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March 13, 2002 - Art Bell

02:53:31

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

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unidentified		Welcome to Art Bell Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert in the great American Southwest.
		I think you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be across Earth's 24-time zones.
		I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM, traversing the world.
		Great to be here.
		Got a brand new affiliate for you tonight, KBMS in El Dorado, Arizona.
		1290 on the dial, 5,000 big one.
		Should be a good regional signal for that much power.
		GM there, Rosh, Rosh, ROSH, Rosh, Partridge, I guess it is.
		And the program director, Brett Miller.
		Thank you very much.
		Welcome to the world's weirdest, strangest, most unusual, but fun program.
		Today was an interesting day.
		I'll tell you about it in a moment.
		First, let's look at the scary world news.
		The president fielded questions on more than a dozen issues today during his fifth, only five White House news conferences thus far.
		And the big topic was Iraq.
		And he said President Saddam Hussein is indeed a menace, his words, and we're going to deal with him, his words.
		And President Saddam Hussein, and then he went on and talked about Osama bin Laden, a man he said once he wanted dead or alive, has been reduced to a marginal figure in the war on terrorism.
		President Bush said he's also leaving all options on the table as the Pentagon reworks its nuclear weapons policy to deter any attack on the U.S., including from non-nuclear states such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria.
		You know, and I wrote after this, and you know, I pre-read all my news, I wrote, meaning what?
		First part of the story you could take to mean that we're going to attack Iraq, maybe.
		We're talking to our allies about the possibility of attacking Iraq, but this nuclear thing, what's going on there?
		Meaning what?
		We're retooling our nuclear weapons policy.
		Now that's pretty ominous stuff.
		Now does that mean we are now deciding that under certain conditions that we may not be all that far from, we would use some nuclear weapons?
		I mean, there's a lot to be read into what the President said and didn't say.
		And then on Osama bin Laden, once he wanted him dead or alive, now he's been marginalized, you know, as being an important figure in the terrorist world.
		That's sort of like saying, well, we can't get him, so now we don't think he's much.
		Or maybe if you think of it in a different way, let me know.
		U.S. Marine helicopter gunships blasted cave entrances Wednesday in the rugged mountains, seeking to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters from escaping after U.S. and Afghan troops seized control of his valley.
		A U.S. officer estimated, listen to this now, this has memories for me, a U.S. officer estimated that 500 al-Qaeda fighters were killed in the 12-day offensive against, or rather, in eastern Afghanistan, but Afghan troops said they found only 25 bodies.
		That's beginning to sound perilously, very perilously close to the Vietnam body count that turned into such a bureaucratic, political, idiotic quagmire, the body count, those who were there will recall.
		Senator John Terry is saying we're going backwards when it comes to fuel economy.
		He had sponsored a proposal defeated by the Senate today that would have required automakers to produce cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles, SUVs, that's the important part, that run 50% farther on a gallon of gas.
		Now, instead of passing that, instead they have passed some measure that will study what the impact, the financial impact would be on the economy if they did that.
		So instead of passing the regulation that they will have to get 50 miles per gallon, there's lots of people say they could do it too.
		They shelved that and passed a measure to study how bad the economic impact would be if they did pass it.
		Isn't that interesting?
		Number of people kicked out of the military for homosexuality rose last year to the highest level since 1987.
		It's a bunch.
		About one-sixth were from one particular Kentucky Army base where a soldier thought to be gay was beaten to death back in 1999.
		Market didn't have a good day.
		It was down 130 points.
		Now, what I'm about to read you is going to sound really conspiratorial, and it did to me.
		And I almost just dismissed this, and maybe I should have.
		I could not readily answer the question.
		Now, maybe a lot of you can.
		This comes from Suzanne Just, news director for a Clear Channel station, News Radio, 1310 KLIX in Twin Falls, Idaho.
		And she says, one of my listeners called and shared an interesting story.
		He claims, there are no photographs of any wreckage of any airplane at the Pentagon.
		A two-hour internet search proved him right.
		Now, it might be an interesting thing to bring up on your show.
		Maybe your listeners can find a photo.
		I Spoke with a representative from Idaho Senator Larry Craig's office who said that he feels the plane must have vaporized.
		Vaporized?
		That wreck wasn't anything like the Twin Towers attack.
		You know, she has a very, very good point here.
		And this is the kind of thing that I would normally just shovel off as right-wing conspiratorial nonsense.
unidentified		And maybe it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		However, searching my own mind, I have personally, now I've not done an extensive two-hour net search the way she has, but I don't think that I've ever, ever seen a picture showing even the smallest part of any airplane at the Pentagon.
		Have you?
		Has anybody out there?
		I'm sure an airplane did plow into the Pentagon.
		But boy, it's an awfully good point.
		Where is any photo showing any part of that?
		I wonder if somebody out there would send me one, please.
		Even as awful as the Twin Tower attacks were, they found plenty of pieces of airplane in the wreckage of the Twin Towers.
		There's no question we all saw the video of the airplanes going in.
		And I had heard there was some sort of military surveillance camera going when the airplane hit the Pentagon, but I've never seen photographs, and I've certainly never seen any photograph with any wreckage at all around the Pentagon.
		It's just kind of a curiosity.
		You know, there are enough of you out there that I'm sure we can solve this quickly and easily.
		But I've never seen a picture, and I've seen an awful lot of pictures of what hit the Pentagon or what happened at the Pentagon, I guess I ought to phrase it that way.
		And I have never seen any plane parts.
		So with your help out there, maybe we can dispose of this one quickly, hopefully.
		And by the way, as you know, if you listen at all, you know that I am extremely interested in time travel.
		Witnessed last night's program.
		To have the executive producer of the brand new movie, The Time Machine, on the program, I think next week, perhaps.
		Somebody writes, Jim, Jeff rather, writes the following, our lives revolve around time, and time revolves around us.
		We base much of our lives around time with sayings like today, tomorrow, so forth.
		And yet, most of us don't have a clear understanding of what time is, partly because we think of time for what it means to us rather than what it actually is.
		Time is the relationship between speed and distance.
		Time can be thought of as movement, and distance is the amount of movement.
		An analogy, just as watts are the relationship actually the product of voltage and amps, time is a relationship between speed and distance.
		It is a well-known fact that if you take two atomic clocks set in perfect unison, God, that reminds me of the other night, place one on a high-speed aircraft and leave the other clock stationary, the clock traveling at a high rate of speed runs slower.
		It's true, it does.
		Time actually slows as velocity increases.
		Even when moving your arm, time slows for your arm.
		It's also a well-known fact, the universe is expanding.
		Were it not for this motion, time would not be.
		Time only exists in a dynamic universe.
		Distance can exist without motion, but time cannot.
		It is sometimes easier to compare various lengths of measurements to better understand them.
		Think about length.
		Length is not inches or feet or miles.
		Length is a qualified relative value representing the amount of space between two absolute points in space.
		Time is unique to the universe in which it exists.
		Imagine there is more than one universe, and I'm quite sure there is.
		Time in one universe does not exist in the other.
unidentified		Oh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was there time before our universe?
		Yes and no.
		Yes, some other dynamic universe was experiencing its own time.
		Actually, a much tougher question is, where does this or any other universe exist in what medium?
		Maybe the term in doesn't even apply.
		One must remember that time, distance, and space only have meaning in a physical universe.
		Whatever lies outside of the universe may or may not be physical.
		The physical and non-physical coexist even now.
		Mass is not required for something to be real.
		Consider thoughts.
		You cannot weigh, nor can you measure thoughts, nor hold them in your hand, and yet they are quite real.
		It is entirely possible that what lies beyond may not be physical at all.
		But now I'm getting into a whole other topic, and I thought his rendition or perhaps best questions I've heard in a while regarding time were pretty good.
		Now, I've got to cover this because I'm just getting zillions of emails on it, and I don't know what to do with it.
		All right, I've been listening to your show for quite some time now.
		I love it.
		One thing that's caught my attention recently is all the emails you've been getting about the reports of mysterious rashes all across the country.
		This has me worried because about 10 minutes ago my father informed me about a rash he has on his back.
		Well, he pulled up his shirt to show me.
		It is now spread around his left side.
		He also has a small spot on his chest.
		There are red bumps.
		Some about the size of a pencil eraser.
		And there are blisters mixed in with the bumps.
		Does this sound like the ones that everyone is talking about?
		If so, do you know if it can be Passed by contact.
		You've got a big hug.
		Any help would be greatly appreciated.
		Again, thank you.
		Keep up the great work and so forth.
		Yes, well, all I can tell you is I am getting a disproportionate amount of email on this subject.
		When I say disproportionate, I mean thousands of emails all across the country about this mysterious damn rash.
		And the emails I'm getting don't quite coincide with what the people down in Atlanta at the CDC have been saying.
		You know, they're talking about schoolchildren.
		Yes, there have been many cases of that, but what I'm getting is at least, at least equally from adults.
unidentified		I don't know.
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		Looking for the truth?
		You'll find it on Coast2Coast AM with George Norrie.
		I argue with people about disclosure time and time again.
		I've told them governments are not going to come out willingly to tell us it's going to happen by a mistake, it's going to happen by a whistleblower, but it's not going to be an organized thing.
		Governments won't do that.
		And the reason why they won't do it is because they do not want us to know.
		They think that they'll lose control of us if we know.
		If you actually truly believe that we were being visited by extraterrestrials and you had categorical proof that it was happening, do you think you would listen to some of the bull that government throws out all the time?
		Absolutely not.
		You'd look toward the heavens, you'd say there's got to be a better way, and you would start doing your own thing.
		And you would forget all about government control and everything else.
		So the bottom line is government will never, ever disclose the true facts of UFOs.
		Now let's go back to the night of March 13, 2002 on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A lot of you aren't going to believe this.
		This comes from the Guardian in the United Kingdom.
		And I've always said if you want all the news, you've got to go to the Brits and around the world.
		And generally, lately, the Brits have been really shining in this category.
		This is something I've always wanted.
		It's the stuff of science fantasy, but a respected American surgeon says that within five years, he will be able to graft wings and or a tail onto a human being.
		It's called radical plastic surgery.
		Dr. Joe Rosen is not a quack.
		He works at the acclaimed Dartmouth Medical Center and has been a scientific advisor to NASA.
		He is fond of making statements such as, human wings will be here.
		Mark my words.
		He believes, in all seriousness, that within five years, he'll be able to graft wings onto a human being's body.
		This is possible, he says, because our brains adapt to create neural maps for new body parts.
		When we have a limb amputated, as you know, our neural map of that limb gradually fades away, but for a while, if you lose an arm or a hand, you're going to feel that arm or that hand.
		It's going to be exactly as though it were physically still with you, right?
		Well, this doctor claims this is so interesting, that if you go into a surgeon and allow them to put wings on you, that slowly but surely the wings will become a functional part of your body.
		Surgical techniques already in existence can be used to stretch torso fat.
unidentified		Torso fat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so they can make a wing out of your torso fat and rib bones to create a wing.
		Now, again, I hear my wife laughing in the room.
		Some of us would have bigger wings than others.
		But haven't you always thought, wouldn't it be cool to fly?
		To be able to stop that in there.
		To be able to spread your wings.
		She's losing it in the other room.
		You probably can't hear it.
		To be able to spread your wings and just either go running and sort of take off in flight as Superman would have, or I suppose you'd have to get a good flap-up, right, and be able to push some air under those wings.
		Actually, they're probably saying in the beginning why you might not be able to fly at all.
		But what they're saying is your neural pathways would adjust to these new limbs, and there's nothing, nothing that would stop us from having wings.
		So apparently they're going to go ahead with it if the medical ethics board will allow it.
		The doctor says that he would carry out these procedures.
		And as in the case of an Italian doctor ben on hell-bent on cloning human being shows, once the technology is there, it's going to go forward.
		This is very interesting story.
		It's in the Guardian, if you want to go take a look for it yourself.
		But it's kind of a lifeline.
		Now, I don't know whether I want to achieve that by having wings grafted onto my body and having my foot stretched out to cover my wings.
unidentified		It sounds a little gross, I know.
unidentified		But God, to be able to fly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Think of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Spread your wings, flap and fly.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an oncore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
		But he left me much too soon, his ladybird.
		He left his ladybird.
		Ladybird, come on down.
		I'm here waiting on the ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ladybird, I'll treat you good.
unidentified		Ah, Lady Bird, I wish you would, you Lady Bird.
		Ah, Lady Bird.
		Sun, sun, sun, see what's become of me while I look around all my possibilities I would go hard to see the ground you
		come You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think my wife made a crack.
		I went into the other room during the break and said, well, what got to you, the part about stretching the fat for the wings?
		She said, yeah, you'd fly a lot farther than I would.
		By the way, it was 24 hours ago, the Weather Bureau began to say we were going to have 60 mile an hour plus winds in excess of 60 miles an hour.
		So Ramona and I went down to the radio station, prepared to dig in, you know, and we were going to report on this horrendous event approaching Perump, Nevada.
		Well, somehow, it never happened.
		Indeed, all the dust was in the air.
		It was about 30 or 40 miles an hour, but that's okay for out here.
		60.
		That's not cool at all.
		We just kept waiting.
		Forecasts never changed.
unidentified		It never changed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they kept saying it would happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And in the end, it never happened.
unidentified		Look around, look around, keep up around, there's a bad kid, no one is around.
		Look around, look around, look around, look around, look around, look around, look around, look around.
		let's go back to the night of march thirteen two thousand two on art bell somewhere in time It was a strange day here, kind of a hazy shade of winter out there, hazy shade of dust, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, there was a, I don't know how many of you watch reality TV or what they call reality TV, The Great Race 2 is on now.
		And we've enjoyed the Great Race.
		It's kind of fun for some reason or another.
		My wife is really nuts about it.
		And I like it too.
		It's very good, actually.
		And the Great Race this time, we just realized, began down the street from our house.
unidentified		Now, yes?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Amazing race, yeah.
		the great race the amazing the great amazing Anyway, The Amazing Race literally began down the street from us.
		Last night, we turned on the TV and there was The Amazing Race 2.
		First episode.
		It began in Terromp, Nevada.
unidentified		Wow, wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then they show where it is.
		It's just literally down the street from us in this dry lake bed where there is virtually nothing.
		I mean, when I say dry lake bed, we're talking surface of the moon.
		I've threatened to go down there and take photographs because it looks just like surface of the moon.
