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Jan. 14, 2002 - Art Bell

02:35:39

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - William R. Alschuler PhD - An Astronomer Examines the Science of UFOs

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01:10:18

william r alschuler

01:06:19

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Great American Southwest London, good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in all 24 time zones of the world.
		Here's this program.
		How are you?
		I'm Mark Bell, and this program is coast to coast 10 a.m. in the next hour.
		William Al Schuler, who is Professor Al Schuler, I guess I should say, who is an astronomer, is going to be commenting on the likelihood of alien life, what it might be like, and such subjects.
		Having an astronomer comment on all of this will be very, very interesting, won't it?
		So, welcome.
		Let's look at what's going on out there, shall we?
		War news.
		U.S. warplanes pounded terrorist hideouts in eastern Afghanistan on Monday and bombing raids aimed at striking Osama bin Laden's die-hard supporters, but they still don't have him.
		They still don't have him.
		The military is looking to cut back what it's doing over the U.S. It has been flying and flying and flying and flying at a cost of about $324 million.
		The round-the-clock patrols over our skies designed to deter any terrorists may beginning to strain both the planes and the people involved in trying to do it.
		So they're going to be cutting back on some of that.
		Hopefully, the reason to cut back is a sound one, meaning the threat is less.
		Under the category of what comes around goes around, or what goes around then comes around, I guess, a Palestinian militia leader who boasted of shooting Israelis was killed himself when a bomb exploded as he emerged from his West Bank hideout and walked along a quiet street on Monday.
		So live by and die by, I guess, huh?
		Enron, speaking of dying, there's another Enron story tonight, Washington.
		An Enron employee warned the company chairman in August that, and this is a quote, we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals unless the company halted certain practices that eventually sent it into bankruptcy.
		Our stocks down 96 points on the Dow, the Tokyo Exchange at this hour following suit and dropping like a rock.
		Again, more stories.
		It seems to be a sure thing now.
		El Niño is on the way back.
		The periodic warming of the surface of the Pacific Ocean that can trigger severe worldwide weather and environmental disasters has been observed to be building up by none less than a U.S. government agency.
		The phenomena brought droughts and floods causing thousands of deaths and serious malnutrition across Latin America, southern Africa, and the Pacific region during its last appearance.
		That was 97, 98.
		Just millions of people losing their homes in China, while Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras, a phenomena caused serious delays to the monsoons in India, severe flooding in Bangladesh.
		It impacts the whole planet.
		Scientists believe that the small rise in temperature in the Indian and Pacific Oceans was enough to also provoke a, get this folks, a severe cold wave in Europe in October of 98 and a crippling ice storm in the southern U.S. So everybody gets affected when El Niño comes around and it's coming around once again.
		It just doesn't seem like it's been long enough, but I guess it has.
		Didn't we just finish talking about El Niño?
		I thought.
		And here's a puzzle for you.
		The Antarctic has cooled during the past 35 years despite worldwide temperature rises.
		According to a study published today, finding challenges the belief that global warming is raising temperatures across the whole of the southern continent, but the authors accept that some Antarctic hotspots have got warmer, actually, over the past few decades.
		So it's really, really weird what's going on.
		They're saying overall, they now think that the Antarctic is colder, but in certain areas, specific areas, it's hotter.
		So I don't know what category to put that one in.
		Now, I want you to listen very carefully.
		I know there are a lot of truckers in my audience.
		And it doesn't matter whether you're a trucker or not, you will appreciate this story.
		But if you are a trucker, I think you will appreciate it all the more.
		It comes from somebody I will call Mark.
		He kindly supplies his last name.
		Actually, I'd love to talk to him on the air.
		But he is very good at writing all of this down.
		Listen to this.
		My name is Mark, and I'm a truck driver from Brayman, Oklahoma.
		That's B-R-A-M-A-N, Oklahoma.
		I listened to your Ghost-to-Ghost program last October and have a story sure to raise the hairs on your neck, but didn't have the time to pull over and call in that night.
		Not to mention some of the stories that I've heard that night were anything but scary anyway, but here it is.
		It was three years ago in late January.
		I was on a run from Oklahoma City to Anaheim, California.
		It was 2 a.m.
		Westbound on I-40, approaching Flagstaff, Arizona.
		As I climbed the mountain pass, I ran into the heavy snow.
		Actually, it had been snowing for some time.
		The road was a solid sheet of ice.
		Any trucker is nightmare.
		So I had to reduce my speed to a mere crawl.
		Figured I could reach the truck stop at Belmont and I'd be okay, so I kept going.
		So I made my way up the mountain and reached the top at about 2.45 a.m.
		The east and westbound lanes in that area are separated by a median that is heavily timbered and both east and westbound are at different elevations.
		As I topped the rise, I saw heavy mist coming from the trees in the median.
	As I got closer, I realized it wasn't mist, it was smoke.
	I saw a dim yellow flame rise above the brush, barely visible over the edge of the drop.
	When I pulled parallel to this flame, I clearly saw what it was.
	It was a car upside down.
	The glint of light on the still spinning rims was unmistakable.
	Now, stopping a loaded semi on an ice-glazed road is one thing no trucker will do willingly or without damn good reason, because you may not get started again, and there you will stay until help comes or the road thaws.
	From what I saw, I felt the risk was acceptable, so I pulled off onto the shoulder and stopped.
	I made my way towards the car.
	It was upside down, and other than a few dents, it seemed to be in relatively good shape.
	A small flame was burning under the oil pan, releasing black smoke that was nauseating.
	So I made my way closer.
	I heard muffled movement and hushed, almost inaudible voices.
	I ran through deep snow to the passenger side and looked in.
	Two people, a man in his 30s and a younger woman were there.
	At seeing me, they started shouting, help us, please.
	They were both wearing their seatbelts, which kept them suspended upside down.
	I tried to open both doors with no success.
	I told them I was going for something to pry the door open with, and I'd be right back.
	I ran to the truck, fished out my largest pry bar and some rope, returned to the car.
	By now, the whole motor compartment was ablaze.
	I pried with all my might, but the door wouldn't budge.
	I tried to crawl into the car, ripping my coat in the process.
	In the attempt to cut their seatbelts and drag them out, no luck.
	The top was caved in just enough to thwart any attempts at entry.
	So I told them to hold tight.
	I was going to try to radio for help.
	As I withdrew, I felt extreme heat on the back of my neck.
	The fire was spreading rapidly along the bottom of the vehicle as I ran.
	Or rather, I ran as fast as I could to the semi.
	All the while, I could hear the screams coming from the couple.
	I knew their time was running out.
	And quickly, I tried frantically to raise someone on the CB, but all I got was static.
	The flames were lighting up the clearing now.
	My mind raced trying to decide what to do, and then suddenly, without any warning, the flames went out.
	Puzzled and a little relieved, I made my way back to the car.
	When I arrived at the spot, there was no sign of the vehicle, no smoke, nothing.
	I was sure I had just ran to the wrong spot since the snow was very heavy and visibility not the greatest.
	I searched for five minutes using my truck as a point of reference.
	Soon I tripped over something.
	It was the round plate-shaped rock I had put my knees on to look into the car.
	Well, I have to tell you, I've never been so scared in my whole life.
	I made a mad dash for the semi.
	Once in, locked the doors, tried calling on my CB, still wasn't working.
	After a few minutes, got the truck rolling, and in half an hour, I was safely at the Belmont truck stop.
	A waitress I knew greeted me as I walked into the restaurant, and I'm sure I must have looked terrible because she kept asking if I was all right.
	We sat and talked.
	After a while, I did calm down and told her my story.
	Her face went white and her eyes wide.
	She told me of a couple of few years ago, a couple from a few years back.
	They were somewhere up from the northeast.
	They were on their way to visit relations in California when they got caught in a snowstorm up on Flagstaff.
	They lost control, crashed.
	The wreck trapped them and the car caught fire.
	No one was out that night.
	The weather wasn't too bad.
	They were found the next day burned to death.
	I still drive, but I gave up long-haul driving.
	I don't stray more than a few hundred miles from home.
	That day, those images, it'll haunt me for the rest of my life.
	And, Mark, if you would like to get hold of me and talk on the air about this, I would love to speak with you.
unidentified		THE END All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why don't we do open lines for the balance of this particular hour?
		And then, as I said, it's going to be, I think, very, very interesting to hear an astronomer speak on the subject of aliens, an alien spacecraft.
		You don't frequently get an astronomer to do that.
		Actually, this one has written some books on the subject, so it should be pretty interesting.
		Here we go.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, sir.
unidentified		This is Joe, calling from Jackson, Mississippi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I've been listening to you for about six years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
unidentified		I've got a request for you.
		Okay.
		On the show you did on the 4th, you're open lined, you talked of a story of some guys that drilled a hole into the earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		And they play recorded some sounds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
unidentified		Could you tell that story again and play that recording?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		I will do it briefly.
		I'd be glad to do it briefly, I suppose.
		Actually, I've been, you're not going to believe this, I've been working on my cart rack, so I've got them on the floor.
		When I work on my cart rack, The only way I can fix this thing is with glue.
		Super glue.
		And you all know the record I've had with super glue.
		As a matter of fact, since, so I've got them all on the floor, since the horrible super glue incident, which occurred to me, I've had several others.
		I do not have luck with super glue.
		There is simply not a dispenser that I have found faultless.
		And, you know, I've been sent some good stuff.
		Somebody sent me like a little, it's sort of like a woman's nail polish thing, you know, and it dips down into the super glue.
		The trouble with that is that after a while they fray a little bit and it flips the super glue into the air and you're as likely to get it on you as any other way.
		And then there were some other super glue.
		You know, there are lots of good ideas.
		I mean, people have good ideas, but super, the very nature of super glue is that it will get you no matter what.
		You know, as you're holding it, as you squirt it, as it, whatever, you're going to be picking super glue off yourself for a while.
		Well, that day I super glued my lips together, and then in a frantic effort to get back on the air again, actually ripped a piece of my lip off.
		It was disgusting.
		But when your lip is actually glued together and you're a talk show host, you have to act quickly.
		All right.
		This story has been around for some time, and it comes from Siberia.
		And it has been in several mainstream media.
		I think it was Reuters or AP or one of the news services anyway ran this story about a group of Russian scientists that drilled a hole.
		I don't know what they were drilling for or why.
		I think the story made mention of it.
		Actually, we've had this on the website before.
		They drilled the world's deepest hole.
		And somebody heard something, or for some reason, they became suspicious that they were hearing something they ought not.
		So they lowered microphones into the hole.
		This sound, this audio I have, is allegedly that recording.
		Now, again, this was in a legitimate wire service, and I was provided this audio by an anonymous donor.
		Actually, it was not anonymous, the person who sent this, as I recall, now that I think about it, we had it up there for a while.
		And it was represented as being the legitimate audio that came from that microphone lowered into that hole.
		And that's what the caller was talking about, and here it is.
		Listen carefully.
unidentified		Listen carefully.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The End Gives a little weight to the hollow earth people, doesn't it?
		Anyway, that's it.
		Pretty horrible stuff.
		And if you want the hair to stand up on the back of your neck, just listen to that one a couple of times.
		So I can't tell you any more about it than that.
		But that is the story as requested.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, Arthur Levi.
		I'm up here in Portland listening to Yell 1190.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you in a truck or something?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm shut down at the fuel island here just getting crazy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, did you happen to hear the story from that trucker I read a little while ago?
unidentified		Sure did.
		Yeah.
		Yeah, there's stories like it that happen quite often, and a lot of people are kind of shy about talking about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		It affects them pretty deeply.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would imagine so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Hey, I got a request for you on your FM station over there and maybe a Valentine's Bumper music.
		There's an old song that I really did like years ago called All These Things by the Uniques.
		Does that ring a bell?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does not, but I have almost every music list in the world, so I'll see if I can find it.
unidentified		Okay, well, have a good night.
unidentified		All right, you take care, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you all, all who sent music lists to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm okay, sir.
unidentified		Francis from Western Pennsylvania calling.
		Yes.
		And I'm calling regarding the sound of the microphone that was dropped into the hole that you had mentioned.
		I had sent you an email last February about that.
		And using the Pro Tools 5.1 software by DigiDesign and the Bruno and Echo plug-ins, it's possible to create sounds similar to that, including placing a Doppler effect on the track.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure that you can do anything with anything, sir, just like it's in fact probably more easily than fooling around with photography, you know.
unidentified		That's true.
		But the point is, I've worked with that software, and for one of my musical pieces for background ambient sounds, I did do something very similar to that.
		So it's fairly easy to do.
		You have the control of digital, but you can get sounds that have been generated in the past by analog synthesizers.
		That's all I wanted to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, sir.
		Glad you said it.
		You have a good morning.
		Of course.
		Digital photography, digital audio, anybody can fake anything Anytime now, these days.
		There's absolutely no question about it.
		However, in this case, it follows a legitimate wire service story.
		And so it's kind of interesting.
		Of course, I understand when you hear it.
unidentified		You wouldn't really want to believe it, would you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly what it is.
