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Aug. 11, 2015 - Art Bell

02:13:18

Art Bell MITD - Seth Shostak SETI

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43:22

seth shostak

58:03

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dr steven greer

01:44

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert, the great American Southwest, this is Midnight in the Desert, and I'm Mark Bell.
		Good evening, everybody.
		It is my pleasure to be here.
		This is Midnight in the Desert.
		We have but two rules for the program: no bad language, and only one call per show.
unidentified		Beyond that, we have no rules.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We have some thank yous.
		Always tell us for the great sound.
		And oh, by the way, it is great.
		I want to read this from Tom.
		I know it'll sound like it's an ad.
		I guess it is, sort of, right.
		From Tom on the wormhole.
		Aren't the earbuds are so good from the Zeek Grain Company that I can hear you snort when you laugh.
unidentified		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean like...
unidentified		Ha, ha, ha, ha.
unidentified		Done?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I highly recommend.
		They fit well and love me.
		Thanks for the excellent advice regards Tom and Reno with an H. I guess it's Rhino.
		Anyway, Talos for the great sound.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Keith Rowland, my webmaster, I found out, of 20 years now.
		My producer, Heather Wade.
		All of you out there, the Belgab website, great bunch of vaguely lovable, grumpy, interesting people.
		A site called People Who Love Art Bell, MidnightIndesert.com, the Belgab, I said that, the StreamGuys who get it to you, LV.net, and they get it to the Stream Guys, and then, of course, our commercial guy.
		If you want to run a commercial, you'd be well served since we have so few.
		Contact Peter Eberhardt.
		You can find him at artbell.com.
		All right.
		Just a couple things to note.
		One, China rattled entire global financial markets by announcing they are devaluing their currency.
unidentified		Now, do you know what that means?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That means that things from China are going to get cheaper.
		They're trying to stimulate their economy.
		It declined by 1.9%.
		That's big.
		That really is big, folks.
		The biggest drop in a decade.
		And so things from China will get cheap, but it's not necessarily good for us.
		The Donald made a big deal of that, and he's right about that.
		A young Mississippi couple who are charged with attempting to join the Islamic State were held without bail Tuesday.
		So two more want to go over there and fight.
		Why, I don't know.
		Why Americans are doing that, I don't know.
		A random encounter leads to astonishing discoveries.
		This is pretty amazing.
		Between two men who get this, they didn't know each other, but they had still managed to lead the same life with wives and children, all of the same name.
		They had the same cars, the same vacation spot, which is, by the way, where they met each other.
		Psychologist Chris McKay says in his years spent as a therapist, he's begun to understand something about synchronicity.
		I mean, what are the odds of that, right?
		Two lives identically led just less than one-tenth of 1% difference between them.
		Actually, no difference at all.
		It would just be too weird.
		It's like I would go on vacation, meet another guy who looks like me, meet his wife named Erin and his daughter named Asia, and we're driving identical cars, color, everything.
		That is just simply too weird.
		That was from anonymous.com, anomalous.com, and what a good website that is.
		All right, I'm going to read this and then I'll break.
		Now, I don't want a response to this tonight.
		Maybe we'll do it Friday.
		It's going to open the doors of whatever.
		I don't know what it's going to open.
		Have you noticed this is all over the Internet, so I just simply can't and won't ignore it.
		Have you noticed there's a tremendous amount of Internet buzz about the month of September 2015?
		Never before have I seen so much speculation about what would happen in one particular month.
		Some people believe that we're going to see an economic collapse next month.
		Others believe there's going to be some sort of historic natural disaster.
		Others convinced Judgment Day is coming.
		So right now, large numbers of Americans are apparently stocking up on emergency food and supplies like crazy.
		I'm beginning to get a little concerned about the period myself.
		Several weeks ago, I think I did express a belief that chaos will begin once the summer ends.
		These are the last days of normal life in America, people are saying.
		Just about everything that we currently take for granted is about to be shaken.
		It seems a lot of people lately are having a gut feeling that something really, really big is about to unfold, but nobody knows exactly what it is.
		Maybe people are feeling this way because of the events that are taking place around them now.
		Signs in the heavens, military stockpiling, politically disturbing events.
		There does appear to be a confluence of activity in both the political and spiritual Realms culminating in 2015, causing people's alarms to go off.
		So this is all over the Internet.
		I'm not going to talk about it.
		In fact, I refuse to talk about it now, but we may talk about it Friday.
