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April 3, 2004 - Art Bell
02:51:56
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Peter Ward - Rare Earth Hypothesis
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From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon,
wherever you may be in the world, prolific time zones, all of them thoroughly covered by this program, Coast to Coast
AM, one way or the other.
I'm Art Bell, and this is the Weekend Version of Same.
It's good to be here.
It really is good to be speaking with you again.
Now, lots and lots and lots to cover on tonight's program.
In the next hour, We're going to be talking about ours a lot tonight.
Converting to the first guest hour, Peter Ward will be here, who wrote a book called Rare Earth, and it's going to be an awful lot of fun and interesting, I think, to examine what you have to view as equally possible.
I mean, we're always saying, as Jodie Foster did, right, in Contact, when you look up at the suns and the stars, they have to be out there.
They have to be out there.
Those are billions and billions of suns, right?
And around them revolve more billions of planets we now know.
And so life, life has to be out there.
It's a very compelling argument and one I will make to Peter Ward who wrote Rare Earth.
Why complex life, that would be us, is uncommon in the universe.
Very good reviews on the book, to be sure.
Reviews from science, the Associated Press.
Very good reviews.
In other words, maybe we are alone.
And maybe complex life is... Anyway, we've rarely examined this from a guest perspective.
We're always looking at the other side of it, and I suppose in a way we will.
But it should be most interesting to hear the case for the fact that man is alone.
All of that out there?
Giant waste of space.
So we'll do that tonight.
A couple of things right off the bat.
First of all, oh gee, my webcam photo.
More than my webcam photo.
Someone, a good friend of mine, a ham radio operator, sent these photographs to me earlier today.
She was sent the photographs by the captain of this boat.
Actually, it's the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine, nuclear submarine, USS Honolulu.
And what we have here in this photograph, actually several of them, is totally incredible.
You'll want to save this.
It shows the USS Honolulu coming up just a few miles short of the exact North Pole.
You know, boom!
Through the ice!
And here are these polar bears.
It is such a remarkable set of photographs.
And so I've got one on my webcam, and then the full higher resolution versions up on the website, thanks to our webmaster.
So go take a look.
www.coasttocoastam.com.
Of course, it'll hit you right in the eye.
You can't miss it.
Now, I do a semi-yearly rant, because you can't call it anything else.
About what is coming up tonight.
Oh yes, by all means, folks.
Go and check your smoke detectors.
And then prepare to spring forward.
God help us all spring forward.
You know, this year I think maybe I'll call for civil disobedience.
I am not suggesting that we all do not spring forward, because springing forward is... well, it's okay.
But let's stay there.
When this fall comes around, you know, after going through the misery, the unspeakable misery of having to go around, I'm going to be changing clocks for two days.
Now, I've got, I used to have, I don't know, 50, 60 clocks.
I've probably got 100 between the radio station that we own here at KNYEFM, 95.1, plug plug, and the house and all the cars.
I have uncountable clocks to change twice a year.
With no merit for doing so whatsoever.
None!
Fine.
Give us the daylight.
Give it to us year-round!
Don't make us like mindless robots.
Year-in, year-out, twice a year.
Have to go around and change every damn VCR and clock.
God, what is wrong with us?
I saw a thing on Channel 13, our local ABC affiliate in Las Vegas the other day.
It said that it was Benjamin Franklin's idea.
Something about, I don't know, World War and saving energy or something, whatever.
You know, you hear about the farmers, some people tell that story, and then there's others that talk about school children and bus stops, and I don't know, you hear a million different reasons why we've changed the clocks, but none of them are worth two cents.
So, I say, enough!
Obviously, talking to you about this twice a year is insufficient, because we continue to mindlessly Follow along like sheep, changing our clocks.
Except for the smart states, you know, like Hawaii and Arizona and there's some others that refuse to go along with the herd.
I say it's time for civil disobedience.
I've preached year in and year out about the insanity of this and now I say we refuse to fall back.
I say we all spring forward and stay that way.
I want you to think about it.
I mean it.
I know, I have people in trouble with their bosses, and God knows what it could do, but maybe that we could send a message by... And then I thought to myself, well, what am I going to do?
I work for a network.
Time is rather important to the network, so can I follow along?
And keep my job?
I'm sure you're saying that, too.
Could you do it and, you know, just refuse to be part of the herd?
Eh, probably not.
But I'm calling for it anyway, and I might even join in, which would be the end of me.
Ah, gee.
all right let's uh... well in a moment we'll look around the world and see what
what sort of standard news is out there actually before moving on to the uh...
and the news of the day i've talked to you for the last couple of weeks of about bpl
That's the Broadband Over Power Lines thing, you know, where they can bring everybody in the nation, they say, broadband over power lines and you'll have, you know, you'll have internet in every single wall socket in your home.
Well, it's big brother-ish to the max.
And it will destroy the shortwave bands.
It'll just destroy the shortwave bands.
Now, many countries, knowing they need emergency communications because of terrorism, which we're about to talk about in a moment, ...tried BPL and kicked it the hell out of the country.
One of those countries, not exactly a technical slouch, would be Japan.
They had this broadband over the internet, or internet over the power lines baloney, BPL, and they kicked it out of the country.
And I have, right here, A recording made at 7 megahertz, which is right sort of in the middle of the shortwave band.
Well, not quite, but a very important part of the shortwave band.
One that hams happen to use, but wouldn't matter.
It applies to hams, CB'ers, broadcasters, people who listen to news from other countries on the shortwave bands.
They're going to take that away from us if this BPL goes through and you don't write to your congressman or your senator.
And I thought you might like to hear what BPL will actually sound like.
This recording was made in Japan.
Alright?
A deployed BPL system in Japan.
Before they kicked it the hell out, here's what you can expect.
Can you imagine trying to conduct emergency communications through that?
Can you imagine trying to conduct emergency communications through that?
Whether it's a ham operator, a CB operator, the U.S.
government, FEMA, or any of the other our own U.S.
military, anybody who would need to conduct emergency communications.
Imagine them trying to do it.
Or maybe you're trying to listen to the BBC on shortwave.
Do you think you could listen through this?
That's what BPL is going to sound like.
Write to your congressman.
Write to your senator.
Tell them, please examine BPL.
Please stop this forward motion of the Federal Communications Commission and these power industries before this Spreads all over the nation and there's no going back.
There's not going to be anybody talking through that, folks.
Write to your senator and congressman and ask them to please take it slow and examine BPL before allowing it to go forward.
If you don't, that's what we're in for.
Alright, Madrid, Spain.
This would be, if innocent have not been killed and wounded, this would be actually in a lot of ways very laudable action.
At least three suspects in the Madrid railway bombings blew themselves to smithereens.
Police have them cornered, and so they blew themselves up, and gee, it sure saves everybody a lot of...
trial money and all the rest of it.
If only others so disposed would take the same way out, we'd have, you know, a better world.
Unfortunately, however, one Special Forces agent was killed.
Fifteen police officers were wounded when this occurred.
And now our Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has conceded, he says, it would appear that the evidence that he presented with the CIA chief at his side to justify the Iraq War in the first place may have been bogus.
The main reason we went to war was weapons of mass destruction, as you all know, and Secretary of State Powell now saying, well, yeah, maybe the whole thing was wrong, leaving it to the CIA to try and explain, I suppose.
President Bush sought Saturday to squeeze more political mileage out of the news that Americans have more jobs, Actually added the most workers in four years.
Good numbers for the president, no doubt about it.
Israel is threatening to kill Arafat.
They're threatening to actually kill Arafat.
And he's responding to that.
It's fascinating.
Publicly saying, well, we might take you out.
Hundreds of technophiles, that's not bad stuff, these are people, technophiles would be people who enjoy technical stuff, that just sounds bad, wired all of their computers, hundreds of computers actually together, you know, standard computers like we have at home, to see if they could achieve, they networked them together, trying to muster enough power to process The most complex research problems that man faces right now and no report on how successful or not the effort was.
Listen to this one from... This is another reason you see why you need to be able to listen to Shortwave.
This comes from the Independent in Great Britain.
Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly Raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control.
Measurements by the U.S.
government show that concentrations of the gas, main cause of the climate exchange, rose By a record amount over the past 12 months, it is now the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, making an unprecedented triennial surge.
Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but they do fear it could show the first signs, listen carefully, that global warming has now begun to feed upon itself.
With rising temperatures causing increases in carbon dioxide, Which then go on to drive the thermometer even higher.
This is pretty scary stuff, actually.
And they go on to show the measurements taken at the 14,000 foot summit of Hawaii's Mount Manoa.
of Hawaii's Mount Manoa, I guess they're saying that it may already be too late.
It could be a remarkable and weird blip in the, you know, just some totally weird thing
three years in a row like this, but the prospect that global warming now has begun to feed
on itself is pretty frightening.
Thank you.
But when you read stories like this one, maybe you can believe.
An 80-mile-an-hour windstorm hit the upper Mackenzie River like a hammer right out of the blue Friday morning.
This last Friday, leaving trees scattered power lines down, the river closed to boating at least until next week or so.
Daniel Fisher, manager of the lodge and hot springs there, said, I've never, it's the craziest thing I've seen in a long time.
It wasn't a whisper, I mean it was dead quiet and then, out of nowhere, 80 miles an hour.
The sneaker wind dropped a three-foot diameter Douglas fir tree, bank to bank, right across the river.
The U.S.
Forest Service closed the boat launches upstream from the tree.
Strongly advise all boaters to stay off the river's upper stretches.
Well, there aren't too many places an experienced boater would put in besides these two particular boat launches, said he.
Point is, though, don't put in above that log.
Anytime you've got a log or any kind of barrier across the river, it's dangerous.
You don't want to run into something like that.
Meteorologist, this is the interesting part, Mark O'Malley with the National Weather Service in Portland said that the wind apparently was the result of a deep easterly flow in the atmosphere That has caused, this is in quotes, listen carefully, that has caused, quote, gravity waves, end quote, to form over the cascade range.
It's like clear air turbulence when you're flying, O'Malley said.
In fact, we've had several reports today from pilots of occasional moderate turbulence and severe turbulence generally over the cascades.
But, um, gravity, gravity waves, that certainly caught my attention.
Gravity waves?
Huh.
So 80 miles an hour, from zero to 80, like that.
Just like that.
Gravity waves.
From a meteorologist.
Okay.
And then this.
I'm sure you've heard about this, probably earlier in the week from George.
Scientists predict major Southern California quake within five months.
A state earthquake council has given a qualified endorsement to a prediction by a group of scientists who believe that an earthquake magnitude 6.4 or greater ...will occur in the Southern California desert sometime in the next five months.
Now, that could include me.
We had a 7.3 here about five years ago that shook us up pretty well, I'll tell you.
But here, these are scientists, legitimate scientists, who are making this prediction.
It's not It's not a revelation that came to somebody in the middle of the night or that was channeled down from whoever.
A team of scientists actually at the University of California, LA predict the quake will occur within a 12,000 square mile area east of Los Angeles by September 5th.
The zone includes a large swath of the Mojave Desert, the Coachella Valley, the Imperial Valley, and eastern San Diego County.
The area was the location of a magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in 1992.
That's the exact one that I referred to.
And the 7.1 Hector Mine quake in 1999.
My wife and I were standing in our living room when the quake I just referred to, 7.3, occurred.
And here in Pahrump, Nevada, we got hit really hard.
I mean, it was rock and roll time.
It was early in the morning, and we were wide awake, being the night creatures we are.
And the house began to, well, sort of ride in waves.
Everything began to move.
Things started to fall off the shelf, all the normal earthquake things.
And I, of course, considered the 3,000 pounds of antenna tower up above me and wondered if it would come down and visit.
Would have cut through the house like a hot knife through butter.
Fortunately, it stayed in place.
Anyway, be warned, I guess.
They have been successful in the past.
Oh, one other thing.
I have mentioned feral people a few times on the show.
Somebody sent me this from Chuck Shepard's News of the Weird, whatever that is.
In February, social workers found a feral family of six Only the father spoke any kind of recognizable language.
Others used hand signs and noises, living in a shed on a farm in Free State, North Africa.
None of the kids aged 14 to 26 had ever met anyone outside the family and simply ran into the woods anytime any visitors ever approached.
One boy Only in a kind of a frog-like manner.
In other words, he didn't even walk.
The father said the kids were born normal, and he assumed their poor development was punishment, because he could not afford the ceremonial sacraments of their tribe.
So they grew up being completely feral.
Truly feral.
Well, yes, humans.
But not humans who had ever touched any part of society ever, but rather wild humans.
As you would have a wild cat or a wild dog.
Truly feral human beings.
Kind of an oddity in the modern world.
But there you are.
It does happen.
I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM in the Nighttime.
Want to time travel?
Go back to past shows on Stringlink.
sign up online at CostaCoastAM.com I don't remember, can you hear my heartbeat in this corner?
Do you know that the heart of this house, like the city's silence?
I'm from Mexico, to my right, are you willing back to me?
I was born a son of a lonely man, I was put to my death, with a gun in my hand, and I'm blind to the sun down here,
I'm gonna ride like the wind, and I've got such a long way to go,
such a long way to go, make it through the water, make it through the forest,
ride like the wind, ride like the wind, I'm gonna ride like the wind.
CostaCoastAM.com All right, everybody, please listen very carefully.
We're about to do open lines, and the telephone numbers you're about to hear are not the same ones you get during the week, a little bit different.
So, listen carefully.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Open line's coming right up, folks.
It's such a pleasure to be here.
Anything that's on your mind is fair game.
Coming right up.
Let's rock.
First time caller line, you are on the air.
Good evening.
Good evening, Art.
Hi.
Where are you?
I'm in Hindsville, Georgia, just off Fort Stewart.
Okay.
You're going to have to yell at me a little.
You're not too loud.
And your first name is?
My first name is Billie Jean.