		Good morning, everybody.
		Open lines between now and the top of the hour, then.
		William, Professor William Hauschuler.
		Hope that's right.
		Hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
		He is an astronomer, and he's going to be here commenting about all kinds of interesting things, like perhaps his own UFO experience.
		And then I guess because he's had that, if I'm correct, he'll then be able to comment, or would be willing to comment, on all kinds of other aspects.
		He's, in fact, written books on the subject, so should be very interesting.
		I don't know.
		That's interesting in IRS commercial.
		And in there in the beginning, it's kind of neat.
		They sing, I love you.
unidentified		Your rest loves me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wasn't the Rockies on the air?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		This is Kathy in Phoenix.
		Hey, Kathy.
		You played that Sounds of Hell?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Hell tape, yes.
unidentified		Yes, and that reminded me, I had been listening to a commercial here in Phoenix for a while that teaches people how to work in the stock market.
unidentified		And every time I hear the thing come on, I'm going to scream, and I couldn't figure out why.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, since you mentioned it, actually, if you've ever heard the market on one of their really, really bad days and covers them, you know, when the market's in sort of a crash situation, they'll always go down to the floor.
unidentified		Oh, it's horrible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they put some poor little reporter down in the middle of this floor.
		People are running by, almost knocking the reporter over.
		Everybody's in a panic.
		And you're right, it sounds just like that.
		Just like hell.
unidentified		I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does.
unidentified		No, I know why I hate that ad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there you are.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you very much and take care of Yana.
		She's right.
		She's exactly right.
		You ever seen those?
		I always wonder about the person who's sent down.
		And no doubt they send them down into the most, probably the most chaotic part of the floor.
		You know, so you get the most dramatic effect.
		Oh, my God, the market's crashing.
		Now, it's down 540 points.
		We just don't understand it.
		You know, and people are rushing by and phones are ringing and people are screaming and, you know, and they do that for the effect.
		So it's kind of like when there's a hurricane.
		They send some reporter down to where they figure the eye is going to cross land, you know, and he's got to stand there and report.
		Same deal at the stock market.
		First time calling line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Despite what I think of some of your guests, I always thought that you've had a really great taste in music.
		And I'm the collector of certain kinds of music, and I was going to send you some, but I guess you're not accepting any more.
		Does it also include UPS?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean by mail?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, it does include UPS because there's nowhere to deliver to.
		So yes, I'm afraid, you know, it's just, it's ruined it, and I wonder when we are going to be all feeling safe enough, particularly public people, to accept mail.
		I don't know what the answer to that is, but I'll let you know.
unidentified		Well, you said you've got quite a complete song list.
unidentified		How about if I tell you some of the titles, and these are ones that are picked out, they kind of fit with some of the themes on the show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You want to email it to me.
unidentified		That's a good idea.
unidentified		Okay, the other thing I want to talk about is the pretzel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, the pretzel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The pretzel and the prez.
unidentified		I think there's one thing we have to remember.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
unidentified		Guns don't kill people.
		Pretzels kill people.
		Unless, of course, you fall on the floor hard enough so that the Secret Service hears you and picks you up and performs the Heimlich on you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Okay, thank you very much.
		You know, I should have commented on that at the top of the hour because it was probably, in some ways, the biggest piece of news in the last day or so, and it was a shock.
		Now, let me tell you something.
		They don't tell us a hell of a lot about presidential medical conditions.
		I think that's something that for long before I was born, there's been a tradition about, you know, if the president has a condition, they don't talk about it.
		Something happens, they rarely talk about it.
		Now, this they talked about.
		I guess they had no choice in view of what happened to his face.
		But it sounded pretty serious.
		And I guess potentially fatal.
		You know, it could be fatal, something like that.
		So I haven't heard who was there, whether someone hindlicked him or what happened.
		Just that, you know, his blood pressure went through the floor suddenly, and it would, as you were choking on something like that.
		Of course, they look him over, and I guess he's okay.
		But boy, that's pretty scary stuff.
		And because of the presidential cloak of you only hear what they want you to hear, we may not know exactly what really did happen, may never know until someone writes a book.
		Kwal Carline, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, how you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm okay, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm calling from Memphis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		And can I say hello to the folks in the grassy knoll?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you may.
unidentified		Okay, and we miss seeing you there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I come in there from time to time, and I also go to some of the FNET channels.
		But you know what I found?
		It's really unfortunate.
		When I go into these places, people don't believe it's me.
		And so it's like I give up.
		They honestly don't believe it's me.
		And they have kicked me off FNET channels because, oh, there's another fake art belt.
		Boom, and you're kicked off.
unidentified		Oh, man.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Oh, man.
		Anyway, what's up?
unidentified		Do you remember about the middle of November whenever a molecular biologist disappeared?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do.
unidentified		Okay, you know his car was found on one of the Mississippi River bridges.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I heard that, yes.
unidentified		Okay, his body was found about a month later.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think they're calling this an accident, aren't they?
unidentified		I live in Memphis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're trying to call it an accident, right?
unidentified		They are saying that he accidentally fell off that bridge.
		Uh-huh.
		Art, I don't know if you've ever seen that bridge, but I just...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tell me, how hard would it be to accidentally fall off that bridge?
unidentified		I think, don't they design bridges to make it hard for you to fall off?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, sir.
		You're near the bridge.
		I'm not.
		You tell me.
unidentified		I'd have to say yes.
		That is the most hokey.
		There's no way.
		That is just totally unbelievable.
		Absolutely unbelievable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've seen the bridge.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, you know, there have been a number of scientists who have worked with things like that scientist did, molecular biology, you know, on a lot of these pretty scary things, and they've ended up dead now.
		Coincidence?
unidentified		I think not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Falling into rivers and stuff like that?
unidentified		And I just wanted to, and I've fast-blasted you an email.
unidentified		I hope I'm not overreacting, but, you know, that the medical examiner could come through and say that with a straight face.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		I know, sir.
		I appreciate the call, and I share your concerns all the way, believe me.
unidentified		Yeah, I've seen the story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And, of course, this is the way the majority of them are explained away now.
		Maybe it is just an incredible coincidence at a time like this, but I don't believe in coincidence that much, do you?
		Eastern the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that would be me.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		This is Pat calling you from Old Forge, Pennsylvania.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Pat.
unidentified		I had a suggestion for a show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, an entire show?
unidentified		Yes, I think a whole show could be devoted to this particular subject.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would that be?
unidentified		That would be mysterious vanishings.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
		Well, it would blow everybody out there away to know how many people virtually vanish.
		And that's the truth.
		I mean, they are just gone.
		There's an investigation that goes on for a while, but after a while, if they cannot be found, they just get written off as vanished.
		Now, where have they gone?
		I don't know.
unidentified		Are you familiar with a case that took place back in the 1930s when Japan was invading Nanking in China?
		Yes.
		And I forget exactly the exact number, but I know that several thousand soldiers were commissioned to defend the front lines of the city.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And apparently those soldiers vanished without a trace.
unidentified		Are you familiar with the city?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that is certainly one story that I have not heard.
		However, I would love to look into it.
		Vanishings and thousands of soldiers.
		Well, kind of hard to prove in China, I suppose.
		But all over the world every day there are vanishings and where these, you know, some of them obviously run away, I suppose.
		Begin a new life somewhere else.
		But then some certain percentage of them, perhaps, well, perhaps something else happens.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
		Hello?
		Hello, Arbell.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
		I'm okay, sir.
		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm calling from California.
		Okay.
		Go ahead.
		I was calling about Bugs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bugs?
		Oh, yes, Bugs.
		What about him?
unidentified		Information.
unidentified		I have been listening and I haven't heard anything about him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's because there is nothing more to hear.
		We did a series of shows, the last of which we thought for sure.
		In fact, Bugs had indicated, just go ahead and pass out my phone number, and I made him wait 24 hours, 48, actually.
		And when I went back to him, his wife said she wouldn't let him do it.
		And I don't blame her.
		And that is the last news.
unidentified		One other question, Art.
		Yes.
		Did you hear about a gentleman who actually hit one of these Bigfoots and had it in his garage?
		Did you hear about that?
		No.
		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you?
unidentified		Yes, on one of the shows, this gentleman actually had hit it and took it down to his basement.
unidentified		And I could have sworn that was your show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was an alien, not a Bigfoot.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You talking about the one that went in the freezer?
unidentified		No, these people had...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
		All right, I know now what you're talking about.
		Yeah, that was Bigfoot.
unidentified		And the guy...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did that end up?
		The guy refused to allow...
		You know, I had permission to give the number, and I did, and Linda and some others contacted him.
		And once again, this man had lowered the body, if I'm remembering the story correctly, into this shelter.
		It wasn't a basement, it was a bomb shelter, actually, a shelter.
		And in the end, he refused to allow a vet to examine the body.
		That's pretty interesting.
		People, as you might imagine, when they think that they may have committed some sort of crime, get very, very hesitant to proceed as they consider it.
		They consider that they may be charged with the crime, and in fact, they might.
		Can't deny they might be.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
		Morning.
		Good morning, sir.
unidentified		How you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Turn your radio off, please.
unidentified		It is.
		Okay.
		My name is Nick from Memphis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Nick.
unidentified		600WREC.
		You bet.
		About a guy called in on one of your programs about the professor that they found supposedly fell off the bridge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We just talked about it, yes.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
		He could actually fall off that bridge because there's no safety restraints.
		I'm a constable in Arkansas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you're saying he could have fallen off that bridge.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, definitely.
unidentified		We've had people fall off, jump off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jump off, one could understand.
		Fall off is a little bit harder.
		You know, what's making people nervous and a little bit suspicious is that so many people working in this area of molecular biology science have been dying in a series of rather bizarre circumstances.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Well, I know the medical examiner, you know, was talking about how he had been drinking that night.
		That could have easily happened from the scenarios that I've seen before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See, I didn't see that in the story.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		The medical examiner came out with, because he had been at one of the hotels there downtown at a function and had been drinking that night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, anything is possible.
		Again, I think the heightened suspicion is that at this particular time when the nation is so concerned about it, right?
		About the possibility of some sort of bug being unleashed upon us.
		Naturally, when you have a bunch of people in this field that are showing up dead under rather unusual circumstances, and particularly a number of them, it makes us a little itchy.
		Itchy, right?
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would have been.
		Sorry, we missed you.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		I'm calling about the other night you had someone call in about a mystery light in Michigan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Okay, I lived in that area when I was growing up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of phone are you on, honey?
unidentified		I'm on a cell phone.
unidentified		I live on a ranch with no power, and we listen to you every night with our battery radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, it's called the Paulding Light.
unidentified		It's in Paulding, Michigan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And it's over 100 years old.
		It's been there for over 100 years.
		They believe that it is from an engineer that got killed during the logging days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean that it's truly a ghost light?
unidentified		Yes, it is.
		It was on Unsolved Mysteries, went there and did a lot of tests and checked it all out, and they could find nothing.
		But the light was there, and it flashes from red to green for stop and go, like the engineer used to have the old light during the railroad days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you hear the trucker story I read earlier?
unidentified		I think I was in the shower.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
		Then you're going to want to catch that in the repeat.
		Yes, thank you very much.
		This whole thing about lights or plasma balls, if you will, is something to consider.
		Plasma balls.
		The most recent science on this is they are discovering these plasma balls are able to sustain themselves in the atmosphere and even grow in strength in the atmosphere, but at the bare minimum sustain themselves, and that defies all laws of physics.
		Anything that generates something like that, you could imagine lightning doing it or something or another.
		It would be a process that would slowly lessen until finally it exploded or winked out or the energy was used or whatever.
		That's the way things work.
		But that's not the way these plasma balls work.
		This is now documented science.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hello, Art.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good to talk to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Central, Illinois.
unidentified		My name's Don.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Don.
unidentified		I got a question for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		Do you have that rotten feeling that you had right before 9-11?
		No.
		No.
		Go ahead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't think that I do.
unidentified		You don't think there's going to be any more problems here in the United States?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I didn't say that.
		Oh.
		I didn't say that.
unidentified		Well, I don't really have that real strong feeling, but I got a feeling something's going to happen, and it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with 9-11 terrorists, but I think it's something from outside, how do I explain it?
		Like a comet or meteor or something coming towards us or something.
		Because I keep having this recurring dream of it's been coming on for the last three or four years, and it keeps refining itself, you know, and you get more awareness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you are aware, of course, of the close call that we had.
		Earth had a very close call last Monday with something that would have ruined our day.
		You knew about that?
unidentified		No, I didn't.
		Well, you didn't?
		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Big old rock.
		Big old rock whizzed by Earth, sir.
		Oh, and it did so at about, I don't know, less than the distance to the moon or something like that, or maybe twice the distance.
		I forget.
		Very close, though.
unidentified		I should have been listening to you more.
unidentified		I probably would have found out about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to have an astronomer on in just a very few moments, and that's one of the things we surely will ask him about.
unidentified		There's nothing coming at us or nothing other than that one big rock just went by it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, they don't exactly know.
