there are several reasons why we don't transmit.
		But your first point should be addressed.
		There was a transmission, a famous one, from this telescope in 1974.
		Before the last break, we were talking about the fact that this telescope, this big antenna, which is really it is, is what it is.
		It's just a backyard satellite dish on steroids, if you will, does have a transmitter, which is used, as I mentioned, for mapping things like asteroids.
		I've got on my lap here, a picture of some asteroids that have been mapped with this thing.
		We might want to talk about that because it's an asteroid that's going to pass by the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, we will talk about that.
		But I mean, I'm talking about let's muster up billions of watts if we can and just blast out near hydrogen and see what happens.
		What is the argument?
		Actually, we're coming to the top of the hour.
		So when I come back, I want to ask you what the argument is against doing that, okay?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, stay right there.
		Seth Shostak is my guest.
		And again, I'll have him go over his background for you.
		But he had SETI, that program that you saw in the movie Compact.
		And he's down in Arecibo right now, sitting inside the control room.
		You can actually see his picture live.
		If not too many of you, go see it at once on my website.
		Just scroll down into the guest area.
		You'll see Seth Shozdak's name, and you'll see the webcam link listed.
		So use it sparingly, but do by all means go take a look.
		From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 24, 2000.
		Music We've been traveling far Without our home But not without a star Free Free Only one can be free.
		Keep hard and close.
		Hang on to a dream.
		Grab around to your home of my heart.
		What I'm feeling, feeling, feeling.
		I can't believe I'm now dancing for my life.
		Take your passion and make it happen.
		It does come alive.
		You can dance right through your life.
		It does come alive.
		Now, here's the news.
		Close my eyes, I am with you.
		When a fly can't take home You're listening to Arkbell, somewhere in time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We've got the real McCoy with us this morning.
		Seth Shostak is at Arecebo.
		You can see him there on a webcam if you want to.
		Up on my webpage right now, you can actually see him live in Arecibo.
		We're going to talk a little bit in a moment why we're not marshaling billions of watts on this giant, giant dish, this dish on steroids, and calling others.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, actually, before we ask the big billion-watt question here, we've got Seth Shostak from Arecibo in Puerto Rico on the line with us.
		And we've got video pictures refreshing now every two minutes, thank goodness.
		It's working again on the website.
		It's amazing.
		It's really kind of cool to be able to sit here and watch Seth.
		But a couple of things I want to get to first before the billion-watt question.
		It's this.
		Somebody just sent this.
		And he says, you know, I saw this in a cartoon some years ago.
		It was simply two Native Americans standing on a beach.
		One says, we have watched the horizon for many moons and seen no smoke signals.
		We are alone in the universe.
		And the camera, I guess, pans back, barely visible on the horizon, is the mast of an approaching ship.
		I thought that was kind of cute.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're hoping to see those masts pretty soon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what you're looking for.
		Would you give everybody a short biography of yourself?
		Tell us a little bit about yourself, your educational background, and how you got involved doing what you're doing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a long and fairly tedious story, so I'll just give you the three-sentence version of it.
		My background's in radio astronomy, as a matter of fact, and for many years I was studying galaxies using radio telescopes.
		Now, when I was a student studying these galaxies, I was sitting alone in a radio observatory in California in the Owens Valley.
		And it was 3 o'clock in the morning, and as was often the case in those days, I was completely alone.
		I was reading a book that had been written by a Russian physicist by the name of Joseph Schlossky, but translated into English and added to by Carl Sagan, called Intelligent Life in the Universe.
		And the point of this book was that the equipment I was sitting there using in the middle of the night, amongst the coyotes and the cows, could be used to communicate from one star system to the other.
		And that struck me as a pretty exciting idea.
		Didn't do much about it, but it was a pretty exciting idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, then in 1980, I think it was, either 80 or 81, this woman who was sitting behind me, Jill Tarter, happened to come to the university I was working at in Europe.
		81, she says.
		Okay.
		Just for a couple of months.
		And, you know, that's what she did for a living.
		Listening, trying to eavesdrop on the aliens.
		And so we put together an experiment there in Holland to do a very simple SETI experiment where we looked at the center of our galaxy.
		And that's what got me started in this.
		And something like ten years later, when I moved to California, I got a phone call from the SETI Institute and they said, are you interested in a job here?
		So that's more or less the way it went.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you began working for SETI, not at the top, but no doubt, I don't know, rebooting computers or something.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, we weren't quite that low on the food chain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your educational background is roughly what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What did you graduate from?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have a physics degree, an undergraduate physics degree from Princeton, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Caltech.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you're Doctor's Showstock.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Professor's Showstock.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But only my mom seems to use that title.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Pretty much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, when you were in it, it should be used, in my opinion.
		So, Professor, you are.
		All right, well, the billion-watt question, and that is, why not put a billion watts out in front of that dish, let it go out at, I don't know what the ERP would be, it'd be big, and we'd really blast a signal out there near hydrogen where we expect to perhaps find one.
		Why not send a signal out?
		What's the downside to that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, in fact, I guess the downside was revealed when the very experiment you're describing was actually tried.
		And it was tried in 1974.
		They had just completed one of the many upgrades of this instrument.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And they decided as sort of a kind of almost a stunt, but in any case, as part of the celebration, they would attach one of the million-watt transmitters that they got here.
		Yeah, a million watts.
		And by the way, when you combine that with the gain of this antenna, which we discussed earlier, that means it's equivalent to roughly a 10 trillion watt transmitter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		10 trillion watts.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a lot of power.
		I hope no birds were flying over the telescope when this thing was on because...
		Yeah, you'd catch them on rye bread and put mustard on them.
		Anyhow, this thing was used for three minutes.
		This transmitter was turned on, and a message was beamed to a star cluster.
		That was in 1974.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Out of curiosity, what was the message?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The message was a picture, actually.
		I mean, it's always a question of what sort of message you should send.
		I mean, unlike in the movies, I don't expect that the aliens are going to speak perfect, uninflected English, as they always do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, I know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but so the message is just what you call a bitmap.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You know, people who are computer literate know what a bitmap is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's just a picture consisting of ones and zeros, if you will.
		So that's what the message was.
		It had 1,679 bits, or maybe it was 59, but anyhow, something like 1,600 bits.
		And the picture showed a schematic of our solar system and a picture of a human, very simple stick figure, something about DNA, you know, some very basic facts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that this would be regarded as some indecipherable code by another intelligence not necessarily similar to ours?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or would it absolutely be recognized as an artificial signal?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it would be absolutely recognized as an artificial signal because of the nature of the signal, it's the kind of thing that only a transmitter could make.
		You know, pulsars, quasars, they all make radio noise, but they don't make the kind of signals that this was.
		So I'm sure they could recognize it as artificial.
		Now, whether they would figure it out or not, that's harder to say.
		The fellow who put together this message was Frank Drake, the very same fellow who really started the whole SETI business in 1960.
		And I believe that Frank actually sent this message to ten of his fellow academicians at the University of Santa Cruz or wherever he was, maybe it was Cornell.
		And apparently none of them could figure it out.
		But the aliens may be smarter than your average college professor.
		I think that may be the lesson here.