		And if I took the right photographs, I would say you could not discern it from the surface of the moon.
		That's where they began the show.
		It came that showed them racing up the street in these gigantic RVs.
		And I remembered coming home one day a month ago, two months ago, I don't know.
		And I said, oh my God, look at that dust cloud.
		There's no wind.
		What's that gigantic dust cloud down there?
		And what it was was helicopters landing and all these RVs taking off for Las Vegas on the first leg of their amazing race.
		They raced right by us.
		It was pretty cool.
		So anybody who saw the first episode of The Amazing Race, by the way, is repeated.
		If you missed it, I don't know who carries it.
		One of the cable channels carries it.
		I'm sure my wife will tell me.
		It begins right here in Tarump, Nevada.
		Right down the street.
		Right by the house.
		God, it was incredible.
		First time caller line, you're on air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
unidentified		How are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I am in Salt Lake City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Salt Lake City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Yeah, this is Michelle.
		The other night, you had mentioned something about the Pentagon and the airplane and everything.
		And the other night, I saw a blurb about it on the news.
		I think it was with Dan Rather, one of the evening shows.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And they showed like a security date and the film.
		The video showed something crashing into the Pentagon, but all you could make out was a big fireball.
		I don't know if anyone saw that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I know they have just released that video.
		But I still, I ask the question again.
		Have you seen any photographs of plane wreckage, pieces of plane or anything on the ground at the Pentagon?
unidentified		I haven't been able to make out any.
		I looked over mine too, and I haven't been able to make out any pieces.
		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I know, of course, an airplane hit it, but this lady, you know, raises a really good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where is a photograph of even a little piece of airplane?
unidentified		We'll keep searching for that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate the call.
unidentified		Thanks, Art.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, the amazing race is repeated, I guess, on any UPN channel or WWOR, whoever carries it.
		But it began right here.
		So when you see this moon-like landscape, and believe me, my town is not all a moon-like landscape.
		It's just a portion of a dry lakebed that they used, you will see a place just literally down the street from me.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		This is Shams in Texas.
		Yes.
		Yeah, I've got a story about the wings.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, the wings?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		I don't know if you know anything about, like, ornithology, but...
unidentified		I think a normal person would have to have a 30-foot wingspan for that to work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
unidentified		And it just reminded me of one of those old lassie episodes where Timmy builds these wings and jumps off a cliff and just falls down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I did a lot of that when I was young.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I thought that a person should be able, especially a small person, which I was at that time, you know, eight, nine years old, should be able to actually jump off a building with an umbrella and become supported and float to the ground.
unidentified		Yeah, I kind of thought that too, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what happens, of course, is actually the truth of the matter is, that I remember that an umbrella did support me for like a split second.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you could feel it supporting you as you crashed to ground, but only for a second.
unidentified		One of those wily coyote cartoons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and you know how stupid I was?
		I did it several times, figuring I just didn't have the right umbrella.
		Really stupid.
		I appreciate the call, sir.
		Thank you.
		We used to go, my grandmother's name was E. She was so named because E, I named her, actually, as you would go down in Connecticut to my grandma's house, you would go down this incredible hill, and I was a little baby at the time,
		and when we'd go down the hill, I'd go, and so she got her name E. Well, we would visit my grandmother at times when there would be hurricanes coming, and my next thought at flight concerned taking an umbrella and running down the street in front of about a 40 or 45 mile an hour wind.
		Now, that also worked, sort of.
		It would pick you up off the ground and deposit you on your rear end.
		But for a second, you had the feeling of flight.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
unidentified		How are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm all right.
unidentified		Well, I got a couple things for you.
		First, about the wings.
		The first thing I thought was a line from a song from Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, if you're familiar with them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Song called Learning to Fly.
		Coming down is the hardest thing.
		I'm thinking great using the wings.
		You get up there, suddenly you're thinking, well, darn, you know, how am I going to land this thing?
		You know, that's what I'm thinking.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The way a bird lands.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Haven't you ever watched a bird land?
unidentified		Well, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, same way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you sort of, if you watch a bird, they'll zoom in and they'll sort of, the wings will come up for a second and they'll break in the air and sort of gently come down on their little clawed feet.
unidentified		I get the idea that people who would be happiest about the wings would be the leg doctors, you know, the people dealing with human knees, which are already kind of bad.
unidentified		But bin Laden, though, and the war, I've got to say that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you notice the subtle different way they're beginning to talk about this now?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At first, we wanted him dead or alive, head on a stick, and I still do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And now it's sort of like, well, we've minimized him.
unidentified		Well, yeah, I feel like they're selling us something.
unidentified		And it would be like if they're trying to sell you beachfront property in Perlump, you know, on the idea that eventually California is going to slide into the ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not to be totally ruled out as a possibility, by the way.
unidentified		Yeah, well, certainly.
unidentified		And I will say, I've always said from the beginning that, you know, I don't know if we win if we catch him, but I know that we really can't be seen as winning if we don't because we vilified him earlier on, you know, dead or alive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right, there's just a perfect overall question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In your view, can we say we won without having either captured or killed bin Laden?
unidentified		I don't believe that we can because he was the one that we put on the poster.
		Yeah.
		You know?
		Yep, yep, yep.
		And that was the problem with doing that in the first place because we painted ourselves into a wall just as much as we did with him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what bothers me about listening to the president is that his words, it's not such a subtle shift in policy.
		It's kind of blatant.
		It's like saying, well, we're not going to get him, but here's how we're going to declare a victory, even though we don't have him.
unidentified		Well, yeah, I mean, he's showing us the recipe to the doublespeak, but, you know, the very fact that we've got to hear it is what bothers me.
		Hey, I've got one other quick thing for you, man.
		Bumper music, you've got to go with a David Bowie song called Five Years, which is a song about the end of the world is coming in five years and how the world reacts to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My kind of song.
unidentified		You'd love that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's it called again?
unidentified		Five Years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Five Years.
unidentified		It's off of his landmark Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider Strong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I promise I will listen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Well, and I also wanted to ask you, why did you bring up the 12th planet to Ed Dames the other night?
unidentified		You know, that whole thing has been Niburu.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Nibiru, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah, the whole thing has been freaking me out for a couple weeks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, people say, what trash, what baloney, what tabloid stuff.
		But you know what?
		ABCnews.com has a big story about it.
		There is something, apparently.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So why did I bring it up?
		I bring it up because I'm very, very interested in it.
		There is something out there.
		And if it backs up an ancient story about big time Earth changes and why they occur on a certain schedule, then it bears investigation, doesn't it?
unidentified		Well, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Especially if astronomers think it's there.
unidentified		And even if it's half right, some of the stuff we're hearing about the effects of it, you know, I think the most foolish thing to do is completely rule it out.
		And I know there are a lot of people out there who have got a whole lot of knowledge about it.
		You know, you think you're getting any of those people on your show?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing the best I can.
		Thank you very much.
		I had Mark Hazelwood on, of course.
		And that's sort of more the myth side of it.
		But he had some hard science.
		And then again, I rest my laurels on this ABCNews.com story in which exactly what is described by Sitchin and others is said to be out there.
		Now, I don't know who else we can have on and how we can go further into this.
		That's a pretty hard science article.
		Where we go, you know, who I would reach out to and grab as a guest to tell me more about this.
		I don't know.
		If you know, you tell me.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hi, Art.
		Diane in Idaho Falls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yo, Dan.
unidentified		You have scoffed at the idea that I am the one and only true time traveler so far.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I haven't.
unidentified		I believe I called last week and you kind of scoffed at the idea that I'm the one that named the Magog.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I did.
		I went, oh, my God, like that.
		And you were gone, just like you are right now.
		So, you know, you've tried about ten different approaches, but it always goes back to my guy.
		My guug.
		It's my God for everything.
		My God for the rash, my God for whatever the subject is.
		You see, what you really want to do is just talk about my God.
		You don't want to talk about any things we bring up.
		You just use them as little wedges to talk about my God, and it's not going to work.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Yeah, this is Rick.
unidentified		Calling you from Nashville, Tennessee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sounds like you're at the bottom of a barrel, Rick.
unidentified		Yeah, I am.
		I drive a truck over the road.
		Oh, okay.
		But anyway, I just want to tell you about that.
		Wings on a man.
		It's kind of like...
		On a man.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, sir.
unidentified		And it's kind of like the Douglas Adams books.
unidentified		It's kind of like learning how to fly is ever learning how to get the ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what another caller said.
unidentified		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What I find interesting about this, and this really is hard science, and that is that if you were given wings, all laughter and joking aside, they say that you would begin to develop neural pathways to your wings, meaning that eventually you could perhaps even manipulate your wings.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You'd have to have wing therapy, I'm sure, in which you would slowly move the feather or something.
unidentified		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, I guess you wouldn't have feathers.
		You'd have flaps.
		Fat flaps.
		There we go again.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Oh, hi.
		How are you doing, Ark?
		I'm doing okay, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		And I was calling about the wings.
		Yes.
		Well, this is cool.
		This is actually the first time I've called your show.
		First of all, why would we want to do this, considering the surgical risk and other factors associated with something like that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I didn't say I'd be first.
unidentified		Who would be first then?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's always some idiot out there willing to wing.
		Sure, yeah.
		Put them on me.
		No problem.
		Go ahead.
		You know, so somebody would do it.
		No question about it.
		I mean, there are volunteers to jump into Mel's hole, sir.
		So why not wings?
unidentified		Good point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Well, hey, it's good talking to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good talking to you.
		Thank you very much for the call.
		There are people who will do anything.
		Now, I would not be first.
unidentified		What?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If wings were a success, would I ultimately consider it?
		Yes, perhaps.
		It was a terrible slam.
		It is true that I have probably sufficient winged material to disperse.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art, it's Monteen in Atlanta.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing just fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How's Atlanta?
unidentified		Atlanta's great.
unidentified		Hey, listen, I keep raptors, hawks and owls and things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, ma'am.
unidentified		And you can't do the wing thing unless you have a tail attached because that gives you brakes in the steering.
unidentified		So you can't do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're absolutely right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you see, that was mentioned in the article, though.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That not only could they give you wings, but they could give you a tail as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, whether, you know, I look at my cats, and if they could fly, I don't think their tail would do them much good in terms of steering or breaking.
unidentified		Well, you know, cheetah has a long tail because that helps them steer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But the kind of tail that you would need as a human to actually be a stabilizing influence in flight and a break is a pretty ugly thing to think about.
unidentified		Yeah and different raptors have like the the exithers have a real long tail because they're forest dwelling raptors and so they need to negotiate through the trees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well all right if if if you could get wings that would allow flight would you be willing to go for a tail?
unidentified		Hell yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh okay.
unidentified		Yeah and you can even imp the feathers and the wing and tail feathers if they break off because the shafts are hollow.
		You just carve out a piece of bamboo and get a donor feather and you're good to go.
		Pretty neat.
		About the 30-foot wingspan though, great horns and osprey have a wing loading capacity that allows them to carry off three times their weight.
		So you don't need a 30-foot wingspan for a human being.
		You just need a better mechanic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about flying squirrels?
		Now in the classic sense of the word in the classic sense of the word they don't fly but they do a hell of a job of gliding.
		Yeah they do.
unidentified		And great hog bait too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how much you would need to get to say that point where you could glide.
unidentified		Well if you had enough fat you could just attach the fat from your tummy to your arms and let's try it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate the call.
unidentified		My pleasure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right I don't think I'd be first in line for this you know the surgery but I really don't think that'd be a problem.
		As I say there are people volunteering on a nightly basis to leap into Mel's hole so why not fly?
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
		Hello.
		Yes, turn your radio off, please.
		That's good.
		All right, thank you.
		Where are you?
unidentified		My name is Steve and I'm in Fairbanks, Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Way up north.
unidentified		Way up here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Way up here where it's scary with this heart thing in the backyard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, it is your backyard too.
unidentified		Yeah, well I'd like to say something about the airplane in Washington, D.C., the missing parts.
		Yes.
		Well, I found that when these things are happening live, you see and hear things that later on completely disappear.
		And one of the things that happened as that day progressed was that there was at first they said that there were four three planes.
		Then they said there were four planes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		And then it ended up that there were four planes and they talked about a fifth plane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, the news, you know, when it breaks, they always get it wrong.
		And so that's not a surprise.
		But you know how, again, this is very, it seems very conspiratorial, you know, but where are the photographs?
		Now, I know they released something of something blurring and going into the Pentagon, but really, find some ground photographs for me with pieces of an airplane.
unidentified		Well, here's what I keep coming back to.
		People talk about that these planes had to have help in order to topple those towers.
		What if there were only three planes?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what if a lot of things.
		But here's something we can do.
		It's a hard search.
		I mean, I know we will come up with the photographs.
		I trust we will, because I do believe that a plane did indeed impact the Pentagon.
		I just thought it is a challenging question because my brief look didn't yield anything at all.
		And my memory of seeing the early photographs also didn't yield anything in that category.
		And I sort of vaguely wondered about it at the time.
		But those things just let go unless you're forced to think about it.
		That's what this email did from the high desert.
		I'm Art Bell coming up, Seth Shostak from Arecibo in Puerto Rico.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
		When a digo digo down about an hour ago took a look around it when you made a whim low with a little girl in a Hollywood bungalow worldwide humiliation.
		Where are you?
		Where are you?
		Well, the night with heavy on his guilty mind Let's fall from the borderline
		When the headman knows damn well he has been cheap and my revolving students my life feels like he knows I need a man who has to go in the ball.
		You are gonna know when the blood hits the bone You are gonna know when the blood hits the bone When the blood hits the bone
		Premiere Radio Networks presents Ark Bell Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight's program originally aired March 13th 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At the moment we're going all the way to Puerto Rico and Dr. Seth Shosak who is the director of SETI search for extraterrestrial intelligence it should be very interesting.
		Matter of fact we're going to dial him up directly because I want you to hear the intro you get when you call Arecibo.
		We'll do that here in a moment.
		Stay right where you are.
unidentified		Stay right where you are.
		Coast at Coast AM is happy to announce that our website is now optimized for mobile device users, Specifically for the iPhone and Android platforms.
		Now you'll be able to connect to most of the offerings of the Coast website on your phone in a quick and streamlined fashion.
		And if you're a Coast Insider, you'll have our great subscriber features right on your phone, including the ability to listen to live programs and stream previous shows.