		They've only categorized one out of roughly ten of these rocks that are out there that would potentially hit us.
		In other words, they only know the whereabouts of, oh, say, one out of ten.
		And the others, well, you might not even see them.
		If they're coming from one certain direction, you might not even see them coming.
unidentified		Like the sun's blocking our view or something?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, something like that.
		So it could just suddenly happen.
		Because most times when they report on it, you know, the report starts out something like this.
		The so-and-so news service reports that yesterday, Earth had a very close call.
unidentified		Yeah, a day late and a dollar short.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At least.
unidentified		You have a good evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you too.
		Thank you, and I hope you're wrong about your feeling.
		Anyway, we've got an astronomer coming on who's going to talk about UFOs next.
		Rolling into the lights.
		That's pretty good pump for music for an astronomer, huh?
		And that's who's coming up.
		Professor William R. Auschuler is an astronomer.
		He has just written a book.
		Actually, he's written several, but his latest, The Science of UFOs.
		The Science of UFOs.
		An astronomer examines the technology of alien spacecrafts, how they travel, and the aliens who pilot them.
		This should be pretty interesting.
		Coming up next, if you'll stay right there.
unidentified		What?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Dr. William R. Al Shuler has a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California at Santa Cruz and received his BA in astronomy at Harvard College.
		Dr. Alshuler has extensive college teaching experience in the sciences, holography, Lippmann photography, energy conservation, and solar building design.
		He is founder and principal of Future Museums.
		That's a consulting firm specializing in the design of exhibits in museums with a science or technology content.
		He's recently served as consultant to the California Science Senator, Asset Senator, Center, and the Getty Education Institute for Curriculum Development that combines art and science.
		He has been author or editor on the following.
		Listen to this.
		The Microverse.
		UFOs and Aliens.
		First Contact.
		The Ultimate Dinosaur.
		Are We Alone in the Cosmos?
		And most recently, The Science of UFOs.
		He is currently a science professor at California Institute of the Arts.
		Professor, welcome to the program.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		You got all that perfectly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Including, I presume, how to pronounce your name, I hope.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Professor, it is, I suppose, I've got to ask right away, normally, and believe me, I've interviewed a lot of astronomers, people up at Griffith Observatory and a lot of different places, a lot of astronomers, really people up in your class from an academic point of view, and they generally are unwilling to pretty much discuss any of this at all.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How come?
		No, no, no.
		Let me rephrase that.
		How come you are?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I am because I'm really interested in discussing matters of science and things related to science with the general public.
		I've devoted most of my life and education to teaching classes for non-science students.
		And I got started in this at a relatively early age.
		I actually got started thinking about astronomy when I was in grammar school.
		I had a school principal who came around every year, and this was in the early 1950s, and lectured class annually about what was going to be the space program before there was a space program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And that caught my attention and imagination.
		And by the time I graduated from eighth grade, I pretty much knew I wanted to be an astronomer.
		When I was in high school, I was in a summer science program.
		And I was at a college in the East where not only were high school students in a special program for students interested in science, but some grammar school teachers were in parallel programs at the same school.
		And I worn my way into the good graces of a graduate student who was a teaching assistant for the teachers program and asked to see some of their exams, which probably he shouldn't have allowed me to see, but he did.
		And then I discovered to my surprise that some very good teachers, one of whom was from my old grammar school and my younger brother had as a teacher and I knew was absolutely excellent, did not know as much astronomy as I did and didn't do as good a job on writing tests as I did.
		And I didn't think I was such a hot shot in any of that, just very interested.
		And I was really rather surprised and at that point decided that really someone should take on the job of making sure that the people who weren't going into the sciences had some real grasp on what the sciences were about.
		You got me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, very interesting.
		It seems as though those who succeed in any area of professional endeavor almost always, not always, but almost always, know where they're headed at a very early age and almost are consumed by it.
		And those seem to be the people that succeed in their various areas of endeavor, I have noticed.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I agree with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So anyway.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		There are interesting exceptions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are, but they are the exception.
		The rule seems to be that people are just consumed suddenly by it at a very young age, and it never stops.
		Okay, lots and lots to talk about.
		Before we do that, I want to ask you, last Monday, the Earth had a pretty close encounter with some rock that came within a couple of moon lengths or something of Earth, and I suppose in astronomical terms, pretty close.
		You know anything about that rock at all?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm afraid I don't.
		I missed that near miss, though.
		There have been a few others in the last decade that were sort of quickly upon us.
		And at least one of them looked like it was going to come back on another pass and possibly actually smack us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And hit us, yes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		But when work was done after the near pass, the near miss, some more work was done on the orbit.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It was pretty much discounted and decided that the thing would not come closer than the orbit of the moon the next time around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If one of these things were headed toward us, first of all, what are the odds that we'd even know about it?
		Because I mean, so many times the story is astronomers revealed today that yesterday or two days ago, Earth had a very near miss.
		I mean, it's like sometimes they don't seem to see them coming until after they've gone by.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The ones that are coming right at us represent a pretty difficult detection problem because since they're headed straight down our throats, generally the clue is you see a star in a location you didn't expect which is getting brighter and brighter.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		If it's headed across us then you see something moving across the background stars and it's a much easier task to detect it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So something coming toward us would simply be a slowly brightening star.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would be very easy for somebody to miss until it got awfully close.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean there are different degrees of this and of course if we're talking about two things in quite different orbits, it might in fact move slowly across the background stars.
		But it's really headed straight for us.
		That's not usually going to be a huge motion across the sky.
		There is a patrol going on right now trying to find and catalog all of the objects in the solar system which have orbits that cross the orbit of Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But doesn't that mean the one most likely to get us is the one that we will most likely not be able to see?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, it'll be one of the harder ones, but remember that if it's on an orbit which intersects us in the future but not immediately, it may represent an easier detection problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If it comes around frequently enough to have been noticed before, right?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Not even necessarily the case.
		Yes, of course, but if it's just coming around for the first time or we see it for the first time, but it's not going to hit us this time around, but the orbit shows up as, you know, the next pass or two passes from now, it's going to come real close.
		We might not have a difficult time getting it this time around.
unidentified		This seems like a real danger.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		There's somewhat of a debate about how big a danger it is.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		People have estimated how many objects are floating around in the solar system that are really possible dangers and how many we've catalogued out of this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I heard about one out of ten that would possibly cross our orbit.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure I want to commit myself on that, but I think the number of planetoids that have been cataloged is now getting in the range of a couple of thousand.
		And the total number is up maybe five times that by estimate.
		But no one knows for sure.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Well.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And how many of those will actually hit us?
		I don't think anybody's really tried to make an estimate.
		It's more like what is the rate of strike over the past history and there's a fair amount of controversy about that.
		But the ones we're worried about, which are, say, five miles across or larger, are pretty rare.
		And as far as we can tell, probably one in 10 million years, maybe one year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they said that this wasn't nearly so big.
		I forget only like 300 meters or something like that.
		But they said that it would have made a hole a couple of miles deep and taken out a good medium-sized city and, you know, totally would have been a mess.
		Would have been a mess, yeah.
		So it doesn't take a five-mile rock to ruin our day.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It would have made a nasty mess someplace.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Professor, I have had a really, really serious UFO experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I am told I should ask you, have you had one?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I have, actually, though not really recently.
		Back in my misspent youth, one summer when I was working for the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, I walked out the door of the planetarium at dusk at the end of my working day.
		And as I usually did, I sort of looked around, and it's in a beautiful sight right at the shore of Lake Michigan, just sort of outboard of the Museum of Natural History.
		And you look back towards the west, and you see all of the water, all of the skyline, all the beautiful buildings, and you look east and you're looking out over Lake Michigan.
		And I happen to look east, and hanging in the sky towards the southeast was a rather bright white disk with no features and no real shadowing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But discernibly a disk.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely discernibly a disk, something that was not too different in diameter, apparent diameter from a full moon.
		And it was silent, and it wasn't really moving.
		And I stood there and looked at it for a while and sort of ran through my head the catalog of things that might be, and no obvious answer popped up.
		Then I decided that if I was seeing this, then a good chunk of Chicago was seeing it.
		And it was a good chance that someone had called the planetarium switchboard and someone inside, who was not me, had figured out what it was.
		So I went back in, and sure enough, somebody had done a little bit of work, and it turned out it was a balloon below which was hanging, though I couldn't see it, a gondola which held a good cosmic ray experiment launched by the University of Chicago.
unidentified		Oh, really?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The whole thing hung there silently, and of course it slowly drifted along, very slowly, and a few days later I read in the paper that it had come down in Texas, which was pretty much what they were expecting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
		So your UFO experience really was an IFO eventually, yes.
		Yeah, eventually.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		With a sort of pause, yes.
		But I had no real immediate clue to it.
		And by that time, I was in college.
		I had a lot of observing under my belt.
		I was well traveled, so I was interested by the fact that I couldn't figure out what it was without going to talk to someone else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you'd been an average Joe and you could not have walked back into the planetarium, most people can't just walk into a planetarium, you might have, to this very day, you might have imagined that you saw a flying saucer.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Though it wasn't very zippy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good point.
		When you look out into the sky and you look at all those stars, and now I hear we're discovering increasing numbers of planets about the stars, makes life more likely, or the possibility of life, you would think, more likely.
		I understand we're only spotting the biggest planets, but that would figure that our ability to first see them would include the biggest ones, and then later we'll see the smaller ones, all probability.
		Would you think that's true?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yes, absolutely.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, we've already got a couple of cases where there are smaller planets detectable around other stars, and in at least one case, there's really good evidence that there's more than one planet traveling around a particular star.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		In those cases, you can see that the first planet discovered was the biggest, generally the one that was closest into its sun, for a reason which I can explain, and then the next ones which followed were smaller and or further away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the only way these are detectable are by some sort of perturbation in the light coming from that star.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		You look at the spectrum of a star, and you can see generally lots and lots of line features, dark absorption from the elements of the star's atmosphere.
		And you can see this in the sun.
		In fact, in the sun, there are thousands and thousands of them.
		And if you have a big enough spectroscope, you can easily see these when you spread the spectrum out.
		If you have an extremely high-precision spectrograph, and this is the advance which has allowed the detection of these planets, of which I believe there are around now 70 announced.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know there were that many.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I just looked at the planetary encyclopedia on the web, and people can easily go check this if they want to do a search.
		Just do a search on extrasolar planets, and you can see the catalog.
		And they're mostly pretty well confirmed in that there's years of observations on them, and in some cases, more than one observer has seen them.
		And with a spectroscope of really high precision, if the star you're looking at is moving in a cyclical fashion, for example, in response to something like a Jupiter traveling around it, then its lines shift to the blue and the red back and forth with every orbit.
		And if there are two planets, then you see two periods in the shifts, and it's a little more complicated.
		And if there's three, it's even more complicated.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Based then on what they have already found, is it possible to mathematically make a fair guess, you know, if you extend it to all we see in terms of stars, and then can we make a fair guess on how likely planets are and how likely it would be that there would be one that could be Earth-like?
		I mean, there's other base of information.
unidentified		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The first one is easier than the second.
		And the first one is now in much better shape than it was a decade ago before we knew any of this.
		Okay.
		It looks like from the statistics that there are so many discovered among the stars near us, and all of the discoveries have been for stars near us because we're not sensitive.
		We don't have instruments sensitive enough to look at things much, much further away that are much fainter.
		That probably two-thirds of the stars near us, which are reasonably like the Sun, have planets, something like that.
		It's a really high percentage.
		And it's possible it's higher because in the case where a planetary system around another star isn't set edge onto us, so that we're looking at the orbits sort of edge-on, but face-on, so we're looking down on or up at this system, in that case you can't detect the motion by the technique I described.
		So we're missing some would be a way of saying it.
		There's some out there we can't detect just because of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The likelihood then of the nearby stars two-thirds of those could be reasonably expected to have planets and of those now your second question is much harder.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		We don't really know of a single case that I'm aware of, not in the catalog of stuff that I've looked at, where there's anything which is really the same mass as the Earth.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And the great majority of them are much heavier because they're easier to detect and are presumed to be like Jupiter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're bigger.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		They're bigger and they're presumed to be gas giants.
		That is things made of hydrogen, helium, methane, maybe ammonia, and maybe with an ice or a rocky core, but really like Jupiter.
		Though many of them are in, because they're easier to observe from Earth at first, they're in very small orbits.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but if we can't see the smaller ones yet, the ones that more likely would have a possibility of being like Earth, it's just because they're small that we can't see them.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		They're small, and maybe they're in further out orbits.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The likelihood is, though, that they are there, isn't it?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think it's reasonable.
		I don't know how to calculate the likelihood, though I feel much more confident about saying this now than I did before we knew about these 70 planets.
		I think my own opinion is, yes, they're almost certainly there.
		I think you'd find a divergence of opinion in the astronomical community, but I think a large number of people would say, yeah, we're likely to eventually find Earth-like planets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, given the number of visible stars, you know what?
		We all talk about that.
		There's as many stars as there are grains of sand on the beach.
		I've always wondered, how many stars can we see?