		It will open the gates of whatever.
		All right, coming up in a moment, Seth Shozdak.
		Seth developed an interest in extraterrestrial life at the tender age of 10.
		When he first picked up a book about the solar system, the innocent beginning eventually led to a degree in radio astronomy.
		Now a senior astronomer, Seth is an enthusiastic participant in the Institute SETI Observing Program.
		There's more than one.
		He heads up the International Academy of Aeronautics, a SETI Permanent Committee.
		Hope I got that right.
		This comes in slightly, you know, if somebody types on an Apple computer, when I get it, it comes out a little differently, especially the punctuation parts.
		Seth, no, wait, there is more.
		I forgot.
		Seth will also update us on all the signals thus far received from all the life forms out there.
		He will update us on the aliens that SETI has had examined, how they now have 37 different alien languages that they've interpreted, and, of course, all of the technical advances that have been derived thus far from the technical information taken from these aliens.
		Hello, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Art.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		37, huh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't help myself.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		If we had those 37, you know, I think my job security would be a little, well, better.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it would be pretty shaky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if we actually had 37 different aliens, the budget for looking for them might, you know, dry up.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
		You'd have to sort of switch your job description to studying as opposed to searching.
		I think you'd have to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long has it been since we talked?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't really know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think it's, I don't know, maybe three years, two, three years, something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At least that long, I would say.
		SETI, it goes on to say, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is an exploratory science that seeks evidence of life in the universe by looking for some signature of its technology.
		And in a moment, when we get back, I will ask Seth exactly what kind of, it's very interesting, what kind of signatures they might be looking for.
unidentified		That would certainly be interesting, wouldn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert, the great American Southwest, midnight in the desert, rocking in the nighttime.
unidentified		Did you see the lights and play?
		We'll be right back.
		Take a watch on the wild side of midnight from the Kingdom of Nye.
		This is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
		Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-Call Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, we may do something a little bit different tonight.
unidentified		By the way, I love this song, and it really gets my blood going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As we have Seth on, I'm going to dispense with some telephone number stuff right now.
		You've got the landline number right.
		It's area code 952-225-5278.
		Once again, 952-225-5278.
		Now, you can also call us on Skype from North America, the way to do it, on your iPhone or your computer or whatever, just bring up Skype and put in MITD51, M-I-T-D-5-1.
		If you're outside the U.S., M-I-T-D-5-5.
		That's as in Midnight in the Desert, M-I-T-D-5-5, and give us a call anytime.
		We may start taking calls during the show with Seth, sort of occasionally peppering it with calls, sort of just playing around with a different format.
		All right.
		Welcome back, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Art.
		I'm here.
		I'm awaiting those calls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You really want calls that fast?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, not right around the right way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But I always find the calls the interesting part of the show because, to be honest, that's the part I haven't heard before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, you're right about that.
		Actually, there may be a few things tonight that you haven't heard before.
		Okay.
		So let's straighten something out.
		When you talk about signatures of technology, what kind of things are you actually looking for?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are several ways that you might, in fact, convince yourself that you'd found some evidence for something that's intelligent out there in the cosmos.
		One thing would be, you know, if they physically landed or you went there.
		I mean, that's straightforward.
		Happens every night on television, but we're not about to go anywhere.
		And undoubtedly, we'll get into the second possibility here tonight, whether they're visiting us.
		I don't think they are, but that's straightforward.
		The second thing you could do is maybe you could see something, you know, with a big telescope that would convince you that, you know, Bob, I don't know what that is, but it isn't natural.
		You know, some huge astroengineering project.
		Maybe there's some advanced society that's built something so big that we can see it with our telescopes.
		And the third way to do it, and the approach that we use here most often, the SETI Institute and other places that do this kind of research, is to try and pick up signals.
		And radio signals are what we usually look for.
		But you can also look for flashing lights in the sky.
		So that's the method of choice, I would say, to try and prove we have some cosmic company.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Back to the telescopes for a moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, we have a hard time resolving small things with big telescopes on Mars, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah.
		I mean, I don't know what you mean by small.
		If you don't have an orbiter that's actually at, for example, Mars, what you can see from the ground is pretty limited.
		You know, big mountains, things like that are probably the smallest thing you can see.
		Fortunately, Mars is close enough that you can put something in orbit around it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I made a poor choice.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pluto.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Pluto.
		Pluto.
		Well, Pluto, actually, we can see things on Pluto that are, you know, I don't know, the size of a football field, something like that.