		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was the in view of that then, in the movie Contact, the initial contact was a sequence of prime numbers, which one would presume would be a pretty good starting off launching point.
		In other words, give them something that's absolutely unmistakable in rhythm.
		A bitmap would appear to be somewhat random if you didn't know what it was and how to decode it.
		So why not open up with something like the primes as they did in that movie?
		Does that make sense?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it may.
		People have suggested that, you know, that maybe what we'll pick up from the aliens is the value of pi.
		You know, that would identify it as an alien signal, all right, but I'd be really personally very disappointed if they sent us the value of pi.
		I mean, I learned the value of pi in junior high school, or maybe earlier.
unidentified		I don't.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		If that's the best they can do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but I mean, just something as sort of a headline to grab you and say, yo-ho, artificial.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's true.
		Now, you might do that, but some people have thought about this, actually.
		It's maybe early days to worry about what language to use if you're talking to aliens, but some people have thought about it.
		And the suggestions range from things like you're discussing prime numbers, the value of pi, maybe, some mathematics, or as in contact, where they kind of start with algebraic equations and work that up into a language.
		That's certainly one possibility.
		Maybe it works out.
		But personally, I think that the better thing to do would be just to send pictures, send a picture dictionary.
		Here's your word, and here's the picture that it refers to.
		And the pictures have to be pretty universal, but maybe you could build up a vocabulary that way and then forget the pictures and just send the words, which would be a much more efficient way of doing things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, there are those that what would be Or has it already arrived at the target?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it has not arrived now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No.
		Because, probably for political reasons, it was aimed at a star cluster called M13.
		It happens to be a big ball of stars in our own galaxy.
		But M13 is roughly 21,000 light-years away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		21,000 light-years away.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You know, that's a heck of a distance.
		That's farther away.
		That's more miles than I have on my Honda.
		Let me put it that way.
		21,000 light-years.
		Now, that signal, of course, is, it was broadcast in 1974, so what is it?
		That's 26 light-years away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So it's still got, you know, 20, you know, 974 to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, don't hold your breath on that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I didn't know it was going to take that long to get there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, part of the deal here was not to get anybody upset.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that certainly doesn't upset me.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, no.
		Of course, there are stars, you know, sort of along the path that maybe it'll intercept.
		And you never know whether they're, you know, maybe interstellar spacecraft or something that are listening, I don't know.
		But even though it was aimed at this very distant object, it still caused a fairly strong reaction from the Astronomer Royal, which is the number one astronomer in Great Britain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Who he got quite upset by this because he thought sending this message was a diplomatic act.
		And after all, you know, maybe it's not a good thing to shout in the jungle, which he considered this was.
		And, you know, aliens might pick it up and come down here and take all our chlorophyll or something.
		I abduct our women.
		So he tried to get the International Astronomical Union to forbid this kind of transmission.
		Now, he wasn't successful at that, but there still is, I think, a little bit of political sensitivity here that if you broadcast something, the chances that it's really dangerous are very, very small.
		But the consequences, if that were to happen, might be very large.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me ask you this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you had the opportunity to make a transmission of that magnitude yourself, and you could send it anywhere you wanted to send it, where would you send it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a good question.
		I'll tell you one suggestion that's been made, which I find kind of interesting.
		And, well, I'll give you a simpler thing.
		You could sort of send it 180 degrees away from the direction to the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Away from?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Aim it in the opposite direction from the direction to the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You might say why.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do say why.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
		There are going to be some civilizations behind us, farther away from the center than we are.
		But we're not quite in the boondocks.
		We're near the edges of the city, as it were, in our galaxy.
		So there are going to be some guys farther out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, but fewer, though.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Many, many fewer.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, sure, but there's still billions, so, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Billions and billions even.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So that's, you know, not such a small number.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, the thing is that there are going to be, you know, astronomers on some of those planets who are going to be interested in studying the center of our Milky Way galaxy because it's a very interesting place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, oh.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So now you get it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, now I get it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, they're going to be pointed past us toward the center because that's the most interesting, likely place to find a signal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's certainly one of the most interesting places to study in our galaxy, you know, for natural phenomena.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And, of course, they might pick up our signal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, we're here.
		What interesting reasoning.
		You're absolutely right.
		Now, are there any interesting star systems that we would reach before 20,000 years doing that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Well, if you just ain't, you know, blasted out in the direction opposite the galaxy, it depends on how big an antenna you use.
		This antenna might be too big for something like that because it's so big it has a really, really narrow beam, so it would be like shining a laser kind of thing.
		Yeah, when you really want a big Hollywood searchlight.
		So it depends a little bit on the technology, but you could reach many, many millions, if not billions, of stars this way, and some of them might be interesting indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But there is that political consideration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And really, when you think about it, it is a diplomatic act, isn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess you could make that argument.
		I should mention the other reason that this isn't done very often.
		It's much more pragmatic.
		In fact, there are two other reasons.
		One is, you know, in addition to this possible diplomatic problem, the second thing is that I don't know how many civilizations there are in the galaxy.
		Obviously, nobody knows.
		But if there are, say, 10,000 of them, then that means that the nearest other civilization is roughly 1,000 light years away.
		Maybe 500, maybe 700, but hundreds of light years, maybe 1,000 light years away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This, folks, just simply means if you were to try to travel there, it would take you going at the speed of light 1,000 years to get there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And it also means that our signal would take 1,000 years to get there.
		And if those aliens deign to reply, it'd take another 1,000 years for their answer to get back here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So now 2,000 years have gone by, and my personal interest in the project will be somewhat less.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And who knows what the funding will be like.
		So nobody's interested in winning the Nobel Prize 2,000 years from now, of course.
		So that's another reason it's not done.
		And then there's a third thought, and it's a bit more philosophical.
		So I don't know how this is going to strike you, but it's that, look, we've had radio for roughly 100 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So we're kind of the new kids on the block.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very short time, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And there are going to be civilizations out there that are way ahead of ours.
		I don't mean 100 years ahead of us.
		I don't mean 1,000 years.
		They're going to be way ahead of us.
		Maybe millions of years.
		So why not let them do the heavy lifting?
		They've had radio for millions of years.
		Let them create the signals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll listen.
		All right, but there is this.
		Unless there is something in physics we don't know about yet, they are making the same calculations on the other end, a thousand light years away, and if they're intelligent, using the same deductive reasoning that you're using right now.
		And so they're not transmitting because it's stupid because they'll never live to get an answer.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you say, so everybody's sitting around waiting for the other guy to call them up.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, you know, let me tell you something interesting.
		I am a ham operator, and a lot of times on 10 meters, which is a worldwide band when it's open, the whole band is dead.
		It's deader than a doornail.
		I mean, you can't hear a signal.
		There's nobody there.
		And you call CQ and about a million people answer you.
		They were all sitting there listening.
		And when you made that one transmission, they all heard you and they all replied.
		But there's no way they'd have known that the band was even open except for the fact that you made a transmission.
		Doctor, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		All the hams out there know what I'm talking about.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in time on Premiere Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
		I'll find some crowds in Avenue.
		Oh, it will be empty without you.
		Can't get used to losing you.
		No matter what I try to do.