		Does anybody know?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends what you're seeing with.
		With the naked eye, it's in the several thousand range per night.
		If you count the number of stars in pictures of the Milky Way, you quickly get up into the millions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Millions.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And if you actually total up the number of stars we think are there by various techniques of estimation, you get something like 300 billion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		300 billion in our galaxy.
		All right, Professor, hold on.
		300 billion in our galaxy.
		That would be stars, which are suns, the majority of which would have planets around them.
		Think about the numbers.
		I'm Art Belt.
		We'll be right back.
		Once again, Dr. Al Schuler, welcome back.
		300 billion suns in our galaxy.
unidentified		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And of those, a very large number are more or less like the sun.
		A minority are brighter and hotter.
		The majority are as bright as or fainter than the sun and cooler.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that if we imagine planets at somewhat equal distances from those suns as a strong possibility, then isn't the likelihood of life, although I know this is a big jump, but isn't the likelihood of life rather high?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I would think so, because when you look at these suns, the great majority of them have chemical compositions that are like our sun, and for that reason one would think, since our sun has basically all the elements we find on Earth, though in different proportions, that it's pretty likely planets around other similarly composed stars will also, some of them have compositions like the Earth, and therefore have all the elements for life.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And presumably at some moment, we're going to see some of these planets using new technology we don't have up yet, but on the drawing boards there is a range of techniques people are thinking about, mainly for space-based telescopes, successors to the Hubble, for example, with more specialized equipment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are they much, much better than those on Earth?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		In certain ways, yes.
		One of the things that you can get away from when you get up above the Earth's surface is the absorption of the atmosphere of many different colors of radiation, most of which we can't see, but nonetheless important for detecting things around other stars.
		And the other thing is that you can get away from the twinkling of the stars.
		Now, it turns out that there was a rather major step in this direction.
		I don't know if you're familiar with this, something that in the trade is sometimes called the rubber mirror technique.
		It's a way of actively deforming a telescope mirror system so that it compensates for the twinkling of the stars and focuses the image much better than you could otherwise.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean it sort of like masks the effects of the atmosphere?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it compensates for them in a way which gets you maybe 80% of the detailed resolution that you would get from a telescope above the atmosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is amazing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How new is that?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends just what you want to count.
		I was at it quite a few years back, I guess 20 plus years ago, I was at an American Astronomical Society meeting.
		It was more than that.
		It was closer to 30, at which a group from Canada announced a sort of low-tech version.
		And at the same conference, a group from one of the defense-operated observatories in New Mexico described the high-tech version.
		And people have been busy building either the one or the other ever since.
		And so, I guess, 30-plus years, though, it wasn't really declassified in the literature till then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it ever classified?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Interesting word.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the defense version of it, which was done in an observatory in New Mexico, if I remember correctly, first, was for quite a time classified, and it had to do with missile detection, I think, more than astronomy originally.
		But the people who worked on it always knew that it had an application for astronomy.
		The people in Canada had no such other goal.
		They were simply interested in trying to get sharper images of everything, and they devised a technique which relied only on the light coming from the sky.
		The defense group actually used a laser to create an artificial star, in effect, by bouncing the beam off the upper atmosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of interest, if ground-based telescopes can be essentially made to ignore the adverse effects of the atmosphere while looking into space...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't it seem logical that a spy satellite going around the Earth, positioned where they want it, would find the same technology really useful looking down through the Earth's atmosphere at the Earth?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Possibly.
		And I imagine that somebody's probably done work on that.
		It probably would require the laser system in that case to create some sort of artificial reference point because the advantage you have when you look out at the stars is you actually have point-like things to look at.
		And you know what a point should look like.
		It should look like a point.
		Any distortion of that is information you can correct the system with to make the point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, gee, there'd be lots of points of light on Earth as reference points for exactly the same thing, wouldn't there?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I suppose some.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It depends what your target of interest is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, to calibrate with.
unidentified		Sure.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I mean, presumably you could look at city lights, for example, to calculate that and use those.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Lighting outside of that, I'm not sure, but I suppose you could find some street lights somewhere else that would be a good idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that probably accounts for some of its classification, I would imagine.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Possibly.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Just don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you as an astronomer from time to time aware, are you able to be aware of classified technology that you couldn't talk about publicly?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I'm really not.
		I'm just not involved in it.
		Every once in a while I have an idea that potentially could be classified, I suppose, but I've chosen not to do much with that.
		And most of what I know about classified stuff comes out unclassified when I find out about it.
		I have a few friends who've worked in the defense industry for a number of years, and every once in a while I shoot the breeze with them, but I've never heard much which I could say really sort of caught my attention.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever get into the middle of conversations with them where they obviously would prefer not to go there?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Just very rarely.
		Really rarely.
		Mostly, you know, if that happens, they're just very straightforward and say, I can't talk about that, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		Fascinating.
		All right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Or for all I know, they're not going to say even they can't talk about it.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		They don't mention it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I can't tell what they're not going to tell me or talk about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		quite right.
		Do you...
		I mean, there's a million UFO stories out there.
		There's a million abduction stories out there.
		On my program, I hear most of them, or a lot of them anyway.
		and there are many who believe that we either have been or are being visited now.
		What's your view of that?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I'm afraid I don't think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't think so?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I kind of wish we had been, but I don't think so.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think that until we get a sort of smoking gun, until somebody steps up to the mark and says, okay, I'm here and provides some technological proof that they came from somewhere else or biological proof or both, that I'm going to choose to be skeptical of the accounts that I hear.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		An astronomer would be not at all very likely to necessarily see a UFO, would they?
		In other words, they're not really looking at things traversing close in.
		and Okay, so, for example, if a spaceship were something the size of a spaceship, I don't know what that would be, bigger, say, than the space station or as big as the space station, just as a reference,
		were coming toward Earth, how long would it take to see it?
		Or is it likely?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends, I guess.
		I think that there is equipment in the world if it was pointed right at the object that could see it out as far as the moon.
		But you'd have to know where to look.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's not very far.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No, but it's far enough, depending on the speed, to give you either hours' warning or days' warning, or maybe just minutes' warning, depending on what it's doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just minutes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		You know, if you're looking for radio signals and the thing is broadcasting, then presumably lots of people can see it from a long distance out, much further away than that.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		If it's somehow radar-stealthed, it's relying on sub-technology either related to or not, you know, like what we've used to conceal certain kinds of aircraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, gee, we even have stealth now.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's possible that something like that might not appear on radar until it got very close, or maybe not at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or maybe not at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		So it's really hard to say, but there are a lot of people with different purposes in mind looking at the sky all the time.
		You know, with detectors from the naked eye up through very large telescopes, very large radio detectors.
		There are big radar systems always looking at the sky.
		In fact, probably the thing that we send out to the stars that's most powerful is the radar pulses, which are part of the defense systems of our country and the former Soviet Union and some other countries.
		And if there's anything out there at all that's detectable by radar, we should see it.
		We really should.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's think about this for a second.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Our radar pulses probably are, what, 60, 70 light years out at the most, 50, 60 even?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The big defense radars, they're not that far out.
		But the radio signals, they're 100 light years out.
		Radio signals started leaving us right around 1900.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but what about the pulsed radar that really might have a shot at making it out?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Those, I guess, are probably 30 or 40 light years out, something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		30 or 40 light years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what is within 30 or 40 light years that might suddenly be out there going, oh my God, look at this.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are actually hundreds of star systems that are, hundreds of stars that are more or less like the Sun.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And of these, we now know, as I mentioned, something like 70 systems which are known to have planets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So within 30 or 40 light years, there would be that much?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, some of those planets are around stars which are further away than that.
		The group of stars we've been looking at go out further than 30 to 40 light years, and the technique works further out than that.
		But 150 light years out might be, or 200 light years might be the limit.
		And within that sphere, there are many stars, many of which have planets.
		So there could potentially be an audience out there.
unidentified		There could be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if you imagine life is relatively common, although you certainly can imagine it might not develop along the exact same lines ours has, if you imagine that every now and then one invents radar or something like it that would emit some sort of recognizable signal, then shouldn't we have heard something by now?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, a number of people think that's true and think further the fact that we haven't suggested that there isn't any life out there.
		But there's several things that get in the way.
		One is just simple geometry.
		Even our extremely powerful radars, the farther they get, the weaker the signal gets.
		Those signals are spreading out in space.
		True.
		And they get to be fainter and fainter.
		And pervading all of space in the galaxy, there is natural radio noise, which comes from many different sources.
		Every star emits some, the sun does.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So eventually that signal would get lost in the noise level.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And without sophisticated signal processing, which of course any civilization, presumably further along than ours, will have, your ability to hear that shrinks and shrinks.
		With advanced signal processing and some guess about the kind of signals the chances of hearing go up.
		But we have several people, several programs going on now around the world, most of them in the United States, specifically to detect radio signals, which so far haven't had any real success.
		They're listening hard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of interest, can you pin it down?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, with the noise floor being what it is from all the stars and planets and everything up there making its radio noise, how far would that effectively limit our pulsed radar, for example, from being audible as something intelligent?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I can't pin it down exactly, but I can give you an example, which is suppose you take the largest radio telescope in the world, which is our telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which is built into the mountains.
		It's 1,000 feet in diameter.
		Right.
		And you used it as an antenna to broadcast a signal across outer space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They did that, you know.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		They did that.
		If the signal were sent across the galaxy, towards the other edge of the galaxy on the far diameter of the galaxy, And a telescope the same size as Arecibo were pointed at us and listening, it would hear our signal.
		So in principle we can broadcast clear across the galaxy, but who would know it to look at us and the travel time for that signal is about 100,000 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the transmission time, incidentally, was extremely short in the test they did.
		And there was some interesting controversy after the test, and there still is that controversy going on now.
		Some scientists suggest it might not be such a bright idea.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		To advertise our presence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To advertise our presence.
unidentified		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's true, though I think there is now consensus in the community that most concerned with this, that we all hew to a protocol, which has actually been spelled out that says if we get real signals from someplace else, we get confirmation by having several different groups observe them, we announce them to the world, and then we decide what we're going to reply, if anything, to these signals.
		And so far as I know, there is not any large crew that anticipates doing anything else.
		And of course, there are occasionally questions, would anyone reveal such a discovery if it were made?
		Wouldn't it be classified?
		Wouldn't they keep it secret?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, I frequently interview Dr. Shostak from SETI.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we've had really spirited, interesting discussions about exactly that.
		So I would like to ask you, in your discipline as an astronomer, if such information came to you and you were either a confirming party or the discovering party and then had it confirmed.
		Either way, in your honest opinion, Professor, what would happen to that information?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I'd do my very best to see it published as soon as possible with my name attached to it.
		And as far as I know, everyone else who's professionally involved with it would do the same.
		I've thought about this one a lot, actually.
		And I have this feeling since we've played through the scenario of alien invasion and all kinds of interactions with aliens in science fiction books and movies, sort of gone through this again and again, if we haven't frightened ourselves to death, I just can't see any reason not to say something about the fact that we're here.
		And I would want to announce this to the world and make sure that they understood what had been found as much as possible, as much as the discoverers understood of it, and get the world's reaction.
		And I kind of think the world would want to reply.
		That's my guess.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think the government would share your view of openness on this subject?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
		At this point, I think so.
		There might have been a time when that wasn't true, but my sense is there just isn't a great interest.
		I've tried to think of what the political interest would be in keeping something like this classified.
		Depending, I suppose, on what it was we heard, there might be some justification for it in the minds of some people, but I doubt it.
		I think that this would be sort of the news of the millennium, and everyone would want to have a piece of it.
		I think many politicians would want to find a way to acquire some piece of it for their political use and to be involved in what was implied, and I think it would be an incredible event, obviously.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Obviously.
		It's just that most of all that science fiction you've talked about, even some of the recent pretty good stuff like contact and movies like that, have always shown, you know, the Defense Department and the military rushing in and taking quick control of the situation.
		For any military advantage there might be, perhaps because of a worry about what the population would do and managing the information.
		And, you know, I mean, our government, after all, is made up of lots of secrets, and they hold secrets, maybe not well sometimes, but they try and hold them.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, but you're convinced it would be open?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think it would.
		I wouldn't say I'm absolutely convinced, but I think the probability is it would be open.
		I think the interest of science and scientists would be so overwhelmingly in the direction of being open, that would have a major influence.
		I've tried to think about what scenario it would be that the Defense Department would really be interested in keeping this classified.
		I can't quite see why the mere fact of contact would be worth classifying.
		If you think that perhaps schematics for some set of weapon systems, or, I don't know, some amazing energy generation system, appeared out of the ether, so to speak, that they might have an interest in classifying it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they would certainly conclude that any race of beings or aliens that would have technology that would get here would at the very least have, for example, a drive system, a system of powering their craft that would be, you know, like a 747 compared to what the Wright brothers...
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Or some much bigger factor of difference, indeed.
		But also think about the difficulty of the problem of keeping this secret, because the signals arriving to blanket all of Earth unless something very strange happens.
		You know, it's going to be a radio signal from a great distance.