Billie Jean.
All right.
Yes.
And I'm in Hindsville, Georgia, right off Fort Stewart.
Okay.
And I was calling about fallen angels, and I don't really know what they are, but I had dreams, and they were recurring, and they were in 1999 for about a month, a month and a half.
And I'm married, and I was at that time, and I had these dreams, and the first one, I'll tell you about the first one.
Um, this man, and it's the same man each time.
Is there a sexual content to it?
Yeah.
Alright, rather than have you tell your story, if you don't mind, I'm just going to go ahead and do what I meant to do anyway, ma'am.
So, there's so much to what that lady was about to do.
Look, alright, here it is.
Last week, I began to understand that in the world of the paranormal, that which we deal with so much on this program, there was something that I had obviously missed.
I mean, we began to get calls Here, more and more of them, people willing to talk about sexual encounters, the paranormal and sexual encounters.
Now, this is a very, very difficult subject.
So, last weekend, I invited anybody with either an interest or an experience in this area to send me an email.
Well, let me tell you what happened.
I got thousands and thousands of emails.
So many thousands that every time I would download my email it would be clogged with them.
Thousands of stories of sexual attacks.
Some appreciated, most not appreciated.
I just, I can't even begin to relate to you the incredible number of honest, obviously told-from-the-heart stories that I have, so many, that I have come to realize this is a monstrous topic.
It's just absolutely monstrous, but it's incredibly difficult to talk about without appearing salacious.
It's just impossible!
I mean, that lady was about to lay a story on us of I understand of something that happened to her.
And so I have begun to look into this.
I have a medical professional who is very much aware of this topic, long before I was who was written to me.
I'm considering putting her on the air.
I just can't tell you how big this is.
And I've also received a lot of emails from people saying, look Art, you know what the FCC is doing?
They're cracking down.
And they are.
And so I have to be very careful how I even think about presenting this topic to you.
But I also, on the other hand, can't not present it to you.
It's monstrous!
Absolutely monstrous!
There may be as much sexual content to paranormal experiences as there is with anything else.
It's that big.
And so, since we do that on this program, talk about the paranormal, we have a responsibility to do something with this, and I will.
I just... I don't know the right way to approach it exactly, particularly in the rather poisonous atmosphere right now with regard to what can and can't be done on the radio or television.
And besides that, I do have a responsibility to the larger audience out there as well.
So, I'm trying to figure out how to approach this in an appropriate, tasteful way, so that you understand the magnitude of it, because it's absolutely gigantic, folks.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
You know what I think is going on, what you just said?
What?
I think because the time that we're in, I believe that we're being attacked, because we're in the very last days, and I'm going to tell somebody that maybe they need to go see the Passion And then get a hold of the ancientmanuscript.com website.
Get information that Glenn Kimball has, and it'll change their whole life.
You could be right.
And I think that we're being attacked because Satan knows his time's about up.
You could be right.
I believe I am.
I'm from the house of David myself.
And I believe, I think this is right, because, you know, he said he was going to attack us at the very end, I mean, like he wouldn't ever before.
I mean, I can't tell you, ma'am, the number of emails is just staggering.
I know, I know.
And so it's so big that I can't not, I can't ignore it.
I know you can't, and I mean... On the other hand, I also can't I could.
I could easily get in trouble.
But I want to be very careful how I do this.
But boy, we've got to do it.
I'm telling you, it's underway.
Mass attacks are underway.
What they need to do is get on their knees to Jesus Christ Himself and ask for His protection.
That certainly would be the advice that a Christian would give.
And maybe it's the right advice.
Maybe it's the right advice.
I don't know.
All I know is, I just do a job.
I'm a talk host.
And when I see something of this magnitude that's underway, I know this has meaning.
Now, has it been going on all the time at this, with this magnitude, with this frequency?
I have no way of knowing.
Yet.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air, hello.
Hello?
Yeah, this is Joel.
Hello, Joel.
Turn your radio off, please.
Oh, yes, sir, it's on.
No, off, Joel.
Oh, off?
Alright.
Yes, off.
Okay, let me... We'll wait.
Alright, it's off.
Very good.
Now, proceed.
Okay, yeah, I was wanting to tell you about an experience I'd had with what I believe to be a Sasquatch, and I was just going to ask you what If you had heard of any other sightings or whatnot in this region.
What I've mostly heard about Sussquatch recently is that the whole thing was hoaxed.
It was all hoaxed?
Hoaxed.
Hoaxed to be fake.
Hoaxed fake.
Yeah, because what I had seen was, is I had actually spotted this track in some remote parts of Montana I had been in.
I had been trying to get a hold of you for a while to ask you about it.
Well, you've got me now, so you found tracks, and then what?
Well, then I kind of followed him as far as I could, and I had kind of noticed a figurine running into the wilderness, and I'd seen a lot of bear and whatnot before, but this was... Okay, okay.
I'm going to ask one more time for you to turn off your radio.
Yeah, it's off.
No, I still hear it.
Yeah, I'm hearing radium.
It's off.
There you go.
Okay.
Alright.
Now, so did you follow the tracks?
Yes, sir, as far as I could.
And?
What had happened is I was walking in snow, and it was probably around May, the snow was starting to melt, and I ran into a patch where there was some dryness.
But I had seen a figurine, and what I had seen was I was on the time legs running.
I couldn't, you know, I'd seen Bear many a time, but This didn't run like a bear or what not and that's why I wanted to contact you and I believe that's what it was in my mind.
You know, that's why I was wanting to contact you.
Alright, well you have.
I appreciate it.
I don't know.
I have no way of knowing.
I just know that many people recently have been copying to the fact that they've faked Sasquatch movies, that they've faked tracks and all kinds of other things.
But on the other hand, a lot of people have seen creatures.
Now these creatures In other words, both could be true.
There could be plenty of fakes out there.
We humans do that sort of thing, right?
And there could also be real creatures out there.
I mean, think about this.
If there can be feral people, and that means people who have never encountered society at all, ever, They've grown as human animals.
Mammals.
I don't know.
As it said in a story I read earlier tonight, one little boy who moved on all fours.
On all fours.
Just like an animal.
Never learned to walk.
They didn't communicate with any known language.
They just made hand signs.
So, if there can be feral humans, there certainly can be A creature that we have not yet fully identified or are aware of on this planet.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
What do we do about the feral politicians?
This is Jeff from San Bernardino.
Any comment I would make would get me in trouble.
I don't know.
So far they haven't gone too far after the people have been talking about stuff in Washington.
I wanted to let you know, I'm calling from the land of KFI to the land of things that go Pahrump in the night.
95.1 KNYESM in Pahrump, Nevada.
I did not make you do that, did I?
No, but I appreciate where you guys come from.
I wanted to ask real quickly, who came up with things that go Pahrump in the night?
You or Ramona?
It was actually something somebody sent in that we modified a little bit and I kind of It was that.
Somebody sent in some email that had something like that.
We changed it a little bit, and boom, there you are.
Well, it really worked.
I called to let you know that you were on NPR National Public Radio on the 6th of March.
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
How?
Not by name, but by movie.
That being the upcoming movie that you've got, well, that your book led to.
Yes, the day after tomorrow, premiering, I believe, May 28th.
May 28th.
Well, I'm looking forward to it.
So am I.
The program was called Living on Earth, and if I can say it was hosted by Steve Kerwood.
Sure.
They discussed abrupt climate change.
Oh.
I want to thank you for being ahead of the event horizon as you've been on so many topics and letting us know way before the general media got a hold of it, but aren't they picking up on it?
They are now, finally, yes.
And they mentioned that Peter Schwartz from the Monitor Group and Global Focus, who worked Deep Impact and Armageddon, and a few others.
He said he turned down work on The Day After Tomorrow because he said it's pure entertainment.
However, Daniel Schrag from the Harvard School of Earth and Planetary Science said that The Day After Tomorrow, he gets a kick out of using the trailer to show that it's top.
So just the trailer alone is making an impact.
Yes, well, I'll tell you what, it's making a big impact already.
In fact, there have been a number of stories Saying that it's going to have a very large political impact on Washington.
There have been a number of stories on that.
So, we'll see.
There we go with the feral politicians.
I guess that's an F word we can still use, huh?
Yeah, it is.
Howard Stern has gotten away with so much.
I think that whatever you bring up, Dr. Laura brings up things all the time on her program.
I think you're in fair territory to speak about that issue.
I believe so.
Yes, and I've got a medical professional who's prepared to discuss it, and this is gigantic.
When I say I get thousands of emails, I mean this was beyond all reason.
Thank you very much.
I'm not going to ferret out any of them and read them to you.
In many cases, they are very descriptive sexual attacks that have occurred to both men and women.
How do I translate to you the magnitude of the response that I have from last weekend?
I don't even know how to translate it to you.
What does it mean?
As a young lady said a few moments ago that these are the final days and that Lucifer is perhaps beginning to have his way.
I don't know.
Has this always been going on and it simply Came to a head with the discussion on the radio about it last week?
I don't know.
I don't have the answers to these questions.
All I can tell you is, it's monstrously big.
The sexual component to paranormal activity right now.
International Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello there.
Going once?
Yes, yes.
Is this me?
Well, only you know that for sure, but it sounds suspiciously like you, yes.
Okay.
My mother lived in Las Vegas, and her third husband left every morning at five o'clock, came home at seven, never told her what he did.
And he went missing, and three years later they found his body in the desert.
Well, going through his things, she came upon a document from one of those old type machines that had the dotted It's like one long piece of paper but they have dots on each side of it.
Yes, that would have been the old dot matrix printer paper, yes.
Right.
And on this paper, it's about 15 feet long, it talks about Majestic 12 and what they did and who they were and all kinds of different subjects and at the very bottom of it Is John Lear's name dated 1979?
He said John Lear, yes.
Yeah.
I was wondering, would you be interested in looking at this?
I think I most probably would, but please do not send any originals.
Yeah, this is an original.
Yes, I understand that.
Please don't do that.
If you can, send a copy to me.
Okay, I have your address, and it'll probably end up at George's table.
Uh-huh.
All right.
Well, very good.
Yes, send it in, but be warned, folks, all the way around.
Don't send originals, because I don't wish to be responsible for them, and there have been a number of incidents where people sent one-of-a-kind things and expected them to be returned, and, you know, you just never know about the mails, you never know about the security of anything these days, so copy me on something important, but for heaven's sakes, hold on to your original.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Hi, Bob.
You and Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen get a fiber optics line into every residence in the United States.
That'd cure the whole problem, wouldn't it?
It would take care of your original thing you talked about tonight.
You could have a true internet discussion, a subject you're not allowed to put on the radio.
you could take it, say, power beyond anything you can imagine
by allowing people to see what it will cost to start the dryer
or to take a day off and do something and so forth.
Actually, it's the key to everything. If we get fiber and that originally was the intent
I mean, if you want to deliver real bandwidth, you don't screw around with trying to put, you know, RF onto, that's radio frequency, onto the power lines, interfere with, destroy shortwave.
That is not the way to get broadband to the American people.
As a matter of fact, it won't even be that broad, to be honest with you.
Nor will it be delivered, as promised to the rule folk, right away.
Just like cable, it will go into the cities, follow the money, that's where the people are, that's where the money is, that's where it'll be deployed.
The real way to do it is, as this gentleman said, get fiber optic cable into every house in America, and that's the end of the story.
You can then deliver everything you want, there'll be enough bandwidth to literally change the entire world.
Yes, get fiber to homes.
Bye all.
Hey, Tracy, hold on.
We're not allowed to put last names on the air, so I had to bleep that out, Tracy.
Let's begin fresh.
Your first name is Tracy, and you're where?
Portland, Oregon.
I just discovered your program a couple months ago, and I really enjoy it.
Something happened to me when I was a little boy, and I just wanted to mention it because I never knew really nobody to talk to about it.
All right, well you do now, but it's got to be fast because we're almost at the end of the hour.
What happened?
We'd just recently moved into a house.
I was there about two months, and about 1.30 in the morning one night, we heard a loud boom, like a gunshot.
I was awake, and everybody in the house caught up.
We called the police and everything, and it happened again a couple weeks ago.
I mean, a couple weeks after that.
At the same time of night, too.
And then, um, we didn't know, you know, what it was.
And then, um, someone down at the little store down the road said that somebody was murdered in that house, and they had robbed someplace.
So you think you were hearing, like, an echo of that murder?
Is that what we're talking about here?
Well, I believe in, you know, strange happenings and stuff, but sounds, actual sounds like that of this gun going off, It happened three times, and my mother was really suspicious, so we moved.
And I was wondering if you heard about that.
No, I haven't heard about that.
In fact, there are some places in the United States, parts of L.A.
and other cities across America where gunshots are thought of as the norm, and they're just ignored.
Call the police?
No, most people would never call the police.
Just another gunshot.
Consider the state of society when we think that What do Mel Gibson and the coral
Oh Oh
Oh Right next to where we started from
I can't stop my heart from beating Do you remember that day, surely you did
When you first came my way I said no one could take your place
And if you get hurt, if you get hurt By the little things like these
I can put that smile back on your face When it's all right and it's coming up
We gotta get right back to where we started from Love is good, love can be strong
We gotta get right back to where we started from To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area...
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with ArcBel from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
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From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
It is, and let me see here.
What's his name?
Carl from Thompson, Maine says, I was a little confused with regard to your last caller and your connection with the new movie, The Day After Tomorrow.
Well, The Day After Tomorrow is based in part on our book, meaning Art Bell and Woodley Strieber, called The Coming Global Superstorm.
So it's based in part on that, and we're all, Whitley and I, are waiting with bated breath to see how it comes out, but it sure looks good, doesn't it?
Sort of nervously waiting to see what was done.
Alright, coming up in a moment, this is going to be fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
Peter Ward is here.
He is a professor of biology, a professor of earth and space sciences, He's an Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington at Seattle.