		And that's pretty good, given the fact that the cameras that made those photos, which were aboard the New Horizons spacecraft, they had one shot.
		You know, that spacecraft didn't land on Pluto, obviously.
		But it didn't even go into orbit around Pluto, which would give you weeks, months, maybe years to make these photos.
		It just sailed right by at a speed that it was by the whole planet in a few minutes.
		It didn't take very long.
		So you get that one shot.
		It's sort of like you're in your car and you see something interesting there on the sidewalk as you're going down the street.
		You grab your camera and you take a couple of pictures and that's all you get.
		So it's really amazing that they've got these incredibly detailed photos of Pluto.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But telescopes don't see a whole lot, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose compared to a visitor or a rover or something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if you're going to say they do, then I'm going out to Alpha Centauri.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Closest star system, I think, right?
		Star.
		Okay.
		Anyway, telescopes are pretty limited in terms of detecting life, unless it was pretty close, relatively speaking.
		So you listen for the more likely thing, which would be radio signals.
		It's been years since we explored together.
		Seth, I don't know the current state of SETI, what telescopes you have available to you, what kind of computer power you're using, what frequencies you're listening on, that kind of thing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we are using an array of telescopes.
		It's called the Allen Telescope Array.
		And that's because the money to build it was largely given by Paul Allen.
		Paul Allen was the co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation.
		Everybody knows about Bill Gates, who Allen was his partner in the early years.
		And Paul Allen is interested in opportunities that new developments in technology make possible, things that are interesting to do, but you never could do them before because you just couldn't build the technology.
		So he has funded this array of antennas.
		It's so far up to 42 antennas.
		That's what we have, 42 antennas.
		The idea is to build many more, but that takes more money, and it's always difficult to get the money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would say 42 is pretty impressive.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, 42, yeah, but it's really designed to have hundreds.
		That's what you really want.
		And it turns out that by building hundreds of small antennas, you get kind of the performance, in fact, more than the performance of one giant antenna for a lot less money.
		So that's the way to go these days.
		Anyhow, this array of antennas is up in the Cascade Mountains of California.
		It's about 300 miles north of San Francisco.
		We put it up there not because of the beautiful scenery, although the scenery is beautiful, and not because of the cuisine, because there is none, but because you've got all these mountains and they kind of shield the antennas from all the radio static that you would get from the Bay Area here around San Francisco.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How big are they generally?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, each one of them, they're all identical.
		They're all about, what, six meters.
		It's like 20 feet in diameter.
		If you put one of these antennas in your backyard, you probably provoke opposition from the neighbors.
		They'd probably want you to remove them as an eyesore.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have a 3.8-meter dish in my backyard now, and I'm getting static about that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Are you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not from neighbors.
		My wife walks out and goes, oh, my God.
		Anyway, so 42 telescopes.
		Now, again, a technical question.
		These are kind of in parallel in the sense that they turn simultaneously and focus on the same point in space.
		And is their gain then, therefore, collective?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
		They don't have to do that.
		It's not that they're kind of chained together and they all have to all point in the same direction.
		I I don't know.
		It's sort of like a chorus line in a way.
		They're all doing the same thing.
		They're all kicking at the same time, turning around, whatever at the same time, but they don't have to.
		And the same with these antennas.
		They could be pointed individually, but the general scheme is indeed to have them work as a team.
		They all point in the same direction in the sky.
		And they're spread out over about, I don't know, maybe 3,000 feet of landscape up there.
		The idea is, you know, you could build one giant antenna, and that would collect a lot of cosmic static just because it's big.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Arecibo.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Arecibo.
		But, you know, Arecibo is fixed in the ground.
		It's a big antenna down in Puerto Rico.
		It's 1,000 feet across.
		It's huge.
		But, you know, it can't turn it.
		You can't twist it.
		You can't build that kind of structure.
		It's too expensive.
		So you build a lot of, it's like taking Arecibo and hitting it with a hammer or something.
		Break it up into dozens, maybe hundreds of small antennas.
		And then you can get very much the same performance with something you can afford to build.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you were to suddenly start getting some kind of signal, just an example, something weak, you could focus all of your antennas or as many as possible on that one source, have the collective gain hear it better.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		In fact, that's the way we do the searching, too, actually.
		They're all looking at the same spot.
		So you decide, okay, we got these antennas.
		We got them for this week.
		What are we going to look at?