		No special app is necessary to enjoy our new mobile site.
		Simply visit CoastToCoastAM.com on your iPhone or Android browser.
		Streamlink, the audio subscription service of Coast2Coast AM has a new name, Coast Insider.
		You'll still get all the same great features for the same low price, just 15 cents a day when you sign up for one year.
		The package includes podcasting, which offers the convenience of having shows downloaded automatically to your computer or MP3 player, and the iPhone app with live and on-demand programs.
		You'll also get our amazing download library of three full years of shows.
		Just think, as a new subscriber, over 1,000 shows will be available for you to collect, enjoy, and listen to at your leisure.
		Plus, you'll get streamed and on-demand broadcasts of Art Bell, Summer Inside Shows, and two weekly classics.
		And as a member, you'll have access to our monthly live chat sessions with George Norrie and special guests.
		If you're a fan of Coast, you won't want to be without Coast Insiders.
		Visit Coast2CoastAM.com to sign up today.
		Looking for the truth?
		You'll find it on Coast2Coast AM with George Norrie.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		What's happening out there?
unidentified		I sense it.
		People sense it.
		They call the program.
		There's something going on.
		I can't put my finger on it, but I feel it.
		How about you?
		It is not our imagination, and the best minds of our time are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that we are living the greatest number of crises ever to face humankind.
		And they're telling us, George, that we've got to act, or not much else is going to make any difference.
		Now let's go back to the night of March 13, 2002, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
		Music
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, this should be kind of cool.
		We are now going to call, as I speak, we're going to call Aracebel, I think.
		So, I wanted you to hear this.
unidentified		Let's see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's do this and bring this up.
unidentified		When dialing operator-assisted calls with a zero or direct dial call with a one, you must dial the area code and the telephone number.
unidentified		I did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course, that's what's going to happen when you try something like this.
unidentified		Let me try it again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's see what happens this time.
unidentified		When dialing operator-assisted calls with a zero or direct dial calls with a one, you must dial the area code and a telephone number to complete your calls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I did!
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I did!
unidentified		Are you an operator-assisted call?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Are you a human?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not a human.
		You're not even a human.
		Oh, good.
		See, I was going to do this for dramatic value because I thought it was really cool.
		And now I can't.
		Before I got right through.
		I'll try it again here.
unidentified		Ridiculous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dialing the whole number.
unidentified		This is the Arecibo Observatory, Especially losing Arecibo.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Para beción en Español o primeluno.
unidentified		Our business hours are Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
		If you are using a touchstone phone and you know the desired extension, dial it now.
		For visitor center information, press 4.
		For our directory by department, press 5.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For our directory by name, press 6.
unidentified		Okay, here we go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're doing it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, with any luck at all, we're about to be talking to Seth Shostak.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One ringing, two ringing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Project Phoenix, this is Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Project Phoenix, huh?
		Hi, Seth.
		It's Art Bell in Nevada.
		How are you doing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Just fine, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let me tell everybody about you, and it was so cool being able to call up and hear the Arecibo introduction in English and Spanish.
		I just couldn't resist.
		But first two times I tried on the air, I flopped.
		So here we go.
		Seth is an astronomer involved with Project Phoenix.
		As you heard, he just answered the phone, has a BA in physics from Princeton and a PhD in astronomy from Caltech.
		But he's also responsible for much of the outreach activities of the Institute.
		He edits the newsletter, oversees the website, gives talks, and writes magazine articles and books about SETI.
		He also teaches a half-dozen informal education classes on astronomy and other topics in the Bay Area.
		For coming to SETI, Seth did research work on galaxies using radio telescopes at observatories and universities in America and Europe.
		His avocations include photography, filmmaking, and electronics.
		He is also the inventor of the electric banana, a fact he claims has had little positive influence on his life.
unidentified		What?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's the electric banana, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, all I can tell you, Art, is that it has appeal.
		But in fact, it was a present I made for someone's birthday party.
		And curiously, it was picked up by the media for a while.
		This was back when I was a student, I must confess.
		And it became something of a celebrity at a local rock radio station down in Los Angeles, K-R-L-A, which they would advertise as the only radio station with an electrical banana product of Caltech research and engineering.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, sad?
unidentified		It was not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have not yet explained to me what an electrical banana is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess it's late enough in the evening that I can tell you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, it was very little.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was a rubber banana just purchased at a local department store, in fact.
		The kind of things that you would throw into a fruit bowl along with some rubber apples and things like that.
		And it had a small micro switch on it, a small little toggle switch.
		It had a cord that came out of it and a neon bulb.
		And you would plug this thing into the wall, flip the switch, and the bulb would light.
unidentified		And that's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's all it did.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		However, as I said, it was conceived in the time when there was a popular song called Mellow Yellow in which Donald Trump was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, okay.
		So in other words, the bulb was inside the banana so it radiated light well actually the bulb was on the outside of the banana no it would have been really cool if it was inside and the banana was somewhat opaque and that would have introduced manufacturing details I had to build this in my business I see all right somebody writes already on my you know I get these computer messages while I'm doing the show and in in the buildup on our website let's see it's Eric from
		Bartlesville, Oklahoma says the comment in tonight's guest info is somewhat misleading.
		It says, quote, real-life basis for the story portrayed in Contact.
		Sounds a bit exaggerated, you must admit.
		But it is not, really, is it?
		I mean, yourself and Jill Tarter, I believe Jill Tarter was the model for Jodie Foster's character in Contact, wasn't she?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		She was.
		Insofar as anyone was the character, Jill was definitely it.
		Now, mind you, of course, Carl Sagan was well aware of the various SETI projects when he wrote that novel in, I believe, 1983 is when it came out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And Jill fits the model of the character, Ellie Arroway, rather closely.
		That's not coincidence.
		She is the prototype.
		And, in fact, I might say that Jill is actually observing now.
		We split the observing.
		I observe until midnight.
		she observes after midnight, and she's at the telescope controls right now in fact people who tune in our SETI cam can see Jill sitting there in a dark jacket and really at the data yeah in other words let me see let me look at the links here book website where should I go well you can always go to www.seti.org okay I'm on the way down there and if you see somewhere there it'll say SETIC.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm right at the top.
		It says SETICAM Online.
		Okay, so from a link, folks, on my site, what you do is go to artbell.com, tonight's guest info, and the first link there is the www.seti.org.
		And then you click on SETICam Live, and then you wait.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe they're all doing it, and they should go in small groups, Art, so that they don't bring down our servers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
		Where do I go now?
		Let's see.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Is it not bringing something up on your screen?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It did.
		Let me see.
		Project Phoenix Diaries from Arecibo, Sashostack, Doran Sight Better, Project.
		But I don't see a webcam.
		The SETICAM is online, now updating every minute, it says.
		I see, I had to go down a little bit, where it says the SETICAM is online.
		I think a lot of people have beat me, and already your site is slowing down.
		But I may be seeing it any moment here.
		All right, well, I'll leave it on the screen, and hopefully a picture will come up, but you're getting slammed.
		And so here I sit, describing how to get there, and they all beat me.
		Great.
		All right.
		So you go down to Arecibo.
		Tell everybody how big that dish is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		it's laid out across of valley sort of isn't it or across In fact, it's situated in a bowl-shaped valley, which is not coincidental because the dish itself is bowl-shaped.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		In fact, there's a story about one of the people involved in the construction of this thing back in the very early 1960s, and it may or may not be true, but the story is that the site was selected by having a fellow slide a quarter around a topographic map of this part of Puerto Rico until he found a place where the quarter would fit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Now, I don't know whether that really happened.
		Everybody says it did, but it's one of those stories that may or may not be true.
		But it is so, that the bowl in which the antenna sits was more or less spherically shaped or round, I should say, to begin with, which minimized the amount of bulldozing they had to do with the local topography.
		So the dish itself is 1,000 feet across, which makes it the mother of all radio telescopes.
		It is by far the world's largest radio telescope, and you can name any other one you want, and it will easily get lost in this one.
		This is big.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, this is interesting.
		I'm beginning to get one, I've got two cameras set up, SETICAM A, which says forbidden, and SETICAM B, which is beginning to show a photograph.
		I can only see the top part of somebody's head here, and I guess I'm going to get the rest of it as bandwidth will finally allow as the program goes on.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, I'm on SETICAM A, which you are being spared, fortunately.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why am I forbidden that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		It must be something in your past life.
		We tried it here.
		It worked.
		But maybe I'll have the operator, the telescope operator, Willie, is sitting behind me, and he might be able to try the SETI cams and see if they work.
		He's on the web.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, I am getting one good photograph at about an inch an hour here.
		So I'll eventually get it.
		All right.
		You obviously are down there looking for extra terrestrial intelligence, a signal of some kind.
		And you do this in the spring and you do it in the fall.
		And why would that be?
		Why not go down in the summer or the winter?
		In other words, what's special about spring and fall?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's nothing terribly special about spring and fall.
		We originally chose those times of year in connection with various satellites, you know, space probes actually, that were available for calibration of our equipment.
		We sometimes look at these space probes, including Pioneer 10, by the way, which we looked at about a week ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		May I ask you a question about Pioneer 10?
unidentified		Of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think it's 10.
		Is it not 10 that is beginning to slow down for some unknown reason?
		Scientists are saying that the spacecraft has actually been observed to be slowing down, kind of like it's running into some sort of some weird thing way out there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well of course you expect it to slow down a little bit due to the gravitational pull of the Sun.
		Of course it's trying to escape the Sun and in so doing of course it's going to slow down a little bit.
		Additional slowing down of course would be very peculiar and the most shall I say obvious?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe it's not so obvious but Pioneer 10 is one of the earliest.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There are essentially four spacecraft that are very far from us right now.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The two Pioneer 10s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Or Pioneer 10 and 11 actually, the two Pioneer spacecraft.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And you know their job was to just see if you could send a spacecraft through the asteroid belt without having it get creamed on the way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I've got the photos.
		Hey, it's totally cool.
		I can see Jill sitting in front of her little PC with several large PCs.
		Then on the right, I can see you on the telephone talking to me.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		I'm the guy with the white shirt, I guess.
		And behind me, wearing white socks, is Willie.
		Now, Willie is the telescope operator.
		There's a telescope operator on duty here 24 hours a day.
		So he has the midnight to 8 a.m. shift, I guess, tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What exactly does the telescope operator do?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Normally, it's the telescope operator who would, in fact, take the data.
		He would run the telescope.
		He would take the data for you.
		If you're an astronomer, you've come down here to study pulsars, for example, galaxies.
		Those are two of the most frequently studied subjects down here in Arecibo.
		Then you don't even have to come here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I want to ask a question.
		Why is it important to study pulsars?
		What do they tell us?
		Pulsars are rotating things that emit this signal like a beacon, right?
		That's right.
		Why is that important?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's interesting to study pulsars because they are the collapsed remains of very large stars.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, that might not sound like it's so interesting in and of itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does to me.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it turns out if you take a star that's, say, two or three times as big as the sun, ultimately, of course, it'll run out of fuel, just as our own sun will run out of fuel.
		And when it does, it collapses because there's no more heat to keep it from collapsing.
		And when it does that, something's got to stop the collapse.
		Either that or it's going to collapse indefinitely and turn into a black hole.
		Some stars do that.
		But stars that aren't quite big enough to collapse to form a black hole will collapse down to about the size of Manhattan Island, say something 10 miles across.
		A very, very dense ball of essentially all neutrons, a very peculiar state of matter.
		One teaspoon full of a pulsar would weigh 10 million tons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, yeah, it would be great to have some of that stuff and maybe carry it aboard an airplane and just watch them taxi endlessly down the runway, never being able to take off and nobody would know why.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		These days you wouldn't want to try to get something like that on a plane set up.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, they'd need a neutron detector perhaps.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But in fact, because it's such an extreme state of matter, such an unusual form of matter that we, of course, don't have here on Earth, you can learn a lot of physics by studying pulsars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they emit strong radio signals, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I guess light as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How strong are the signals?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, strong is a relative term.
		They certainly are much flashier, if you will, and much stronger in the radiation than anything that we put out here on Earth.
		But they're not very good about how they broadcast.
		They broadcast all over the band, as nature tends to do.
		Nature's not very good at engineering high-quality radio broadcasts.
		But it can put a lot of energy into it.
		And these things do put out a lot of energy.
		And you might say, well, you know, where does that energy come from?
		It comes from the spinning of the pulsars.
		So ultimately, the pulsars slow down because they're radiating away all their energy into space.
		They slow down, then they fade from the heavens, and you just have these invisible, highly dense, strange objects sitting around, dead stars.
		It's a fascinating thing.
		It's kind of like asking, why study black holes?
		And tomorrow night's guest on your show, Mishi Ukaku, can probably tell you 20 different reasons why you might want to study them, but it all comes down to understanding the extremes of physics, the edges of what we know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what would be the characteristics of a pulsar other than the radiation?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're spinning how fast?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It varies a great deal.
		Some of the first ones that were found, and they were found kind of accidentally in the 1960s in Cambridge, England, because they were using a radio telescope.
		They had it pointed at this guy.
		And a young woman who was working for the observatory by the name of Jocelyn Bell, same name as the earth.
		Jocelyn Bell.
		She happened to notice that in one particular direction they were looking at, they got these radio signals that came in not as a steady hiss, but as a series of puzzles.
		About once a second.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And for a while they called them LGMs, little green men, because...
		They didn't know what they were, and they seriously thought that, well, something as regular as these things are might just be a deliberate transmission from some civilization.
		And it took about six months before they decided that this was a natural phenomenon.
		Actually, her advisor, her advisor, got the Nobel Prize for this work.
		Jocelyn Bell did not, but that sort of sexism, I think, is gone from astronomy these days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold tight, Seth.
		We'll be right back.
		It is bottom of the hour.
		And this is really cool.
		These photographs live from Arecibo are really cool.
		You can actually see inside the control room.
		It's a little congested right now, but hang in there.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
		I'm here to go.
		All of the years cry.
		I'll just feel like cry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I...
unidentified		with them is pretty cool stuff especially inside Arecibo we'll be right back you're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13, 2002.
		Coast to Coast AM All right, I'm going to take one second, and Seth Shosack is back with us, I presume.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth?
		Yes, I am.
		Okay, I want to read you.
		Can I read you something briefly and get your reaction to it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, then here it comes.
		It's entitled, it's from a NASA site, Science at NASA.