He's a Principal Investigator of the University of Washington Node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute that involves the leadership of over 25 scientists studying the possibility of finding life beyond Earth.
He has published more than 100 scientific papers dealing with paleontology.
I knew I was going to blow this!
Paleontological, thank you, zoological and astronomical topics.
In addition, he's published 12 books and appeared in numerous television documentaries, senior counselor of the Paleontological Society, and was awarded an affiliate professorship at the California Institute of Technology.
So, big time credentials.
His book is Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
In fact, the New York Times concluded of his book, maybe we are alone in the universe after all.
That's quite something to think about, that we would be alone in the universe, that Jodie Foster, in contact when she looked into the heavens and said it would be such a great waste if there was nothing else up there.
I mean, the entire concept is as, is it as probable?
Or even more probable than there's life everywhere, that life is common, that given the right mud puddle and lightning strike, it's going to occur all over the place?
All those billions of suns and billions more planets going around and there's not life?
It doesn't seem logical, does it?
But in a moment, Peter Ward, I think, is going to perhaps make that exact argument.
Well, I will note the title says, uh, why complex life is uncommon in the universe.
It's said uncommon, not impossible, not non-existent, but uncommon.
Nevertheless, somebody at the New York Times apparently was motivated enough from reading this to at least imagine that we might be alone.
Peter, welcome to the program.
Great to be here, Art.
Thanks.
Peter, where are you as a matter of interest?
I'm in Seattle, Washington right now, and I'm very curious about how the change of hour is going to affect this conversation.
Well, I don't think it's really going to affect us at all.
I mean, we're going to do the next three hours, and then boom, the insanity will ensue.
They will do something different.
When they play the program back, it's like some hour slips out from somewhere or something.
I don't know.
There it goes.
Peter, before we even get into this, what do you think of that?
I mean, isn't it insane that we're doing this twice a year?
Is there any rationale that makes any sense to you about why we must do this?
Well, I'm even curious why we have 12 months.
It would be much more logical, actually, to have 13 months in the year.
Our calendar system is totally screwed up, and I know it's going to mess my sleep up for the next couple of weeks.
Well, yeah.
But, I mean, do you see any reason why we should have to do this?
No, but it's one of those things imposed upon us, and you and I both know there's no way we can get out of this one.
I was actually suggesting civil disobedience.
Just spring forward and stay the hell there.
Forget about going back altogether.
Just civilly... Anyway, that'll never happen.
So yeah, I know.
I'm already setting the clocks.
I hate this.
Welcome to the program.
It's a pleasure to be back.
I was with you about two years ago now.
I'm sure we'll cover much of the same territory.
I mean, most people, certainly most of my listeners, would think that complex life actually is rather common in the universe.
And so it's interesting to even consider the opposite possibility, but I suppose one must consider it, huh?
Why did you decide to write this book?
Well, it's funny, I was talking to a good friend of mine, who is the co-author, Don Brownlee, and Don is the principal investigator of the just recently almost finished Stardust mission.
This was the NASA spacecraft which scooped up a bit of comet and is coming back to land in, I think it's a Utah desert, in about three years from now.
So if you ever wanted a real Andromeda Strain scenario, it's on its way.
Yeah, it figures it'd be right up there in Utah, close by.
So Don and I were just talking and wondering You cannot turn the TV on without seeing aliens.
I mean, it's clear that our society is so interested in believing that we are not alone.
Absolutely.
It's totally throughout the culture.
So we started asking ourselves, we come at this not as straight astronomers, but as people who study how planets should work if they have life.
The Earth is the only example we know of a life-giving planet.
And our sense was that most planets die early, and coming from geological sides of planetary geology, you really get a sense that most planets have a very narrow window where life can occur before it is snuffed out.
What kind of window, as a matter of interest?
Well, again, we're geologists, and we think in millions of years, but we think that a billion years is a very long time for a planet To be able to have liquid water on its surface.
You know, our planet's already 4.6 billion years in age.
And we now have, of course, Mars, which had apparently salty seas chomping their way across the surface of the planet not very long ago, geologically.
Well, but then that's almost a case in point, proof of our point.
Mars had an ocean, and conditions on Mars are so bad, that ocean very quickly left.
They may have had a billion years of ocean, they may have had A half billion years of ocean, but not enough.
How long have we had the ocean?
We've had 4.5 billion years of ocean.
That's a lot of ocean.
Long time.
Plenty of time for evolution to build all kinds of stuff.
So it's a time question.
And what Don and I have also done is try to figure out how soon will the end of the world be for this planet.
And I did read your book, by the way.
I enjoyed it.
Oh, well, thank you.
I also saw the script for the movie.
It was sent to me by Fox Studio to comment on it.
Oh, you're kidding!
Oh, no.
You have read the script.
I have read the script, but I had to sign my life away to say I will not give away any of the secrets.
So, oh, gee, well, let's see.
What can we pick legally from your brain?
Did you... Let's see, what can I ask you?
Did you enjoy it?
Well, I did.
Actually, it's interesting.
There's a big spread about it in popular science.
Water might take on it and a few others.
Because, again, in this book that I also wrote called The Life and Death of Planet Earth, we look at just this scenario, as you did, as a matter of fact, and try to get a sense of what a catastrophe a new ice age ought to be.
But my problem with the script, and maybe I shouldn't say this, is that it all happens too quickly.
This is like, bang, and there you are.
Yeah, it's a movie, though.
Well, that's what the producers said.
It's a movie.
It's a movie.
The producers are right.
But, you know, the producers are picking and choosing.
They're cherry-picking their science.
Well, that's producers for you.
Anyway, it was interesting.
We shall see.
Boy, what a rare find, and I can't ask you any questions without getting in trouble.
All right, fine.
Let's move on.
As I said, in contact, she looks up, what a great waste it would be.
I mean, we can see, I don't know, I don't know actually how many stars the eye can see on a good clear night, but many.
And there's billions up there, and then probably planets we now know going around those stars, and so I think it's right that the average human being look up at night and imagine there is life up there, because it seems logical.
And if not, Peter, why not?
I totally agree.
I think life is almost everywhere, and this is one of the points of our book.
We say that life isn't rare.
Microbial life is probably very easy to build, but our point is that almost no planet, very few planets, get enough time, and you need time for evolution to work, to build intelligence.
Intelligence, I think, is going to be a really rare deal.
And the other aspect we were coming at, we're trying to really refute Carl Sagan, and much of the book, although dedicated to him, is kind of a backslap, and I can say this now, Sagan had the view that if you look outside at the stars, you're going to see, inevitably, some of those stars will have intelligence.
His estimate was there were more than a million intelligent species in the Milky Way.
That means you or I looking out, you've got to see them.
This is a pretty interesting estimate, and it's based on a whole number of scientific aspects, which are much better known now than were known when Sagan made that estimate.
And if there were ten more intelligences in Milky Way, I'd be happy.
But that's 500 billion stars, Art.
So I think my sense is that we're not particularly alone, but we may be so geographically separated that, in fact, we are alone.
Okay, in the instance where complex life did arise, Peter, wouldn't it be a race?
In other words, you're saying extinction cycles occur, in fact mass extinction, and oceans come and oceans go, so once complex life has arisen, Then it would be a race for the ability to easily traverse large distances in space, and before you become extinct.
Exactly right.
And I guess you would contend that more than not, other civilizations, if they do exist, lose the race.
Most civilizations lose the race, and not many creatures, I think, make it to civilization.
We only have to look at Venus and Mars.
See what happens when planets go bad, because both of these were early in the game, easily habitable planets, Venus especially.
Quite true.
The sun was closer, or the sun was less bright when Venus and the Earth and Mars first formed.
Venus would have been the optimal place for life.
And yet, look at Venus now.
It's had what we call a runaway greenhouse.
Oh, yes.
Where it just boiled away all the water.
In fact, in the first hour, I read a story indicating that process that built upon itself may be underway right now, Peter.
Well, we certainly have problems on planet Earth.
It's getting the thermostat regulated.
You've been in an apartment, you turn it up too high, it goes too cold.
The problem with a habitable planet, if that thermostat screws up, you lose your water or you freeze.
So there's really no room for error for a planet between freezing and losing all of your heat through boiling away.
You cannot screw up, not even one time.
Yes.
Well, it doesn't look too good.
When you read the news right now about the changing weather patterns, the increasing temperatures, runaway global warming, and all the rest of it, it really doesn't look very good.
But see, on the other side of the coin, Peter, we have all these people who say, Either from a religious perspective, look, God put all of the animals and the trees and the things that crawl and live on the planet for the use of mankind, and we are supposed to go ahead and use them as we will.
There is that point of view, and then there is the conservative economic point of view, And all of these great political pressures that keep the ball rolling toward the, let's keep doing what we're doing right now until the last drop of oil, tomorrow's subject is gone, or whatever.
And so those are very powerful forces out there, Peter.
I was always curious who wrote that passage in the Bible that all the animals and plants are here for us.
As far as I know, the Bible isn't autobiographical.
Although I've seen God signed in a few bad motels, I think this is early Christian monks, probably ignorant as you can imagine, saying all this stuff.
It strikes me that we take it still so seriously when you look at the context of who wrote that and when.
It nevertheless forms a very popular current attitude.
That's shared by a certain political side of the fence that wants to keep the economic ball rolling right up until the last drop of oil, petroleum.
Yeah, well, I can see that happening.
Seattle, Washington now has $2.25 gasoline at our pumps.
I'm thinking we'll see $3 probably first in California about mid-summer if something doesn't radically change.
Well, I agree entirely.
The thing is, though, however, You've been to Europe, you know that once you go overseas, our gas is still half the price of any other Western democracy.
We have enormously subsidized gasoline in this country.
True, absolutely true.
But that's going to make the eventual change all the worse and more difficult because we perhaps have an unrealistically low when the real shortage begins to happen and the price is going to go up so drastically that our economy is going to fall to its knees.
Yeah, I expect there will be some major problems and if we compound that with Well, I think both you and I believe it's going to happen, certainly in the next 50 years of sudden and catastrophic climate change.
You're looking at a world where it's problematical for having a continuation of this very easy, wonderful culture that we live in.
So then these would be the last great years of planet Earth?
Well, the planet's going to go on.
Oh, yes.
Well, from our perspective.
I just think the last great year is a civilization as we know it.
I think we as a species, I don't think we are to be eradicated unless we have a really large asteroid coming in.
But I was finally heartened to see that the military establishment of the United States is for the first time taking sudden global climate change seriously as a military threat.
And of course it is.
Well they have to.
Well they haven't in the past.
But they're doing this, really, with an administration, a political administration, which after all is the supreme commander of the military services.
They're doing it, in effect, against their wishes.
They're moving independently along a line that is not being towed by the administration.
Interesting, huh?
Yeah, it's interesting and scary.
Let me tell you, the major criticism I had about the movie relates directly to this issue.
And my criticism was that the movie is compressed into less than a year.
I mean, the time frame is very short.
Yes.
And in a way, this makes that particular problem that's foreseen in the movie much easier to solve.
There's a very wonderful scientist named Bill Calvin who did a paper, or actually an article, Atlantic Monthly, about three or four years ago, called The Great Climate Flip-Flop, in which he looked at the same scenario that the movie posits.
We get a change in these thermal-haline salt currents.
Yes.
And hence, we've produced a sudden global warming, or in this particular case in the movie, a sudden cooling.
Freezing, yeah.
And the thing about that particular type of climate change is that, from looking at ice core records from Antarctica and Greenland, we know that that has happened in the past, but at a minimum of 10, and more usually 20, and sometimes 50 years.
And the point I made to Popular Science is that a ten-year event is far more dangerous and difficult to solve than a one-year event.
A one-year event is like an earthquake.
The earthquake shatters a city, people come to the aid, everything's back hunky-dory, and you fix it.
No matter how bad the earthquake, within a year or two, you're fixing it.
Right.
When you have a long-term climate, a ten-year climate change, Not 100 years of climate change.
That's pretty easy to deal with, too.
That's slow enough.
10 years is just fast enough to really ruin your civilization, yet so slow that there's no way that you can fix it with sudden aid from many different sources.
Do you think that you could describe to this audience what a 10-year change would be like for everybody in the United States and then for the rest of the world as well?
I mean, do you think you could kind of put together what might be a realistic scenario based on a 10-year flip-flop?
Sure, I think the thing we have to deal with is what keeps us going and what I had tonight was the most wonderful dinner And in that dinner I had noodles, we had beef stroganoff, I had friends over, we had salad, we had stuff that came from California, stuff that comes from the Midwest, things that grow because farmers have an enormous predictability.
It's April in Seattle, I'm just starting to set out the first of my little vegetable gardens.
Alright, listen, we're here at the bottom of the hour, so during this, consider that please, Peter.
A sort of an overview of what the United States could expect, what changes would happen to us and then to the rest of the world as well.
Peter Ward is my guest.
I'm Art Bell.
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Art Bell.
None of this was planned.
You know what?
None of it.
It totally blew me away when he said it.
I mean, The Coming Global Superstorm, yes, is the book that the new movie, The Day After
tomorrow is based on.
And here I walk into a guest who's read the script to The Day After Mom.
I haven't read the script.
They never sent it to me.
I don't think they dare.
I've got a guest who's read the script.
unbelievable i mean what are the odds
Almost a million to one have to be a million to one.
Even the critics of the concept of fast climate change, rapid climate change, are beginning to yield to the inevitable fact that it's happening right now, actually.
We're having one Weird, bizarre weather story after another.
The inexplicable continues to happen.
You know, hurricanes forming where they've not formed previously.
Bizarre weather all over the place.
Real changes.
You were telling me about your garden, and I hope you kind of lay out a 10-year kind of thing.
In other words, what do you think, Peter, we can expect if we get this 10-year flip?
The garden analogy is simply that we have to have predictable agriculture.