		And you could just point them randomly at the sky, but normally speaking, you don't do that.
		You try to be a little more clever.
		And so we point them in the direction of star systems where we know they're planets.
		These days, that might actually not be such a terrific strategy anymore because now we know planets are so commonplace, you really can't miss pointing at planets.
		But if you decide where you're going to point them, they all work together.
		They're looking at a few spots on the sky at once.
		And then you've got this huge receiver that's listening to 30 million channels at once, trying to see if there's some channel in there, some frequency, some spot on the radio dial where you pick up a signal and change the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		30 million channels at once.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
		That's really incredible.
		So the computer's come a long way, huh?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It has.
		Well, the computer, yeah, a lot of this is indeed, as you suggest.
		It's digital technology that makes all this possible.
		And there's actually an upside to that.
		The upside being something called Moore's Law, which sort of drives the industry around where I'm sitting, which is the Silicon Valley.
		As most listeners will know, every couple of years, you've got to replace your computer because the computers on the store shelves then are so much faster than the one that you had that you don't get any respect at parties when you tell them you've got to replace a three-year-old laptop.
		Right, it's depressing.
		But it's good for the Silicon Valley.
		So they'll sell you a new laptop, a new computer, whatever it is.
		The same is true for SETI.
		Every couple of years, the equipment gets so much better that the search becomes faster.
		So I think that that's what keeps me interested.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, actually, not everybody knows about the WOW signal.
		Let's go over that incredible event that occurred to SETI.
		You had what you called the WOW signal, which is WOW Signal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, WOW Signal.
		Yeah, we didn't pick it up, actually.
		In fact, it was before the SETI Institute, which is where I work, before the SETI Institute was actually founded.
		That came later.
		But this was a SETI experiment being run at Ohio State University, which is in Columbus, Ohio, I think.
		And they had a big antenna there that they'd been using for astronomy, radio astronomy.
		But, you know, it sort of outlived its usefulness.
		But it was still there, and it was a perfectly good antenna.
		So they said, okay, what we're going to do is just put the brakes on it.
		We're going to have it just park here, just aimed in one direction.
		You might think, well, that's not terribly interesting.
		But of course, the Earth does rotate.
		And so it's looking at one spot on the sky, but the sky kind of sweeps across it as the Earth revolves.
		And so they just put a, you know, I think it was like a 64-channel receiver.
		I don't know how many channels their receiver had.
		It wasn't 30 million.
		It was a small number.
		This was in 1977.
		And, you know, it would just look for signals.
		And every morning, one of the astronomers, a guy by the name of Jerry Amon, actually, that was the guy's name, he would come in to the observing room.
		In those days, they'd print out the results on paper for people who remember those big line printers that computers used to have.
		And he would just flip through the paper and look for a signal.
		And one day he came in, and there was a big signal, and he wrote WOW next to it.
		So that became known as the WOW signal.
		I mean, this is maybe the triumph of marketing over product because, you know, all those other signals that were found, and there were many others that were found in those days, they didn't have such a nifty name, and they're not remembered.
		But the question is, was it E.T.?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, what have you, do you have a recording of the WOW signal?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		There wasn't any recording.
		It was just a bunch of numbers printed out on this line printer.
		And you can go online.
		I mean, people who are interested should go online and just.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean a bunch of numbers?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We all saw Jodie Foster sitting right there with those headphones on, and this started up, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, we did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you're telling me it's only a bunch of numbers, huh?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to disillusion you.
		You're too young for me to disillusion you.
		But, you know, it was a movie.
		No, no, no.
		There were just like 10, 12, 15 numbers that went from something like 0, and then 1, 3, 5, 8, 12.
		And then they had some hexadecimal numbers because when they got beyond 9, they needed some other way to represent the number.
		But it's just a string of maybe a dozen numbers.
		But these numbers are a combination of actual numbers, like 0, 1, 2, 3, ordinal numbers.
		Then plus A, B, C, D, E, F. Now, if you program computers, you know that's hexadecimal.
		But it's just a way of representing numbers up to 16.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, these were meaningful.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They were just the intensity of the signal.
		That's all it was.
		It just went and it came back down.
		And that's it.
		And if you listen to it, you wouldn't hear anything.
		You would just hear some static that went.
		That's it.
		That's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's pretty cool.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's kind of neat, but you can't dance to it.
		The thing is that that telescope was programmed to automatically reobserve everything a minute later.
		See, sort of, you know, check it out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but the Earth is turning.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		It is.