		It will blanket the Earth.
		Or if it's a light signal, possibly the same thing is true.
		So what do you do?
		Shut down the radio receivers all around the world?
		It seems like a rather unlikely thing, and there are astronomers all over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, by the way, Professor, is light as likely as radio?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting question.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I would say that a decade ago people would have said no, but now I think things have swung the other way, and I would say the majority opinion is that it's quite possibly kids.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that fascinating?
		Hold on.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		We'll be right back.
		Of course.
		Indeed, so.
		William Oschuler, our doctor, professor, is with us.
		He's an astronomer, and we're talking about things really out of this world.
		A tight line, I know, but that is the case, and we've got a lot of territory to cover here, so stay right where you are.
		All right, once again, Professor Alshuler.
		Professor, I think a lot of my audience understands that in the radio world, you know, Showstack has been on, and he's explained how we have a favorite place to look, which is near the hydrogen frequency.
		It's kind of a marker where we expect aliens might send a signal.
		Right.
		If, on the other hand, we expect it to come, by some means, by light instead, where do we look and what kind of light emission would one expect?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I don't think there's a favored frequency in the light range as there is in the radio range because there isn't a sort of similar extremely sharp single line from a single element that would be so favored that it's just obvious that that's the one to look at for.
		Yeah, towards the red would get farther than the blue.
		The material between the stars consists of thin gas and some dust, and the dust scatters blue light more than it scatters red and infrared.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Interesting.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		From that point of view, you can see further through the fog in the infrared than you can in the visible.
		But the people who started to work on this basically have said, well, it's not such a complicated problem to build a detector that looks at the whole spectrum, so that's what we'll do.
		And the chap who's leading in this, I think, is Paul Horowitz at Harvard.
		I don't know if you've had him on, but he's very interesting.
		He started off doing major radio searches, and as far as I know, those are continuing, but he's also constructed a very high-speed search engine using photoelectric detectors, attaching that to the Harvard Telescope in Harvard, Massachusetts, which I believe has just been refurbished, and he's starting up a mat, but maybe you could put in a word for me.
		I'll give it a try.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it would look at all the spectrum and look for, I suppose, as in radio, anything that seemed not natural.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And the assumption is that people who would send light messages would do so using lasers because they are extremely intense.
		They're very narrow in frequency.
		And they can be focused extremely well.
		So all of those things working together make them a pretty efficient way of sending a message.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How would they do in radio we have the problem we discussed last hour with the noise?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there an equivalent noise in the light spectrum?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, basically the light of the star around which the planet is circling that has the lasers.
		And it was for a while thought that you really couldn't beat that, that the starlight would simply drown out the laser light.
		But as time has gone on and lasers have gotten more powerful, it's been realized that in fact if you know how to look in lots of little itsy-bitsy frequency bands in the light spectrum, the same thing works for you that does in the radio.
		A very narrow band signal will stand out against the background of the starlight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, how about that?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, you're looking for a narrow spike just sticking up out of the starlight spectrum.
		And it's not out of the question that we could have recorded these already in some of the long exposure spectra we've taken of stars.
		And there is actually a group of people, I believe actually among the crew in California who've been discovering planets right and left using this high precision spectroscopy technique.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Who are spending a little time examining that pulse voting?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		They're looking back over old records and trying to find out if anything appears in any of those.
		But it would be anomalous enough, I think, that anyone who saw a bright spike at a laser frequency would suddenly say, hmm, that's not a natural frequency you see in stars generally.
		What's that?
		And would have already glommed onto it and tried to make something of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In SETI, they call that a wow signal.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I assume that in light it would be wow too.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I would think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have there been any little wows in light yet?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Not that I'm aware of.
		I asked Horowitz this question about a year ago and he had just started looking with one piece of equipment and was taking the telescope apart and he'd said no, but he just started.
		So it's early days.
unidentified		Okay.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It's quite early days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		There are others, by the way, who are doing this, and I thought I'd mention, I don't know if, I'm sure that Mr. Shostak has also mentioned this, but there are amateur efforts connected to some of the professional ones in the radio region.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, SETI at home.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		SETI at Home.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Also, the SETI League, which is run, I believe, by a chap named Paul Schuk.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And you can find that on the web at www.setileague.org.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, they are shifting their efforts toward light, it is my understanding.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I've heard that also.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I know that one of the people who is associated with them wrote an article about light detection more than a decade ago and actually abdicated amateur look programs for this a long time ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If we were to err on the side of believing there is life out there, probably life more advanced than our own, that's not too hard to believe if you start with the premise there is life.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There would be some more primitive, no doubt, but lots more advanced.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what kind of alien life can you imagine there could be?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would it tend, in your opinion, to look like human life, bipedal, or would it be very, could it be very different?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I suppose it could be very different, but I'm going to make an argument that it probably will be reasonably similar to something we've seen on Earth, with the caveat that some of the things we've seen on Earth, we've seen in the fossil record, they're no longer with us, and they're very distinctively different than stuff that's running around now.
		My argument goes like this.
		I think that the chances are that all life that we'll ever find is carbon-based.
		And that if it's going to be anything else, it's silicon-based.
		And we would have seen that on Earth since there's so much silicon lying Around in the form of rocks and minerals.
		And though there are a few things on Earth that make silicon skeletons, silicate skeletons, for example, there's this wonderful thing called a glass sponge.
		I don't know if you've ever seen one, but it's highly valued in Japan.
		It looks like a tube of open lattice crystal.
		In fact, it's glass.
		It's silicate.
		And they grow very slowly over time.
		They're anchored by what look exactly like fiberglass threads, which is what they are, to the sea bottom.
		And the living part is a sort of soft tunic mounted on this silicate skeleton.
		But the life of it, that is the genetic code, is like ours, DNA, based on carbon.
		And since the Earth's been around for a long time, four and a half billion years, and all sorts of life have evolved, which has evolved, which is carbon-based, and we just don't find any silicon-based, and the fossil record doesn't show anything that looks like it might have been, I would say that carbon-base is what we're going to find.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's even, even sticking within the carbon-based possibilities, how different could it possibly be?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or would it automatically be very much like us?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think it could be equal to the range of life on Earth, which is incredible.
		If you look around, this is a recommendation I give to my students, in fact, a requirement.
		There's a wonderful book called The Five Kingdoms, which was authored by Lynn Margulies, who was Carl Sagan's first wife and co-author.
		I can't remember the name at the moment.
		But in any case, it's around.
		It's been out for a while.
		And it's a catalog of all different kinds of things on Earth.
		And when you look at it, you discover that there are things you have never seen, which look like your worst nightmare and then some.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there are.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And they live in environments which are as diverse as the bottom of the sea and the hot vents where lava is coming up to the plateau of Antarctica where it's very cold and very dry.
		And the shapes and sizes and the things that they eat and what they need to breathe vary greatly.
		Based on that, I would say what we're going to run into will fall within that range, but it may not look like anything we've seen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And probably now, of course, the big question is intelligence, obviously.
		Right.
		I'm sure we'll find creepy crawly things in all of what you described.
		And we have it here, so yeah, it's probably going to be elsewhere.
		The question is...
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I don't think so.
		I think it's unlikely.
		I think it's very unlikely, for the reasons we already talked about.
		But there are so many stars like the Sun, that the composition of these stars is like the Sun, that it's observable that they have planetary systems, and among those we'll find planets with the right distance and the right composition and roughly the same size.
		Though, of course, there's no law that says a rocky planet has to be Earth-sized as far as we know.
		Though it turns out our examples in this solar system are all roughly the size of the Earth.
		You look at Mercury, it's considerably smaller and Mars is, but Venus is almost a duplicate in size.
		And so, you know, there could be something larger, for example, though we haven't seen it here.
		And a different surface gravity could have an effect on the way life evolves.
		But if it's the same composition and it's at the right distance, the chances are good it will have liquid water, and that's key.
		And if it has liquid water, I think the chances it'll have life are excellent.
		And if time enough is allowed, there will be evolution and you will get intelligent life.
		I think it's myself, I think it's a virtual certainty.
		It's a question of how many and where.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's interesting.
		I find that if I, you know, in my discussion with you, if I get skeptical enough, then that forces you over on the other side, which is really interesting.
		So, you know, occasionally I have considered the concept that we could be totally alone.
		That, you know, the biblical folks could be right.
		This was creation.
		It was done once.
		It was done here.
		That's it.
		There's nothing else anywhere.
		It's just pretty stuff to look at in the sky.
		I mean, it's an argument.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I've thought about it.
		It is an argument.
		I think that argument rests on an idea, something like the evolution of life and further the evolution of intelligence is somehow extremely accidental.
		That the chain of events is so unlikely that it's just not duplicated.
		And I would say, even if it's quite unlikely, there are so many possible places for it to happen that it did happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, as you point out, in lava cones deep under the sea where the volcano rages, things live around it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's so unlikely, but there they are.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just given the heat, the energy.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And there seems now to be a population of microbes that live in the rocks in general, perhaps with more mass than all of the other living things on Earth.
		And, you know, there's a single-celled algae sort of thing living in the forests up near the Canadian border, partly in Minnesota and partly in Canada.
		A single-cell thing which covers the ground in wetlands, which is something like 100 miles in extent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There was just an interesting organism discovered off the coast of New Zealand.
		Very interesting organism, and I don't know that I still have the story here, but it turns out this organism eats all sea life.
		I mean, it eats everything.
		They showed a blob of it in this fellow's hand.
		It was like a blob.
		And it literally devours everything from the smallest to whatever it encounters.
		It just absorbs it.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I don't think I've seen that.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I did see a story about a very vigorous algae which has been discovered in the Mediterranean out of its original environment, which was imported By one of the oceanographic labs, I believe, in Monaco, and which escaped and has made a colony which is spreading fairly rapidly along the Mediterranean coast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, great.
		Well, that one I hadn't heard of.
		Here's an interesting article in Nature, and I don't know whether you've heard about this either.
		It's brand new.
		It says, the headline is, Cosmic Rays Could Find Holes in Standard Model of Particle Physics.
		The Pierre Auger Observatory, currently being constructed in Argentina to study cosmic rays, could examine the structure of space-time itself.
		According to physicists here in the U.S., if, as some suspect, the universe contains invisible extra dimensions, then cosmic rays that hit the atmosphere will produce tiny black holes.
		These black holes should be numerous enough for the observatory to detect.
		This is according to Jonathan Fang of MIT in Cambridge and Alfred Shapiro of the University of Kentucky at Lexington.
		Had you heard about that?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I hadn't.
		I'm curious to know what they think the signature of the black holes would be, and one assumes that whatever they are, they must not grow, or we'd know about them in some very drastic way.
		These black holes must evaporate somehow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fascinating.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Travel away somehow, because if they could keep on acquiring mass, they'd eat the Earth, presumably.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's what black holes do if they can keep on acquiring mass.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They believe somehow there are copious quantities of tiny black holes generated.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what they're talking about.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's possible.
		Stephen Hawking predicted some years ago that if you got a small enough black hole, contrary to the behavior of larger ones, they would be so small that quantum physics would get into the act in a way in which allowed material at the black hole's surface to evaporate.
		And in effect, the black hole itself would lose mass, the surface would shrink, the effect would get larger, and the thing would evaporate catastrophically and go off sort of like a firecracker.
		So that micro-black holes or mini-black holes would have a finite lifetime and would eventually disappear.
		I don't think anyone's seen evidence for that yet, though.
		Maybe this is an example of something like that, created by a process that Hawking did not anticipate, as far as I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's discuss for a second your latest book, because it's got an unusual title for somebody of your persuasion.
		The science of UFOs.
		The science of UFOs.
		All right.
		An astronomer examines the technology of alien spacecrafts, how they travel, and the aliens who pilot them.
		Who wrote that?
		Me.
		You wrote that.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you mean the cover copy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I meant the subtitle here.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Subtitle?
unidentified		Yeah.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Actually, I think my editor at Byron Price wrote that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When he wrote that and sent that to you, did you object to it or did you say, well, all right?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I pretty much said all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How does somebody with your skeptical attitude about whether we've even been visited yet, either in our history or now, and you do have a skeptical attitude about that, examine the ships and the aliens who pilot them, just as a matter of curiosity?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I like to think about it.
		It's one of those things which intrigues me.
		And left over from my, as I already said, misspent youth when I was reading a lot of science fiction and actually a fair amount of sort of first contact literature came out in the 50s, I sort of hang on to a remnant of the interest.
		And besides that, just thinking about the physics and technology which would be involved if you could look at a spaceship of the sort of observed properties people have claimed, at least some of them, is a problem that interests me.
		So I thought about it and thought it was worth talking about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And exactly, how did you talk about it?
		In other words, how is it you come at the subject at all?
		Are you imagining these craft might be there, and if they were there, well, then here's what they would have to be or might be, or what?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's the basic idea.
		I tried to look at what people had reported in the UFO sightings that I could get my hands on, and people had discussed about this, and then thought about some of the science fictional proposals people had made.
		You look at Star Trek, for example, and there's some wonderful books out about the physics of Star Trek.