Yes.
ten-year flip will be a gradual failure of crops. One by one by one, where you start
losing the predictability of crop yield. And that is the disaster, because it is food that
drives the world around. And when we lose predictability of agriculture, we are back
to ten thousand years ago.
Alright, having said that, imagine this ten-year flip, and so what do you see happening in
the United States?
Let us begin here at home.
Well, just as we were discussing that, interestingly enough, I have the TV on, too, and CNN has just reported that the President's science advisor denies that the science policy of the White House is driven by a conservative agenda, including studies of climate change.
It is the perfect storm because I think people are now just waking up to the fact that we do have a big problem with climate change.
I wonder if this comes from the same people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Well, that's out of my purview.
I simply look at the earth.
I'm a specialist of past mass extinctions.
I have studied and seen episodes in the past when Over half the species of the planet die out.
And we now have identified about ten episodes caused directly by global warming.
Ten years ago, we thought every bit of mass extinction was caused by asteroids from space.
And indeed, the dinosaurs died out that way.
But all the rest, the dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 billion years ago, was a unique case.
We have had, however, numerous times when much of the species of the planet die out through global warming.
Global cooling is also a big one.
It is sudden climate change that is the most dangerous aspect of living on planet Earth.
There has to be a reason why all of a sudden so much of science is beginning to embrace this as not only possible but probably inevitable and possibly even occurring right now.
That we're actually in it, the beginnings of it, right now.
Well, there's two good sources of evidence.
As you know, for the last, oh, ten years at least, scientists have been going to the great ice sheets.
There's one in Antarctica, there's one in Greenland, and the ice, piled layer upon layer, preserves excellent records of the ancient climate.
All you need to do is core it, you take a big drill, you take the cores back in a cold lab, you analyze them for the nature of the isotopes of oxygen, and you can get ancient temperatures.
Now we've been realizing over the last five years that the rather sudden shifts happen very quickly because you need two things.
You need to know what the temperature change was and how long it took.
So you need to do a radiocarbon date on it as well as understanding the magnitude of the temperature change.
And it's very clear that the Earth's climate, at least since the ice ages began, has been flipping back and forth and back and forth.
We have been in a 10,000 year period of calm.
It is very atypical of the last two million.
And that 10,000 year column is about to end.
And when it does, what will happen?
I mean, I want to know the simple stuff, like how this will affect my daily life.
Whether I'm going to live through this, or whether it's going to kill me.
And if I live through it, what changes can I expect in my life?
You know, the basic stuff here.
The scariest scenario is Not so much America's climate change, and because it will, but we're a very large continent, quite well insulated.
The biggest problem is Europe.
Europe has about 500 million very cranky people.
Happily for us and the rest of the world, Europe totally feeds itself.
It is self-sufficient in food because European agriculture is fabulous.
But if you look at the latitude of Europe, you have to realize that all those beautiful wine-growing areas in France and Italy ...are really at the same latitude as parts of southern Canada.
Southern Canada doesn't grow wine grapes, because it has a very cold winter climate.
Roughly as Labrador, I believe.
Yeah, and Europe is anomalously warm because of these thermohaline circulation patterns.
These are these big ocean currents that keep Europe warm.
If these currents are perturbed, Europe gets the temperature it should have, which is cold.
So over a 10-year period then, you have 500 million Europeans who are no longer self-sufficient in food, and yet have an industrial civilization and an armament ability, and armies, sufficient to conquer areas that do make food.
And that, I think, is the inevitable consequence of climate change.
War.
The inevitable consequence, you're saying, is war.
I think so.
I think for Europe, the best place to grab would be Tunisia.
So in other words, you're saying that a nation faced with possibly even simply being erased, I mean being destroyed, prior to allowing itself to be destroyed under those conditions would absolutely go and grab the land where they could grow food, and they would do so through war.
That's my guess.
For a while they'll buy it, but then Sooner or later, food will be the most valuable commodity on the planet, and fresh water, those two, become the new gold.
So there's where you have the problem.
Yeah, that's a problem, all right.
And you think they would take... I'm sorry, you said...
My guess is that certainly armed conflict would arise.
Yes, you mentioned a specific country you thought would go first.
Well, one of the places you'd want to get would be Tunisia.
Tunisia used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
Northern Tunisia has some fabulous grain-growing areas.
It's semi-desert in the southern half, but as the climate cools, it cools just enough to be fabulous for grain.
It was the granary, again, of the Roman Empire for a thousand years, and that part of Africa Once Europe cools, Northern Africa gets wet again and becomes a fabulous grain-growing area.
And that is a very likely militarized, easily grabbed place.
The Crimea in Russia would be another grain-growing area, but the Russians have enough armament to take care of themselves.
The Europeans, they have to figure out where can we go.
This is a political question, but I was actually wondering about the same thing, and I was suggesting the very same outcome.
I really was.
I mentioned the probability under those conditions of war, and gosh, Peter, I just don't know what to say.
I mean, that could be the end of the world in the next decade, should that occur.
That's virtually the end of the world, because I don't think there are any small wars.
Well, maybe there are, but it seems like almost any war that would be for just taking land or taking something on the part of Europe would lead to something much wider and perhaps dangerous on a global scale.
Well, you've certainly got problems.
If I were we, I would certainly be making nice with the Canadians.
Because, again, if we certainly have an episode of global warming, southern Canada becomes the grain area of choice, whereas much of the grain area now in the United States is too hot.
So it would naturally move north.
Well, our Canadian friends, I'm sure, are ready to grow grain for us.
Right up there?
They're willing to sell us grain, I suspect.
We share a culture.
The Canadians and the United States, I think, are a very well-bound society, and I think the conflict doesn't arise from North America.
It wouldn't seem so.
I mean, we're the green belt now, and the grain is shipped quite readily to Canada.
I would imagine the reverse certainly could occur without war, but as you mentioned, Europe would be a very dire situation.
Dire indeed.
When I thought of the same scenario, I considered perhaps Northern Africa.
But that might even be hotter, actually, so I guess that wouldn't work.
They'd have to go north, wouldn't they?
Well, it depends.
Again... Or no, they could go south, actually.
They could go south.
Yeah, they could go south.
Especially, again, the funny thing about global warming is global warming could make Europe colder.
Yeah.
And that's the paradox.
Yeah, so they could actually then consider parts of Africa.
That's what I would do, geopolitically.
There are many ways, of course, in which it can end for Earth, and one is asteroids.
I mean, you can't Leave them out.
They did, we think, take out the dinosaurs.
So what are the odds?
Well, actually, they're pretty good.
But you asked me earlier in the conversation why I had the temerity to write a book that would suggest that complex life is fairly rare.
And part of that is based on studies that we've done and other colleagues.
We examine the galaxy as a whole and we ask the question, are there better and worse neighborhoods in the galaxy?
And one of these relates to asteroid impact.
It turns out that there are regions of the galaxy where you would have a lower asteroid impact, and regions where you'd have a much higher impact.
The farther away from the center you are, the safer you are.
Well, we're quite a ways out there.
That's right.
And that's why the Earth, I think, in the last 500 million years, has had but one single large, calamitous impact event.
And that's the one that killed the dinosaurs.
One time in 500 million years is pretty good.
Now, if you're a star sitting in the center of the galaxy, You have so many stars very close to you that you have this enormous close packing.
It affects your Oort cloud.
The Oort cloud is where the comets are kept.
All star systems have them.
Once you have other stars dragging your comets, it starts pushing comets into other stars.
You have a much higher asteroid impact rate.
And the second aspect, the centers of galaxies are dangerous because of enormous energetic explosions.
There's gamma ray bursts and supernovas.
We really posited that the center of the galaxy is a terrible place for complex life.
We have seen some rather large gamma-ray bursts, some that really have shocked the scientists, and that's yet another way the Earth could be virtually scorched of all life, isn't it?
In other words, a strong enough one, and life would cease?
Oh, sure.
These gamma-ray bursts are directed, and we can imagine them wiping out thousands of planets.
Just eliminating life from thousands of planets in their way.
But the good news is, the majority of gamma-ray bursts and the directionality are from the center of the galaxy.
We are a long way.
We are in the galactic outposts.
And again, that's a very favorable place.
I've had this argument with SETI.
You know, you talked about Contact in the movie, and they've got the beautiful Jodie Foster.
It turns out that Ellie, the heroine of that movie, is a real person.
I know, I've talked to her.
Jill Tarter.
I've talked to her.
And Jill Tarter is... As a matter of fact, I interviewed her while she was down at Arecibo.
It was probably a nice interview.
It was.
Jill Tarter would like to see me killed by a Sherman tank.
Would she?
I'm the most dangerous threat to SETI because of our book.
Yes.
They don't like the news that there may not be intelligent life everywhere.
I would rather imagine they don't.
You need to get your big donors, like Paul Allen, all excited about all the aliens out there.
And if you can get a scientific sense that that may not be the case, why would people give them money?
So I was with she and Paul Allen.
I gave Paul a copy of my book, Rare Earth, and it was kind of like out of The Exorcist.
She looked at me like, it burns!
It was a very funny moment.
Well, it was funny for me, it wasn't funny for her.
Paul was bemused.
So did you get into a lively discussion with her at all?
Well, she sent her attack dogs out, and I've had four or five formal debates now with the SETI people.
Seth Shostak is the designated debater, and he and I have done it around the country several times, and it is tooth and claw.
The first couple times were personal, but we both have improved our debating skills.
Neither of us believes the other, but nevertheless, I really think that we're probably correct, and deep in his heart, I think he cannot refute my arguments.
Well, only because, as we all know, Seth, I've also interviewed many, many times, and he actually is extremely optimistic that they will find life.
However, he's also faced with the indisputable fact that they have surveyed a great deal of the sky already, and so far, other than a few moments of regrettable excitement because it didn't come true, they haven't found a damn thing.
Enrico Fermi, where are they?
Well, that's exactly the case, and sooner or later, you said he has this sort of, they're in a tough bind.
They have to say, we're really optimistic we'll find things.
On the other hand, they have gotten money, they are looking, they haven't found anything.
Sooner or later, they have to come to the truthful point, well look, there's now a lesser chance of us finding anything than there was five years ago, because we've looked here, here, here, and here.
Yes.
Do you think they're close to that, or do you think that the need for continued funding to keep the program going will prevent that, or has that moment really already occurred?
I mean, where are we with that?
Well, interestingly, Seth gave a public lecture that I was at, and he has now stated for the first time that if they don't find some contact, I think he said by about 2050, Then the odds of their finding a contact are going to lessen dramatically.
So what they're saying is, give us another 50 years of your money and we'll give you a better sense of whether or whether not.
So that I thought was interesting.
That was the first time that I've heard any of the SETI people publicly admit that, yes, there is a limit to our searching.
Well, these people work with numbers, right?
And they know what they've surveyed so far and what they've got left to survey.
So, 50 years, huh?
50 years.
Now, in SETI's defense, I shouldn't bash them.
They do a tremendous amount of good.
Well, no, you should definitely not bash them.
You perhaps might question the viability of what they're doing, but bash them, no.
So, for instance, an awful lot of the really good astrobiology that's being taken place is by SETI scientists, but it just underscores the fact that they need a lot of money.
They have a huge overhead because they have so many people on staff.
Hmm.
Too much staff, in your opinion?
No, again, I think there's some fabulous scientists.
Chris Chiba, who is the chief scientist there, is really one of the more brilliant humans on the planet.
And a lot of the stuff that they're doing... Then, I mean, do you argue that what they're doing is essentially useless?
My point is, and this is a point that a lot of probably my colleagues would disagree with, my point is I think the Earth is going into such a dangerous moment in its history... That it's moot?
I think it's moot.
I think we should put it off for a century or two.
It's not that the aliens are going to go away, and if we get through this, fine.
I mean, stay a hundred years from now or fifty years from now, let's start doing the search again.
But at the moment, my sense is I'd rather save endangered species and worry about climate and try to keep our house in order.
In other words, you think it's so pressing that we should live to search another day?
Well, that would be my brothers if I were in charge, but I'm not in charge of much, so there you are.
Well, suppose you were in charge of everything, and you were a dictator, and based on the scientific knowledge you now have, you could dictate what would begin to happen right now.
What would you order?
Well, the first thing I would do, I think, one of the most dangerous things that we're doing, is I would demand that Detroit start building hybrids.
I mean, it's just a tragedy, I think, that the only two reasonable hybrid cars to be bought in America One comes from Toyota, and one comes from Honda.
Now, you can't tell me that Detroit can't equally build a hybrid car.
The amount of carbon dioxide and emissions coming out of every one of our automobiles is part of the crisis.
Detroit, though, has a problem.
They're a business, and they have to provide what people want.
And what people want right now are great big, you know, sort of civilian tanks They are, but I think that... And then, you know, they're a business.
They have to give people what they want, don't they?
That will change with $5 a gallon gasoline.
And once we start getting disruptions in climate, we are certainly going to find that transportation systems, fuel, everything is going to be on a whole new world.
And if I were in charge, I would certainly start mobilizing for a lower oil economy than we have in the present day.
So if you have an SUV now, hold on to it, because Who knows, it could be worth a lot of money as an antique, or maybe if you want an SUV, just hang on for a little while longer because they're going to suddenly get real cheap, Peter?
You think so?
That would be my fence.
Hold on, we're at the top of the hour.
Peter Ward is my guest.
His book is Rare Earth.
Why complex life is uncommon in the universe.
And he's in quite a row with the SETI people.
Well, this should be interesting, shouldn't it?
I'm Art Bell, and in the nighttime, this is Coast to Coast AM.
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That's who we are and it occurred to me that maybe Seth Shostak is out there right now listening and would like to get a word in.
Well, Seth, If you would like to get a word in here, I think that could be arranged.
All you'd need to do is get a hold of the network.
You know how to do that, I think.