		Gonna live my whole life through loving you.
		Called some girls I used to know.
		After I heard her say hello, couldn't think of anything to say.
		Since you're gone, it happens every day.
		Can't give you screws in you.
		No matter what I try to do, gonna live my whole life through.
		There ain't no woman gonna settle me down.
		I just gotta be terrible at home.
		I'm taking nobody in the world.
		I'm just a good loving, rambling man.
		Hey buddy, can you spare me a dime?
		Hear me crying, it's a...
		Corrine Green, it's Green Day Day, on the far side of the hill.
		Corrine Green, I'm going away to where the grass is greener's hill.
		Yeah.
		Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell somewhere in time.
		The night's program originally aired February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is indeed and Seth Shostak who is talking to you from Arecibo in the control room.
		the very same ares he will use on the movie contact and his partner has uh...
		She's back in the photograph again because we've got a live webcam, actually a pair of them, SETICam A and SETICam B, looking right at them as we conduct the interview tonight, which will resume in a moment.
		All right, once again, the same discussion for a second.
		That is, everybody listening, nobody transmitting.
		And I play around on the six-meter band too, and that has rare openings, but they happen.
		And everybody's sitting there listening, waiting for a signal.
		And save the occasional beacon that you can find that's on 24 hours letting you know when the band really does open if you're lucky enough to hear it.
		You know, everybody's listening.
		And a lot of times when you'll transmit, you'll suddenly get an answer, but only because you transmitted.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that that's a, you know, that's a pretty good argument for transmitting.
		And people have made that argument.
		They've also said that one of the advantages of making a deliberate transmission is that you might learn something about how to improve your receiving experiment because you'll know some of the problems involved in building a transmitter that stays on for long periods of time, that has a lot of power, that's maybe directed at nearby stars and all that sort of stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Something the Defense Department could use.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there could be cool than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know what it takes to get funding.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Now, I hear you what you're saying about 10 meters, and it sounds like the band's dead, but in fact, all that's happening is everybody sitting around.
		I have to say, my own experience isn't quite the same.
		You know, if I get invited to a party and it sounds like it's going to be pretty dull, I might suggest to my wife, oh, well, I'll go to the party, but I'm not going to talk to anyone.
		And how often is it that you go to a party like that and nobody talks because they've all made this kind of deal?
		So, you know, it may be the case, but remember, unlike in Jill just passed me a note here.
		Wait a minute.
		Transmitting makes no sense unless you're prepared to do it forever.
		Well, that's another point, but we'll get on that in a moment.
		I just think that there are probably lots of good reasons why you might want to transmit that we haven't even thought of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		May I please ask your partner's name again?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's Jill Tarter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jill Tarter.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Jill Tarter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, everybody, you can see Jill in the photograph with Seth.
		And actually, the movie was modeled after Contact was modeled after Jill.
		How long has Jill been doing this?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Jill has been doing, how long have you been doing SETI here, Jill?
		He's embarrassed to say, 20 years?
		I think he's being modest there, but it's 25.
		It's going up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		25 years.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Jill has, I believe, done more SETI observing than any other humanoid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, please tell Jill it's a real honor to even be talking to you with her being next to you.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I'll tell her that.
		Because it's a real honor, Jill, that you're in this thing with me.
		It's obviously an honor for me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You'd have to transmit forever, she said.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, see, that's another problem here.
		But of course, you know, what you're doing is you're putting this burden on the aliens.
		If people are, shall we say, suppose the aliens turn on their transmitters and they, you know, they beam at you for a couple hours and then they go to lunch and turn it off.
		Right?
		They go, you know, QTH or something and turn off their transmitter for a while.
		Well, we're never going to find transmitters like that.
		It's sort of like flash bulbs popping off all around the galaxy.
		The chances that you're looking in the direction of a flash bulb when it fires are pretty darn small.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that tells you and everybody else how much of a chance our great big three-minute transmission in the 70s has.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's right.
		Exactly right.
		So what you have to hope is that there are some transmitters out there that are on long periods of time.
		Now, that's not so unreasonable.
		I mean, our television transmitters, for example, and our radio stations are on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
		But nonetheless, this has only been going on for a few decades or, you know, maybe 50 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, and okay, and then back to the movie.
		You remember the opening sequence was unparalleled.
		I still sit and marvel at it, and it's just incredible in context, that opening sequence, as it pans back from Earth.
		And so this is an honest question for you.
		With our radio and our television and all this RF noise emanating from Earth, microwave, all of it, as you pan back, if the movie had been realistic, where would it finally have faded out?
		Zonata?
		Nothing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the only signals that really make it into space are the kind of the high-frequency ones, things above about 100 megahertz.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So that means FM, that means television, that means radar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, everybody knows we started television broadcasting seriously in the 1940s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		40s.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So that indication that we're here, the fact that Earth has not just life, but intelligent life, that's reached out, what, 60 light years?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		60 light years.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Roughly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And that's, you know, the distance to the nearest star is on the order of four or five light years.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So within 60 light years, they're on the order of several thousand stars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then this question, realistically, at 60 light years from Earth right now, would those transmissions be detectable realistically?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you'd have to work at it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I worked this out actually once, what it would take to pick up the carrier wave from the early I Love Lucy broadcast.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Just not to see a Lucy, not to hear a Lucy, just to pick up the carrier so you know there was a television signal there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And you'd need a couple of thousand acres covered with Yaggy antennas if you were 60 light years away.
		So that's a pretty big antenna, of course, but it's not an impossible antenna.
		I mean, if you're serious about it, or if you've got this antenna in space or something, and you have some way of building really large antennas, you could do it.
		You could do it.
		But you would do much better at that distance to try and look for our military radars, which began to appear in the 1950s.
		They're a lot more conspicuous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they'd probably notice those at 60 light years.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or 50 or 40 or whenever we got the big ones going.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, if you remember in contact, Carl Sagan put this civilization, I guess it was at Vega anyhow, at a distance that just allowed enough time for the 1936 broadcast of the Olympics in Berlin to get to these aliens and for their signal to get back to us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so there was Hitler.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, exactly.
		Well, that's...
		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then we're going to be wiped out.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, if it's Mr. Ed, maybe they'll just come down and take our horses and leave us alone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But anyway, the honest truth is there could be signals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Certainly radar pulsing high output radar would be detectable at 60 or 50 or 40 light years out.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's certainly detectable.
		It takes a pretty big antenna.
		Now, I can give you maybe a more interesting number.
		We obviously have no idea what sort of setup the aliens have.
		Since we haven't had contact with them, we can't ask them what sort of transmitter and antenna they're using the way a ham would do.
		But suppose they have an antenna just like the one that's right outside the window here, the Arecibo antenna, and suppose they're 100 light years away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We would be able to pick up that signal with this system that you're looking at here if their transmitter power is 10,000 watts.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And 10,000 watts is probably less power than most of the stations that are carrying your program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		You're exactly right.
		So that's within reason.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is within reason.
		That's why this experiment is interesting, in fact.
		It's not so hard to send signals from one star to the next.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then the criticism that what you're doing is simply impossible is not valid criticism, is it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I certainly don't think so.
		Certainly not on that basis.