		And I said I would do this the other night for the audience, and I'm going to do it right now.
		I would ask Seth about this.
		The title of the article is, Puzzling X-rays from Jupiter.
		Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory have spotted a mysterious pulsing X-ray beacon near the north pole of the giant planet.
		I'm only read you part of this.
		Every 45 minutes, a gigawatt pulse of X-rays courses through the solar system.
		Astronomers are accustomed to such things.
		Distant pulsars and black holes often bathe a galaxy with blasts of X-ray radiation.
		But this time, the source isn't exotic and isn't far away.
		It's right here in our own solar system.
		Said Randy Gladstone, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute leader of the team that made the discovery using NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, quote, the pulses are coming from the north pole of Jupiter, end quote.
		We weren't surprised to find X-rays coming from Jupiter, he continued.
		Other observatories have done that years ago.
		The surprise is what Chandra has revealed for the very first time, the location of the beacon surprisingly close to the planet's pole and the regular way that it pulses.
		NASA's Einstein X-ray satellite first spotted Jupiter's X-ray glow in 1979.
		Nobody back then looked again for many years until researchers, Gladstone among them, pointed the German X-ray Observatory Rossat toward Jupiter in 1992.
		The glow was still there.
		Scientists wondered, what was it?
		Now, one explanation might be northern lights, just like Earth.
		They have more of them, in fact, than we do on Earth, auroras, in other words.
		Well, you see, the new images are very mysterious.
		They are not from the aurora.
		They appear not to be from the aurora.
		They are not perfectly regular.
		Either, like signals from ET might be, the period drifts back and forth by a few percent.
		So they're using words like beacon.
		They're calling it a beacon.
		And they even said E.T. now they didn't say it was ET, obviously.
		But there is a theory that the best way to achieve contact with any budding civilization would be to put a kind of 2001-type obelisk or something or another that might send out some kind of signal and wait for some kind of response.
		And this is a pretty weird story about Jupiter.
		And I wonder if you've read about this, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I haven't read about it in detail, to be completely honest, Art, but I can think of what it might be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		If you're going to make X-rays, X-rays, as you know, require a lot of energy to make.
		X-rays are pretty energetic, and that's why they can go right through your shoe and through your teeth and everything else.
		I guess they don't go through your teeth, but they can go through your head and show your teeth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But a specific spot at the North Pole would be gigawatts of X-rays.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's the clue to me, the fact that it's near the North Pole, because, you see, Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field.
		The Earth has a magnetic field.
		Other bodies in the solar system have magnetic fields.
		Not too many of them actually.
		But Jupiter certainly does.
		It has a very strong magnetic field.
		And in fact, it may be that that magnetic field helps to possibly support some life on some of its moons.
		We might come back to that.
		But if you have a strong magnetic field, one thing it's going to do is it's going to channel incoming cosmic rays.
		These are, you know, high-speed particles that just cruise through the galaxy.
		And in fact, a whole bunch of them are going through your body as we're talking right now, cosmic rays.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, most of them actually slam into the atmosphere and do things to that.
		But cosmic rays will be channeled by those, that magnetic field will be interfered with by the magnetic field, particularly at the poles of the planet.
		And I suspect that the X-rays that we're seeing are the result of the interaction of cosmic rays and magnetic fields rather than being a signal.
		I think there are easier ways for them to make a gigawatt signal.
		A gigawatt sounds like a lot, but it's not really that much if you're talking about something that's as big as Jupiter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nevertheless, very interesting.
		And I know that you look out a very long way.
		And you don't look at the X-ray spectrum, do you?
		Not with what you're doing there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, we don't.
		It would be very difficult to do that from the ground, obviously.
		You mentioned that the NASA Chandra Observatory was used for this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and the Chandra Observatory, of course, is not on the ground sitting in somebody's backyard.
		It's up in orbit.
		And the reason for that is that the X-rays really don't make it through our atmosphere.
		They get stopped by the atmosphere, fortunately for us, I might say.
		So it would be tough for us to look for X-rays.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But Chandra found it very quickly.
		Now, just humor me.
		Is it not true, what are they called?
		You know, this concept that aliens might place the equivalent of an obelisk or something on a moon that would either send out signals or wait to receive a certain thing and then sort of relay back to the ETs that, hey, guess what, folks, somebody has arrived.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are two ideas there.
		The first, the idea of planting an artifact, as in 2001, for example.
		I mean, that's what that's called.
		It's an artifact.
		You're looking for evidence of the extraterrestrials on the basis of some hardware they've left around for you to find.
		And it might not do anything, and it might.
		I mean, if we were to find some sort of obelisk on the moon or anywhere else nearby, that would be pretty compelling evidence that there's something out there, of course.
		And to be quite honest, we've done very little looking for that sort of thing.
		So, you know, you can't really rule it out.
		You might say, well, we haven't found anything on Earth, but Earth has weather and plate tectonics and all sorts of things that could sort of mess things up, could make it very difficult to find something after a long period of time.
		The moon might be a better place, and I think that's probably what Arthur C. Clarke had in mind when he wrote about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a good point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, Earth changes over thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years could put the thing 500 feet underground or under the water or who knows where, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly right.
		So, you know, if you're going to place an artifact somewhere, you might indeed not place it on the Earth.
		You might decide, well, look, I'll put it on the Moon because the Moon's pretty dead and it doesn't have a lot of weather and it'll stay there for a couple of billion years without getting messed up.
		You might also put it in space.
		There are places around the Earth known as the Lagrangian points, but the name is not so important as the fact that they're kind of stable places between the Earth and the Moon or near the Earth and the Moon where you could put a time capsule or an obelisk or whatever you wanted to put there.
		And it would just stay there.
		It would just stay there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you were going to put something on the moon of a planet, let's say that we were the ETs and we were going to saw a planet that we suspected might eventually harbor life or might be in the process of harboring life and we were to put something on a moon, what would we likely have that listen for?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a different sort of thing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Now, if you just talk about an obelisk that just says Kilroy was here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's just a passive piece of hardware.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, let's talk about an active device.
unidentified		An active probe, it's not so easy.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		What you really want, as they say at NASA, you really want one of those tricorders that Captain Kirk had.
		You want one of those devices that somehow can sense that there's life nearby.
		And how would you do that?
		How would you find, for example, if you had one of these probes, say, on our moon, I suppose the aliens have put one on our moon.
		Let's turn it back around again.
		What would they look for on Earth?
		How would they know that, well, hey, something interesting is happening on this planet.
		It's time to send information back to the mother world.
		There are a lot of things.
		You could just sort of sit around and wait for television or something like that.
		That would be pretty easy to pick up from the moon, of course.
		But you could do better than that.
		You could have something that looked at our atmosphere and looked at the elements in our atmosphere.
		There's a lot of oxygen in our atmosphere.
		Everybody knows that.
		But what you might not realize is that two billion years ago, there wasn't very much oxygen in our atmosphere.
		That's all the result of photosynthesis.
		So if you find a lot of oxygen, you might want to notify the mother world that, hey, you know, there's plant life down there.
		That's right.
		Finding the animals is a little harder, but a lot of animals on Earth produce methane.
		You know, cows and pigs, they produce methane as part of their exhaust gases.
		And you find that in our atmosphere.
		If you found a planet with a bunch of methane in the atmosphere, you might say, pigs in space, right?
		So there are some things you could do to find, as it were, a stupid life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then, how would you get word back?
		Word would leave what?
		At the speed of light?
		Or do you imagine there might be a way to speed that up somewhat?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's, to me, that's the kicker here, because, you know, you've got to ask yourself, what's the value of the probe if when it does detect, for example, suppose it waits for something intelligent.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So it waits until we invent radio and television.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Reasonable.
		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And so then what it does is it says, ha, these guys, you know, they're clever now, they're technological, they're worthy of being introduced to us, or the other way around.
		All right, So now they send a message back to their home planet.
		Well, as far as we know, that message cannot go back any faster than the speed of light.
		So why bother with the probe?
		Why not just build a big antenna on the home planet and just pick up the radio waves when they get there?
		There's hardly any difference in time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because the radio waves are traveling at the speed of light, of course.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps not as specific a pulse as might come from a probe in a directed manner towards some place.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		The probe would have a transmitter that's tuned to a frequency that you would be monitoring, and the probe would have certain advantages.
		There's truth in that.
		But on the other hand, this probe has got to sit there and maybe wait billions of years before making its report.
		That's got to be a darn reliable probe.
		And I find it a little difficult to imagine that these civilizations are willing to seed the galaxy with probes that are going to sit there for billions of years before they do anything.
		That's a high level of engineering and a big expense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly would be.
unidentified		Do you know who Stanton Friedman is?
unidentified		I do.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I do.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't know him personally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's a nuclear physicist way up in Canada.
		Same time zone you're in, as a matter of fact, Eastern Canada.
		Newfoundland, I guess.
		That's not right either.
		Anyway, way east, same time zone as you're in.
		And he desperately wants to debate with you, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have heard rumors to this effect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you now?
		Yes, he brought it up the other night on the program.
		He's an interesting fellow, an advocate of the 1947 Roswell crash.
		He's done a very great deal of investigation into that and a lot of other things that have occurred here on Earth.
		And basically, his bone of contention with you is, look, we have plenty of evidence, albeit, I'll add somewhat anecdotal, I suppose, but eyewitness testimony from pilots and policemen and people who are trained to observe who have seen craft here on Earth.
		Thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of sightings.
		Now, he would like to essentially say to you and to Jill and everybody there, why are we searching the distant heavens for what's here right now?
		That's what it comes down to.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would grant him that that's a good point if he would simply produce good evidence that they are here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I told him you'd say that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Well, I suspect that's not a surprise.
		And indeed, I get lots of emails, in fact, from folks who say, well, look, you're barking up the wrong tree.
		Now, that's always possible.
		It would be hubris of the first water to say that, well, our method of trying to find out if there's any intelligence out there is the only reasonable way to do it.
		We think it is the most reasonable way, but that's our approach.
		It involves worldwide.
		I think SETI involves a few dozen scientists, maybe not even that many.
		It's a very, very small project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that in itself is a very good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why are there not more of you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that's mostly a matter of funding, actually.
		As you know, since 1993, all the SETI in this country has been privately funded.
		It was a NASA SETI program.
		In fact, when I joined the SETI Institute about 11 years ago now, it was a NASA program.
		But that ended in 1993.
		And since then, it's been run on private donations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Basically said to be a waste of taxpayer money, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's what was said in 1993.
		They said, we just can't afford to do this.
		We're in a budget deficit year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That wasn't that much money, really, was it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, it amounted to about 3 cents per taxpayer per year.
		So I can't say that that's a whole lot of money.
		It didn't impress my neighbor when he heard he was going to save 3 cents and his next-door neighbor was going to be out of a job.
		But as it turned out, I wasn't because of the generosity of some people who have given and continue to give the Institute money so that we can continue the research.
		But I think that this small number of people is a consequence of that funding.
		But really my point is this.
		The number of people that are involved in SETI is really quite small.
		It's a very highly technical exercise, of course, and it's based on our best astronomical and, for that matter, physical knowledge.
		We do the best experiment we can based on what we know about the universe and what we know about how to build instrumentation.
		There are far more people, of course, involved in looking into claims that the aliens are afoot in the land or buzzing the countryside and so forth.
		And so it seems a little odd that they would say, well, we've got thousands of people that are doing that, but you two dozen people who are doing this other thing should really stop what you're doing and do what we're doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not an advocate of that at all.
		Not at all.
		I think that what you're doing is very, very, very important and may yet yield results.
		Although, SETI began in 1960.
		Now that's four decades of looking real hard.
		And still you have not heard anything that you call a sustainable wow signal.
		How far through it are you?
		And is there now reason to be discouraged?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me just answer that last one first.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, not discouraged.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, no, it's early days, early days.
		This project, which is, of course, as we've discussed, Project Phoenix, was begun 1995, so that's six or seven years ago now.
		And we've looked at about 600 star systems since then, in quite some detail.
		In other words, over a wide part of the radio dial and, you know, with a lot of sensitivity.
		And these are checked out as carefully as we can these days.
		But 600 stars isn't very many.
		There may be a few hundred thousand million stars in the galaxy.
		So looking at 600 stars isn't very much.
		Now, I have to say that this experiment has probably collected far more data than all the previous experiments put together.
		You have to keep that in mind.
		It's not that we keep doing the same experiment decade after decade after decade.
		The march of technology means that the experiments keep getting better.
		And you know what that march of technology is going to be.
		There's something in the Silicon Valley called Moore's Law, which says that computer power doubles every 18 months.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so it seems to.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It does.
		You keep throwing out those computers.
		Every couple of years you've got to throw out your computer and buy a new one because the technology has marched on.
		Well, that technology affects what we're doing.
		And on the basis of this march of technology, you can kind of estimate how many stars you're going to be able to look at, say, 10 years from now or 20 years from now.
		And it's not going to be another 600 stars.
		It's going to be 600,000 stars.
		Or in 20 years' time, a few million stars.
		And so that's such an interesting number.
		That's such a big sample that to me that sounds like we may get the jackpot.
		And that's not 100 years from now.
		That's within the next one or two decades.
		So I think that to say, hey, now's the time to give up, it would be like pulling back Chris Columbus one week out of Spain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is Arecibo keeping up with the very latest computer technology?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Arecibo does.
		Arecibo does indeed because they've got to be on the cutting edge.
		I mean, this is a very, very desirable telescope from the standpoint of the astronomers, and they always want the best equipment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How come you're allowed to be there?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We're allowed to be here because we made a scientific proposal years ago and asked for time, and the time is granted on the basis of scientific merit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so they declared it to have merit, and that's why you're there, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold it right there.
unidentified		Strawberries, cherries, and an angel's kiss in spring.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll be right back.
unidentified		My.
		you're listening to our bills somewhere in time might be during the replay of coast to coast a m from march thirteen two thousand two I walk in town on silver spurs that jingle too.
		A song that I had only sang to just a few.
		She saw my silver spurs and said let's pass some time.
		And I will give to you.
		outro music
		I will follow him.
		Follow him wherever he may go.
		There is in an ocean to deep.
		A mountain story can keep me away.
		I must follow him.
		Ever since he touched my hand, I knew that I knew I always must be.
		I love me and I keep.