Or, failing that, email me at artbell at mindspring.com with a phone number, and that sure would be interesting, wouldn't it?
Get Seth on here, since they've debated before.
That would be fun.
So Seth, if you're out there listening, artbell, a-r-t-b-e-l-l, lowercase, at mindspring.com.
Since we're touching on SETI, Peter, Peter Ward is my guest.
Rarer is his book, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, he's tangled with Seth Shostak a few times, and while we're talking for a second about SETI, I've always sort of tangled with Seth over whether SETI would immediately release the information, or whether there's actually a Oh, I don't know.
A behind-the-scenes protocol that would, if they actually found life, that would take precedence and it would remain secret for I don't know how long a period of time, but we wouldn't get the information right away.
We've always gone round and round on that.
What do you think?
Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
I found out that there is something called a Planetary Protection Officer.
What?
Relate right to that.
It turns out that NASA has someone on staff who is the planetary protection officer for planet Earth.
And this is no joke.
I mean, this guy's making civil servant wages.
The aspects that are most interesting, I touched earlier that my friend Don Brownlee has comet stuff coming back to Earth.
Well, when we start doing sample return missions from Mars, you know, we are going to be bringing back alien samples to Earth as well.
I'm just wondering if a first signal Well, of course.
Of course.
I mean, let's face it, you know, if the aliens know that we're here, although we've seen
enough bad science fiction movies, all of this, there is a potential for danger as well.
Well, of course.
Of course.
And by the way, while you're on the subject of the comet and contamination, I read a fascinating
story the other day that suggested, short of the two rovers that we just sent to Mars,
everything preceding them was not sterilized before it was sent to Mars.
So, there's a lot of scientists now saying, you know, we're gonna find life on Mars alright, and guess what?
It's gonna be ours!
Well, you're exactly right about that.
And believe me, a whole lot of people are very, very, very worried about that.
And here's an analogous case.
Because the Bush administration wants to go to Mars, and because there's going to be a lunar aspect to it, I was sent to Houston last week Along with, I guess, 10 or 15 other scientists to try to put together, on short notice, a scientific rationale for going back to the moon.
What would be a reasonable and valid scientific sort of impetus to, if we're going to go there anyway, and the military's going to run it, couldn't we get in some science on the side?
And it turns out one of the more really interesting projects that could be done on the moon is finding fossils.
And you say, ah, fossils on the moon, that's nonsense.
Well, not necessarily.
There are those who believe that the Moon was carved from the Earth.
Indeed, and you're very close, because we think early in Earth history there was a heavy bombardment.
There may be more pristine early Earth rock on the Moon than on the Earth, because all the old rocks on the Earth have been affected by metamorphism and volcanism.
But that pristine early Earth rock has been blasted into space, and we've done calculations showing that actually quite a bit has landed on the Moon.
We may have a better insight into how life first formed on Earth by going to the moon than by studying it on the Earth.
It just shows that microbes and rocks and material can go from planet to planet.
The old concept of panspermia, the idea that life, Fred Hoyle, that life originated elsewhere and was seeded here.
But doesn't that argue over on the other side of your argument?
I mean, doesn't that really argue that life would tend to be common?
Well, that's not uncommon.
This is where our book is totally misinterpreted.
You want to maintain complex life.
We have proposed two things.
We call it the Rare Earth Hypothesis, and it's even entered scientific lore as such.
One, life should be almost everywhere.
We think life is easy to form.
If you have liquid water, if you have temperature that isn't too high, too cold, you're probably going to get life.
Mars had it.
Venus had it.
Or, it's sent from place to place.
But you've got to have a nice nest for a long period of time if you want to get beyond a bacterium.
To a paramecium, which is pretty complex.
What you're saying makes sense.
I understand.
In other words, you've got to have an appropriate, long-lasting environment, which we do appear to have, and you point out we're out here on the edge, where we're unlikely to be struck, at least for a good period of time.
So we have this little garden earth, and you're just saying it's not very common.
Well, there's something even more important than even being on the edge.
And this is where the geologists and geology, I think the greatest contribution that we
have made to this whole concept of how many life forms are out there, comes from the insight
that not only do you have to have a planet in a safe part of the galaxy, you have to
have a planet with plate tectonics or continental drift.
And this was totally unforeseen.
Turns out that the same process that caused our continents to slide around is the global
thermostat.
Maybe we better define what you mean by complex life, because now you're getting down to the
tectonic plates being important for our existence.
Anyway, perhaps they are, but I can imagine other forms of complex life that might not necessarily follow our format very closely.
That's another great question that we should actually think about.
Let's define complex life as... Remember the flatworm you had in school, Planaria?
I'll go even that simple.
And if you get as complex as a flatworm or a garden worm, that's really a complex life.
Okay.
And so you're suggesting even that is... Even that.
We don't even have to go to intelligence or mammals or anything like it.
Let's just go to anything that has multi-cellularity where the cells all have to work together.
Alright.
That's complex life to me.
So we think that's almost non-existent in the galaxy and the universe as a whole.
That's a very difficult concept to embrace.
But on the other hand, as you explain it, maybe not.
Well, let's just get one quick look like plate tectonics.
I mean, what the hell does plate tectonics have to do with anything?
It was found out that is our thermostat.
It turns out that we have carbon dioxide, as we all know.
That is the problem with global warming and greenhouse gases.
Any planet that has too much carbon dioxide becomes Venus.
So how do you get it out of an atmosphere?
It's always being pumped in there by your volcanoes.
So there's a constant stream of it.
If you don't have a system to scrub it out of your atmosphere, you're dead in a short period of time, which is what happened to Venus.
Venus did not have plate tectonics.
Every time we have a mountain go up, we get granite being formed.
And once you expose granite to air, The silicate minerals, as they weather, take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as part of the weathering product.
This little, simple concept totally escaped the astronomers, and this was the contribution that was made by geology and in Rare Earth for the first time.
We suggested this was why Earth has maintained its extremely long, stable temperature, building on the work of Jim Casting and others at Penn State, who discovered this originally.
So, it just seems so simple, and yet, if you don't find plate tectonics, and we already know one place in the solar system that has it, Earth.
Mars had it and it stopped.
Venus had it and it stopped.
As soon as they lost it, they lost any ability to have life.
Peter, let's assume all of this is correct and the cycle is about to occur.
Have we, to this moment, sufficiently evolved technologically I think so.
be able to survive, by and large, the population survive and make it through this?
Would that be a yes or a no?
I think so.
I don't think we'll survive happily, but I think we'll survive.
Okay.
Well, that's at least a fairly cheery thought in the middle of all this, that we will survive,
but you say it'll be a, perhaps, miserable existence.
Not so bad as in a nuclear war where you wish you were dead.
Not quite that bad?
No, I think we'll certainly see population crashes.
I think the history of the next thousand years is going to be one or more enormous sort of corrections to the human population on planet Earth.
And none of that will be very happy.
We really, I think, are going to see famine.
Or, simply, if we get these 10-year global changes in climate, I could see a case where a billion people die.
We're really looking at a major correction on the planet.
Maybe we can do it as in the case of sort of outsourcing.
You retire a lot of them before you send the rest of them away.
But my worry is that we just as a civilization are not yet ready to deal with, again, this 10-year event.
Well, it's rare that I get a guest who can do more doom and gloom than I can.
You're really doing pretty well here.
All right, let me try this for an optimistic point of view.
The United States, and I think you said this earlier, probably is uniquely positioned to make it through with less pain than most of the rest of the world.
Wouldn't that be true?
I think so.
Good.
That's sort of good.
But even the U.S.
We'll be strained, won't we?
Economically strained from a perhaps even food and a fuel point of view.
Yeah, the worst case scenario as you know, Art, I guess I'm just preaching and converted here because you know all this stuff, but the worst case scenario is with global warming you get a rise in sea level.
Now it isn't going to be bad like the movies where you have this gigantic sort of tidal wave aspect coming in.
But the rise in sea level injects salt into deltas and near shore, very productive farmlands.
It turns out that a huge percentage of the world's crops come from deltas right now.
The Mississippi Delta, the Nile Delta, the Bama Pruta, it goes on and on.
These are flat, very, very rich soils, almost at sea level.
If you rise or create a rise in sea level of even a meter or so, You inject salt water into the groundwater systems in these places, and you lose crops.
It is the loss of the Delta that is going to be as catastrophic as almost anything.
And this is where the U.S.
will really suffer, because we do have lowland areas.
The whole Mississippi area, the Gulf Coast, there's an awful lot of productive farmland which has become non-productive.
and personally the most productive place on the United States of all
is the Sacramento and the Imperial and the San Joaquin Valleys and we know that because the sea level is going to change
the Sacramento Delta region, it injects salt into the San Joaquin
and once you do that all these beautiful winter vegetables we get
and the San Joaquin is definitely as productive as any place on this planet
for groceries. Then we've got trouble.
That's quite a change all right and that would certainly eclipse in terms of a challenge for mankind in the most
immediate future anything else we're thinking of including terrorism and
I don't know whatever other threats might be looming even the remote asteroid possible all the
rest of it is dwarfed by this if it's underway
That's my sense of it.
The next book I want to write is called The Defense of Civilization, simply asking, what is civilization?
What are its threats?
And what are the actual mechanisms by which it can be destroyed?
So you have now come to believe that this is the most likely and that it's imminent?
I mean, are you that far down the road?
Well, the only way it's not imminent is if we can really begin controlling climate in a fashion that we don't do yet.
And one of the really scary aspects about... You don't know anything about that, by the way, do you?
In other words, whether there are any current climate control efforts underway.
Have you heard any big rumors, even?
Well, we certainly walked out of the Kyoto.
Now, Kyoto itself was flawed, but nevertheless one of the biggest single polluter of greenhouse gases.
No, I didn't mean that kind of climate control.
Oh, I see.
Engineering climate control.
Yes.
No, it's going to have to be done country by country by trading emissions.
I mean, this is the whole name of the game.
But we have this huge new middle class in both China and India.
I think this is something that we Americans just don't quite understand.
Is that China and India are in the same position that the U.S.
was in 1950, 1955, with this huge emerging middle class, based on many cases, either jobs we've sent, in the case of India, or the products that are produced in the Shanghai region in China.
So you've got a middle class, middle class wants cars, and they want refrigerators, and they want metal things.
To do that industrially, you've got to increase your energy, which is either oil, or in the case of China, it's coal.
So what we're looking at is even with the best efforts of Western Europe and America, and we're not doing our best efforts, the Chinese and the Indians, in a large sense, hold the key to the planet's climatic future.
I'm laughing because I've said these exact Things that the rest of the world is going to want what we have now grown used to, you know, the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed is going to be wanted by the rest of the world and very quickly now.
In fact, it's very well underway and they're going to be doing all of the submitting as well.
And so the problem is going to be compounded many times.
I've heard I've just said all of this myself.
And so it's like hearing an echo Coming from you, Peter, it seems absolutely true to me.
And I see absolutely no real-world way to reverse it.
You can talk about it, but it's not going to happen.
Do you have any thoughts?
No, I agree with you.
I think, unfortunately, we are so threatened by different cultures, and because of the political realities that we hire politicians for four years, and there's no politician on the planet With the current mandates, they can think about a 10-year event because they're not in office long enough.
That's what makes it really, really difficult.
The cultural and also just the political systems that have evolved by humankind.
What about some other nations that don't have that four-year problem?
Are they looking at this in a very different way?
Well, probably so, but again, the players in this business are those with industry.
I think that in Russia, for instance, Putin is president for life.
I don't see him ever giving up that power.
So there you have someone with a longer term view, but unfortunately he's got such huge problems.
I mean, they teeter on going from a European country to really a backwater third world nation.
I've been to Russia several times.
I've just been struck by, boy, you know, my whole life as a child, I'm from the fifties, I was scared, scared of Russia and all the Cold War, and when I finally saw the industrial sort of ineptitude of the place, it just was both funny and really, really sad.
I still think that Southeast Asia is one of the big players, but boy, I think India and China are the name of the game for understanding the next century of climate change.
So, we will make it through this.
Do you think that out on the other side of all of this pain, that almost seems inevitable, there will come this great, wonderful, technological society where man has benefited himself and perhaps lives now a longer life, has extended his life through genetic manipulation or whatever?
A little more cynical than that.
I wrote another book, actually, since the last time we talked.
It's called The Future of Evolution, in which I try to just posit what future evolutionary creatures of the planet may look like.
Really?
Yes.
It's a picture book.
Alexis Rockman, the great New York artist who was the illustrator, has done through time his books.
And in it, you know, I've been contacted by many movie makers over and over and over, and once they've found out what my sense of it is, they just hang up, because it's not a very sexy view.
I don't think humans will change in an evolutionary sense.
I do think the one chance at producing a new human species is genetically engineering into the germline the ability to live to 150 years old.
So let's imagine that we have a 150 year person and that person can say because they lived to 150 they can have children for 100 years of it.
All of a sudden the social structure is radically different.
Oh yes!
And the other major thing is that once you live to 150 Your ability to make money radically changes as well.
You can make 50-year investments at high yields, and you become rich, unless you're a really, really bad investor.
Someone living 150 years and having, say, 50 kids is going to be a radically different human than the rest of us.
So you think we will do that sort of thing?
Oh, I'm sure we'll do it.
But the point is that not everybody will get to do it.
I think the reality of the human civilization and human species is that there will always Be a few haves and many, many more have-nots.
And this will certainly go for biotech, too.
I mean, we're already seeing it.
Who gets plastic surgery?
Who gets the elective, very expensive genetic aspect?
It is certainly not the whole world.
It's a very tiny percentage.
Keep out of the money.
That'll increase, but not for everybody.
Hold it right there.
Peter Ward, my guest.
Rare Earth.
Why complex life is uncommon in the universe?
Perhaps not even any more complex than your standard Earthworm.
That qualifies as complex.