		And I thought, well, if you could think about what these different phenomena were people have reported and assign to them some idea of maybe some common phenomena that flow through the different kinds of reports, what do those mean?
		You know, what are they?
		And then what kind of physics might explain these things?
		What are they most attached to?
		And if someone says, can we travel between different dimensions or are there more than the usual three spatial dimensions, what does physics have to say about that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		Hold it right there, and we'll examine all of that when we get back.
		A million good questions already asked on Mark Bell.
		Dr. William Schler is my guest, and we're talking about his book right now.
		And what we're talking about specifically is, given the kinds of UFO reports that we get, in other words, their behavior taken into consideration, then what is it that we'd likely be dealing with in reality?
		What kind of physics?
		What kind of drive?
		What kind of everything can we imagine scientifically would support such a sighting?
		Once again, Professor Altshuler, Professor Altshuler, Then take me through one.
		Take a good sighting or a group of sightings where certain things were agreed on, and then tell me what you thought about it.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are a lot of sightings of disks which seem to be able to fly at very high speeds, make sharp turns, so very high accelerations, travel silently, leave no visible flame, smoke, or wake, and in some cases seem to disappear sort of on the spot, and others disappear in the distance.
		They get smaller and smaller and get farther and farther away.
		And there are certain things about this one can speculate on, but some of this bears with it certain problems.
		But what might drive them?
		Well, there's a whole slew of possibilities.
		Probably something that has to do either with space warps or wormhole technology of one sort or another would be worth thinking about.
		And in either of those cases, you're basically playing with the shape of space.
		You're figuring out a way to warp space or curve space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're doing this with a device on a craft in your immediate area, is what you're saying.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Presumably, that's right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And with that device, you have some way of either creating a hole in effect in front of you or a wormhole in front of you which you can jump into or travel into or which can drag you along.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Or some way in which you create a curvature of space which pulls you in and perhaps one behind you which pushes you along.
		And in either case of this sort, it's possible to think of seeing the ship move extremely quickly.
		In the case of something in which you basically create your own warp and encapsulate the ship, the problems of extreme acceleration for the inhabitants of the ship, the crew, go away.
		But in most other cases, just the accelerations themselves for the inhabitants are very difficult to deal with.
		If you look at some of the reports, the accelerations are up in the range of hundreds of Gs.
		I believe the record for the strongest acceleration any human has undergone is 17 Gs for about four minutes.
		And that was really hard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then we turn into jelly or something.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Above that, you start to think about turning into jelly.
		There are various techniques you can think of for cushioning human bodies and other living things against the rapid accelerations.
		But eventually, even if you get into injecting some sort of fluid into every part of everybody's body cavities, internal body cavities, to cushion the motion of their organs, it still gets to be a very difficult problem.
		And you either have to have a particular kind of enclosed warp or you have to have control over inertia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If, Professor, we were to see a craft capable of a kind of warp that would avoid the problems we talk about with regard to our own biology, what do you think an observer might see on the ground?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It depends what the particular kind of thing is, but let's say, for example, that it's some sort of a warp which enfolds the ship, then presumably the region just outside the surface of the ship, up to some distance, is severely curved or distorted space in a way which we're not used to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, golly gee, we've had a lot of reports like that.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And what you would see, I think, is, depending on what time of day or night it was, if it was against the night sky, it would be most distinctive, because then you might see stars in the same direction sort of drawn in to the side of the ship in a way which would create at least a somewhat luminous rim to the ship.
		The ship itself might not show much, but this immediate ring around the ship might in fact become rather bright at least briefly.
		And then if the ship were accelerating away from us, presumably it would both get fainter and redder as it went and then fade out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, gosh.
		I just can't tell you how many reports exactly like that we have had.
		I mean, exactly like that, Professor.
		No kidding.
		Of the UFO reports we get, so many include descriptions like you just gave.
		Gee, that's interesting, isn't it?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		If we're coming towards us, I would expect to see something somewhat the opposite.
		That is blue shift.
		And again, you'd see luminous ring, which got maybe a luminous dot to start with, which got brighter, and the closer it got to us for a bit, the bluer it would get.
		Then it would slow down, and everything would become normal.
		I haven't actually seen records of UFO reports that look like that, I have to say.
		I've seen, as I said, lots of reports of ships which accelerate or decelerate extremely quickly, but not quite with what I've described.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, I've heard a lot of reports of the distortion that you spoke of.
		Many, many like that.
		And now, I know this is a burden to my audience, but bear with me for just one moment.
		I've told this story so many times, but it's a true, you know, it's my own account.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it counts for me.
		I live out here in Prump, Nevada, near Death Valley.
		Very quiet area, desert.
		Beautiful area if you love the desert.
		Some people don't.
		But I do, and it's barren, but it's beautiful, and it's really not barren when you get down to the minutiae of it all.
		It is, however, at night, exceptionally quiet.
		I mean, it's wonderful to walk outside my house and just hear absolutely nothing.
		You know, the humming in your own ears.
		It's a great experience.
		And this is where I live.
		And some number of years ago, my wife and I were on the way home from Las Vegas, and nobody on the road but us.
		And my wife said, what the hell's that?
		And she saw something coming from behind us.
		She just happened to catch a glimpse of something movement behind.
		And she did look back, and she said, what's that?
		I said, I don't know.
		Pulled the car over, got out of the car, looked up, and coming up on us, I would guess at about 150 feet above us, was this gigantic triangle.
		And I mean, a precise triangle, just rounded slightly at the edges, but a triangle.
		And it was doing, oh, no more than about 30 miles an hour.
		I mean, this thing was, you would describe it as floating, not flying.
		I was in the Air Force, I know what aerodynamic flight takes, and this was not flying, trust me.
		In addition, you could hear crickets about a quarter mile away.
		Well, this thing passed so close to us, up above us, Professor, that I could have, if I hadn't been in shock, which I was, I could have taken a rock and tried to throw it at it.
		You know, I mean, it felt that close.
		Stars went away, almost full moon went away, everything disappeared.
		This thing passed directly above us and just kept on going right out across the valley toward Area 51, which is close by.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Did it muss your hair or blow any dust up?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The crickets never changed in volume, not so much as a whisper of sound or a wisp of wind emanated from this thing.
		Nothing.
		Dead, flat, silent.
		Now, I can imagine a lot of things.
		I can imagine that we have some sort of anti-gravitic technology that nobody knows about.
		Or I can imagine I saw something from somewhere else.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I don't know what to tell you as far as an explanation.
		The part that gives me the most trouble in some ways is the fact that there was no sound and no wind.
		And even if you say, well, there's anti-gravity or some version of a warp drive that was taking it along.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not even a whisper.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I would have thought that something would have stirred.
		I mean, among other things, gravity drives, which work on the basis of some sort of space distortion, should create really major effects in their local vicinity.
		You shouldn't have been left standing there if the thing passed 30 feet over you and it was a gravity drive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe 150 feet.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Whatever.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		What you're talking about is something which, to support itself, assuming that it was tenanted or it had significant instrumentation, and you didn't tell me exactly how big it was, but I'm assuming it was something like 30 or 40 feet long.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would say much longer.
		It was monstrous.
		I mean, it was really, really big.
		I would say I would estimate a couple of football fields from one point of triangle to the next point of triangle.
		Imagine that.
		This thing was gigantic.
		And it was close.
		Really close.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And then I can't tell you what the explanation is.
		And the biggest problem, as I say, is I can't conceive of what would allow it to pass not only silently but windlessly past you, even at 30 miles an hour.
		I haven't a clue.
		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nor have I. But again, sorry, folks, for the burden, but I knew that I would not have been the only person who would have seen this.
		And I was not.
		In fact, in the next week, our local newspaper here ran a story indicating that many, many people had seen this object over the Perump Valley.
		And the newspaper had made an inquiry of Nellis Air Force Base, which is outside Las Vegas.
		And Nellis Air Force Base, interestingly, responded to the inquiry and said that, yes, indeed, there had been a secret mission that may have overflown the Perump Valley at the time and night in question, but that it was a C-130 aircraft.
		Now, Professor, I flew in C-130s in the Air Force, and I can assure you, had that flown over my head at 150 feet, it would have rattled my teeth.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		I have personal experience in this area myself.
		Once I worked for a camera company taking cameras out of the assembly line, movie cameras, and testing them by taking them outdoors and shooting airplanes that were just taking off from O'Hare Field.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And they were about 100 feet above me, and they shook me every single time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, a C-130 definitely would have done that.
unidentified		But I found that completely insulting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Totally insulting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so therefore, one has to wonder, could we have, do you know of anybody working on any technology that sounds like that?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No, I really don't.
		I've looked, but I don't.
		That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
		As I said, my contacts in the secret world aren't super fantastic.
		But I've also looked for, you know, all those sort of reports of speculative physics.
		There are various parts of the government which have directorates which work on speculative problems.
		It's not out of the question people can be working on something that doesn't look like at first glance it's conventional physics.
		I know that there are projects funded that don't, but I don't know of anybody who's working on something with those characteristics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, because Area 51 is famous for anomalous activities of all sorts.
		Now, we did, after all, develop the stealth aircraft in part in that area and kept that secret for a long time.
		And now we're a long way down line from stealth aircraft, so one can only imagine what they're working on now, eh?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't know where I read this, but somewhere I read that a major advance in our stealth program came as a result of an openly published article by some physicists in the former Soviet Union.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		Yes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That their ideas that had to do with special coatings, if I remember correctly, were important to the coatings that were developed to put on the stealth fighter and stealth bomber.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And as far as I know, the Russians have not to this day succeeded in building anything really comparable to what we've got.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they had mines over there who thought...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, you know, we must be a generation or generations beyond the stealth we know about.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, there was this code-named Aurora aircraft that was mentioned in the literature maybe, what, eight years ago?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Aurora, yes, indeed.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And I knew some people Who thought they'd heard sonic booms in circumstances which were rather unusual.
		But that's sort of the flip side of things, isn't it?
		I mean, they couldn't see the aircraft, but they could hear the boom.
		Well, now you saw the aircraft, but there was no boom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Now, in the case of the Aurora, there actually were, there was some tracking that went on regarding sonic booms coming in from the Pacific toward this area.
		And I guess they can, sonic boom leaves sort of a trail that one can somewhat discern, doesn't it?
unidentified		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And that, I think, allowed someone to suggest that they were seeing an aircraft that was traveling at much higher speeds than announced aircraft that have entered chains, catalogs, and things like that.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		But beyond that, I haven't seen any reports of it recently, of you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, which would indicate to me that perhaps they either solved that problem or they're just on to yet the next generation.
		I mean, who knows?
		But surely they are doing things that we don't know about, and so we have to imagine, puzzle out some number of these UFO contacts to the possibility that it's our own secret projects.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Certainly, it's possible.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		But as I said, the physical explanation for something which can fly over that's that size, even at 30 miles an hour, without causing at least a slight breeze.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A little something?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		A little something, that's hard.
unidentified		That's difficult.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If this is a big if, but if you had experienced what I just described personally, if you had experienced it yourself, how would you process that information?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If everything I said were true and you knew it to be true because you personally experienced it, how would you process that?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		If I possibly could, I'd try to find out what it was.
		I would, you know, keep it on the shelf and if I couldn't find out at a given time, I'd go back to the problem periodically, try and find out.
		I might go back to the same location every once in a while and see if it repeated itself.
		I might ask, as I guess you did, for other people to contact me to find out what they had seen on any problem.
		And I probably would have put the question, as you did, to a number of different places and probably received just as unsatisfactory an answer as you did.
		But I would keep trying, probably.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you more likely conclude that it was something of ours, secret, or something from somewhere else?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, to me, those seem the only two possibilities.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, more like the R's, I guess I would say.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Even if I didn't understand what it was, I would say more like the R's.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then we're doing really well.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we would be.
		One would want to know, you know, if that exists, what are its limitations?
		How much energy would it take to drive it to the moon or, you know, some other more distant location?
		And the answer to that depends on knowing what it's all about.
		But generally speaking, the farther and faster you want to go, the more energy you're going to need, and somewhere, somehow, you've got to get a hold of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You wrote a book called First Contact.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How do you imagine first contact may well occur?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think it's going to be by message.
		I think that one of our detection efforts is going to succeed in hearing or seeing something.
		And after that, I really don't know.
		I'm not totally convinced that if we get in contact with others, we'll ever actually shake hands because I'm not sure there's any feasible way to travel between the stars.
		Wish there were.
		Hope there is, but I'm not sure there is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You saw the movie Conduct, of course.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		And is it feasible?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Is that particular idea feasible?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No one knows how to do it.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		In effect, I think that idea was an idea for creating a wormhole connection between one place in the universe and another.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And there is now some real theoretical work that's gone on that examines the possibility of making wormholes, and it's not forbidden by physics in the sense that it violates one or another principle such as relativity.
		In fact, relativity gives rise to the idea of wormholes.