		The criticism usually isn't with the technology.
		The criticism usually is of the kind that we were discussing in the last hour.
		Things like, well, how many planets are out there that are kind of like the Earth?
		Or how many of those kinds of planets would have life?
		Or, even more controversial, just because you have life, are you going to cook up intelligent life that's going to build radio transmitters?
		That's, you know, a pretty unanswered question.
		And we don't have a lot of insight into that.
		It happened here.
		But, you know, keep in mind, if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out 65 million years ago, there'd still be dinosaurs in Puerto Rico and not people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe.
		I don't know.
		That's a whole separate argument.
		But at least it certainly is possible.
		And the fact that we are here says it's possible.
		I guess I've got to stand by that argument.
		We are here.
		We are doing it.
		Therefore, in my mind, it should be happening somewhere else if life is out there.
		And I really err on the side strongly that life is out there.
		I believe it is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, obviously I agree, and everybody who does this sort of work also agrees.
		We wouldn't do it otherwise.
		If astronomy has taught us nothing else in the past 450 years, it's taught us that every time we thought we were special, we were wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, since you brought up possibly being wrong, everybody believes that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
		Now, if that was wrong somehow, that the speed of light can indeed be exceeded in some manner, then the Equation radically changes.
		If it doesn't take, say, 20,000 years to get to your destination, but if you could do it virtually instantly or close to, then you've got a whole different ballgame, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, there are a lot of theoretical physicists right now that are talking about the possibility of if we have enough power, and it would take a very great deal of power indeed, that it might be possible to utilize the services of a wormhole, a black hole.
		It might be possible to actually warp space and time and perhaps not deliver a human being, but perhaps deliver a signal.
		You all consider that kind of thing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, it's an interesting possibility.
		We're at founders.
		I mean, indeed, what you're saying is, could you build a rocket that instead of just blasting propellant out the back end, for example, somehow warp space in front, sort of contract space in front and expand space behind it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And get somewhere in a great hurry.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, the trouble is that the calculations suggest that, although you might be able to do this on paper, if you try to do it for real, yes, the amount of energy required is absolutely enormous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And unattainable right now.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		Now, you know, who's to say?
		I mean, arguments that say it's possible but we can't do it are usually the kind of arguments that don't hold up very well because, you know, normally 100 years later you can do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so then if we are to suppose there could be a civilization millions, if not billions of years ahead of us, they would have solved that one a long time ago.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it may be.
		It may be, but it depends.
		You know, there may be some limits on how much energy you can get together in one spot.
		I don't know.
		The sun does a pretty good job, but you need more energy than the sun produces, for example.
		The sun's pretty heavy-duty.
		It's, what, it's a million, billion, billion watts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Dr. Kaku from City of New York University, who's a theoretical physicist, says that there are several types of civilizations.
		I'm sure you've heard him speak.
		And that as you move from a type zero that he says we are now to a type one, you begin, type one, type two, to control the power of the sun, and then even more.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that if they were able to do that, it might be possible they could virtually dump a signal in close proximity to us or to some other sun or planet that we would get suddenly.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You know, this idea of various civilizations, I think Mishio Kaku may have been referring to the work of a Russian physicist by the name of Kardashev who said, look, there are probably three kinds of alien civilizations out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There's type one that uses the resources of its planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's where we are.
		We burned coal, we burned gasoline, you know.
		We use the resources of our planet.
		Type two uses the resources of its sun, of its star, uses all the resources of its star.
		So those 100 million billion watts of energy that the sun's pumping out instead of just going out into the night sky to make a small pinpoint of light in somebody else's star system, we try and harness that energy.
unidentified		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so that's a type two civilization.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Then the type three civilizations, which you're talking about, well, you might be talking about type two, but there's also a type three that Kardashik proposed, and those were the aliens or whatever, that could harness the energy of an entire galaxy, right, with 100 billion stars in it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you could virtually create a wormhole, do whatever you wanted?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		If you could marshal that kind of energy, yes, I think you could.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And so the question is, if civilizations are out there that have gotten to that stage, shouldn't we see the evidence?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, not necessarily.
		Not yet.
		You never know when that signal might arrive.
		In other words, if they could send the signal, and there's still lots of targets out there, and it doesn't mean they've gotten around all the targets yet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
		That may be.
		But the thing is, the problem is only that if you say, look, I'm looking for a civilization that may have, as it were, organized all the energy in a galaxy somehow, then you would expect that if you took a picture of that galaxy, it would look a little different, that they somehow herded up all the stars or did something or put a big shell around a lot of stars.
		This may be very naive, of course.
		I admit it.
		It may be very naive.
		But it's hard to tell whether we see any evidence of really, really big astro engineering projects, which are the kind of thing you're talking about.
		We tend always to interpret things we see as natural phenomena first, and only when that fails do we consider that it might be something else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Occam's razor.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, fine.
		But still a possibility that, in other words, that one day a signal that you would hear, instead of traversing 20,000 light years, hopped across in some spectacular manner and got here very quickly.
		You could, it is within the realm of possibility that you could get that kind of surprise.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's certainly possible.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, mind you, it's not such a concern to me that signals that we're looking for here, we assume, are traveling at the speed of light.
		Because even the farthest star in the Milky Way galaxy, on the other side of the galaxy, the other side of town, as it were, the other side of town is 100,000 light years away.
		And that's a bit of a distance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's 100,000 years to get there at the speed of light.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so it took 100,000 years to get here.
		So there's kind of old news, but for us, it's still new news.
		It'd be like reading Julius Caesar.
		That's old news, but it's still interesting.
		But this is 100,000 years old.
		But that's okay, because the galaxy is 100 times that old.
		So there's been plenty of time for those guys to have developed and sent that signal.
		I mean, you don't have to worry about that.
		So in some sense, the speed of transmission is not a big concern, except if you want to have a conversation.
		And if you want to have a conversation, and these guys are, say, a thousand light years away, you say hello, and then two thousand years you get back, you know, repeat that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, there.
		It'd be very disappointing, but um, obviously, more would be sent.
		Uh, or I guess it would be.
		Now, if we were to receive a signal, and we always talk about this, the politics of reception, uh the politics of transmission is interesting enough, but the politics of reception is also very interesting.
		What we would do as a planet, what our societies would do, what the UN would do, whatever, whoever ended up controlling all this, how they would react if we did receive a signal.
		I guess you have thought about that, haven't you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We have thought about that, in fact.
		Yeah, there's been quite a bit of thought about that.
		It's an interesting subject, of course, because to begin with, there are quite a few people, at least in my experience, and polls show this as well, who feel that if we were to pick up a signal, that that information would somehow be kept from the public.
		And, you know, that some nefarious federal agency would swoop down here on the control room and shut it all down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
		I believe that.
		Well, it wouldn't be that much different than the movie.
		You'd have guys in there with guns.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, they don't know the difficulties of the local roads, that's for sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But, see, the reason I don't believe that is because, to begin with, remember, this is not like hiding some sort of evidence, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It isn't that we've got more of a sort of evidence.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but this evidence is up in the sky, see?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And that means that anybody else with an antenna can go find it, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if they know where to look, I mean, you've been looking for a long time, unless it were the big Krthumper that Jody found.