So we are rare!
we'll be right back I'm a street
Then they sent me away Teach me how to be sensible
Logical Oh, responsible, practical
Then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable Oh, came it gone, oh, it didn't get too old, same it goes
There are times when all the world is steel When questions run too deep
Oh But please, please tell me what's wrong.
So much But please, please tell me what's the problem
I know it sounds absurd But please tell me who I am
Say, what would you say I'd be calling you a radical
A liberal A fanatical criminal
So won't you sign up for me We'd like to be your acceptable
Respectable Oh, resentable
I bet you won't Take, take, take it
Wanna take a ride?
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that's a lot of fun laura in hells canyon washington there's a name for it hills canyon
says art Yes.
When Planets Go Bad would be a great title for a book or a movie.
You want to write it, or should I?
When Planets Go Bad.
but that's what we're talking about well here's something interesting
Peter mentions specifically, as he did a little while ago, the scenario of the Andromeda Strain connected with the cometary material that we're going to bring back to Earth, and we are doing that.
I'm curious, though, Peter, why would you reference the possibility of an Andromeda Strain type of horrible whatever with respect to bringing back cometary material?
I mean, after all, things are smashing into the Earth all the time, perhaps with All sorts of seeds, or would you postulate that, you know, they're virtually sterilized as they enter the atmosphere and therefore bringing back something unmolested from a comet might be a really poor idea?
Is that the scheme here or what?
Well, that's the word about stardust.
The cometary material coming back is coming from, as you say, a pretty sterile environment.
Although there are a small few who do believe that you could get the formation of certainly complex organic molecules in comets.
We know that There are amino acids in space, and so one could see where some of these do link together.
But when we bring stuff back from Mars, I think we have to be really pretty careful about it.
And there's a terrible, as you said already, two-edged sword to this.
Let's say we find, on the sample returns from Mars that are coming back in 2011 or so, that we find microbial life.
Now, is it Mars life?
Or is it Earth life that got there and then got to Mars through our space probes?
And really, one of the great bombshell discoveries of recent times, in a way, may have been made yesterday, Art.
I don't know if you saw the methane on Mars story?
No, yes.
Well, methane, as you know, comes commonly from volcanoes, even though we can't find any active volcanism on Mars.
But it comes much more commonly from methanogen bacteria.
And boy, I'll tell you that this has really heated up the life on Mars question.
A little pun there?
Well, too late for me.
I didn't see a comment.
Yes, methane.
Sure, a byproduct of living organisms and volcanoes.
No volcanoes.
It really does look like there might be life there.
It doesn't seem like though.
To be honest with you, Peter, that whatever life we might have put there with our earlier probes could have evolved quickly enough to be producing methane at those levels.
Does it to you?
Well, Viking got theirs in, what, 76?
They had two Viking probes themselves.
What if we have subterranean water and it's just a bacterium after all?
You could get bacteria grow pretty darn fast.
Not totally far-fetched.
Well, this argument will never end then, will it?
Well, that's the scary thing.
Let's say we get the microbes, and they have DNA just like ours.
There's two possibilities.
Either DNA independently evolved there, or it's a cross-contaminant.
How would you know?
Well, you wouldn't.
But I wouldn't.
Except, again, to say, to evolve to be sufficiently A progress to produce that kind of methane would seem unlikely in that period of time.
Well, this is what, they got their 76 in 25 years.
Right.
Even a couple bacteria, given the correct conditions, can easily, in 25 years, produce sufficient populations that you could easily do it.
I think methanogens, archaeans, are just the type of bacteria that we could expect to make it across from a spaceship.
Crash on the... we had two enormous landers with all the others going down.
It is not impossible.
And at this stage, the best solution to the whole business, if we find life in it, is non-DNA life.
And we said, aha!
I mean, this has independently arisen on Mars, but the scary scenario for the NASA people, of which I am one, is that it will be DNA life, and then we can never quite say that we didn't put it there.
How heavily is this being debated, and how much of a crashing possibility was it for NASA to realize that, oops, all the stuff we sent in the beginning wasn't sterilized.
Darn!
Look what that means.
I mean, this must be a big one for them.
Well, it's a big one for them, and there's a lot of really bright, good people who are debating these things.
I'm not Peripherally employed by NASA, but I get a very large grant from them, and so I've gotten to know them over the last five years.
The scientific wings of that agency are really first class.
And by the way, why do you get a grant from NASA?
What do you do to engender a grant?
The NASA Astrobiology Institute is made up of 15 consortia.
Generally they're universities, but not always.
For instance, there was one node at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
There's one node at Johnson Space Center, there's a node at Ames in San Jose.
It's a competitive grant system where 10 or 15 professors at each of these places put forward a proposal that would further the field of astrobiology.
And what was yours?
Ours was pretty much the same conversation and the same outline as Rare Earth.
We at the University are looking for the factors that would allow complex life to arise and what are the Biotic systems of a planet that would keep them alive.
What is it about planets?
This is very interesting.
Have you had any feedback from NASA with regard to what you've said to them?
I mean, you're really... It's kind of like talking to Seth in a way.
After all, NASA Has every hope that something will develop out there.
I presume that's the purpose of NASA.
We're going to space to see what's out there.
And one of the things would be life.
So they'd be over on the positive side of life.
NASA would be, or wanting to find it, certainly.
So how do they take what you tell them?
Well, NASA is certainly in the let's go find life business.
But they're also in the more physical aspects.
One of the specialties that we bring them from the University of Washington and the team that I put together is looking at past planetary catastrophes.
Again, we look at the past mass extinctions and ask, could these be a commonality in other worlds?
What is it about the Earth that caused these great periods of mass death?
And what might we expect on other planets to be the fate of life should we find it elsewhere?
Again, this idea that there are various areas in the galaxy that are better and worse for life is a very, very productive way to go.
Peter?
Peter, if we could travel in space much better than the speed of light and we could go visit right now.
Many worlds with, I don't know, the probability of life based on water and all the things that we're familiar with.
And we could zoom around and visit these planets.
Would it be your view that what we would find is a bunch of, perhaps, signs of ancient civilizations that have self-immolated or been destroyed one way or the other?
That's my guess.
That if we could go to the 100 nearest stars, and we now know that virtually every star has planets.
Yes.
This is much more optimistic than Sagan said.
Certainly.
So let's go to the 100 nearest stars and go star system by star system by star system.
The vast majority of them are not going to have Earth-like planets that are habitable.
They may have had Earth-like planets, but we now know that the vast majority of systems we've seen have Jupiters, hot Jupiters, That are present in the highly elliptical orbits.
So we're going to find a lot of dead planets?
Well, you're going to find a lot of Jupiters, and where the Earth-like planets used to be, they're no longer there.
They've been either sent into the Sun or ejected.
When we find Earth-like planets, I think we're going to find an awful lot of planets like Mars or like Venus.
Earth-like planets, planets that went bad.
You know, if we find two or three Earth-like planets that have life in the nearest hundred stars, I think that would be a very positive outcome.
I would think that the chance to find a civilization, although you can't say.
I mean, lightning always strikes twice.
You could always have two planets like the Earth, maybe side by side, but I think the odds are that in a hundred planets around us, we would find nothing that was Earth-like in the sense of having so much life.
This kind of scenario sadden you?
I mean, to contemplate this?
Or are you just straightforward scientific about it?
I mean, surely it must produce strong emotions in you as you think about it.
It would in any person.
So how does it affect you?
Well, I would love there to be lots of life out there.
I mean, it would be more interesting, I think, to be in Sort of a zoologically rich universe.
Yes.
Yes.
On the other hand, I'm vastly influenced by several of my colleagues here, and I keep bringing up Don Brownlee, who's an amazing guy.
You should get him on your show.
He's just one of the most wonderful, cheerful, outgoing people, and yet his pessimism runs in an entirely different way than mine.
His pessimism is about space travel.
In what sense?
He is entirely pessimistic that we will ever, ever get to another star, or that we will ever voyage outside of our solar system.
He thinks that the distances are so enormously great, we have totally, totally sort of misunderstood what a light year is.
Well, the numbers are solidly, of course, on his side.
I mean, sadly, they are on his side.
Even if we could travel at the speed of light, they're still on his side.
Yep.
In terms of being pessimistic, I'm afraid it's numerically just fine.
His sense is that we're always trapped in this particular system, so whether... Unless, of course, you can assign multi-generations of humans to live and breathe in a tin-can spaceship that would go for hundreds and hundreds of years, and perhaps, coming out at the other end, you have a crew which is brought up ten generations away from the one who launched it, who know how to slow the rocket down, but then your chances are you're going to enter a system which is totally dead and devoid.
Now, can we send out hundreds of such endeavors with no possibility of ever coming back?
No.
No, we would not do that.
And that is the way it would have to be done, unless, of course, you think we can get faster than life drive and all that stuff.
And, of course, a lot of us just think that physics suggests that's not going to happen.
Well, a lot of what has been suggested couldn't be has already come to pass, so I don't rule that possibility out, but I am willing to certainly consider that even if we got it, what we would find out there, according to you, seems to be either always dead or planets that were at one point harboring some sort of life, but now are dead again.
And the existing life would be nil and maybe even zero.
Or bacterial.
Again, we may find that bacteria are very beautiful.
Humans can eat them.
It may be the best that we find, or here and there.
We do find a flatworm, but not a very advanced flatworm.
I can see how Seth would just go berserk around you, I'm sure.
There we go.
But NASA, again, getting back to NASA, I mean, you've had to present this hypothesis to NASA, and there must have been some Notable reaction.
I mean, are they sort of displeased by its consideration, or are they so scientific that they're willing to consider it right along with everything else?
Well, I'll find out in two more years.
We're going to put a renewal into our grants, and maybe we'll get renewed, maybe we won't.
But the court of public opinion doesn't count for anything.
The deliverables, NASA exists in a world called deliverables.
For us, the deliverables are scientific papers.
So if we produce good science, That is all they want for their money.
And they draw upon that, and I think already the entire NASA Astrobiology Institute, I think, is evolving into the premier sort of prestige scientific arm of NASA.
I see NASA itself is really changing, radically changing, and that one part of it will be scientific, and certainly the pursuit of life and life beyond the Earth is the primary mission of this particular institute.
To understand where life will be, you have to know an awful lot about how planets work.
But having said all that, your theory argues against their existence, if that's a prime reason for them to exist.
Well, we certainly argue against complex life, although we think there may be a multiplicity of bacteria life.
Or could it be reasonably argued by NASA that even if there's not life out there, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't go?
Well, NASA has a new mission, a mission statement, and one of the aspects of that mission statement is try to make our world better.
Certainly to understand the fates of worlds that didn't do well may at least give us the wisdom and understanding of how not to screw up this particular planet.
There are many people who believe that NASA Yeah, I am.
I guess I'm not close enough to NASA, even though I'm part of it, to have been privy to all that great new knowledge.
Things were seen on the moon, things have been seen on Mars and elsewhere that NASA
is well aware of and has said a word about.
You're aware of that group, I'm sure.
Yeah, I am.
I guess I'm not close enough to NASA, even though I'm part of it, to have been privy
to all that great new knowledge.
So everything I've seen about it has been pretty straightforward.
I think an awful lot of the brightest people on the planet seem to be working for them
now.
And I think this last shuttle disaster has really woken people up in it.
And what I see now that I really, really appreciate is finally this idea, let's get out of low Earth orbit.
Let's realize that the space station is a disaster.
Cut our losses on that boondoggle and start reaching out to places that really matter.
Let's go back to the moon.
There's a lot of very interesting science to be done.
You don't think there's a good argument for the space station having a worthwhile mission?
Well, it's a good military argument.
A military argument?
Sure.
Well, I suppose.
But it's manned by Russians to a large degree.
Yep.
So what are you saying?
I don't see a lot of Chinese on it.
Not yet, but the Chinese have plans.
They're going to put their own up.
In fact, the Chinese say they're going to the moon!
That's exactly the point.
Why, all of a sudden, there's this sort of renewed interest in going back to the moon.
That's why NASA had a crash group of us try to put together scientific reasons to, at least if they go, take some scientists along.
Because the Bush directive, up until now, is we're going to the moon, And we may not have time to do any science as we go.
In what way have they actually said that?
I mean, that seems ludicrous, sort of.
You think?
Well, we're going to the moon and there's no real science planned.
No, I don't know if I grasp that.
It came down from the person right beneath the NASA administrator.
It was a get ready for a moon mission.
And try somebody, please, give us an excuse for sending scientists along.
Otherwise, it'll be just like Apollo.
Apollo wasn't about science.
Out of all those astronauts, one geologist made it on the last trip.
Now that's not much of an interest in science.
Well, at least then we had the Cold War going.
We had the race excuse.
And you think that's all it is now with the Chinese?
They say they're going to go to the moon, so we're going to go back to the moon?
Is that what it's about?
Boy, certainly this idea to get to Mars was a bold initiative by the President, and it was met by an awful lot of sort of ho-hum, where's the money going to come from?
But to get to the Mars, we have to springboard to the moon first, at least that's his directive.
And we're in early stages of planning.
So let's maybe I'd be more diplomatic.
And let's just say that at this stage, the planning is going so quickly that it may have outstripped the scientific sort of rationale to go.
So scientists are now trying to put together a possible series of Very interesting experiments to do, if we do go.
And there are some very interesting things that can be done on the moon.
Well, let me try again.
You're saying that short of this, though, it was only a political... They're doing it, so let's go, I don't know, do it again, show them we can do it again.
Why?
That's my read of it.
That's the way it came down to us.
Let's put together some science here, because, hey, guess what, gang?
We're going to the moon and Mars, so jump on that bus.
We are a strange group of people, aren't we?
Well, America's different than I remember it when I was younger.
Yeah, me too.
All right, Peter, hold on.