		But they offset the receiver in such a way that it would look at the same eye spot.
		So every spot on the sky got two tries, if you will, two opportunities to make the signal known.
		So this signal was found, but a minute later, it was not found.
		So what was it?
		Well, maybe it was E.T., and he was on the air for a minute, and then he took a break.
		I mean, it could be.
		Could be.
		Or maybe it was just interference and then it went away.
		Could be.
		But you don't know.
		Nobody knows.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it had to be WOW above everything else they were getting to be called the WOW signal.
unidentified		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was very strong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it observed by more than one?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it wouldn't have been, no, because only that was pointed at it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		There have been attempts since that time.
		I mean, this is quite a while ago.
		This is almost 40 years ago now.
		And there have been attempts.
		There's a gentleman in Chicago, Robert Gray is his name.
		And he has actually gone to radio telescopes around the world and gotten a little bit of time and, you know, reobserved that spot on the sky where the WoW signal came from with much better equipment, actually, and much more sensitivity and looking over much more of the radio dial.
		And he's never seen it again.
		So, you know, if you only see it once, you might be convinced, but nobody else is going to be convinced.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Got it.
		All right.
		This is that break where you can walk around and do what you want.
unidentified		Break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We've got news, a couple of spots, and we'll be right back.
unidentified		You can see me now, here's a surprise.
		Bye.
		I know that you have said much.
		To sniff our packets, then with a smile on your face, please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-CALLART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Love that.
		Actually, it sounds like an alien language, doesn't it?
		All right.
		My guest is a significant person, Dr. Seth Shostak.
		He is Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research.
		And that's quite a title.
		Seth, welcome back.
		Okay, I think welcome back.
		There you are.
		All right, Seth, a lot to talk about.
		So we had the WOW Signal.
		Then you had been working for, what, many, many years, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
		I mean, the WOW Signal 77, I believe, 1977.
		So that's a while ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, since 77, have you had anything as impressive as the WoW Signal apparently was?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, at the time of the WoW Signal, the way you would do these experiments, you point the antennas up in the sky, and you had to record the data.
		You didn't have the compute power back then to actually, you know, analyze it kind of real time.
		So typically, you would record things on computer tape, like in the old sci-fi films, all these big tape units there, stealing computer tape.
		Of course.
		Well, they actually had that stuff.
		So, you know, you'd record those things, and then you would take this tape back to wherever it was that, you know, you actually worked.
		That might be far away from these antennas.
		It might be thousands of miles away.
		So you'd cart all these tapes back to your office.
		You'd play them on a computer there, and then you'd analyze things, and you'd find a signal.
		And you'd say, well, you know, what's that?
		And it looks kind of interesting.
		But, of course, you can't just immediately check it out because it's long gone.
		So in those days, when you had that situation, there were lots and lots of signals that looked interesting.
		But today, we have enough compute power that when you get a signal, you immediately check it out.
		And it turns out, if you have that capability, then all those kind of intriguing, wow-like signals seem to have gone away.
		So that says to me that those guys were not real.
		They were just interference, and you didn't have the ability to identify it as interference at the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then a person might almost say that since we've been listening, there probably has not been a signal indicating extraterrestrial intelligence received by radio.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think that's a fair thing to say.
		I think it's a fair thing to say.
		In 1997, we did have a signal that looked really good.
		And in fact, it looked good for, I don't know, about a day.
		And I was at home.
		I just had dinner.
		And the boss calls me up at home and he says, I think you ought to get down here.
		So I drove down to the Institute and I found all my colleagues arrayed behind a phalanx of computer terminals all watching the screens because they picked up a signal that looked good.
		Now that was very interesting and very exciting for about, I don't know, 16 or 18 hours till we figured out it was a satellite.
		But for quite a while, that was maybe the longest time we went where we thought this could be it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, it would be sure fun to hear what that 16 to 18 hours was as all of you listened to this incredible signal that you thought was coming from elsewhere.
		That's still actually a long time, 16 or 18 hours.
		That's a long time.
		You, of course, called the president, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Called the president of the local Rotary Club.
		No, I didn't call the president.
		I don't know the president's number, actually.
		But I was expecting somebody to call us.
		I have to say that.
		You know, because usually you hear, come on, guys.
		You know, if you found a signal, the federal government will move right in.
		The men in black will show up and shut you down or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it didn't happen.
		Nobody was interested.
		I mean, you know, there were people who were interested.