		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is pretty awesome if you'll follow the links and have a computer go to SETI.org and then simply go to the webcam and you'll see Sesh Osak, my guest, the operator of the telescope itself, and of course Gil Carter all sitting there doing their work.
		And you know what they're looking for, right?
		It's a big sky up there, folks.
		A really big sky with more stars than any of us can count.
unidentified		And you know what they're looking for, right?
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		I argue with people about disclosure time and time again.
		I've told them governments are not going to come out willingly to tell us it's going to happen by a mistake, it's going to happen by a whistleblower, but it's not going to be an organized thing.
		Governments won't do that.
		The reason why they won't do it is because they do not want us to know.
		They think that they'll lose control of us if we know.
		If you actually truly believed that we were being visited by extraterrestrials and you had categorical proof that it was happening, do you think you would listen to some of the bull that government throws out all the time?
		Absolutely not.
		You'd look toward the heavens, you'd say there's got to be a better way, and you would start doing your own thing.
		And you would forget all about government control and everything else.
		So the bottom line is government will never, ever disclose the true facts of UFOs.
		Now let's go back to the night of March 13, 2002, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Art Bell All right, back live now to Arecibo in Puerto Rico, the largest telescope of its kind in the world, manned now by the good people from SETI, which is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and Seth Showstack.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Seth, was there ever a moment for Jill Tartar, as there was in the movie in her career with SETI, was there ever a moment when the funding was cut and Jill went basically berserk?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I've never seen Jill go berserk.
		You know, sometimes she gets pretty active on the dance floor.
		She's quite a dancer.
unidentified		I see.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Berserk, nope, never in that mode.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, from an intellectual point of view.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		No, it was a very trying time.
		And to be quite honest, I was sitting with the CEO of the SETI Institute in our boardroom when the Senate was taking its vote on this amendment that, in fact, killed the NASA SETI program.
		And we were under the impression that there was enough congressional support to keep NASA SETI going.
		And we were wrong about that, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it was a nasty surprise.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was, it was.
		And I remember as the votes were coming in, the boss who was keeping notes about how the votes were going, he turns to me and he says, we're going to lose.
		And I didn't say anything, but needless to say, it was a very, very strange feeling.
		Now, as it turned out, when we did lose that and when we lost the government funding, fortunately, there were people at the Institute who knew people who could help us out.
		There was a fellow who worked at the Institute.
		He's unfortunately passed away now, Barney Oliver.
		He was the vice president for, well, he was the head of research and development at the Hewlett Packard Corporation for their first 25 years.
		He was a school chum of Hewlett and Packard.
		And in fact, if you have a pocket calculator, you can thank Barney Oliver for that because he was really the guy who invented that.
		And his real love was SETI.
		He spent a lot of time at the SETI Institute, and he managed in those first frantic months to get us the funding to keep going, at least in those first years.
		And that's why we're here today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth, straight out, how much of a chance is there that if SETI continues and computer power continues to increase, as we discussed a little while ago, how much of a chance is there that we will hear a signal and when might that happen?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, nobody really knows the answer to that because to know the answer to that, you need to know how many civilizations are out there.
		And of course, that's what you're trying to find out.
		So it's one of those sort of circular kinds of things where you don't know the answer because to know the answer you need to know the answer, if that makes any sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, it doesn't.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		But you can, what you can do is you can say, well, look, let's make some reasonable guesses about how many civilizations might be broadcasting in the galaxy right now on the basis of some things we do know.
		We know how many stars there are in the galaxy, of course, a couple hundred billion.
		We have some idea of how many of them have planets.
		You know, astronomers have been looking for planets now and finding them for the last five or six years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, the first planets were found right here at this telescope by a fellow who's down here now, by the name of Alex Walshan from Penn State.
		He found them around a pulsar, actually.
		Now, those aren't the kind of planets you'd want to inhabit, but those are the first planets found outside our own solar system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, the pulsar, in its way, illuminated the fact that they were there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because the pulsar is such a regular clock, it's easy to detect very slight irregularities in that clock.
		The clock was slowing, one of these pulsars had a clock that was kind of slowing up for a while and then speeding up and then slowing down and then speeding up.
		And the explanation for that was that there were some planets encircling that pulsar.
		But in fact, we know that at least 5 or 6% of all stars have planets.
		So, you know, there are at least tens of billions of planets just in our galaxy.
		I mean, we know all that.
		So what we don't know is how many of them might have life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, we didn't know it for sure until, as you pointed out, just a few years ago.
		But now, it seems to me the calculations, the math can change a little bit with the knowledge of the last, say, five years.
		Before that, we had to imagine planets.
		Now, we know they're there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right, we do.
		We know that there are other worlds.
		It's just not, you know, a bunch of guys saying, oh, well, you know, planets are probably a dime a dozen.
		Now we know what the price is.
		You know, it's more or less a dime a dozen.
		So that's good news.
		But we don't know how many of them are the kind of planets that life might gain a foothold on.
		And we don't even know whether, just because you have a lot of planets with, say, liquid water and maybe a little bit of atmosphere, whether life will gain a foothold, because we don't know how life got started on Earth yet.
		But it would, you know, it doesn't take too much imagination to figure that if you have a thousand planets kind of like Earth, that, you know, some fair number of them will cook up life.
		That doesn't seem so radical anymore.
		So you can go through all this exercise and come up with some number about how many civilizations you think there are out there.
		And the numbers range from one, that we're the only ones.
		Those are kind of the pessimistic estimates.
		And we're the best things in the galaxy.
		And I have to say that many of my neighbors believe that to be true.
		Or you could take a number like Carl Sagan.
		His estimate was there are probably a million broadcasting civilizations in the galaxy.
		Now that's kind of the optimistic point of view.
		But suppose you just take some number in between there.
		Say they're 1,000 or 10,000 or 100 or some number in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You do all that, then that tells you, well, okay, we now know how many needles are in this haystack, haystack being our galaxy.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And the question is then, how much hay do we have to sort through before we stumble across that first needle?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's what we need to understand so that we can know where you are in your search.
		In other words, with all the years devoted to it thus far.
		Some of the early years are not effective enough to discuss really compared to what you're doing right now.
		But in other words, how far along in the project you are.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly right.
		So, you know, I'll take, for example, at the Institute we have a fellow by the name of Frank Drake, who is, in fact, the chairman of the board of the SETI Institute, and is the guy who did the first SETI experiment, modern SETI experiment, back in 1960.
		And his estimate of the number of needles, as it were, in our galaxy is like 10,000.
		Now, if he's right, then we have to check out a few million star systems to find that first needle.
		And since we've only checked out 600, not 600 million, but 600, obviously we're very, very far, very far shy of that number.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then the people who are critical of SETI and say, look, you've been looking all these years, haven't found anything, you have only just begun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's the real truth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Karen Carpenter was right.
		We've only just begun.
		And you might say, well, look, at the rate you're going, it's going to take 20,000 years before you find a needle.
		And indeed, if we could only continue at the speed at which we're going now, that would be the case.
		But, in fact, the SETI Institute, together with the University of California, Berkeley, is putting together a new telescope called the Allen Telescope Array that's going to be situated in Northern California.
		And when it starts up, it'll already be 100 times faster than what we're doing today.
		And by the year 2020, if technology keeps its frenetic pace, then that telescope will be able to check out a few million stars, and that's the number you have to check out in order to hear something.
		So the bottom line is: no, we don't know when success is going to come, but any kind of reasonable estimate would tell you that this is not a project for the ages.
		This is not a project that may require until the 22nd century or the 23rd century.
		This is something that's going to happen in the lifetime of folks around today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was going to say, with 20 years, say, of technological advance, we could anticipate contact in our lifetimes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		That's right.
		And that's quite interesting, in fact.
		And particularly interesting, we were just having a little dinner discussion down in the cafeteria here the other night about, well, what would it mean if we actually did stumble across a signal?
		Because, of course, it could happen any happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, your current, how long have you been down at Arecibo this time?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We've been here since about this 8th of March, something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We get about three weeks in the spring, three weeks in the fall.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I know you have had several signals that really got you guys really, really excited.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, have you heard anything at all down there this time that peaked any interest?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we have, actually, Art.
unidentified		Oh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'm always reluctant to make too much of a claim here because that's...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What have you got?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, because, of course, you know, all the signals, no matter how interesting they've been, have always turned out to be human-made and unlikely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know it's something like that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But this particular observing run has been interesting because, lamentably, the second telescope that we normally use to check out whether signals are ET or just AT ⁇ T, if you will, just interference, that telescope in Jagral Bank, England, is not working.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's got a mechanical problem that had developed just as our observing run was getting underway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And consequently, it's out of action.
		So in order for us to check out signals, if we find a bunch of signals, and we always find signals here, of course, this is a huge antenna.
		We've got 57 million channels in the receiver.
		Of course, we find signals all the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		To check them out, what we do is we're compelled to just use this one telescope and move it back and forth on the sky and see if the signals go away and they come back, they go away, they come back, that sort of thing.
		It's slower than when you have two telescopes, and it takes longer to decide, hey, look, is this signal it, or is this signal just some telecommunications satellite wheeling overhead?
		And so we've had lots of interesting signals.
		So far, they've all turned out to be interference.
		But, you know, just a minute ago, Jill yelled, we're going off, which...
		Yeah, well, it sounds like something wrong with our mental state, but actually that's not it.
		It just means that the telescope has found a signal that it thinks is interesting enough to go look at another part of the sky and see if we can see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see, and then come back and see if the idea is really quite simple.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you have a telecommunications satellite or a local radar or something like that, that signal will be so strong that you pick it up no matter where you point your antenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you're a ham radio operator, you know this that's a problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, particularly if it's a terrestrial signal, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right, exactly.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It really doesn't matter where your antenna is aimed, you're going to hear that thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But so if we move the antenna away from the star.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it goes away.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And it goes away, then you think, hey, maybe this is coming from the star.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But if you move it away from the star and you still pick up the signal, you can be pretty darn sure that this is just some terrestrial interference.
unidentified		So it's just moved off, in fact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How often do you get it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're going off cry?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, if we had that second antenna going, it would only be every couple of days.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But because we're working with just one antenna, I've got to tell you it happens every couple of hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		every couple of hours well uh...
unidentified		uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		how are you it let Then what?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's been a problem for us.
		We've had at least one signal where we move the telescope away and the signal goes away, which is what you expect if it's really E.T. and then you move the antenna back and it comes back and go off.
		All you can do is keep doing that.
		That's all you can do.
		You have one antenna.
		You just keep going back and forth on the star, off the star, on the star, off the star.
		And, you know, you do that often enough, and if it works every time, then your blood pressure begins to rise.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But without John Robank...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How willing, if you make that kind of a call, which you don't do frequently because you obviously can't cry wolf in the observatory world or they won't go look, how often have you come to that point?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think the answer is never.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Never.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Never.
		We got very close in 1997.
		We were looking up the phone numbers, but it didn't happen.
		And so, yes, that's the answer.
		Never.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Never.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They're very, very, very conservative.
		That's something that I think people probably don't expect to be the case, but we don't, clearly, we don't call up other observatories and break up their observing schedule and maybe force them to mount a new receiver on their telescope every time we get a signal that at first...
		I'm obviously speaking for unseen colleagues, but I think the answer is yes.
		I think they would do it.
		And part of that comes from the fact that they know that we're conservative, that we wouldn't have made the phone call unless we ourselves were convinced that it was worth it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you've come pretty close at least once.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		At least once.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Looking up telephone numbers is real close.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is real close.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that was what?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		As it turned out, that was the SOHO satellite, which is a European solar research satellite.
		It's a million miles away and only 10 watts, but that's a strong enough signal for us to cause us to think that it might be real.
		That was another case where we had only one telescope, by the way.
		Our second telescope was not working that particular day, too.
		Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have been fooled.
		But it was very interesting because we found out what it might be like if we really got that signal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, people don't generally know this, but because they watched Contact and they heard Jodie Foster listening to the headphones, you don't ever listen to headphones, do you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We never do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I am curious, though, if you got, you know, if you really got a wow signal, a serious wow signal, wouldn't there come a point where somebody actually would listen to what's coming in or attempt to listen to what's coming in?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think you're probably right about that.
		I think somebody would jury-rig something up.
		But keep in mind that the channels that we're listening to are very, very narrow.
		Now, that's kind of a technical point.
		But for example, this radio show is going out on AM radio, and that means that the channel width is about 3 kilohertz, 4 kilohertz.
		It's kind of like a phone line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, it's more like 9, 10.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, 9.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's not a problem.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if you sound so good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And not to forget we're on FM as well.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's even better.
		Okay.
		Well, there you go.
		9,000 hertz wide.
		Our channels are 1 hertz wide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is very narrow.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, listening, you're not going to hear a whole lot of, you're not going to get, you know, symphony into 1 hertz.
		It's just going to be just a pure tone.
		Okay, but I think you're probably right.
		I think if we got a signal that we were convinced looked like it, I think somebody would start plugging in amplifiers and putting on the earphones or at least plugging in the speakers so everybody could listen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it could be done.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think it could be done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, after all, you really would want to hear kind of what it sounds like.
		I certainly would, anyway.
		All right, listen, hold it right there.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		Seth Shostak, Dr. Seth Shostak from SETI, is my guest.
		He is now at Arecibo.
		You can see, if you follow the links, you'll see Dr. Shostak speaking with me on the telephone, Jill Tarter when she's in her seat, and operators of the telescope.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
		In the heat of a summer night, in the land of the Dalabill, when the town of Chicago died, and they talk about it still.
		When a man named Alcaphone tried to make that town his own, and he called his game to war with the voices of the law, I heard my mama cry.
		I heard a brave night in Chicago die.
		Brother, what a night he really was.
		Mario plays
		Well, I'll be waiting for the summer.
		Oh Lord.
		I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord.
		Well, I've been waiting for the summer.
		Hold on, hold on.
		I remember your worry.
		How could I ever forget the first time the last time we ever met?
		But I know the reason why you keep inside for the beautiful leap for the hurt and show, but the pain is so gross.
		more than you and me.
		I can't get a call in the air tonight.
		Oh no.
		But I'm in the way of the moment For all my life Oh Lord I'm in the end of the night Oh Lord Oh Lord But I'm in the way of the moment Premier Radio Networks presents Art Bell somewhere in time.
		The night's program originally aired March 13th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I was out of wonder what would happen if they began to get a wow signal as we were actually on the air.