Peter Ward is here, author of Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
We're going to go to the phones shortly after we get back, so if you have questions, now
would be a good time.
Thank you for watching.
Letters I've written, never meaning to send.
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coast to coast and worldwide on the web.
on the internet. This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
And my guest Peter Ward who wrote Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
And I think I'll give him a couple of minutes to think about this one. It's a typical critical email of anybody
who talks about global warming and all the rest of it.
And, uh, it's very typical, and it's typical of the Klan, so I thought I would read it, give them a couple of minutes, and think about a response, but here it is.
Hogwash art!
Does your guest deny that Mount Pinatubo erupting in the Philippines put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all the activity of man since the dawn of time?
So, um, there you go.
in a moment we'll get a response to be fair to the author of this email bill in santa ana
california uh... he actually said uh... pinatubo put more greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere than any of the activity of man since the dawn
of man Not the dawn of time, the dawn of man.
But even that is a very powerful argument, suggesting that nature does things that dwarf anything man could do with regard to the atmosphere anyway, and to that you say what?
I was able to go to the Carbon Dioxide Laboratory.
There is such a place.
It's on the slope of one of the big volcanoes in Hawaii.
It's up 13,000 feet.
That's right.
And on it is marked the rise in carbon dioxide since measurements began, I think it was in the early 1970s.
I read a story on this tonight!
Jeez!
Yeah, it's a very daunting sort of place to get to, but once you're there, you see this Clockwork rise of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere.
Alpinitubo raised the temperature of the planet only for a very short time and only very briefly.
And in actuality, the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of it was quite minimal.
It's nothing like What cars are doing in a single year?
Yeah, I've got it here.
This one came from the Independent in the UK, where we get a lot of news we don't get here.
But yes, that's exactly where they went, to Hawaii.
And they're saying, this was actually the story that I read in the first hour, which suggests, embodied in the story, that it may be now feeding upon itself.
That we may have actually tipped past the point Where it's simply increasing, but now it has begun the process that ends up with boiling, roiling planets of death.
Like a Venus.
I don't think we're going to go that far for all of, hopefully not, for everything I've seen.
Hopefully not.
The best estimate that I've seen comes from a climatologist, and this is scary in itself, Suggesting that in a hundred years we will have carbon dioxide levels of a thousand parts per million.
We now have about 360 ppm.
What was interesting to a geologist such as myself is we can calculate from rock nodules what past carbon dioxide levels have been.
The last time we had a global forest, really a tropical forest, that covered the whole planet was the Eocene Epoch.
This was 60 million years ago when the first horses evolved.
It was a planet-wide jungle.
CO2 levels were 1,000 parts per million then.
So this guy at the University of Washington, David Battisti, has suggested that within a hundred years we will have a return to the same levels of CO2 that we had in the Eocene, which was an entire planet of warmth.
1,000 parts per million.
1,000 parts per million is, again, because of what we're doing to the atmosphere, at most 150 years from now we get to 1,000 ppm.
And that will really signal a planet radically.
Well, it'll start producing climate that is hugely different than present day.
So then you would say back to this emailer, hogwash, go read the numbers.
Well, I don't want to say hogwash.
Maybe he's looking at different aspects, but to my understanding... He was quite specific with Pinatubo.
You're saying back hogwash.
No, it's not true.
Here's what man is doing, and here are the numbers.
As far as I know, that's correct.
All right, here we go.
First time caller online.
You're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes.
My question is related back to life in the universe.
I realize that my view may be a bit ahead of time, but With just our galaxy alone, approximately 100 million light years across, and there's billions of galaxies in our known universe, doesn't it seem kind of a small mindset to think that there isn't, or was not, some form of life out there?
At one point, it's not right now.
Yeah, I never said there's not life out there.
In fact, I said there's life almost everywhere.
Right, right.
Okay, complex life.
My mistake.
Well, we never said there's not complex life out there.
We are just trying to refute Sort of the Carl Sagan, SETI view that everywhere you look, you should expect to find an intelligent civilization.
And there's two aspects to refute it.
First of all, why haven't they contacted us, or why haven't we seen any of them?
That is beginning to be at least a reasonably compelling argument, Caller, when you say the fact that we haven't talked to anybody yet.
I mean, that's reasonably compelling, huh?
Well, it is a little compelling, but I personally think that our society certainly isn't at a level yet where we should be contacted, honestly.
I mean, we're trying to blow ourselves up every other year.
We don't really have a clue what's going on.
Why would an advanced civilization want to contact us?
Doesn't he make an awfully good point?
In other words, wouldn't we be looked on by anybody who has made it, Peter, as one of the much more likely going to blow themselves up any second here?
Come on, we're going to the next one.
Well, my sense is if you had aliens, they would probably, well, alien anthropologists, look what we do.
Whenever we find a lost tribe in New Guinea or whatever, We fall all over ourselves to study it and see it.
And certainly my sense would be that if there were other more advanced civilizations, they'd probably want to know how we tick.
Especially if we're not advanced enough to be a danger to them, why would they hide it?
I think a much easier solution to that particular problem is that at least in our neighborhood, there's nobody else.
I hope so.
Maybe I'm still a dreamer.
I know I'm in the minority.
I hope you're right.
Listen mister, I really hope you're right.
I'm just telling you what I see and what I think.
It's not what I want.
Okay, thank you very much and take care.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hey.
Hi.
Hi.
Have either one of y'all read the book of Enoch or read the Sumerian text?
It tells you in the Sumerian text that Enoch There's twelve planets to our solar system.
Yes.
And we were brought here four billion years ago, according to Bible codes.
Right.
Of gold miners, right?
They say they're looking for gold, but anyway, the thing is, it explains it in the book of Enoch.
It tells you about our galaxy.
Also, there's twelve planets in that book also.
Of course.
All right.
Let me ask Peter about all of this, just blanketly.
Peter, I'm certain you're aware Well, the older I get, the less I seem to know.
Zacharias Sitchin and the theory that we were designed, we're designer beings, and that
we were brought here to mine gold, and there is this other planet, and there are these
other people and comets?
Well, it's just, in my, the older I get, the less I seem to know.
I guess what I have learned in my life doesn't seem to support that, but I try to keep an
open mind.
I guess I'd answer the same way.
I don't know one way or the other.
It is certainly an interesting hypothesis, but I don't know.
East of the Rockies, you're on there with Peter Ward.
Hi.
Hi.
Yeah, I'm not one of these people who thinks it's terribly likely that we've been visited by extraterrestrials with advanced civilizations.
I guess I was under the impression that you thought that there might not be much out there in the way of any kind of life, but it sounded like what you said a few minutes ago.
Maybe I was mistaken in that impression, but I was just going to say that given that we have already witnessed the propensity for some rather strange forms of life to be able to survive very hostile environments on our own planet.
You know, if you go like a very deep down into the bottom of, you know, very deep oceans
on our planet, we've seen some pretty strange life forms down there surviving without sunlight.
Absolutely.
And, you know, and I guess there's like, you know, various caves and such where there's
no sunlight and what have you.
What he's saying is complex life, even little sluggy things, are not common, are uncommon.
And so that would make us very uncommon or even possibly totally unique.
At least there's a possibility, right, Peter?
Well, there's a possibility.
I think it's a pretty small chance that there's no other intelligences out there.
No, when I say intelligence, I mean at or beyond our level.
The numbers are so huge, you'd be very foolish to think that we're unique.
That's not a word I ever use.
See, now he's sounding a little like Shostak.
No, this is the big difference here.
It's just, unique means one, and I just personally don't believe that we're it.
Alright, call him.
Hello?
Yep.
Well, basically I wanted to say that You know, it would seem to me that there could at least be some form of life, even if it's not, you know, technologically advanced life.
In various places, you know, in other solar systems, even if the planets in those solar systems have very hostile environments, I'd certainly like to see what's underneath the ice flows of Europa, given that it is covered, seems to be covered in water and, you know, may in fact, well, we don't know for sure, but, you know, there's Some sort of a possibility that there could be life underneath the ice crust there.
So if that's a possibility, then I would say that there's at least a possibility for some form of life in solar systems, even if they do have, you know, planets that are rather... I don't think you're disagreeing.
No, that's a very cogent description.
And it's interesting you talk about the subsurface life, because I begin my book, Rare Earth, Talking about subsurface life and extreme life as the reason why we should believe that life is going to be very common.
So you hit the same argument I did.
We could have written the book together.
Well, then the name of your book, and even its subtitle, really are misleading.
No, it's the Earth.
Well, I mean, according to you, they are.
Yes, you're saying that, well, maybe it is pretty common.
It doesn't take an Earth to have life.
It takes an Earth to have complex life that can last a very long time.
But then when you start talking about the numbers, you start sounding more like Seth than yourself.
In other words, yeah, yeah, okay.
It's probably out there.
Well, I think that Rear Earth and this whole idea is certainly an N-member that has not existed prior to this.
I mean, you either have one group of people that says, aha, we're unique, or you have the cultural sort of trend towards aliens are everywhere.
But there's never really been sort of very critical evaluation of that.
And that's the point we're trying to make.
Okay, but even a critical evaluation might include the following.
Any life sufficiently advanced to get here might well only study us, accounting for the sightings, the mutilations, the abductions, the sorts of things that we do hear about.
It might account for that.
I mean, they wouldn't necessarily make contact with us.
They might only sort of monitor us and consider that we're going to blow ourselves to pieces more than likely or, you know, the climate will get us or whatever, that we won't make it.
Yeah, that's one point of view.
But something just happened two weeks ago that made me really wonder even about any of the sightings.
We just spotted an asteroid that whizzed by, as you know, and it was only 30 meters across.
Right.
Now, to see something that is between us and the moon, that's a long distance away.
It's only 30 meters across.
Yes.
Indicates that our ability and our looking in space is unbelievable.
Spaceships smaller than 30 meters, it's hard for me to imagine tiny little spaceships.
In other words, if they were out there, we would see them.
There would be record of this.
So to get around that, you almost have to invoke Really far out.
You don't have to invoke so much.
No, you don't.
Look, we can make aircraft that are almost completely stealthy.
They're stealthy to radar.
They're on the verge, if not already making an invisible to the eye craft.
So you don't have to think too many generations ahead in technological advancement to imagine that they can hide from us if they wanted to.
Yeah, I suppose it's true.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hi.
Hello.
Going once, going twice, gone.
International Line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hello.
Hi, it's Jeff Colling from Canada.
How are you guys?
Oh, just fine.
Fantastic.
I love your show.
And quick question and a comment, and then I'll listen off the air.
Sure.
The question about, or the comment about climate change, If it's taken us this long to build up all the CO2, and now we're seeing the climate change, how can we change it so that it stops happening?
I think it's a little too far progressed to help anything.
The USA right now, per person, is 23 barrels of oil per person per year.
And the rest of the world, like China, is a barrel and a half.
So how can we change that so we actually can stay on this earth?
And if we ever get anywhere else, your guest was saying that it's impossible to go like
light speed or maximum light speed or faster than light speed, but what if this earth,
as the whole universe is moving around, what if we're actually moving somewhere to where
we're supposed to be going, but don't even know because we think the universe is spinning
around us?
What if we're spinning towards something?
And that was my comment, and if you could comment, just let me know how he can, or what
his plan for the future is with global warming, and a little comment on the earth moving around
to meet the people.
That would be great.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Well, I guess to answer that, I think you're correct.
The U.S.
certainly is the biggest energy glutton.
I think it's up to every one of us as we go through our lives.
I know this is going to sound really trite, but it is an individual effort.
The most important, single important thing one can do Is vote.
I don't know if I could say who to vote for, but voting is one aspect that certainly is going to affect the future of the planet.
You know who I'm going to have on tomorrow night?
Who?
Richard Heinberg.
And he's written a book called Parties Over, Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.
The Party's Over.
Now, what do you think that might add up to?
Well, it's certainly scary times.
I must admit, scary times.
My own sense of what to do is my wife and I are shopping for a hybrid car.
That alone, we only have one car.
We're trading in what we have for a hybrid.
That's not going to save the world, but if it's multiplied by lots and lots of people, it will certainly make an effect.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hello.
Hello.
Going once, going twice, gone.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hello.
Hello, this is Peter.
He's here, yes.
This is Peter from Dearborn Heights.
Okay.
I sent you the email.
I was the one that talked to you on New Year's Day about the asteroid hitting.
Okay.
Probably within this next couple weeks.
All right.
And basically, isn't it funny how small this world is?
My son's down there in Las Vegas.
He works for Roush and he's down there for the NASCAR races.
Uh-huh.
But anyway, you know, I've read a lot of UFO magazines.
And you know, I find that the biggest UFO book is the Bible.
You know, in the Bible it tells you that the angels are uncountable.
That means there is life out there.
And it's uncountable.
That's how many there are.
Alright, well that's kind of a different sort of life, I think, than Peter was trying to discuss scientifically.
Isn't that correct, Peter?
Well... Or is it?
Again, I try to keep an open mind in this world.
Yes.
Having said that, what does that mean?
I mean, do you...
Simply hold an open mind about the possibility of angels and the whole story as told in the Bible and all of that?
Well, I was raised as a fallen Catholic and I'm afraid my beliefs now have fallen away from some of the more literal tales in the Bible.
You know, I ask this of all men of science nearly that I interview.
And it's a very hard question to ask, so usually I just use the movie Contact.
And I remember that really critical scene where he was sitting in the seat with a review board and it was to be decided who would go and make contact with these incredible beings who had provided this sketch for the machine of how to get there.
And the critical question the group wanted to know of the scientist was, will you spread, will you tell them, do you believe in God and will you take the word of God to them?
And what a moment.
What an incredible moment.
And the scientist just had to sort of sit there and finally, honestly answer, no, I can't do that.
Would you have said no, Peter?
I was on the Jodie Foster side of things, yes.
Yeah, I thought perhaps that would be the case.
Which is fascinating.