		And by the time it was all over, the newspapers were calling because they knew about it by then.
		But no, the government never showed any interest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If the signal had been a description of how to build a better bomb, they'd have been there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Trust me.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe.
		I mean, who knows what the signal was.
		It was a signal.
		But we're just picking up what's called the carrier signal.
		That is to say, it's just a component of the signal that's there to carry the information.
		So it's not actually interesting to listen to that somebody's on the air, and that's the first thing you want to do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you were hearing a carrier Without modulation.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So modulation.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		We weren't even hearing it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was just numbers on the screen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Modulation is the intelligence that would be included in the carrier.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		So it was a radio signal without any message, if you will.
		But only because if there was a message, it would take a different kind of equipment to find that.
		It turns out it's much harder to find the message than it is just to find the on-the-air sign, if you will.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so then to sum up, other than that great excitement, and of course the wild signal, which you kind of dismissed, there's been nothing in all these years, in all these planetary systems, we've pointed at nothing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		That is correct.
		And some people think that's significant.
		They think, well, you guys have had plenty of time to do this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even you were one of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember you telling me, and I'm sure you remember it, you said, if we don't get a signal, and I forget what it was, the next five years, 10 years, something like that, we're going to have to start thinking there may not be one to get.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't quite remember it that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But maybe it was 50 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		What I do remember saying, and this I would say again, in fact, I'm going to say it again right now, if SETI doesn't succeed by, I don't know, say 2050, that's a long way off.
		2050, so that's 35 years away.
		If we don't find something by then, because by then we will have looked at millions of star systems, millions.
		At this point, we've looked at thousands.
		But because of the improvements in technology, by then, you looked at a fair sample of star systems.
		And if you don't find anything after looking at millions of star systems, you know, some people would say, okay, that proves it.
		We're the smartest things in this part of the universe.
		And a lot of my neighbors believe that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you be one of those saying that at that point?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I would never be one of those saying that.
		That strikes me as entirely too improbable.
		What I would say, though, at that point is that this is the wrong experiment.
		We're not going about this the right way.
		What we're looking for isn't something we're going to find.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you've already thought of this, actually, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that tells me you've already thought of a better way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure I've thought of a better way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I can think of ways that, you know, sort of improvements or changes in what we're doing that might really change the odds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like what?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the most obvious thing is simply to have antennas and equipment that's 100 or 1,000 times more sensitive.
		We're listening for signals that have to be fairly powerful.
		In other words, the Klingons or whoever they are up there, they have to invest a fair amount of money in their transmitting setup unless they know we're here and they're deliberately targeting the Earth and they can make a very focused, if you will, a very beamed signal and then it doesn't cost them so much.
		But if they don't know we're here and they're just giving the, if you will, the galactic weather forecast or maybe it's the galactic internet signal or whatever it is, if it isn't really intended directly for us, we're only going to hear it if it's an incredibly powerful transmitter.
		And that might be unrealistic.
		Maybe they don't want to pay for all those kilowatt hours.
		And in that case, if you had receivers that were 1,000 times more sensitive, then maybe the landscape changes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so we've pretty well summed up the signals not received to date.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Something I want you to hear.
		Hold on just a second, and you'll get a chance to respond to it.
		This is Dr. Stephen Greer, and I know that you know that name.
		So what I want you to do is listen very carefully.
dr steven greer ▲ ● ▼		Now, I'm going to say something here because this is enough years after it happened.
		A few years ago, there was a show called Coast to Coast with Art Bell.
		And it was on the cover of Time magazine, and I was one of his favorite guests.
		And when I'd be on that show, it really lit things up at certain agencies.
		And one time I was on his show a few years back, towards the end of his career there, and this issue came up, and I said, well, you know, I have a source high up in SETI that confirms to me that they, in fact, have received interplanetary signals, but in a kind of phased, not normal array.
		It was kind of a pulsed array, and that it was kept secret and covered up.
		And the SETI people were furious.
		Subsequently, Seth Shostak got on the show and just said, well, Dr. Vera knew what he's talking about, and he probably talked to some volunteer computer operator because we have all this network of volunteers.
		What the RF Bell didn't know, and what Seth Shostik didn't know, which I'm going to say now because it's enough water gone under the bridge, is that the guy who told me that was the founder of the SETI project and the Drake equation, Dr. Drake.
unidentified		He told me that, that they had had that contact.
dr steven greer ▲ ● ▼		Moreover, a man who had been one of Carl Sagan's best friends, with best men at his wedding, confirmed it.
dr steven greer ▲ ● ▼		And he had been present when the wow signal came in at Harvard.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you have it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'd like to get your reaction to that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll try and moderate myself here.