		Darn it, it's the top of the hour again.
		So hold on, Doctor.
		Professor, we'll be right back.
		Professor Seth Shostak from SETI, actually at Arecibo right now, is my guest, and there's lots more to do.
unidentified		You're listening to ArkVel somewhere in time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 24, 2000.
		The end of the month of the month is about love.
		Where would you be now?
		Who I love.
		The end of the month is about love.
		Where are those happy days facing the road?
		You hold your mind.
		I tried to reach for you, but you have lost your mind.
		Whatever happened to my love, I wish I had you like that you.
		Oh, when you're near me, darling, can you hear me?
		It's the way.
		The love you gave me, nothing that can save me.
		It's the way.
		When you're gone, how can I even try to go on?
		When you're gone, go outside, how can I carry on?
		You're looking so far away, though you are sending me.
		Amen.
		You make me feel like the bump right here.
		I'm in a crime, you made it up.
		You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is never going to be another ABBA.
unidentified		Never.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, they recently turned down $1 billion, that's right, with a B, a billion dollars to go on a world tour.
		And I think, frankly, wisely so, because they wouldn't sound like this.
		They wouldn't look the way they did.
unidentified		They wouldn't be ABBA.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Except in name.
		What an incredible group.
		Anyway, my guest is the Honorable Professor Seth Schosak.
		And he's actually down at Arecibo, and we've got webcams up right now.
		Well, that's kind of interesting.
		I can see Seth taking a break.
		Scott looks like cup of coffee in his hand and walking away from one of the computer consoles.
		And in the other photograph, I can see actually two people, Seth, and I guess Jody.
		Actually, Jill Tarter.
		Now, we're talking about politics of reception.
		And I'll clarify that in a moment.
		We'll talk more about it.
		Coming right up.
		Don't touch that.
		All right, back now to Puerto Rico, all the way to Puerto Rico and Professor Shostak.
		Seth, I want to take a moment to compliment, you know, you see an awful lot of webcams out there across the world now, and 99% of them look awful, and they don't have the right lighting, and they're not sharp, and or they're, you know, just unsatisfactory.
		But I must say, yours is spectacular.
		Somebody really went to a lot of trouble to get that webcam set up just right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope they're listening, Art.
		There are a couple of engineers connected with the project who indeed set everything up with the framing and all the technical things that have to be done.
		And actually, if you were here in the control room where you could look up at the ceiling, you would see that I've put up pieces of paper sort of taped to the lighting fixtures here in order to improve the lighting somewhat to make the photography look a little bit better.
		So we've tried.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, there is a little creature extending from the top of a computer directly above your head in one of the photographs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's Tigger here.
		That was put in by one of the software people.
		I think it's a mascot, but occasionally it sticks out of the top of my head, and then I start getting emails of some alien growing out of my scalp.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, how do people email you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that something you wish to give out or wish to avoid giving out?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, I've done that actually before on your show, two years ago, I think, you asked about my email address, and as an experiment, I just gave it out to see what would happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I got a lot of email.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But I'll be happy to give it out again, and let's see whether it works again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it'll work.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's Seth S-E-T-H.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		S-E-T-H.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		At SETI, S-E-T-I.
unidentified		Yes.org as organization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Seth S-E-T-H at SETI S-E-T-I.org.
		That's easy.
		Well, I'm sure you're going to get lots of mail with lots of comments.
		All right.
		Well, look, we were talking about the politics of reception.
		Let's finish that one up.
		I just.
		The Cold War is over, but we're worried about secrets leaking to China.
		China is building rockets.
		What used to be the Soviet Union is looking more like the Soviet Union these days than less.
		The leadership there is kind of hardcore right now.
		In other words, if there was a signal received, I just can't believe that we wouldn't be extremely concerned that there would not be military value in that signal.
		And so before we would tell the Chinese, hey, guess what, or the Russians, hey, guess what, we'd take a little time out and we'd have a talk about it at some very high levels.
		Now, disabuse me of that notion.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, since you challenged me to do that, there are two lines of reasoning here.
		One is, first off, if we pick up a signal here, and occasionally we do, of course, before we would claim that we had found ET, we would insist that it be verified at another radio observatory.
		Because after all, in the end, you know, something that might convince us could just be a bug in the software or maybe even a prank.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then maybe England, maybe Australia, but not Beijing or Moscow.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Quite right.
		But suppose we call up our buddies in Australia.
		We say, look, we're picking up this signal here, and would you mind turning your instrument in the following direction?
		We give them a couple of coordinates on the sky, and we say, look, here's a range of frequencies.
		We're not going to tell you the exact frequency because we don't want to bias you.
		We'll just give you a range and see if you find it the same spot we do.
		All right, all very straightforward.
		Now, the people we're going to call in Australia will be, you know, another set of astronomers.
		Astronomers are not very good at keeping secrets.
		They're not used to that, and nobody ever told them to keep secrets.
		So there they are down in, say, Australia, looking at this thing, and they're finding it too.
		So that means that immediately they're all on their email systems and telling all their relatives, hey, look, you know, it looks like SETI finally succeeded here.
		We got a signal, and we find it too.
		Okay?
		Now, so my first point is that you might not want to tell, for example, the Chinese organiz some other nation or group of people or whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Potential adversary.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right, potential adversary that you found this, but the word's already out.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's point one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I've already got a counter for it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's take them one at a time.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, fine.
		The story breaks.
		I'm with you.
		It would leak out.
		But we've already had, I don't know, lots and lots of those because I've had to call you in the middle of the night.
		So I can imagine a story would get out and then like many other stories, it would suddenly die.
		Oh, it was a satellite.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the reason that these stories have died in the past is because they deserve to die.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because it was a satellite.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Because it was a satellite.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I know, but that would make it the perfect cover story to quiet things down so you could do a little quiet study about what might be important national security information.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an interesting idea, Art.
		But, you know, the thing is we've got to convince all those people at the other observatory to do exactly the same.
		And how are we going to do that?
		Remember, they've already told all sorts of people.
		I mean, I can give you an example of how it could be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me give you an example of how it could be done.
		Washington decides it doesn't want this story to have legs.
		So it calls the British government and the Australian government, which make a few quick calls to the astronomers in question and threaten all their funding.
		You will keep this quiet for a while, and all your funding is at stake.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it wouldn't worry us, of course, we're privately funded, but I don't think that, I honestly don't think that would work.
		I think that if I were, say, at the observatory down in Australia, and I've been there, of course, you know, there are like 100 people at the observatory.
		Now they're all getting excited.
		They've all been, you know, emailing their friends and relatives.
		And now somebody comes in from Canberra and says, sorry guys, we've got to put the lid on this.
		It's either that or your job.
		Well, maybe 90% of them would say, okay, I'll shut up.
		But the other 10% won't.
		They say, look, I can get a job somewhere else.
		This is too important.
		This is too exciting.
		And besides, I've told my brother-in-law.
		So I should give you an example of What actually happened?
		Because thanks to the movies, people have the impression that the way a discovery is made is that, you know, you're sitting here, as we're sitting here, and suddenly, you know, the signal comes in, and ten minutes later, we're calling up the airlines to get our tickets booked to Stockholm so we can not meet ABBA, of course, but collect our Nobel Prize to see.