I'm Mark Bell.
good evening this is close to close to you oh
oh oh
If we still have time, we might still get by Every time I think about it, I wanna cry
We fall into a devil, but it keeps you coming You're waiting with ease in a time to be young
Do Trump with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at areacode 7
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Carbon dioxide has just been measured at the highest point in Hawaii at 379 parts per million, up from about 376 a year before.
379 parts per million up from about 376 a year before now these last three years of measurement represent
Actually the largest on record They add up to about a 64% rise over the average rate of growth over the past decade of 1.8 parts per million per year.
So, there you have it.
Those are the hard numbers.
current measurement of carbon dioxide at the highest point in Hawaii, 379 parts per million.
Just get them all the time.
Now Josh in Tokyo, Japan says, wanted to say hi.
Tell you I was listening here in Japan.
Very grateful for Streamlink.
All right, once again now with my guest who believes that we are a rare commodity.
Now that would be a fair statement, wouldn't it?
That we, human beings meaning, are a rare commodity.
Fair?
I think very fair, sure.
And possibly even so rare as to never be able to talk to others of our ilk.
That's also a good statement, I think.
I hope we're wrong.
Yeah, no wonder SETI's after you.
They are.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hi.
Yeah, this is Mike in Detroit.
Listening to AM 800 CKLW out of Windsor.
Oh, yes indeed.
Long time listener.
First time caller.
Can't believe I made it through.
That's why we have this line.
Yeah, well, it's great.
I've got a question for Peter, I believe, about DNA.
Is DNA like the elemental chart where it's pretty much a finite list of properties that catalyzed correctly will form different forms of life?
Well, you're right on one of the most interesting questions of all, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up in this debate.
We'd like very much to know if DNA is one way to make life, or the only way to make life.
And you say, Pat, that's absurd.
Surely with all the chemical elements we have, you could have a whole variety of types of life.
And yet, when you start looking at what life is, and the definition that we use, it can reproduce, it can metabolize, and It can evolve.
There's not a whole lot of ways you can actually build it and have information and have proteins made or whatever structure you use.
So some of the smartest people I know on the planet, and one of these is named Steve Benner down in Florida, is trying to figure out if not DNA what?
And he's really following up on your question.
Is there another way to do it that is not DNA?
And we don't know yet.
Okay, and the reason I ask, I'm not a big Bible guy myself.
Creation can be created by using a battery or it can be by an entity.
In the period of the Big Bang, creating our universe and so on, it took a long time after the coalition of the universe for life to form.
Was there a catalyst, i.e.
a meteor, Natural volcanism occurring as the Earth evolved that caused the gases that we needed to create the atmosphere to give us the filters and the possibilities for the evolution of a catalyzed DNA deposited by meteors, whatever.
And if that's possible, would it not be possible to catalyze Mars being as it already has DNA, although We don't know what its activity, its status is.
Kind of like the Genesis program, to create a planet for us to, in the future, inhabit.
We may have already started that process.
Yeah, yeah, I gathered that from the earlier guest, earlier question.
If I could answer, DNA is so complex that no one has been able to build it in a test tube from first elements.
But this last year, there has been a breakthrough by this team in Florida.
And when I was a boy, the most popular show on television was hosted by Ronald Reagan.
It was called Death Valley Days.
And they had the old Ranger and they had 20 mule team Borax.
Art, you must remember this.
I do.
And it turns out that Borax, while it's a pretty good soap, is a naturally occurring product.
And it has been found now to be the first step in building RNA.
Which is half of DNA.
So parts, the most important parts of RNA have now been synthesized by a natural process where you take RNA, you run water over it, you throw in some amino acids, and this may be really the most critical and interesting step into eventually producing artificial DNA.
Who knew?
So, producing our own blueprints for life.
Well, already people are messing around with DNA, and there's another crew in San Diego, again, part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, that built five-stranded DNA instead of the two-stranded that we have, and it remained stable for some time before it then fell apart.
It's almost frightening, isn't it?
Well, it is.
Well, you know, a lot of people are really trying to examine the very basic or base level of what life is and how to build it.
All right.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Yes, this is Phil from Venice, Florida.
I wanted to ask the guest about, and you too, what do we know about the soil itself on Mars?
What does it make up?
How does it compare to soil on Earth?
Have we done much?
I hear about the rocks and everything, but I don't remember much information about soil per se.
I believe we're probably just beginning to get that information, or about to get it, or something.
Aren't we doing some experiments in that area, or we're about to on the next spacecraft, Peter?
Yeah, it turns out that we really can't analyze it per se, but I really wouldn't call it soil.
Soil is a word that I always use that you can grow things in, and a soil is by definition Oh, a third to a half sometimes percent organic material.
Alright, whatever passes for it then on Mars.
All you've got there is broken up rocks and dust and material.
Right.
You don't have any organics in it at all.
Well, I don't know if I want to say okay.
We don't really know that yet for certain, do we?
Well, that was the big disappointment of Viking.
You remember when the two Vikings landed, they worked perfectly.
And up until that time, Carl Sagan was really the top of the heap.
We were really expecting to find life on Mars, and two of the experiments done by Viking, each of the Vikings, showed that not only was the soil sterile, essentially, but it had chemicals within it that would inhibit life from growing in it.
This was such a depressing finding that it really set back astrobiology for about 20 years.
Viking convinced most scientists that the soil of Mars is dead.
I actually did not realize we had a comprehensive test.
Oh, yeah.
They had a very good test.
They actually picked up some of the material, took it in, tried to find reactions that would suggest that life was there.
Viking was an entirely life detection experiment.
It was sent up there by Sagan for that express purpose.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hi.
Hi.
This is Bob from El Paso, Texas, listening to KTSN.
Hi, Bob.
And one of the things that has troubled me for a long time with the ozone layer and the chlorofluorocarbons, and how supposedly the chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the ozone layer, when even helium won't go to the altitude that the ozone layer is And can somebody explain that one to me?
In other words, how it gets up there to do the damage?
Something that supposedly humanity has a little victory here.
In other words, they've begun to see, some of them claim, a turnaround and that the ozone is healed to some degree.
You think that's bunk?
Do you think the whole thing is bunk?
Do you think CFCs never get there?
What?
Well, I think they get there.
I don't know the physics well enough to understand how they do get there.
I was just thinking it's a pretty heavy molecule.
There's a lot of updraft that takes an awful lot of stuff higher up.
But it is the single most hopeful sign And I think it's also an indication that we can do something about carbon dioxide, because you're right, Art, the hole in the ozone is getting smaller.
This is a small victory.
It's an important victory, as much for understanding and dealing with other gases as it is ozone.
Carbon dioxide doesn't seem so simple a problem, though, does it?
It's a big problem.
It's a really big one, yes.
The natural process that takes it out of the atmosphere, again the weathering of rocks, is an extremely slow process.
Now there's even a worse problem than carbon dioxide, and that's methane.
Methane converts to carbon dioxide in what, 20 to 100 years?
Yes.
But methane is also an even more effective greenhouse gas.
Now the big spooky concern for an awful lot of us are things called gas hydrates, which is frozen methane.
It is methane that is frozen into soils in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
How you can get a runaway greenhouse is if you warm up the atmosphere sufficient to allow the release of that frozen methane.
It doesn't act as anything when it's frozen.
It goes up in the atmosphere in 20 years, it converts to CO2, and you have a very much hotter climate.
And this is the scariest scenario of global warming, is that we warm the planet warm enough that the Arctic region Get a temperature that releases the methane.
Have you seen the pictures of the Arctic, Peter?
I've been in the Arctic.
Well, I was wondering, we had some pictures up that showed, I think, the last 50 or 100 years of the Arctic.
In other words, where there was ice and where there is now water.
Have you seen some of those comparisons?
I flew back from Alaska this summer.
I was just charting and examining the glaciers by airplane.
And that's pretty phenomenal, too.
The glacier recession that's taking place all over this planet is so amazing.
And you're totally right, Art, about what is going on up there and the thinning of the ice sheets and the fact that we are losing an enormous amount of the Arctic If you can look at those photographs and not have a profound reaction, then I just don't know about you.
Meaning, everybody.
I really don't.
I mean, it has to be a profound reaction.
It's going away.
It's melting.
Both ends.
North and South.
Well, the scarier aspect of the melting, very briefly, is that once that ice melts, it's very white.
It reflects light back.
Yes.
So the albedo of the planet changes.
Indeed.
Rock absorbs the heat that ice had reflected out, and we just get warmer.
Yes.
So we begin getting the opposite effect, which accelerates itself, which is what this article's all worried about.
West of the Rockies, you're on there with Peter Ward.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, hello.
Yes.
This is Tim.
I'm in Pendleton, Oregon.
Art probably remembers the town where Kenneth Arnold flew in in 1947.
Yes, sir.
I've seen ships the same day, three of them.
There were six of us here that have seen them.
I'm quite amazed, after 70 years of living, that there are still a lot of people, supposedly educated people, who have never seen them or can't believe in them.
I've been aboard seven times myself and I have five implants.
Well, that's a pretty heavy record there.
Peter, just generally respond to that.
I mean, there are, of course, thousands of sightings, some of them quite spectacular.
It's got to at least cause one a little pause and say, well, yeah, hey, what if we are being, maybe we are being visited.
Well, I hope so.
I truly, deep in my heart, hope that at least one of these sightings is correct.
I don't want to be the only game in town.
And maybe, hopefully, that it is true that we are being visited.
And if someone's on the line, they're going to say, OK, hello folks.
But the scientist in me is deeply skeptical.
Gotcha.
First time caller on the line.
Hi there.
You're on the air with Peter Ward.
Oh, thank you.
You're very welcome.
I thought I'd never get through.
Well, here you are.
Where are you?
I'm in Seattle.
And what is your first name?
Bill.
Okay, Bill.
Fire away.
Go ahead.
Oh, thank you.
Turn your radio off.
Oh, off, okay.
Off, yes, off.
Hello, Art?
Yes.
Hi, Bill.
How are you?
Yeah, you're sitting in for Art tonight, yeah?
No one could do that!
Well, that's true, but... No, this is Art, sir, and Peter Ward is the guest.
Yeah.
I've been trying to get through to you for weeks now.
Okay, well, you're here and our time is short, so... Okay, well, I have an answer to space travel.
Oh?
I've learned Well, I'm appreciative of that point of view, and it may well be, Peter, I know where he was headed, that all of this perhaps cannot be done with science, all of this perhaps cannot be done by going faster than light, but it may well be.
That our salvation in meeting others who may exist anywhere will exist within the mind.
I'm not blind to that possibility, are you?
No, I'm hoping.
Again, Art, I'm not a believer, but I'm a hoper.
How about that?
With an open mind.
That's as good as it can get, I guess.
A wild card line.
You're on the air with Peter Ward.
Hello.
Hey, Art, Peter.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
This is John in Atlanta.
Hey, John.
You know, the question of a complex life.
You know, Art, I've been listening to your show for eight years.
There is no doubt in my mind that we're being visited by life from elsewhere.
Why is there no doubt in your mind?
Just a small percentage of the body of evidence out there would convince any jury in the world.
I mean, just one of your former guests has collected documents that are freedom of West of the Rockies.
Call toll-free 1-800-618-8255.
From the government.
We're being visited.
No doubt.
J. Allen Hynek's book, UFO Report.
He was a leading astronomer on the Project Bluebird.
He used to call UFO enthusiasts crackpots.
He became convinced by the body of evidence.
All you gotta do is look.
You say, you gotta open mind, Peter.
Just look.
Check it out.
I've got an open mind, but I'll reply to that.
It just strikes me.
Paul Allen in Seattle has now given, I think, $24 million to SETI.
Now, if we were being visited He said he wouldn't have to do what he's doing.
They could save all the money.
I mean, it'd be over, wouldn't it?
Why would you have to go look?
They, of course, say that themselves.
And as a result of that hypothesis, they actually scoff at such suggestions.
It's pretty much of a, well, show us.
And, you know, that's a fair position to take.
I mean, they too will say, well, I've got an open mind, but I really don't see the evidence.
Despite this last caller's claim about documents, and I'm certainly as well familiar with most of them as anybody, it's not irrefutable evidence.
Not yet.
I don't think.
It's close.
I've had sightings myself, Peter, so I'm teetering in a strange place here, but it's still not, in my mind, irrefutable.
It's close for people like that caller.
Well, there's room to hope.
I think the best we're going to get out of you on that subject.
Ease to the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward, not a lot of time.
Hello.
Yes, this is Will from Madison, Wisconsin.
You know there have been societies that have educated less intelligent societies, and in turn these people have Yes.
Defeated the more intelligent societies in human history.
That's why intelligent human beings, if they exist in outer space, do not want to give us their education.
They're afraid of us.
All right.
Well, there you have it, Peter.
You think so?
You think they might be afraid of us?
Well, we certainly see a caterer in American society that seems less educated, that seems to be afraid of what More educated groups seem to want to come up with that.
That fear is certainly real.
Maybe they have a reason to be afraid.
I think we should be a little more liberal, but what do I know?
Well, listen, Peter, it's been a pleasure having you here.
Your book, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, available at all the usual places, Amazon and so forth, right?
Thank you, Art, as usual.
I hope, actually, get ahold of staff.
Get us both on, let's do a debate.
You know, I really would like to do that, and so if you're up for that, actually, we'll do it.
Does it get pretty good and heated when you and Seth are together?
It gets really heated.
We're just going and going and going.
Why don't you hear us talk about binary star systems, why I think you can't have anything on a multiple star system, and on and on and on, etc.
Well, good!
I'll work on exactly that.
And you have a good night, Peter.
Thank you.
Take care.
Alright, Peter Ward, and again, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
The book is called Rare Earth.
I was a music group, too.
I remember Rare Earth.
That's it for tonight.
Tomorrow night, the party's over.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
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