		I actually do remember the show when Stephen Greer came on on your program, as he says, and he went on for, well, a couple of hours about how he knew that we had found a signal.
		Now, first off, you've got to ask yourself, if we had found a signal, why wouldn't we tell the world?
		That would really help our funding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, but at that time, to be fair, he didn't say how he knew this.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he did.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		He did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He didn't say what he just said.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Somebody at SETI told him.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		He said somebody at the SETI Institute told him a party, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you have it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He laid it out here, though, who it was.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		He did.
		He did.
		And I got hold of, you know, coast to coast, and I said, this is incredible.
		And, you know, and they said, we'll put you on.
		So I was on with you, I think, the next night or within 48 hours, anyhow.
unidentified		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And what I had done in the meantime was, you know, there were only four scientists.
		There are a couple of engineers.
		There are no volunteers.
		All of that is nonsense.
		Also, the WOW signal suddenly was at Harvard.
		I suppose you heard that.
		Whereas, in fact, it was at Ohio State.
		But never mind any of that.
		The thing is that there were only four scientists connected with the SETI project at that time.
		And of course, they were all just down the hall from me.
		They're not casual acquaintances.
		They're people I work with every day.
		And I went to all of them, including Frank Drake, by the way, and said, what do you know about Stephen Greer?
		Not one of them had heard of Stephen Greer, let alone have talked to him at a party somewhere.
		And so I thought, okay, well, that's interesting.
		So I called up Stephen Greer's organization.
		Should I go on?
		I mean, do you want to hear more of this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A little more.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So I called up Greer's operation in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I asked to speak to Mr. Greer about this because I wanted to know with whom he had spoken.
		He didn't say on the air when he was with you that it was Frank Drake.
		Of course, if Frank Drake had known that we'd pick up a signal, Frank Drake would be, you know, he'd have a Nobel Prize on his mantle today.
		And they didn't let me talk to Greer, actually.
		And in the end, they just stonewalled me.
		They said, well, he's busy.
		And I said, well, could you just at least send me an email?
		Just have him tell me a date or a location where he heard this information, just so I can verify it.
		And he refused to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I doubt they refused.
		They probably didn't know at that point.
		I mean, the reason I pulled this audio, obviously, is because he laid it out, you know, the people involved and everything else.
		Now, are you absolutely sure, Seth, that if one was received, that even you, as senior astronomer, of course you would know, but I mean, what if there's some protocol that even you don't know about?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was chair of the international committee that set the protocols, so I guess I know about the protocols.
		But beyond that, you just got to back off from this for a moment and look at what we're trying to do.
		We're trying to find a signal that would prove somebody's out there.
		Okay, and we do this on the basis of volunteer donations.
		I mean, the only money we get for this is the money people send us because they think it's an interesting thing to do.
		Now, if we had found a signal and that looked pretty good, doggone it, you know, the problem of the funding, of course, would go away.
		But it would be like asking a cancer researcher, Ralph, you're looking for a cure for cancer.
		Now, are you sure you're not keeping that a secret?
		Maybe you found it and you're keeping it a secret.
		Would you say, well, does that make sense?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From some points of view, Seth, you know it does.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, not in the case of SETI, because, you know, there are people who will say, you know, Seth, if you guys find a signal, probably the government would want to shut you down.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Keep that news quiet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And I ask, every time somebody says that to me, I have to come back and say, why?
		Why would they want to keep it quiet?
		It would be one of the most interesting discoveries ever.
		So why would they want to keep it quiet?
		If you discover Antarctica, do you want to keep it quiet?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've got a lot of answers for that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, we've had this argument before or this discussion before, but there are obvious answers.
		It would, depending on the nature of the contact, it might well very much upset religious faith across the world, not just here, but across the world.
		And it would just depend on the nature of the contact.
		If it's just some, you know, dot, dot, dot, we're here, dot, dot, dot, we're here, dot, dot, dot, we're here, but we're a hundred light years away, dot, dot, dot, no problem.
		Hundred light years seems like, you know, plenty of separation.
		But if it's, we're here, dot, dot, dot, we're going to take over, dot, dot, dot, get your armies ready, they'll last about five seconds, dot, dot, dot, that's a different kind of signal, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, to begin with, that's a signal that we couldn't pick up, right?