		But that's not the way it happened.
		It's not the way it happened.
		In 1997, there was a signal that we picked up, not with this telescope, I guess, yeah, it was 97.
		We were using the telescope in a telescope in Greenbank, West Virginia.
		Much smaller one than this one, actually.
		But in any case, there was a signal there that was looking pretty darn good.
		And part of the reason it was looking so darn good is that part of the confirmation telescope we normally use was broken.
		But that's a technical point.
		Never mind why it was looking good.
unidentified		It was looking good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You really thought you had something, or potentially had something.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We did.
		I can tell you, we sat around the computers back there in California.
		Nobody went home.
		Nobody went to sleep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was about to ask, how long does it take for a scientist of your stature and the ones you work with to really get excited?
		I mean, I know you guys are really cool, and you check this out and check that out.
		But I mean, at some point, the adrenaline pumps.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, this was a once-in-several years kind of event.
		So it takes on the order of, I don't know, half an hour, an hour before the signal is so interesting that you're beginning to pay exclusive attention to what's going on and you're not sitting in the chair anymore.
		But this went on much longer than that.
		This went on for almost a day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A day.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, part of the problem is that when you're only using one telescope to see, which in a sense we were, the star system you're looking at, of course, is likely to drop down below the horizon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so that's gone for about 12 hours.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And so you've got to sit there and chew on your fingernails for 12 hours, waiting for it to come back up and continue looking at it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that happened?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That will happen unless you call somebody up on the other side of the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, to that signal that we're talking about now that you thought was so exciting, did it in fact go away?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you track it to the horizon and then lose it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yep, we did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So people weren't going to the local burger places to get something to eat.
		They were just allude.
		Now, it turns out that in the end, what this was, was one of a European research satellite, the SOHO satellite, which you may have heard of, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it studies the sun.
		And it's a million miles away, more or less.
		And it's got a transmitter on board, which is about 10 watts.
		So it's really QRP, if you will.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That means low power.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's low power.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But 10 watts for us is a lot of power, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		If it's only a million miles away in 10 watts, that's a whopping signal for us.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And so this signal was sort of leaking in, you know, sort of coming in the side of the telescope, coming in what are called the side lobes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And it was causing this confusion.
		And it came in in just such a way, it was just the luck of the draw, sometimes this is going to happen, that when we took the telescope and we moved it away from the star we were pointing at, it went away.
		It went away.
		We moved the telescope back toward the star, it came back.
		We moved it away, it went away.
		We moved it back, it came back, okay?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's why everybody's getting excited.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, at that point, Jill was looking through her Rolodex looking for the phone numbers of people at other observatories, figuring whether she should call them up.
unidentified		All right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, as I say, it turned out to be the solo satellite.
		This went on for close to a day.
		Now, the interesting thing was that clearly people in our organization knew about this.
		We weren't calling up the local radio stations, or we didn't even call you about this, because, of course, we weren't 100% sure.
		Even after a day, we weren't sure.
unidentified		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, or half a day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And another telescope was down that you had tried to call so you couldn't get a confirmation?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a telescope we normally use.
		We always use two telescopes for our observations.
		We're using this one here in Puerto Rico.
		What you can't see on the webcam is our other telescope in Jodrell, Bank, England.
		Okay, so that's running at the same time that we run this one.
		So we always use two because that allows you to sort out a wheat from the chaff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure, sure.
unidentified		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, our second telescope was down, and that was really the reason we got confused for so long.
		But that's not the point.
		The point is that we thought it was real.
		So I'm looking around, looking for those guys with the black fedoras and the narrow ties, right?
		Waiting for some government officials to show up and say, what are you guys up to here?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Meanwhile, you were emailing all your friends and associates.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, I wasn't inside.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		But some people were.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But the interesting thing was, about six or eight hours into this, I got a call from one of the science writers at the New York Times.
		And he said, hi, Seth, I understand you guys are following an interesting signal.
		You want to tell me about it.
		Now, I think that's interesting because although the feds never showed any interest in this, the New York Times sure did.
		And what we told them was, well, look, you know, everything we found so far has been interfering, so, you know, I'll call you back in a couple of hours.
		And as it turned out, within a couple of hours, we began to get suspicious that this was the SOHO satellite, which it turned out to be.
		But the bottom line, two lessons came out of this.
		One, you can be sure that the media will know about this before anybody else.
		And two, when you find a signal, it isn't like In Contact or any of the other movies where suddenly from one moment to the next, it's an aha, we got it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did the New York Times find out about it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They got a phone call from somebody in our office.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Suddenly.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They got a phone call from somebody who had been called by somebody in our office.
unidentified		I see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's the way you feature it would occur?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think what will happen is, yeah, if you ask me how it's going to happen, now, mind you, this is a personal opinion, so take it for what it's worth.
		But it's clear to me that because it takes a long time to really confirm a signal, it's going to take, you know, on the order of a couple of days.
		Because that's the amount of time it takes to get somebody at another observatory to stop what they're doing and check it out and then confirm it.
		And you've always got this problem that, you know, maybe for 12 hours a day you can't see the star system because the earth is rotating and all that.
		So it's going to take a few days before you're sure.
		And during those few days, you're going to get more and more confident that this is the big one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		If I got my normal email message saying SETI has got a hit, and I called you in the middle of the night, and you weren't yet ready to talk about it, you had not yet confirmed it.
		Would you tell me, yes, we've got something, no, we haven't quite confirmed it, but we're all real excited?
		Or would you say, listen, Art, call me in a couple of days, or I'll call you, or something like that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that was exactly the problem I had when the New York Times called, actually.
		Should I just tell them, sorry, we haven't got anything?
		Or should I just be honest about it?
		And I was honest.
		I said, yes, we are following a signal, but every time we've had something that looks like it might be it, in the past, it's always turned out to be interference.
		So I recommend that, you know, before you get too excited and run a story, that you check with us in three or four hours because we may have some more information.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's what you would tell me if I called you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's what I would tell you.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'd just be straight up with him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on, Seth.
		We'll be right back to you.
		Seth Shostak is my guest, and we're long past where we should be getting to the phone, so we'll get to the phones coming up next.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from February 24, 2000.
		Music Run down, you better take care If I find you been creeping down my back there Music Run down, you better take care If I find you been creeping down my back there Music She really like we did.
		She called Shiba, thinking we make it feel better.
		I'm feeling no pain.
		Sometimes I think it's a shame when I get feeling there.
		I'm feeling no pain.
		I'm feeling no pain.
		You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from February 24th, 2000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, Kingdom of Nye to Puerto Rico to Arecibo, where Professor Shostak is right now.
		He's our guest.
		And he has the SETI project, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
		And I know you have questions because it's all lit up like a Christmas tree.
		So we'll get to it straight away.
		All right, once again, not only can you hear, but you can see Seth, Professor Seth Shostak, in Puerto Rico, because there are two live webcams operating right now that give you refreshed views about every two minutes, actually in the control room at Arecibo.
		Very exciting.