		But the material requirements for it, you could say the engineering requirements.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The amount of energy, really.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The amount of energy is one thing, and another is simply how do you open a wormhole, and once you've opened it, how do you keep it open and preventing it from collapsing in on itself?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And the theory says to do that, at least one way of doing it, is to find a kind of matter we've never seen, which has an energy of a sign opposite to the normal energy that we associate with the matter that we're made of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It has to be there, though, doesn't it?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No.
		It doesn't have to be there, but it's possible that it's there.
		No one's seen it.
		No one can put their hands on it yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold it right there, Professor.
		We'll be right back.
		I'm Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast A.M. in the night time on the Premier Radio Network Wanna Take a Ride.
		That, of course, came from my love of movie contact.
		I absolutely fell in love with that movie, and Russ Mitchell cut me in a hey, wanna take a ride kind of intro bumper.
		It probably is my favorite movie of all time.
		I'm Mark Bell, and in a moment, the journey continues.
		The End I would imagine this would be something that a professor would have discovered very early in his career, because he's been looking up for a long, long time.
		But Professor, for the average adult who has not made a career of astronomy, to get a really good telescope, a really decent telescope, and to spend some time with it changes your whole outlook on life.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't agree more.
		I hope it's universally true.
		It's certainly my experience.
		And at a certain level, I suppose I have a rather different view of what goes on on Earth than a large number of other people.
		And I think most astronomers do, because we routinely consider extraordinarily large distances and extraordinarily great sweeps of time.
		And the things that occur quickly on an astronomical or cosmological scale, with maybe just a few exceptions, look like either zero change or glacially slow change to an ordinary human being.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does.
		It changes your perspective on everything.
		And it's an interesting thing to allow to happen to you.
		And most adults don't do it.
		They don't ever get there.
		I mean, they are so consumed with the business in front of them every day.
		And, you know, their business is not your business.
		It's answering phones and selling this or that or whatever it is they're doing every day.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		In fact, just the mere fact of looking up, the mere act of looking up, is too little engaged in by most of the world, I think.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Probably especially those people who live in cities who, if they look up, look up one story and see the very brightly illuminated signs that are in front of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you are so correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, actually, I maintain that if people looked up more frequently, the number of UFO sightings we have would go up exponentially.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Totally would go up.
		I agree with you.
		And I love the fact that you're advertising telescopes, and I hope that the people out there who are listening, if they don't have one, think seriously about getting one because it's a wonderful thing to have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is the beginning, yes.
		In here, for some reason, this sounds like a set-up question in view of what I've heard already from you, but I'll ask it nevertheless.
		Do you believe the government has a stock of dead or alive aliens hidden away anywhere?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't think so.
		I think if they had, they would have come to light by hook or by crook in the time interval between the time they most likely are thought to have arrived and now.
		I just don't think, as good as we are at keeping some secrets, that this one would have stayed secret and someone would have succeeded in coming out with a photograph or a small sample of whatever it was and made it convincingly public.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The government commissioned Brookings Institute to a study some time ago that I bet you've heard of regarding what the sociological impact of contact would be.
		And their conclusions were very, very interesting.
		They suggested that the most negative impact would occur on a very unlikely group, or maybe a likely group, and that would be the scientists.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think there's an argument to be made that people in the sciences could be demoralized by sort of the arrival of greatly advanced science.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		But I think there's a counterargument to that, which is that many scientists would be delighted and spend a lot of time, even if they didn't think they could leap from where we are to where the visitors were in one jump, that it would be worthwhile spending the time to try to make progress in that direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if a fellow operating that giant UNIVAC computer that we used to have that took up rooms and rooms were to encounter somebody who walked in with a Pentium 4 2 gig machine, he'd be demoralized.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Maybe for a few seconds, but I think he would then the WoW Factor would arrive.
		He would say, that's a fantastic toy.
		Let me at it.
		He'd say, you just replaced six back rooms of equipment with that thing.
		I want it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		All right.
		Well, listen, we've got phone calls, and I would like to.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's all plenty of phone calls.
		So let's give it a try.
		First time caller online, you're on the air with Professor Al Schuler.
unidentified		Hi.
		Color.
		My name's Mike.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, Mike?
unidentified		I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee.
unidentified		And my question is, the comment about the asteroid almost, or was it an asteroid that almost hit?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mike, do you have your radio on?
unidentified		Yeah, here, let me turn it off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Turn it off, please.
		That's very important.
		Turn your radio off, everybody.
		Yeah, the close encounter we just had, yes?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And the one that happened when they said that it knocked out the dinosaurs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That was more than a close encounter.
unidentified		Yes, right.
		Well, my question is, like, as far as it knocked out all dinosaurs, and what size would it take of that to happen to, like, what would happen?
		Right.
		And what would happen if one hit and it wasn't that big?
		But what kind of effects would it have?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, the best guess about the size of the thing that is thought to have impacted 65 million years ago and perhaps wiped the dinosaurs out is something like 10 miles across, which it turns out is about the size of the nucleus of Halley's Comet, as we measured it the last time around.
unidentified		Really?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		But Halley's Comet is largely ice, and the feeling is that while that would do damage, it wouldn't be as significant as if it were solid rock.
		Of course, there are some solid rocks around which are that big, and maybe some of them will eventually head our way.
		Though, as I think I said earlier, we don't know of any.
		A one-mile diameter item would be enough probably to completely blow away, say, the whole of Manhattan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All of Manhattan.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And some surroundings also.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It would create significant firestorms in the forests of the northeast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was out of curiosity.
		Let's say we detected something like this and we said to ourselves, okay, next time around, in three years, three years, next time around, it's going to hit us.
		It would seem like a high probability, you know, we can get the numbers crunched better when it gets closer, but a high probability it's going to hit us.
		And we had three years' warning.
		What could we do about it?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think the best bet would probably be to try to divert it.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		There is an argument going on about this, but if we tried to blow it up, something that was, say, 10 miles in diameter disintegrated into things which were a mile in diameter, which sprayed us, then maybe some would miss us, but some would still hit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It would do major damage.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		So it might be a wiser course to try to implant rocket motors on the thing, or maybe to somehow put up shielded bomb explosions, which forced it to take a slightly different path and miss us altogether.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And do we have the technology to accomplish that now?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
		I suppose for something that's a mile in diameter, we might.
		For 10 miles in diameter, I'm not so sure.
		Depends, again, on how much warning we've got and just what its path is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would have a fair amount of mass and absolutely.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		There's a crew of people also who might be interested in actually putting it into orbit around the Earth, capturing it as a new moon, and if it were a rocky item, it probably would have a reasonable proportion of metals and might form a sort of orbital mine where extraction of the metals would allow you to do major construction in space, either build space stations or ships without having to leave Earth to do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of curiosity, something, a rock, say a mile or so in diameter, how far out would you get that?
		And would it be safe to have it out there orbiting about?
		The moon, of course, is what, 250, some thousand miles away?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		Oh, I suppose you'd want it up maybe 300 miles or a bit more.
		That would make it a stable enough orbit, considering the outer reaches of the Earth's atmosphere, that it would stay there for a good long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gee, that close, it would be quite a sight, wouldn't it?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it would be a reasonably good sight, indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting.
		That's very interesting.
		You wouldn't think they'd be so afraid of it that they would just want it to miss altogether.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there would be a good strong argument, but if you had a pretty reliable way of controlling where it was going to go and could put it into orbit, aside from the mining idea, a lot of people would presumably want to go up and just take samples to see what the composition was and considered that as a sort of commentary like samples from Mars on the origin of the asteroids and the origin of the solar system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, by the way, it just hit me before we go to the next call.
		There was a NASA plan that dealt with the problem of global warming.
		And it was suggested by some people at NASA that we move Earth a little bit.
		That we actually move Earth into an orbit somewhat more distant from the Sun for a period of time.
		This is a serious suggestion now.
		And then when appropriate, to perhaps move it back.
		What do you think of such an idea?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It sounds to me like something we can't technically do and for which the energy expenditure would be the sort of major problem.
		And it would be much cheaper and easier, I think, to provide some shade for ourselves than to do that.
		Put into orbit something which constitutes a shadow caster.
		It might be big sheets of reflective material.
		Oh, gee, you might even put something into the atmosphere that would do that because when volcanoes go off, you could, for example, put balloons up which distribute large sheets or perhaps one of these newfangled solar-powered airplanes which could drag behind it a big reflector or a set of reflectors.
		But you could also, in orbit, you could, I suppose, disintegrate one of the asteroids and create a cloud of particles which would reflect a lot of the incoming light.
		And if they did that, that would be a whole lot less difficult, I think, than trying to move the Earth, which sounds really out of the question, even if NASA examined it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have no idea how you would move a planet.
		I don't even have a clue, but they actually thought about that.
		Well, Carline, you're on the air with Dr. Alschuler.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir?
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Going once.
		Okay, going on.
		Hello there.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Alshahler.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hi.
		This is Chris in Chicago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Chris.
unidentified		And there's a couple of things I'd like to say.
		For one thing, concerning the range of life in the cosmos and what it might be consisted of, I would think that in view that life as we know it is so narrow on Earth,
		the conditions for it, much like our perceptions of the entire spectrum, the visible electromagnetic spectrum, that there would be a much vaster range of possibilities in space.
		For an example, we have bacteria on Earth that can feed on glass, radioactivity, various types of toxic materials, and under tremendously high pressures and temperatures above that of boiling water.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		All of that I agree with entirely, but my comment is that every one of those things you've named is carbon-based and has a genetic code that's DNA, or maybe possibly in a few cases, some viruses have RNA.
		But DNA is universal, based on carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, and a number of other things.
		And I think it unlikely we're going to find a differently constituted genetic code.
		We might find some place where it's not exactly the same four components of DNA that we've got, but it'll be a molecule with the same kind of structure, I think, and carbon will be at the heart of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Professor, it's interesting you would say that because, of course, we have just finished mapping early, I might add, the human genome.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we are at least on the verge of genetic manipulation capability.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, what we can stand in terms of Gs and the conditions in which we can live could conceivably be genetically modified.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if our society, if our civilization can do that in the next hundred years, 200 years, then why could not another have done so?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Quite possible that there are civilizations out there that do very great genetic manipulation.
		And I'm not saying it's totally impossible to create an organism which could withstand hundreds of Gs, but if you think about the design requirements, it's not obvious that they could.
		And I think that if we sort of play the probabilities, it's kind of unlikely that that's happened.
		I would like to actually add also that I'm not trying to claim that the possibilities out there are so narrow that they could only be encompassed by what's here, but we have a very wide range here, and it seems to me fairly likely that what we will see out there is somewhere within the range.
		It probably won't look exactly like anything we've got here, but somewhere within the range.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not in the total monster category.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Well, it could be a total monster, but a carbon-based total monster, one which either likes to breathe oxygen or possibly consumes sulfur in its place, as the things that live at the bottom of the sea do, which live in the trenches, the hot trenches.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you could imagine intelligence evolving on that basis?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then you really could have a total monster.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		You could.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Al Schuller.
unidentified		Hi.
		Doctor.
		Hi.
		Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		Okay, I'm on.
		I'm out with my radio.
		I'm going to turn down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		I am in Ellensburg, Washington.
		Okay.
		And my first question is, what can you tell Art's audience about SETI at Home, the screen-saving program that measures, I think it's radio waves?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		The second question is, have you read the book The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		About radio waves at the same time.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The second question is shorter than the first.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So let's try the first.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		SETI at Home, of course, is number crunching on everybody's personal computer to help SATI out.
unidentified		Right.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And anybody can participate as long as you've got a handy PC.
		You go find SETI at Home on the Internet, which is actually spelled out SETI and then A-T-H-O-M-E dot SSL.berkeley.edu.
		And it sends you, when you sign up, a routine which looks like a screensaver, but hidden behind that is a number cruncher which will acquire periodically a batch of information taken from the radio telescope somewhere in the world which was running to do an astronomical project,
		but for which the data was swiped for this project and cataloged on big storage capacity disks at Berkeley and sent out for processing using this sophisticated number cruncher.
		And when it gets through doing the batch that you've been sent, it gives the results both to you on the screensaver and sends them back to Berkeley.
		And it basically does this whenever you leave your machine on, but you're not using it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you are helping the search for.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		You are helping the search.
		And last time I looked, there were a million and a half participants in this.
		It's the single largest number cruncher in the world, and other people are looking at it as sort of a model for weather processing, weather prediction, and other really big projects.
unidentified		That's a big project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Professor, hold on.
		We'll be right back from the high desert.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
		It is, and we are honored to have Professor William R. Alschuller.
		Alschuller or Al Schuller.
		I guess either one works, he suggests, and I've probably been slaughtering it all night long.
		He is an astronomer, and we're talking about, believe it or not, UFOs, propulsion systems, what's likely, and what might happen in all kinds of circumstances, ranging from extraterrestrial life to big rocks that might come visit us.
		We'll get more of it in a moment.
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		1-877-KIDS313.
		A public service message from the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Ad Council.