		I mean, it's possible.
		He just said they're going off, which means that they're tuning off the signal and then going to come back to it.
		Now, we'll explain how that occurs in a moment, but if they actually found a signal as they were talking to us, I wonder what would happen.
unidentified		The End now let's go back to the night of march thirteen two thousand two on our bills somewhere in time the Now, it's kind of interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've been spying on the webcams all the way along here, which now are running a little better as the morning progresses.
		And when Seth told us a moment ago, somebody just yelled we're going off, I noticed that Jill Tarter started moving around all over the place.
		And I noticed that the gentleman running the telescope behind Seth has a very intent look and he's bent toward the screen.
		Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well he is.
		Willie, what are you looking at over there?
		He's checking out the web.
		Actually, our equipment runs the telescope.
		So the telescope operators have an easy time when we're down here.
unidentified		I see.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But it is true that Jill has been following a signal here.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I heard your remarks there about how exciting it would be if we found E.T. while on the show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it was more like a question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would happen if you found something that big during the program?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, needless to say, I think that it would distract me a little bit.
		I guess I'd offer to take you with us to Stockholm to help collect that prize if it came to that.
		But, in fact, Jill did bring over a plot here of what we were just looking at, and this is one of the reasons we don't use those headphones, as they always do in the movies, to listen for the signals.
		It's because the computers are actually much better than you would be.
		These signals are buried deep in the noise, and the computers can average out the noise and find signals that you don't see with your eye and you wouldn't hear with your ears.
		And as it turned out, this signal was not it.
		But, you know, in terms of what would happen if we found it right here, that's another misconception of the films.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would the show be ending?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Would the show be ending?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you have to go?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't think so.
		Curious as that sounds, it's because it's going to begin very sort of simply, very slowly.
		If we get a signal, suppose we got the real signal, suppose that happened in the next 10 minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, suppose it is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		What would happen?
		Well, you know, the telescope would sort through all the signals that it found in the last five minutes of observing, and our equipment would check it all out, and it would come up with a handful of signals that look like they might be it.
		It does that every five minutes.
		Nothing special there.
		And it would, you know, then to decide that, well, all of these signals but one look like they're interference, and this one that looks good looks good enough that I ought to move the telescope off.
		You know, so it would beep at you.
		But, you know, it does that every couple of hours.
		And it would move off, and then maybe it wouldn't find the signal.
		So it would beep again, and then it would go back to the star.
unidentified		All of this happens all the time.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So it would be, you know, a couple of hours.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You only get a couple hours on each star.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, but if it just kept beeping and beeping and beeping.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It can only do that for a maximum of about two hours here because the Arecibo telescope is so big.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		People should understand the Arecibo telescope does not move.
		Right.
		So they're sitting there wondering, well, then how do you move on and off a star if you're dependent on just sort of pointing where the Earth is going?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It looks like it's just aiming straight up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's very interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The answer to that is...
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's on the tracks.
		It's on tracks.
		So we can move that receiver around, and that, of course, changes where you're looking in the sky.
		Not by a whole lot, by about a maximum of 20 degrees one way or 20 degrees the other way, which is kind of the size of a couple of constellations.
		But what that means then is if you're looking at a star, you've got to catch it when it's more or less overhead, and you only get a couple of hours before you can't point in its direction anymore.
		So we'd get excited for a couple of hours, and then we'd have to wait till tomorrow and get it again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		All right, I want to hit you with some massive questions here.
		You are familiar with the name Zachariah Sitchin, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm familiar with the name.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you know what it is he believes, don't you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think he believes that there's an incoming planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That there is a planet out there or perhaps a burned-out star or something that on some regular 3,600-year basis comes by Earth and causes lots of trouble.
		Right.
		Since you're an astronomer, I've got this story from ABCNews.com that I would like to read just a little bit of.
		October 7th from ABC, astronomers may have found hints of a massive, distant, still unseen object at the edge of the solar system, perhaps a tenth planet, perhaps a failed companion star that appears to be shoving comets toward the inner solar system from an orbit 3 trillion miles away.
		Two teams of scientists, one in England, one at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, independently report this conclusion based on the highly elliptical orbits of so-called long-period comets that originate from an icy cloud of debris far beyond Pluto.
		Quote, we were driven to this by rejecting everything else we could think of.
		That's a quote from the University of Louisiana physicist Daniel Whitmer.
		Any comments?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that that's a very legitimate result.
		Mind you, you know, it's a little hard because it's very indirect to know exactly what it is that's causing these comets to come to the inner solar system, but this is certainly a reasonable explanation.
		On the other hand, that thing now, 3 trillion miles away, that's the number you gave there, that's far out, man.
		I mean, that's a half a light-year away.
		Okay, that's 10% of the way to the next star.
		Keep in mind that Pluto is about 500 times closer than that.
		So this is 500 times farther than Pluto.
		Now, it may be out there.
		There are rocks out there that are probably as big as Pluto or close to being the size of Pluto that we haven't seen.
		We're pretty sure of that, beyond Pluto's orbit.
		Just leftover junk from the formation of the solar system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would have to be a pretty big piece of junk, though, to be diverting comets' orbits, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It probably would.
		Now, the controversial thing about this is, one, you know, well, how could you get such a big object that far out because when the solar system was made there wasn't very much raw material that far away to make a big planet.
		That's why Pluto's far out there, but it's not very big.
		Pluto's a pretty small world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, as a matter of fact, they're I think in the middle of stripping it of its planetary status.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, I find that very disheartening.
unidentified		I think this poor little planet deserves to be called a planet.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But that's nomenclature, and people can argue about that interminably, and it never gets you anywhere.
		But the thing that I think is controversial, as I say, one is that how did it, you know, how do you get something so big out there?
		But the second thing that fares on Sitchin's theories is, well, has that thing ever come this way?
		Has it ever come to the inner solar system?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If it would, though, it isn't unreasonable that something that massive would cause some pretty big problems.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And that's what's wrong with the idea, I think.
		It would disturb the orbits of the solar system, the inner solar system.
		If the planets' orbits would clearly be fairly severely affected by this, and sooner or later, in fact, it might cause collisions.
		I mean, all sorts of stuff would have happened.
		And we don't see much evidence of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You look at Mars and something happened up there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, something happened to Mars, but, you know, its orbit doesn't seem to have been radically altered.
		You know, that sort of evidence, the solar system has a, you know, it tells you a lot of history.
		And to begin with, this thing being half a light year away, I mean, we could work out how often it's going to come to the inner solar system.
		How often is he claiming it's coming to the inner solar system?
		Every 3,600 years?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Something like that, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, see, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
		I mean, that's just Newton's mechanics, if you will.
		Kepler's laws.
		Something that far away is only going to come to the inner solar system if it does at all.
		You know, on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could be.
		Maybe even more.
		All right.
		From Roswell, Gene and Roswell.
		He says, here in Roswell, we've been living with denial since 1947.
		It'll be 55 years this 4th of July, like being eligible for senior discounts.
		If what was proposed in the Brookings report is to be the real reason for non-disclosure of the evidence gathered here in 47, why wouldn't the same hold true for withholding any contacts or communication received by SETI at their very large array up the road from us?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, two things, Gene.
		First off, that very large array up the road from you there in lovely Socorro.
		It's actually not in Socorro, but that's the nearest town of any size.
		It's about an hour's drive outside of Socorro.
		The very large array, and that was also in the movie Contact, by the way.
		It's not very good for doing SETI.
		It's the wrong kind of instrument for doing SETI.
		It was used for SETI in the movie because it's very photogenic.
		But it's actually not used for SETI.
		But anyhow, the question is...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, those dishes in parallel provide, each one provides additional gain, so if they were all moving in unison, it could conceivably be used for that purpose, couldn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It could.
		It could, but it's actually not so good for it.
		It would be quite expensive to set up receivers for that particular instrument.
		And there's not much point, because if you took all 27 of those antennas out there and it moved them down to Puerto Rico, I mean, that's, you know, a fairly expensive moving job.
		But if you did that and dropped them into this dish outside the window where I'm sitting, they'd get lost.
		This thing's four times larger than all of them put together.
unidentified		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so, you know, but never mind that.
		I mean, I think Gene's real question is, if we were to find the signals, wouldn't, you know, the government cover it all up?
		That's right.
		And I don't think so, Gene.
		I really don't see how it could happen because...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Brookings report is what it is.
		There's no debate about that.
		I mean, there might be debate about what happened in Roswell in 1947, but the Brookings report we can all read.
		Right?
unidentified		Yep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why would it not apply to what you're doing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's kind of the nature of evidence.
		I mean, if something happens on somebody's ranch in New Mexico and you somehow scoop up all the evidence and cart it away, then maybe you could keep that secret.
		I mean, I don't think that aliens have been kept secret from Roswell, but that's my opinion, and I know other people don't agree.
		But, I mean, I admit that it's possible that if you scoop up all that evidence and bury it somewhere, maybe nobody would ever know.
		But if you're talking about finding a signal in space, as we've already talked about tonight, the way you would prove that it was truly ET is you'd call up some other observatory, and you'd have them listen.
		So now, you know, there are staff at two observatories that know about this signal.
		And that second observatory, by the way, might not even be in the United States.
		In fact, it probably wouldn't be.
		So, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they might talk.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Of course they'd have to talk about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, how do we know that there's not a prior existing sort of agreement that it would go many, many stages before it would get to the public?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And one of those stages would certainly be to the government or governments involved.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I just don't see that happening simply because nobody's ever said anything, anybody doing this, hey, you know, at some point you just got to shut up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, as you well know, this is the only point of disagreement that you and I have.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's fairly minimal then.
		Well, listen, I think that the bottom line, actually, Art, is that any signal that you find, you see, the evidence here, it's not something you can cart away in a truck.
		The evidence is up in the sky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		He goes on.
		As you recall, the motion picture industry offered up two different scenarios for us to consider.
		In contact, for example, with Jody Foster, we experienced the first initial communication after a long wait, as we are to believe is going to happen someday, perhaps.
		But in Arrival with Charlie Sheen, we were to discover that construction of the massive dishes were funded on the basis that communication was already assured.
		So which version is closer to the truth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well I like that Chuck E. Sheen film.
		I actually did, The Arrival.
		I thought it had some good things, but unfortunately it came out the same summer as Independence Day, which had the aliens coming here and demolishing the planet.
		And that's always a little more interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, oh yeah.
unidentified		So it didn't do so well in the theaters.
unidentified		But I thought it was a good storyline.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But I think that, in fact, contact is the more accurate portrayal of what would actually happen.
		You know, to somehow say, hey, we'll build the hardware because we know we can make some sort of contact, that we can have communication, that's pretty unrealistic.
		Keep in mind that if we find a civilization, it's not going to be 10 light years away.
		It just doesn't seem that that's going to be the case.
		We've looked at all the stars that are 10 light years away.
		In fact, we've looked at just about all the stars that are within...
		I don't think so.
		I think it's in the southern hemisphere.
		You have to look up its declination.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Zeta reticuli seems like a fairly likely location for life, doesn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, why is that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was a time for the story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, but I mean, also, and it's not all that far away, really, I mean, compared to other star systems, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, we should look it up.
		As I recall, I looked it up once, and I thought it was the wrong kind of star, but in any case, let's just short-circuit all that since I don't know the number off the top of my head, but I can assure you that essentially all the stars that are decent candidates, that is to say that they're not so big that they're going to burn up and blow up in just a few million years, which wouldn't be very good for any inhabitants, those are the ones we've been checking out.
		And so the bottom line there is, if you find the aliens, they're not going to be so close by.
		They're going to be at least hundreds of light years away, and maybe 1,000.
		But even if it's only hundreds of light years, how much money would you be willing to spend to set up a transmitting station that's going to take hundreds, maybe thousands of years to get a reply?
		That's pretty tedious.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		But I don't think Zetoraticuli is really that far away.
		And I wonder if they've done any work in the southern hemisphere on that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've been in the southern hemisphere.
		We observed down at the radio telescope in Parks in 1995.
		That's, in fact, where we began Project Phoenix.
		We looked at 200 of the nearest stars in the southern hemisphere.
		So if it's one of those, we've checked it out.
		In fact, speaking of films, you may have seen the movie The Dish.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, it was out about a year ago.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Very, very nice Australian film about this telescope that was used down there to beam back the television shots of the first guys on the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		I don't know how I missed that.
		I'm going to have to get a hold of it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's an excellent film.
		Sam Neal.
		Yeah, anyhow.
		But that dish was, in fact, the one that we used.
		It's the biggest radio telescope in the southern hemisphere.
		And so, you know, we've covered the southern hemisphere, too.
		We haven't neglected half the universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jeff Browning, rather, in Houston, Texas would like to know, does the upgraded Hubble telescope, and it has just been upgraded, provide any improvements that might allow astronomers to identify planetary systems that could be the targets of SETI?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think, Jeff, that it's not going to make a big difference.
		The Hubble telescope has not really been terribly important in finding these new planets.
		In fact, the way you find planets is not by training a telescope on stars nearby and, you know, seeing little dots going around them.
		That would be great if you could do it.
		But we still can't do it.
		Our telescopes aren't good enough for that because the planets are too dim and they're too close to the stars.
		So we find the planets by looking at the wobbles of the stars and kind of an indirect approach.
		And for that, Hubble is really not so good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why will they not let Hubble look at the moon?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think that the moon is just too bright.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Too bright.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And one more thing Jeff asks is, please provide a progress report on the Allen telescope array.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Jeff asks a good question there because that's the new telescope we've been talking about a little bit here, which will be able to sort of sift through the heavens a lot faster than we can do it down here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I tell you what, we're at the top of the hour, so let's do that when we get back.
		Seth Chostak at Arecibo in Puerto Rico is my guest.
		We'll ask about the Allen Array and much more when we get back.
		Stay right where you are.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
		and then I feel you, you know, that was mine.
		But I couldn't find a way.
		So I'll never hold one to leave you, leave you Oh, I'll never hold one to leave you, leave you Oh, I'll never hold one to leave you, leave you Tell me light, tell me, free little light.
		Tell me lies.
		Tell me lies.
		Oh.
		Inside of the sand, the smell of the touch is something inside if you need so much.
		The sight of the touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an alcohol is deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up to tarmac to the sun again.
		Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
		To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing, how all these things in our memories are, amuses to come.
		To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing, how all these things in our memories are, amuses to come.