		The last time we tried this, a hurricane came along, and Seth had to pack up and run away before we could get very far.
		In fact, that hurricane was really bearing down on you, wasn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That was Hurricane Georgia, and it actually did a bit of damage up here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so you packed your bags and got on an airplane and beat it out, I guess.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I got out of Dodge.
unidentified		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wise.
		All right.
		Well, I have a million questions.
		I can go on all night, but if I don't answer phones, they get angry.
		So let me do some of that.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Seth's show stack.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yes, Seth, and this is Larry in Waterloo, Iowa on KCNZ.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Larry.
unidentified		Hi.
		And I just got off work a half an hour ago and got the website up and looked first and then had to shut it down to call.
		We just have one line here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
unidentified		Kind of primitive, you know.
		Anyway, a couple of points.
		Maybe we have already seen signals and don't recognize them.
		Maybe that intelligent life is farther out if we send a signal out farther.
		But maybe the older systems are farther out because they've been going out longer.
		And, you know, so maybe more intelligent life will be looking this way.
		And maybe some of these UFOs that we've seen and don't recognize are signals from an intelligence that's a little bit farther advanced than us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the eternal question that we get when we do this show.
		And it's irresistible.
		And a lot of people, Seth, there's an attorney right now named Peter Gerston who is in the middle of a lawsuit with the Department of Defense on these triangular craft that have been observed.
		And to be honest, Seth, there are, I know you cringe around the subject of UFOs, but man, I'll tell you, they have detected and seen all kinds of things going across the Atlantic, fast walkers, they call them, all these unaccountable craft that seem to be traveling in our atmosphere at impossible speeds, and I might add turning at impossible angles and all that sort of thing.
		So inevitably, people go up and say, look, they're already here.
		What are you looking for?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, first off, just a technical point, I don't know if it's possible for you to turn up the gain on what I hear, because you're about 5x3 at this end.
		And that's okay with your voice, but I can really hardly hear the callers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, actually, it's not possible.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's not possible.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I can make callers yell, though.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, get the callers to yellow if necessary.
		Maybe you can just sort of relay my profession.
		But what I hear Larry saying is that, you know, how does this fit in with the possibility that the aliens are already here?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Did I get the question right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, as you know, I don't think they are here.
		It would be great if they were from my point of view because, after all, it would make the whole job a lot simpler.
		I mean, this is a pretty tough experiment here.
		And it's a difficult thing to do.
		And if we thought that maybe the extraterrestrials were nearby, buzzing the countryside, that would in many ways be a much easier experiment.
		I mean, you just built a lot of radars.
		In fact, those radars kind of already exist.
		And you look for them that way.
		Or just look at satellite data and sort of look down on them.
		So as you know, my take on this is that I don't find that evidence compelling enough.
		I mean, nobody really does walk into our offices with the bumper from a UFO.
		That would certainly get my attention.
		But it hasn't happened so far.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're right in that it has not happened so far, but couldn't you do the math on it and probably come up with some sort of number that would say it's as possible as our getting a signal from 100 light years away?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or are there numbers on your side?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't know on what side the numbers are because unfortunately, you know, this is pretty hard to predict.
		It's kind of like asking Chris Columbus, what do you think the numbers are that you're going to run into a continent before you get to Japan?
		And there's no way he can really know that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but you do concede that there have been some very high-quality sightings by NORAD, by all kinds of legitimate organizations that observe this kind of thing, and they've seen things in the atmosphere that are simply unaccountable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It cannot be accounted for.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's true that there's always some residue of sightings and observations for which there aren't explanation.
		I mean, there are thousands and thousands of these kind of reports every year, and if you look hard enough at the best of the reports, and that's usually what people will do because there's so many of them, they can't investigate them all.
		I mean, I get phone calls about once a week from somebody who wants me to fly to some part of the country and investigate something they've seen.
		Now, that's not my business.
		I'm not expert in that, and I can't afford to fly there anyway.
		And besides, if you try to do that through even half the sightings that are reported every year, I don't think you'd get very far.
		But what has happened in the past is that you take maybe the 100 best cases, the ones that look most interesting, and you sort of scrutinize those.
		Now, the usual result is that 90% of them, and I think Larry may be aware of this, 90% of them can be explained as atmospheric phenomena or aircraft or whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A whole list of things.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And 10% of them cannot.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		10% of them, they just come up empty-handed and say, well, we don't know what it was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		10% still represents, using your language, a pretty large number.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's 10% of a large number is still a large number.
		That's true.
		But on the other hand, you know, in New York City, they probably solve 70% of the murders every year.
		And all of those are committed by humans against other humans.
		But what about the other 30% that they didn't solve?
		I mean, could those have been committed by, say, aliens against humans?
		And of course, you can't disprove that.
		But that would be a big assumption, wouldn't it?
		It would.
		So the fact that 10% of them are not explained, you know, you could say, well, that somehow proves aliens, but I don't think it does.
		I think that maybe just to be very succinct in an answer to Larry, I personally don't think that the evidence is there that they're visiting us, but the advantage of this experiment is that we don't claim success yet.
		we haven't had success yet, but if we do claim success, But more than that, you can check it out for yourself.
		Or anybody with a big antenna can go check it out.
		And there are a lot of big antennas around.
		So it isn't one of those things that it's a matter of, well, your interpretation versus my interpretation.
		It's like a scientific experiment.
		If you claim success, immediately 10 other teams will run out into the field and check it out and prove you're right or wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But really, really, though, some scientists are in the exact same position with respect to ufology as you are with listening for the big one, you know, the signal.
		There's quite a bit of, or at least some conventional science that's beginning to say, look, these reports, cumulatively, deserve scientific study.
		And I'm sure you're aware of that report out of Europe.
		It was out of Europe some months ago or a year ago.
		And legitimate study.
		In other words, there are things that are simply inexplicable, and so science should devote a little of its attention to seeing if there might be something here.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, in principle, there's nothing wrong with that, actually.
		I mean, it would be pretty pig-headed to say, you know, let's just ignore it all.
		That's not the way science works either.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it shouldn't be, but that's the argument people are always using against what you do.
		Shouldn't be doing it at all.
		What a way of science.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Some of us get that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You get that occasionally, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		On occasion, but yeah.
		But usually the reasons are for personal philosophy, reasons are of religion or something like that.
		And I think in some sense you could make that same argument for what you're talking about there.
		But there's a problem, and I don't know how to get around it, and that is that it's pretty tough to predict where that next sighting is going to be if you could somehow know where these things happen, and then you could set up some equipment or something like that.
		But it doesn't seem to work that way.
		I mean, it strikes me as a tough problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And that may be one of the reasons that there aren't that many scientists who get seriously involved with it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		No, you're absolutely right.
		All right, let's see what we can do with the phones here.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Professor Shostak.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, this is Lyra from Texas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From Texas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you're going to have to real yell at us.
unidentified		Okay, can you hear me a little better now?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I can hear you.
unidentified		Okay, great.
		Well, I'm right in the middle of a thunderstorm here, so before I have a Danny and Brinkley experience here.
		And I'll just say to the gentleman, unless you have ever seen one of those large, black, very quiet, huge things beside you or above you, you'll be a believer.