		Dr. Wagner talks about nighttime teeth grinding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everyone is under more stress these days.
unidentified		The grinders, that can mean even greater damage to your teeth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's why I created the Doctor's Night Guard.
unidentified		The Doctor's Night Guard is a dental protector you wear at night to cushion your teeth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because you fit it yourself, you save money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		More importantly, you can save your teeth.
unidentified		The Doctor's Night Guard relieves the nightly grind.
		Oh, and about that stress, my advice is find somebody to hug.
		At your drugstore.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sounded like a monster to me.
		Back now to our guest.
		Professor, I was just reminded by a nice caller that the NASA plan that I explained to you, I left out the energy part.
		They actually had a plan for how to obtain the energy to move the Earth easily.
		Yes, and it involved getting a large rock like the five or ten miler that you were talking about and having it make a close pass, just grazing Earth.
		And they were suggesting that would move us.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It would, but the amount, it strikes me, would be unlikely to be anywhere near the amount that you'd like to do the trick that you're talking about.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's a sort of gravity assist slingshot effect type idea, which we've used very successfully to send some of our space probes out to the outer planets, principally using Jupiter as the slingshot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's not that outrageous.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		You'd want to have something more the size of the moon, it seems to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The moon.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And of course, any small miscalculation, one way or the other, and I suppose the results wouldn't be good.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you wouldn't want to make a mistake.
		I mean, it's a great deal of effort to move the Earth either in or away from the Sun, and a mistake in either direction would have noticeable climate consequences, which would be probably much less reversible than the ones that we're currently worried about.
		And, you know, all sorts of other schemes with less import, it seems to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, have you noticed that the mainstream scientific community now seems to be suddenly making an awful lot of noise about rapid climate change?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, I have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you have noticed?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I have noticed that.
		And there's been a big argument going on about what sets an ice age off for a number of years.
		And the arguments have tended recently to be that the trigger is something which might involve major ocean currents.
		And that if you get, say, a certain amount of ice cap melting and the amount of fresh water that enters the oceans at the North Pole, for example, changes by a noticeable amount.
		The current changes its location.
		The temperature distribution changes.
		And everything happens very quickly, as in a decade, or two decades, or three decades, as opposed to thousands of years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the public, the general public, is very curious about why there's so much noise about it all of a sudden, because we observe that at the same time, we seem to be in the middle of some sort of climate change.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Many have observed that anyway, and so some are a little concerned that this could be the beginning of the decade of change.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It could.
		There's a great deal that we don't know and a great deal of uncertainty around this.
		The kind of data that we can most easily get from geology tends to smooth over very short-term events.
		And so it's difficult to see to resolve really rapid changes and be sure that that's what we're seeing.
		There are always issues of how complete the geologic record is and things like that.
		But you can make models which suggest that this could happen very quickly.
		And there are some parts of the record which suggest now that there were rapid fluctuations sort of going into and out of the last several ice ages, which took place in the time scale literally of decades, not of hundreds or thousands of years.
		And that's disturbing because the fluctuations look like they're large enough to wreak havoc with agriculture and sort of change everything that we think about as normal to something else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would no doubt then create warmer places where it had been cool, perhaps, and then places like Europe, for example, no longer influenced by warmer ocean currents, could become roughly like Alaska.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I don't know if you've ever seen a portrayal of this, but for a while there was on display at the old Statehouse in Boston an oil painting of the Boston Harbor in revolutionary times, and the whole harbor was frozen over to the extent that big sledges could go out and pull freight off the ships that were frozen into the ice a mile out.
		And that simply doesn't happen now.
		You see the Boston harbor get iced, but it's chunks of ice floating around in the water.
		You never see it frozen solid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, more phone calls.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air with the professor.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Hi, my name's Ryan.
		I'm from Joliette, Illinois.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Ryan.
unidentified		Hi.
		I was wondering what you guys thought of Stephen Hawking's theory of the other dimension.
		I'd already proved it mathematically or something.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't say he proved any theory of other dimensions, but he and a number of other people certainly think that Einstein had something when he talked about four dimensions, three of space and one of time.
		And the work that's going on now in this area has really sort of jumped things up to the point where there are a number of people who think there's a possibility that there are ten dimensions and one of time and that the seven we don't see are basically too small to encounter easily, but they're there everywhere.
		That every part of what we normally experience in three dimensions is connected to tiny seven additional dimensions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, gee, I noticed we're beginning to get closer to a quantum computer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm hearing that phrase more and more now.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		It looks like it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there are some people who believe that a quantum computer would have the ability to discern or draw information from more than the dimensions that we presently.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I've seen that argument, though.
		I think we're going to have a version which works purely in three dimensions in some sense first.
		But there are some people trying to do experiments to see if we can detect any of these other small dimensions.
		And the experiments are not so gigantic that there isn't a prospect of actually getting one going which might succeed in seeing something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that could certainly change a thing or two.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That would change many things.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, it would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Professor Al Schuller.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		In New Bethlehem, Massachusetts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		First off, I would like to say great show.
		Don't ever quit.
		Before I go on and ask the professor or something, might I post a, I'm sorry, make a comment about an alternative recording source?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Make a comment on what, sir?
unidentified		An alternative recording source for listeners?
		Sure.
		Software.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wild thing.
		At 775-727-1295.
		I'm going to put a particular brand name on the air.
unidentified		Oh, I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are many, many pieces of software out there right now.
		Many companies make software which will allow you to record audio on your computer on your hard drive.
		That's very common.
		Let's leave it at that.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		And my question for the professor is, and I jumped in a little late, so if you've already spoken about this, I apologize.
unidentified		But brown dwarfs and if they would possibly be heading in our direction, what damage they could pose, and any satellites or planets they might have orbiting around them, if that's a possibility, and if life could possibly be on those?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Brown dwarfs, for those who aren't sure, are a class of almost star.
		They're thought to be the sort of object which would be a star if only they weighed a bit more.
		But as they don't quite weigh that much, they can't turn on their internal fusion reactions to make energy.
		So they glow energy from their, they're sitting there glowing from their own contraction, but that's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Himmering.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And yes, and they could have planets, though it's only very recently, and actually some of the same programs that are detecting extrasolar planets are also finding some of the brown dwarfs that we've begun to see brown dwarfs at all.
		And they are, by and large, the ones we found confined to areas where there's lots of star formation going on, which are not nearby.
		And as such, anything which is more or less star-like generally will share in the motion of the stars in the galaxy rotating around the galactic center.
		And though there could always be deviants and they could come our way, it's a relatively unlikely scenario.
		It would certainly be possible that a brown dwarf could have a retinue of planets.
		And if a brown dwarf headed into the solar system with its retinue, depending on just who passed close to whom, it could be severely disruptive or absolutely fatal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a fairly horrifying thought.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we'd see that coming for quite a while.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		We would see that coming for quite a while, and I'm not sure we could do anything about it.
		I don't think we could.
		I think that would be one of those cases where maybe the best thing we could do would be to leave.
unidentified		We, some of us, anytime.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Take off for distant climes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Meaning not on this planet, right?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Not on this planet.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Maybe not even in this solar system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Professor Al Schuler.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		Hello, Bill.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Mr. Shuler.
unidentified		This is Chris in Illinois again, Chicago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sir, I'm sorry.
		I can only allow you on one time per show.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with the Professor.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		This is Dan in Idaho Falls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		The thing that they were going to use to move the planet Earth is four comets that were coming by.
		And I told them where the comets were and what direction they were coming from.
		And the first comet is scheduled for the 27th of this month.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know about a comet that nobody else knows about?
unidentified		The four planet-sized comets coming towards Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I heard that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Professor, are you aware of these?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not.
		But that doesn't mean that they don't exist.
		However, I'm unaware of any comet anybody's ever seen which has a mass anywhere near the mass of the moon, our moon, which is what it would take.
		I think it would really take something like that.
		A comet could easily have the mass of a significant asteroid, but the biggest asteroids are hundreds of miles in diameter, and if a really near pass was made by one of those, you could get an effect which might possibly fall in the useful range.
		But a comet, the largest ones I know of, have masses that are much smaller than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Professor Al Schuler.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, hi.
		If I guess we had four or five of those comets coming this way, we could get pulled really far away from the degree, huh?
		Yes.
		No, my question was, if we hooked up a meteorite and had it going around to mine at 300 miles, how long would it last and how big would it be to see it from Earth at night time?
		But how long would it last before it degraded?
		And if it degraded, how would you get it back up in the air?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		The answer is if it's 300 miles up or more, it should last for hundreds of years.
unidentified		Really?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		If you're much below that, you're starting to encounter the outer fringes of the Earth's atmosphere, and then the atmospheric drag gets significant, and the thing's orbit will decay, and it could come down in a matter of years.
		As to How long it would last?
		Well, that depends on its actual size and the rate at which you're mining it.
		And so I can't really give a single answer to that.
		But anything which is a couple of miles in diameter of fairly rich, say, iron and nickel, which some of the asteroids certainly are, would be a gigantic mine in Earth standards.
		Gigantic.
		So many, many, many years.
unidentified		Why do you think we haven't gone back to the moon?
		Could you answer that?
		No, listen off here.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Why we haven't gone back to the moon?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
		We went to the moon, and then we retracted completely.
		Not only have we not gone back to the moon, but a lot of us are wondering if we'll ever get to Mars.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I guess I would say first, I hope we go back to the moon soon, and I hope we do go to Mars.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And why we haven't, I think earthly politics and the intervention of concerns about the environment to some extent has caused us to sort of look away from doing that scale of project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Concerns about the environment.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think people, I mean, there's a whole issue about national priorities, and I think the political judgment was made that space was not really the top of the list for most people, that something else, say education, social equity, environmental amelioration, you know, any of those things comes ahead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you generally agree with that or not?
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think we can do both.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		What I think is that if we do the right thing, if we're careful about what we do, we can have our cake and eat it too in this area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've always thought the same thing, that there would be or should be room for both, for a great nation like ours.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		And I don't think it would just be us.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think, you know, this is space programs are programs which cry out for international cooperation, and I don't see any reason why we can't have that, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We started it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, although if you look at the space station, for example, it cried out for international cooperation, and a lot of the international cooperation was pretty slow in coming, and we picked up a lot of the bill.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		We have, though I would say the original biggest partner, which was the former Soviet Union, was going through the ringer.
		And I think there's actually, I'm feeling more optimistic about this now than I have in a long time.
		I think they're coming back and that they will be significant partners in this.
unidentified		And that will be good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I tend to agree with you.
		I think they are slowly beginning to come back.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with a professor.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		This is John in Atlanta.
		Good morning, Professor.
		You mentioned the Boston Harbor freezing over.
		Yep.
		Now, if I understand this, this took place during what's been called the Little Ice Age.
		Right, exactly.
		Now, I've read that during that same period of time, there was a period of our sun cycle called the Maunder minimum during a 60, 70-year period where there was virtually no sunspots.
		Correct.
		None recorded.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
unidentified		My question to you, do you think there's a connection?
		And what would that connection be?
		And why did this take place?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a very good question, actually.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think there is a connection.
		And I think one of the sort of additional parts of the puzzle about climate change and global climate change is the influence of variations in the sun's brightness.
		It seems pretty likely now that the sun is at some level a variable star.
		And though it's counterintuitive, the more spots there are on the surface of the sun, apparently the brighter the sun is in total.
		And the reason is that with the spots come flares.
		So the total amount of energy the sun sends us when it's at the top of its sunspot cycle is actually greater, though you would think the opposite, than it is when there are no spots or few spots.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, there's something rather interesting going on right now, Professor, and that is that we really, according to, you know, I'm a ham operator, so I watch the cycle pretty closely, and we're supposed to be past the peak of the cycle, but gosh, the sun has been going totally berserk.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Yep, I'm very aware of this because I like to show my students the surface of the sun through a filter telescope, and we look at the sunspots, and also I'm very much interested in the northern lights, the aurora, and they've been extremely active.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
		Wild time on the sun.
		And it seems to affect, it's my theory, that it affects everything, including biological organisms and the way we act and everything else.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I think that's probably true.
		Oh, you do?
		I do.
		I think the effects may be rather subtle, and they may be something sort of built into us by evolution, and it may not be something which we respond to very directly, but the atmosphere has tides just as much as the water does, and so there are atmospheric pressure changes that go along with all the water tidal changes, and there are even very subtle land tides.
		And there's some reason to think that people's moods are affected by pressure changes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it's certainly not hard to imagine that the sun, even with a subtle influence, wouldn't have a hard time affecting our climate.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		Small variations in the solar output would have presumably a noticeable variation in our climate.
		And I think the Maunder minimum and the sunspot cycle we were just talking about really are connected to what goes on here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's a very interesting time.
		Professor, it has been such a pleasure.
		We're out of time, but I hope your book sells like crazy.
		I'm sure it will.
		We've got it up.
		It's called The Science of UFOs.
		And there's a link on my website for it, Amazon.com, I'm sure, has it along with the other books that you've written.
		And I hope we can have you back again.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		I'd very much like that, and I've enjoyed this myself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, my friend.
unidentified		Thank you.
william r alschuler ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you have it, folks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The kind of stuff that will indeed take your breath away.

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