		To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing, how all these things in our dreams are, amuses to come.
		listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an ongoing presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Seth Shostak is with us live from Arecibo in Puerto Rico, where the gigantic telescope, biggest one actually in the world, is located.
		And they are down there right now listening for signals as we speak on the air tonight.
		In a moment, we will go to the phones for Dr. Shostak and allow you to ask any question you would like.
		So, stay right there.
unidentified		Sounds of the wind
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		Looking for the truth?
		You'll find it on Coast2Coast AM with George Norrie.
		What's happening out there?
		I sense it.
		People sense it.
		They call the program.
		There's something going on.
		I can't put my finger on it, but I feel it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How about you?
unidentified		It is not our imagination, and the best minds of our time are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that we are living the greatest number of crises ever to face humankind.
		And they're telling us, George, that we've got to act, or not much else is going to make any difference.
		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13, 2002.
		Music Back now to Puerto Rico and Dr. Seth Shosak.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, we were going to say something about the Allen Telescope Array.
		How is it coming?
		What's the schedule?
		What's going on?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the telescope is proceeding apace.
		You know, it's a big engineering job.
		And for those who don't know, the Allen Telescope Array, which, by the way, is named after Paul Allen, one of the co-founders of the Microsoft Corporation, the other guy being Bill Gates, donated a lot of the money that it's going to take to build this thing.
		So that's where the name came from.
		Anyhow, it's going to be a telescope that's a little different than this one outside the door here, which is one giant single reflector.
		That's a very expensive sort of thing to build these days.
		It would probably cost $100 million if you wanted to build another Aero SIBO.
		So this is going to be done in a different way because now you can do it in a different way.
		Build a lot of smaller antennas, right?
		And just spread them out on for some California real estate.
		And in fact, the Allen Telescope Array will, at least in the beginning, it'll consist of 350 antennas, each six meters.
		That's about 20 feet in diameter.
		So these are pretty big antennas.
		This is not your average backyard dish.
		And they'll be spread out over something like a mile of real estate.
		So 350 of them, big things, things that would fill your garage.
		And it should be operational by the year 2005.
		And we're having the first models that are going to be delivered to us later this year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How will that compare in gain, overall gain, to what you're using now?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, in fact, it's smaller.
		It will be the equivalent of an antenna that's about the size of a football field.
		In other words, it's like 300 feet in diameter.
		And this telescope here is 1,000 feet in diameter.
		So, you know, it will be less sensitive, but on the other hand, it's an instrument that we can use 24-7.
		We can use it all the time, which, you know, we can't do with Arecibo.
		Arecibo is in such tremendous demand that we get these weeks in the spring and weeks in the fall.
		But by having more telescope time, you can sort of make up for some of that loss in sensitivity.
		But the really interesting thing is you can look at stars much more quickly with it because you don't have to look at them one at a time than we have to do here.
		It's enormously faster.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you from time to time actually check on what's going on with the installation?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, absolutely.
		Yeah.
		They're not being planted in the ground yet.
		We're not that far.
		We have a small test array, actually, near Berkeley, California, of more conventional backyard satellite antennas, which allow us to test out systems for rejecting interference and things like that.
		So no, it's a big, big engineering job, and it's well on its way.
		These guys are very keen, and I might say very clever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I want to read you a bit of a story.
		See if you agree with this.
		From Boston, astronomers on alien planets almost certainly have the Earth listed as a world teeming with life, according to a leading scientist.
		Dr. Roger Angel from the University of Arizona in Tucson said, Earth observers were about 20 years away from identifying distant planets on which life exists.
		Therefore, it was likely that other civilizations in distant star systems, assuming they exist, have already come to the same conclusion about the Earth, he said.
		Quote, I'm convinced that if there were aliens with technology a bit more advanced than ours, they would know that there's life on this planet.
		Does that make sense?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It does.
		It does.
		But it's life on this planet, not necessarily intelligent life.
		Obviously, intelligent life, you know, humans have been broadcasting our presence into space for what, 50, 60, 70 years, something like that.
		If you had looked at the Earth, you know, 100 years ago during the time of the Victorians, or just at the end of the Victorian era, you would not know there was any intelligence on Earth if you were far away.
		You couldn't tell that, right?
		Because there was no signals going out into space that would tell you, hey, there's some characters down there that are technically sophisticated.
		But for something like 2 billion years, we've been broadcasting the fact that there is life on Earth because of, as I said, oxygen in our atmosphere, for example.
		So that kind of signal has been coming off the Earth for billions of years.
		And I think that that's what Roger Angel is trying to tell you.
		They would know that there's life here.
		They wouldn't yet know there's intelligent life unless they were very, very close and they picked up some of our early radar or television.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so, in other words, even with all the radio radiation we have, even the radar and all the rest of it, there would not be enough, strong enough, for them to conclude there was life based on...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, say an equal distance to what you're generally looking at right now.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		No, they wouldn't know about us, but not so much that the signals are weak, although they are pretty weak.
		Although our military radars are not so weak.
		The real problem is that if they're 100 light years away, the signals haven't gotten to them yet.
		That's the problem.
		It's kind of an expanding shell of information about humans that's reaching out into space.
		And of course, it's moving out at the speed of light, but it's only been doing that for 50, 60, 70 years.
		You can work that out.
		That means about every day or so, the information about our existence washes over yet another star system.
		So, you know, we're telling yet another couple of stars this week that we're here, but it's only a couple.
		It's going to be a while before we've told, you know, a few million stars that we're here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, this is something that a lot of people don't like to consider because it's perhaps depressing.
		But let's say that 20 years goes by, we've got all the improvements, and then another 80 years goes by, and we've examined a very good percentage of what there is to examine out there, and we find absolutely nothing.
		Is it reasonable to conclude, or unreasonable to conclude, that it is possible that we are the only intelligent life for as far as we can see or imagine?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a possibility.
		I mean, gotta admit it.
		It is a possibility.
		I think Carl Sagan was the one who said that even that would be profoundly intelligent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly would be profound.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course it would.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, to know that you're the only kid on the block is simultaneously indeed depressing and important to know.
		I actually wouldn't draw that conclusion if we did this for, say, another 50 or 100 years and didn't find something.
		The conclusion I would probably draw, if I were around to draw it, is not that we're alone, but that we're somehow barking up the wrong tree, that we are using the wrong kind of physics, the wrong kind of technology.
		You know, that could be.
		Physics changes.
		150 years ago, you wouldn't be using radio to hunt for a cosmic company because you didn't know anything about it.
		So maybe 100 years from now we'll have found something else.
		I mean, that's always possible.
		But I don't think I would give up on their existence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Big Bang occurred conservatively.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long ago?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, 14 or 15 billion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		14 billion years ago.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We're the new kids.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are the new kids, indeed.
		All right, let's go to the phones and see what we get.
		Lots of calls out there.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Seth Shosak in Puerto Rico.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		Art, I am in Seal Beach, California.
		Okay, go ahead.
		This is Gordon.
		Mr. Shopak.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Showstack.
		Showstack, like a stack of pancakes.
		Showstack.
unidentified		Thank you, Art.
		Mr. Showstack, I have to take issue with you, sir, on a couple issues here.
		I spent a better part of my life, and I'm about 54 years old right now, working for a division of the DOD.
		In Seal Beach alone in 1991, I saw a trainer for advanced craft.
		And usually, Mr. Chopak, if they have the hardware, they usually have the software for it.
		My question for you, sir, is this.
		How can you possibly get on the radio and tell people this when I know that you know what's really going on?
		And I would like to please ask him one other question after he responds.
		Well, okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Gordon, what is it that I know that I don't know?
unidentified		Well, apparently, Seth, either you're behind the plow or you're directly an implant for disinformation.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think somebody owes me some salary if that's the case.
unidentified		I mean, you guys are slick.
		I've met a lot of you guys.
		You guys are very, very slick.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's not a lot of his guys around.
		I mean, there's only, would you say, Sess, two dozen people in the city, something like that?
		So there's not a lot of them, sir.
unidentified		Well, I've got to tell you, Mr. Chopac.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Show stack.
unidentified		Excuse me.
		Number one, on the moon itself, there's a large contingency of ET presence that are waiting for this event in 2003, and they have been...
		The event of the pole shift.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so there's some of you saying there's going to be a pole shift, Doctor, and E.T. is waiting on the moon for this to occur, no doubt, so they can scarf up our real estate.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Let me just say this to you, Gordon.
		You know, that's a pretty dramatic thing to say, obviously.
		Clearly, I'm not.
		I don't believe it.
		But you have at least made a prediction.
		You've said by 2003, we're going to see something.
		A pole shift?
		Is that a pole shift of the Earth or a pole shift of the Moon?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, the Earth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Of the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, virtually destroying all life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then, of course, E.T. would take our real estate once all life.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		He said, you know, pole shifts of the Earth in 2003, I don't think anybody's going to miss that.
		And so I at least appreciate that Gordon is making a prediction.
		And all we have to do is wait another 500 days and find out if he's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it important, Seth, that people who do understand the importance of the work you're doing make donations to SETI?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is, because we can't do it otherwise.
		I mean, if you think that this is interesting, and I really do, because, you know, at no other point in human history, sort of no time prior to now, could we do it?
		We just didn't have the technology.
		And so finally we do have the technology, and it just seems like it would be an enormous shame not to conduct a search, even as limited a search as we have to conduct because of the financial restrictions.
		So clearly, I think that it's worth the candle, and I'd certainly encourage people to support it.
		And they can do that by going to our website, actually, and finding out about joining Team SETI.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that will lead them toward the ability to get an address and so forth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, good.
		There's an interesting question here that you submitted, and I don't know why.
		It says, can I use a radio from the Seacrane Company to try to listen to four extraterrestrials?
		Why did you put that in there?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I guess I put it in there to see if you were going to read those questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I'm so curious why you wrote it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think a lot of people may wonder whether it's possible just to use sort of any radio and connect it up to just about any antenna they have and listen in for signals from space.
		And in principle, you could.
		It's just that it wouldn't be very sensitive.
		Not so much because of the radio, actually.
		The radios are very sensitive, but you need a big antenna.
		So the C-Crane radio, of course, you wouldn't be getting a lot of channels.
		You'd only be getting one channel at a time.
		So that's a bit limiting.
		But the radio itself is probably sensitive enough.
		It's just that you'd want a big antenna.
		Otherwise, your chances of hearing something aren't terribly good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, interestingly, it covers the VHF television spectrum.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you had a decent antenna, it's not all that outrageous.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It isn't all that outrageous.
		And that's what you'd want to do.
		In fact, that's more of a technical story.
		But of course, you'd want to go to high frequencies because the lower frequencies, as every AM listener knows, tend to get bounced back by the ionosphere.
		So higher frequencies is what you need if you want to punch right through all that and listen to space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Seth Shostak in Puerto Rico.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Ken.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can barely hear you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Ken?
unidentified		From Winnipeg, Manitoba?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm on CDLB.
unidentified		I was going to ask about the basics of life, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The what?
unidentified		The basics of life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, the basics of life, yes.
unidentified		We base everything on water and air, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Yeah, and is it not possible that something would be able to live on something else?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Doctor, what about that?
		We do assume that the conditions that we have here would be the ones that would likely nurture life elsewhere.
		What about silicon-based life, for example?
		Is that a possibility, isn't it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is a possibility.
		It's much harder.
		I mean, silicon is not nearly as good at making really big molecules as carbon.
		And, you know, life really likes to have big molecules.
		Life is a fairly complicated chemical exercise.
		And therefore, you need these big molecules.
		And there's lots of carbon in the universe, you know.
		So it isn't that there's a shortage of carbon.
		We have to resort to silicon.
		But I mean, it is possible.
		If you look at what makes up life here on Earth, you know, it's really only a couple of elements.
		I mean, there are 92 elements, but there are only a few that are really involved with life.
		Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, that's about it.
		Hydrogen, I neglected hydrogen.
		So, you know, five, seven elements make up probably 99% of you and everything else that's alive on the planet.
		Those are very common elements.
		They're light elements.
		They're very common throughout the universe.
		But the thing that you may need is liquid water to get the chemistry going.
		Although, although there have been some experiments recently in which they've just taken some dry dust grains, the kind of things you find floating between the stars, and exposed them to a little bit of starlight, as it were, and they've produced some amino acids, which are some of the building blocks of life.
		So, you know, who's to say?
		Life might be very ingenious.
		We don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're looking now carefully at Mars, and of course, we've got another spacecraft now around Mars, and we're finding water.
		There appears to be a significant amount of water on Mars.
		We know it once had an atmosphere of sorts, and something catastrophic occurred on Mars.
		Arthur C. Clarke has made some interesting comments recently from Sri Lanka, where he's sort of sequestered.
		And he said that he believes there may be large life on Mars.
		Now, I wonder why he'd say that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, to be honest, so do I. And I've heard him say it.
		He said it in some sense personally.
		I mean, we had him on the phone.
		But, you know, clearly, I mean, he can't rule it out.
		But the conditions on Mars are just not very good for life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At the moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, at the moment, that's true.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		At least not on the surface or near the surface.
		I mean, if you go down a little bit, you know, you go under the ground, you know, who knows how far, five feet, ten feet, maybe a hundred feet, you might have a little bit of liquid water there.
		In fact, there's a good indication that you might.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then there might be life.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And then there might be life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on, Doctor.
		We're at the bottom of the hour already.
		Dr. Seth Shostak at Arecibo in Puerto Rico is my guest.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 13, 2002.
		Music Happy and I'm smiling.
		Walk me miles to drink your water.
		You know I love to love you and above you.
		There's no other.
		We'll go walking out while other sounds of water deserve.
		Oh, we won't get pale and Sama pool, though.
		She tried it harder to recreate, but yet to be creative.
		Watching her life, she must have smiled for his nostalgic head.
		Never coming near what he wanted to say, only to realize he never really was.
		She had a place in his life and day as she rises to her bounty.
		Anybody else would surely know You're watching my girl What a fool will be Do you see The wise man has a power To breathe in the way What a fool will be
		You'll be, it always comes away There's nothing at all Keep turning in somewhere back in a long ago But here gets to.
		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 13th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're talking with Dr. Seth Shostak in Arecibo in Puerto Rico, as a matter of fact, live right now.
		So if you have a question, now would be a really good time.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Now let's go back to the night of March 13, 2002, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, back to Puerto Rico and Dr. Sashosak.