		You won't know where it's from, but you will definitely believe that it's there and it's very real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, listen, I'll back that up.
		I have seen what she's talking about, Seth, 150 feet above me, define gravity, floating, massive, blotting out the stars and the moon.
		I saw that, Seth, personally, along with my wife.
		We both stood there and watched the damn thing float right above us.
		Now, could it be our own?
		Of course it could be.
		But if it is, that means that we have technology that, by your definition, couldn't be kept secret.
		I mean, we would have anti-gravitic technology, and I don't see how we could keep that secret.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I don't think you'd want to keep it secret.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, something like that, you'd want to let it loose on as many experts as you could, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Seth.
		Oh, Seth.
		You know, I'm out here near Area 51, as you know.
		The valley right across from me is where Area 51 is.
		And that is a little naive from my point of view that you'd want to let as many people know about it as possible.
		Hey, we've got anti-Gravitic technology world.
		Here you go, Chinese.
		Here you go, Russians.
		I don't think we'd do that.
		I don't think our government would do that.
		In fact, I know they wouldn't, Seth.
		They'd keep it secret as long as they possibly could.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		I'm not sure I want to take on that particular point.
		As far as these big things go, I mean, if they're really there, why is it that you just never seem to see them in these, you know, in the satellite photos from up above?
		Now, mind you, there are occasionally instances where the military craft will, and I've heard stories like this, you know, just for the fun of it, the pilots will sort of, you know, scare some people by zooming in clothes and turning off white lights and stuff like that.
		Sure.
		That kind of thing.
		You've got to watch out for that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		but these big things, if there really were such big alien objects sort of cruising through the atmosphere...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Alien as in...
		It's not if.
		I'm telling you, they are there, because I saw one.
		Now, the only question is, to whom does it belong?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, exactly.
		That's the next point.
		And there, I'm afraid you've got to attack that beard with Occam's razor again and just say, well, there are two possibilities.
		One is it's some sort of phenomenon that it's terrestrial.
		It's either some sort of aircraft that I don't know about, or it's some other phenomenon that I don't understand or don't know about, or it's the aliens.
		And, you know, the aliens are a pretty easy explanation because they're capable of anything after all.
		But on the other hand, Hackam's razor, which says, you know, take the simpler possibility first, suggests, well, you ought to consider all the possibilities here on Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I am willing to do that.
		In fact, it is demanded that you do that, perhaps even as the first most likely option.
		But the problem here is that if that's true, then again, we have a really, really big secret that we're keeping really well.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me ask this.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's not my task here to ask the question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you ask whatever you want.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'll put one to you.
		If this technology came from outer space, then why is it that only the Americans have it?
		I mean, wouldn't the aliens also be interested in the nightlife in Rio, for example?
		And maybe the Brazilians have it, or maybe the Iraqis have it, or maybe the Chinese have it.
		I can't imagine that they confine their attentions to us, although we like to think that, but it just doesn't make much sense to me.
		So I would think that there would be lots of countries that would be having these sorts of experiences and profiting from them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
		We're talking about movies a lot.
		Did you ever see a movie called At Play in the Fields of God?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I did not.
		No.
		No?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really, really interesting movie.
		It was about some missionaries, Seth, who went down into Amazonia and they contacted a tribe that had never been contacted by human beings before.
		And of course, they wanted to turn them into Rice Christians.
		But what they actually did was carry a flu virus down there and killed them all.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suspect that what you're suggesting is that that may be our fate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm suggesting that if we're being observed, being observed is at least a possibility.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you assume that somebody could get here or somebody could get here, we would be observed for a long time before actual contact was made.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		That's certainly a possibility.
		And it may even require that they get here.
		They could just, and people have suggested this, that maybe they send a probe, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That just sort of looks.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, you know, the probe itself could be pretty small.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because that's something we would do.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It possibly would.
		You know, you have to probably send out a lot of probes.
		I mean, there's some constraints here.
		But sending a probe the size of a baseball or something like that, you know, that just sort of hangs around in somebody's solar system and takes pictures or listens to the radio or does something until somebody wakes up in that solar system.
		In other words, until some intelligent life form appears and wakes this probe up.
		And then the probe sends information back to the home planet.
		You could imagine a scenario like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		And so, yeah, That could happen, and maybe that has happened, and maybe we're being reported on.
		But, you know, what does that tell us?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's good.
		That's as far as I've heard you go.
		Listen, SETI is not funded by our government, as you pointed out, thanks in part to the actions of my senator here in Nevada.
		So it operates, I guess, on donations from what?
		Industry, individuals?
		How do you guys eat?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, down here, write it carefully because there's a lot of bones in the chicken.
		But in fact, the Institute SETI activities are funded by, indeed, private donations, and they're almost all, not almost all, are individual donations.
		In other words, they're not from corporations in general.
		They're from individuals, people who just think that this is an interesting thing to do, because after all, you know, 100 years ago we could have been having this conversation about whether there's somebody up there in space looking down on us, but we wouldn't be having it on the radio.
		We wouldn't have had the technology to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And so this is a special moment in time, the first moment in time in the whole history of this planet, when we could do this experiment.
		And so some people say, you know, that's an interesting point.
		It's sort of like 1492.
		It's finally possible to build a wooden ship that maybe can cross the Atlantic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, they say it's worth a little bit of money.
		The government isn't funding this.
		And so they make donations to the SETI Institute to help us do this experiment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth, I think it's worth a lot of money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I think that if we can talk anybody out there into leaving you their estate or just sending you $10 or whatever it is, I really, really, really would like to get an address where people could make a donation.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would recommend, first off, of course, they can go to our website and find out a lot about us.
		And also how they can join up with our Team SETI group if they want to do that or if they just want to send a donation.
		But I'll give you the address.
		I mean, it's not such a big deal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, please.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		First off, the website is www.seti.org.
		Couldn't be simpler.
		If you type SETI.org into your browser, you'll come to our website.
		Gotcha.
		The address is the SETI Institute, and that's at 2035 landings, as in aircraft landings, drive, and that's in Mountain View.
		Two words, Mountain View, California, 94043.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right here.
		90.
		What?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		94043.
unidentified		94043.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		The SETI Institute, 2035, Landings Drive, Mountain View, California, 9.
		I can't even read my own handwriting.
		94043.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So all donations, obviously, are welcome, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's for sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think the work you're doing is so important that if I, you know, I might put you in my will.
		I'm serious about that.
		It's that important.
		For all the arguments that I've given you, you know, if what you're doing turns out to be a success, Seth, then everything that mankind knows and thinks and hopes and dreams changes.
		It all becomes, there's some new reality.
		There's some, I think it would change the world.
		I think it would change socially the entire world and what we all believe.
		It's that big a deal.
		So you'll have my support.
		Seth, what a pleasure as always.
		We'll do it again.
		You name the time.
		I'm always yours.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Great.
		All right.
		It's actually been my pleasure, and I always enjoy it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, bye-bye.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
		That's all the time we've got, folks.
		That was great.
		Professor Seth Shostak.
		And my advice to you would be, if you can, contribute.
		The SETI Institute at 2035-2035 Landings Drive in Mountain View, California, 94-043.

▲