		Doctor, your big telescope there is located in Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.
		Kind of tropical place, right?
unidentified		Yes, very.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm curious, if you could take that telescope or something even bigger and locate it not there, but somewhere else in the world, maybe out here where I am, wouldn't it be better?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a reason it's down here, actually, and it's, you know, no slam against Nevada.
		But this telescope has a transmitter on it, and it's used for studying the upper atmosphere by bouncing radar off it.
		But also, it's used to study planets, like mapping Venus.
		For that matter, even mapping the moon, it's been used for that.
		And, you know, if you want to map Venus, if you want to point this thing at Venus, you want to be close to the equator because that's where the planets pass directly overhead.
		So when they built it, they said, look, this thing's got to be as close to the equator as it can be, and we want it in a place that's politically stable.
		built by Cornell University and the choices were Puerto Rico and I think even Cuba was in the running in those days and Hawaii and Puerto Rico Yeah, I suppose we are.
		Yeah, indeed.
		But in fact, the best location is neither Puerto Rico or Nevada, for that matter.
		It's the backside of the moon, but moving it there is a bit of an expensive operation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it certainly would be.
		All right, well, let's keep going.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Seth Shostak.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Oh, that would be me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be you, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm actually in Florida.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Florida, okay.
unidentified		Hello, Dr. Shostak.
		I'm sorry.
		Hello.
		This is actually, my name is Lily.
		This is actually about the signal difficulty that you're having.
		I was thinking that maybe we, I mean, it should be, well, I think it should be considered that we might be on a totally separate frequency than the extraterrestrial life form.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's actually a very good question.
		Not so much a separate frequency, but there are many people now saying that why are we looking at all in the radio spectrum?
		It might well not be radio.
		It might be laser.
		It might be light.
		It could be, I guess, even X-rays.
		Or who knows what it might be.
		It might not be radio.
		Doctor?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, Marie, actually, as far as radio goes, by the way, that's a really good point.
		I mean, we may be just on the wrong channel, as it were, the wrong frequency in the radio.
		We try to minimize that possibility by checking out as much of the dial as we can.
		The receivers here cover almost 2,000 million channels for each star we look at.
		So we try and cover those bases as best we can.
		But the other point that, well, maybe radio isn't where the signal is.
		I mean, that's possible.
		Radio is pretty good because it's easy to make radio waves and they go right through the gas and dust between the stars.
		But the SETI Institute also has an optical SETI project, which is to say looking for flashing laser beams that might be headed our way, that might be deliberately sent our way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where is that taking place?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or where will it take place?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's taking place right now, actually.
		And in California at the Lick Observatory, which is near San Jose, so that's south of San Francisco.
		There's an experiment that runs a couple of times a week, whenever we can get telescope time, where you just point an ordinary telescope, an optical telescope, mirrors and lenses, pointed at nearby stars and look for very short flashes of light from nearby star systems.
		It's also being done at Harvard, Harvard University, and Princeton.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Has anybody involved in that area of the work, Doctor, had any WOW-type signals?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Not so far.
		They get lots of signals, at least the early experiments did.
		And it has more to do with the electronics they were using because they would, you know, when they would get signals, they would go back and see if they were getting them again.
		And the signals didn't tie in with any particular star system.
		And then, you know, in the end, it turns out it's all due to the instruments.
		But today's detectors don't have that problem.
		You don't get false alarms.
		And so far, they haven't found any signals from space.
		But that may be the way to do it.
		That's another way to try it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that is ongoing now?
unidentified		It is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's ongoing now, and that will get better very quickly because it's kind of a new field.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So whenever you have a new field, it usually progresses very rapidly, at least at first.
unidentified		Is there any contention between the groups?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Not that I've noticed, because I think the groups have tremendous overlap.
unidentified		Those two dozen people are all the same two dozen people, you know, because they say, hey, well, here's another way to do it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Let's try this, too.
		And they happen to have the expertise.
		So a lot of the same people are involved.
		And it would be wonderful if you had more people involved.
		That's to say, mostly a question of money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Welcome to the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Dr. Sef Shosak.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm sorry.
		I didn't push the button.
		Now you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Hi, there.
		This is Joe.
		I'm calling you from East Los Angeles.
		KF5, 6.40 a.m.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Here's my question.
		Didn't you have a response?
		You're going to have to help me with this, Art.
		Last year, wasn't there a crop circle next to a SETI satellite dish?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There was one in Great Britain at Chobolton.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Chill Bolton Observatory.
unidentified		And it had like a little manual.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it was.
		Hey, listen, it was allegedly the signal that SETI once sent out.
		It was allegedly the answer to that.
		And there were very clear photographs at Chill Bolton.
		Doctor?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, indeed, and in fact, we discussed this on your show, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We sure did.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And Joe, about all I could tell you is that indeed there were these crop circles, and they were located next to the Chil Bolton telescope there.
		But in fact, that particular antenna is not used as a radio telescope so much.
		It's used for meteorology, in other words, for weather, for weather.
		So it really isn't a receiving station.
		But my opinion of all that, and to be honest, the opinion of all the people I talked to at Chilpolton was that it was due to British students and not due to aliens.
		You have to keep in mind that the signal that it was supposedly replying to was sent from this telescope down here in Puerto Rico in 1974.
		And so it's been on its way for, what, 27 years, something like that?
		28 years.
		That means it's only 28 light years out.
		And, you know, that's not even the distance of Zeta Reticuli, by the way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You did a little quick check.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We did.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Zeta Reticuli is in the south.
		It's about 40 light years away.
		It's a wide binary sunlight star.
		So I think it's in our observing list, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, that's very interesting because if it's, let's see, 40 light years away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we've been broadcasting for, what, 40, 50 years?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, high power.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		High power, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they would have been receiving the signal now for perhaps 10 years if they were looking.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		But keep in mind that even if they, as soon as they found it, they found that signal, they decided, hey, let's send them a reply.
		Yeah, that reply hasn't gotten here yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would still be a good 30, 40 years out.
		All right.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Shostak.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yes, Lewis from Lyman, Florida.
		Yes.
		Yes, I have a question for Mr. Shostak.
		My question is, in the event that they have a confirmed signal, a positive hard signal, and they know that it's not terrestrial, it's extraterrestrial, how do they go about deciphering the signal?
		How do they break it down?
		Do they use math, express theoretical math, or what kind of physics would you use to read the signal?
		If you get it, you have to break it down and pretty much see what it says.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a very good question.
		Once you deciphered the fact that you had an ET signal, Doctor, I remember the movie Contact, and there were sort of layered aspects to the signal, and they found sub-carriers and all kinds of things that were carrying additional information.
		Is that likely?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think if we get a signal, it probably will have a message on it.
		Now, mind you, it might not be a message intended for us.
		It might be some sort of internal communication.
		It might be an attempt to sell magazine subscriptions in their home planetary system.
		Who knows?
		Who knows what the message might be?
		But, Lewis, the problem is that it's very difficult to actually receive the message to get those bits.
		Because if you think of a television signal, right, there's a lot of power in a television signal in a very narrow spectral component of that signal.
		In other words, at one spot on the dial.
		About a third of the power is in what's called the carrier.
		But the picture and sound, the part that you're really interested in, that's spread over five megahertz of band.
		And it would take, the bottom line here is that it would take an instrument 10,000 times as big as anything we have to actually see the message.
		So our job is to simply find that carrier, find that they're on the air, find that their transmitter is turned on.
		If we find that, then we can think about building this huge instrument that would be required to go back and see the message, and at that point, you can start worrying about decoding whatever you're doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
		But even when you consider the carrier, as I recall the first contact in the movie Contact, it was pulsing prime numbers.
		Would that be a reasonable mathematical communication that could be done with the carrier itself?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you could do that.
		That's sort of like Morris code.
		You know, any ham knows that you can take a carrier, you know, just essentially a pure tone and just turn it on and off with your hand there and make Morris code.
		And if they were doing that, you might pick up some of that.
		They'd have to have a really slow fist.
		They'd have to be sending those characters really slowly for the moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The likelihood that the equivalent of Morris would have invented something like that elsewhere is very slim.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But prime numbers are prime numbers.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They might do that.
unidentified		They might do that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's hardly necessary, though.
		I mean, just that narrow carrier automatically tells you that it's somebody with a transmitter, so they don't need to send prime numbers.
		That's, you know, not necessary.
unidentified		We would recognize right away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any kind of carrier would be enough.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Seth Shostak.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yes, I'd like to explore a little bit further what you were talking about before you went to the break about what if we go through this for the next 300,000 years and nothing happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And nothing.
		All right.
		Well, I can even expand on that.
		Actually, he's right.
		It's a good question.
		Wally in Duluth, Minnesota says, remember we were saying, well, you know, 100 years goes by, nothing.
		The possibility that we're all alone.
		He says, Wally says, depressing?
unidentified		Not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would prove how important each human being really is, unlike what evolutionists teach.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so can you understand, Dr. Shostak, that creationists and people of a religious bent would find that very comforting, actually?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I wonder if they all would.
		I think that's personal philosophy, whether you find it comforting to know that we're alone.
		And of course, you could never really know that we're alone.
		All you would know is that, well, we haven't found anything.
		But, you know, even in some sense, if you felt confident that we were alone, would that be more comforting to think that this entire universe, consisting of 10,000 billion, billion stars that we can see, and that there's only one of them that has anything very interesting happening?
		I mean, is that comforting?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		It depends on how you look at it.
		In one sense, it would make us very, very special.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Indeed.
		Indeed.
		I personally would find that rather scary to think that all the eggs of the universe were in one very small basket.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A basket which, by the way, is looking, at least beginning to look, for near-Earth orbiting objects that could just ruin the basket at any given.
		All the eggs.
		Break all the eggs at any given moment.
unidentified		Yep, could happen before this show is over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Shosak.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hello, Dr. Shosak.
		Hello.
		I was curious, you were a couple of things.
		One, I've been participating in the SETI at home situation.
		Is that related at all to your project, or is that a totally separate operation?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, in fact, it is a separate project, although we have supported the guys at the University of California, Berkeley, who are doing the SETI at home project.
		We have supported their data gathering.
		And as a matter of fact, the equipment that gathers the data that you process there on that screensaver at home is located, you know, like 15 feet away from me on the other side of the wall here.
		It's a big relay rack full of electronics.
		And it's collecting some data off this telescope most of the time.
		Those data are then sent back to Berkeley and then distributed.
		Some fraction of it is distributed via the web to people who are doing those data processing.
		And although the data aren't terribly sensitive because of the way they've been gathered, because millions of people are processing those data, it's very carefully looked at.
		I mean, that's a fine-tooth comb extraordinaire.
		So it's a very interesting experiment.
		It's not our experiment.
		It's one of the other dozen guys in Telescope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even though the source is the same.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is and it isn't.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's the same telescope, but it's a different receiver, and they can't point at particular stars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nevertheless, there is always the possibility that some SETI-at-home person could crack the big one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's possible.
unidentified		There was a further question I had regarding talking about the planet or burned-out sun or whatever that's out there.
		I read several years ago a book called Nemesis, I believe.
		It was a guy that worked with, I believe, Shoemaker, the one that co-discovered the string of comets that hit Jupiter.
		Have you read that or are you familiar with the Nemesis theory?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think I am.
		This is the idea that the sun has a companion star, which they called Nemesis because it might be bad news, that orbits very far out and occasionally shakes up the comets, something that we were talking about earlier in the case of a big planet.
		And, you know, those comets rain down on the Earth and they cause mass extinction and other havoc and destruction.
		Is that what you're speaking of?
unidentified		Yes, it is.
		I was wondering, you know, I'd been hearing on the show about the planet supposedly that's coming in on us, and I never heard mention of the nemesis theory, and I thought that was pretty well researched, demonstrating the periodic Infall of extraterrestrial material causing various mass extinctions through geologic time and so on.
		I thought it was kind of odd that nobody had mentioned it that I'd heard.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think that there are two points there worth keeping in mind.
		One is that the whole idea that you need a nemesis star out there to make these recurring extinctions, I think that that's a little bit questionable because you look in the geological record and you say, well, you know, when did these extinctions occur?
		That's really hard because you're talking about digging up, you know, a few bones here and a few bones there.
		And it's sometimes hard to be very precise about exactly when the extinctions were.
		You know that the dinos were wiped out 65 million years ago and you know that there was a Permian extinction.
		You know a couple.
		But to say that, well, every 26 million years there's been an extinction, I don't think that the data for that are really all that good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not enough proof, all right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Not enough proof.
		And the second thing to keep in mind is that people have looked for that nemesis star with infrared telescopes and they come up short every time.
		They haven't found it.
		It probably doesn't exist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		A couple of very quick things.
		We're running out of time.
		Isn't it possible that extraterrestrials, despite the way we think about them, might have absolutely no interest whatsoever in communicating with either other life or specifically with us?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's quite possible, but we'll never hear from those guys.
		Simple bottom line.
		You're only going to hear from the guys who've got big transmitters turned on for whatever reason.
		And one reason they might do it is to avoid the incoming rocks.
		They might need some big radars to look for that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's true.
		And on behalf of Stanton Friedman, I really should ask you, at some point when you get back from Arecibo and you're relaxed at home, would you consider debating Stanton?
		Would you like to do that?
unidentified		Well, I think we'll have to talk about that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Have to think about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Why don't you do exactly that and consider it?
		It might be kind of a fun time, actually.
		Stanton's a very reasonable guy.
		He doesn't get all that outrageous, and I think he'd give you a pretty fair debate.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you make it sound very reasonable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm trying.
		So hopefully you will at least consider that.
		You'll be down at the telescope there for how long?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The end of this week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The end of the week?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and there will be, my colleagues will be here for yet another week.
unidentified		Ah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, be sure to say hello to the operator for us and Jill.
		And, you know, as always, I really want to thank you.
		And you consider that debate.
		Be fine.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Take great art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, my friend.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Thanks a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
unidentified		Good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's Dr. Seth Chosak all the way from Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
		That was really neat.
		I just love doing that.
		And one other thing that I forgot to ask him is, I'm going to take a vacation down there one of these days.
unidentified		And, boy, I sure would like to get out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She would like to walk around on that telescope.
		Upon it, why didn't I ask?
		Anyway, that's it for tonight for all concerned in producing this broadcast.
		I'm Mark Bell.

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