		Because that one has modulation.
		That's a signal with a message.
		Remember, we're only listening for the dial tone, if you will.
		We're listening for the carrier.
		Okay, so the carrier doesn't carry any information.
		It's just part of the signal.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But once you get the carrier, you're going to be looking for the modulation real quick.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's a completely different instrument to do that, and it would take 10 years to build that.
unidentified		What?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean to tell me if you got a signal that amounted to a carrier of whatever nature, you couldn't examine it for any modulation for 10 years?
unidentified		You serious?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, you could try.
		You could try.
		But the thing is, I mean, if they were just modulating the carrier, this is getting a little bit technical.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Modulation, folks, just means information.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Think of this carrier, this signal.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You could look at the carrier as it's like a whistle.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's a single tone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Like that.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And they could turn that on and off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be some kind of modulation.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You know, interstellar Morse code.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And if they had a slow fist, if these guys were really slow in setting their Morse code, you know, maybe you could pick that up.
		They're only sending a few words per minute.
		But they're not going to do that.
		If they're going to the trouble of building a transmitter that's sending information into space, they're going to send a lot of information.
		You're not going to waste time sending a few words per minute any more than you want to dial up modem anymore.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, when we transmitted from Arecibo in that very controversial transmission, we sent information.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Very little information.
		1,679 bits.
		That's not much.
		Any page of text in a magazine has considerably more.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		More than a blank carrier, though.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It was done with two carriers.
		It was done with two carriers.
		And you might be able to get that.
		But the point is really a different one.
		The point is you're picking up a signal.
		There's no danger in picking up a signal.
		If somebody tunes in their favorite talk show host right in their car radio, you don't have to worry that that talk show host is going to jump into the car and start giving them a hard time just because they got tuned in.
		The talk show host doesn't know Who's tuned in, right?
		So that would be the same with us.
		We pick up a signal.
		Of course, they don't know that that, I mean, the signal may even have taken a thousand years to get to us.
		The guys who sent it might be long gone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I sometimes feel like strangling my callers occasionally.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But do you ever do it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, it's just a thought.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Innocent.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's the difference.
		And in any case, in any case, Mr. Greer, I've had to occasionally debate him on the radio, but he just makes stuff up.
		I hate to say this, but he just makes stuff up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's where you stand in response to that statement.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He made it up.
unidentified		Yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, absolutely.
		You can talk to Frank Drake himself.
		Ask him, hey, Frank, did you ever talk to this guy, Stephen Greer?
		I asked him that, actually, and he said, I don't know who that is.
		That was his response.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, and you would think if he made a statement of the kind of magnitude we were talking about here, certainly he would have recalled it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, not only that, but if we picked up a signal, it doesn't matter whether he recalled Stephen Greer or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Unless Frank turned around after you asked him and thought, oh, my God, how does he know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't think so, huh?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't think so.
unidentified		No.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Really don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We do have to talk about protocols.
		You say you have written the protocols that would be used if a signal was detected.
		And we, I guess, when do the protocols kick in?
		How many people have to verify it before the protocols begin?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the protocols are simply, if you will, a code of good practice.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like something for a colorist.
unidentified		It does.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's no force of law.
		And there have been protocols.
		They were set up during the NASA SETI days.
		So even back, you know, in the early 90s, these things have been drafted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sounds like something you'd for an outline for a sitcom or something.
		Listen, hold tight.
		We'll be right back.
		We're at a big point.
		Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research.
		My guest.
unidentified		Look at us, but do not touch.
		Fedra is my name.
		In the darkest time, between dusk and dawn, from Baha'is Desert, it's Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert.
		Now, here's Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, I'm going to sort of semi-open the phone lines, even though we've got a lot to talk about with Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, if you have a Skype call you want to make and you're in North America, it's so easy.
unidentified		M-I-T-D 51 is what you put in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's like you're going to dial something.
		M-I-T-D 5-1 and call us.
		Here is Seth Schostak once again.
		All right, well, so we've got to face, at least, the possibility, Seth, that we are all alone.
		Although we did recently, I saw this amazing photograph.
		In fact, it was too amazing to be true.
unidentified		They called it Earth 2.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess you probably saw that headline somewhere.
		There's this planet they found.
		But it's really far away, I think.
		And they call it Earth-2.
		Did you see that headline?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think you're probably referring to a planet called its other name other than Earth-2, Kepler-452B.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the one.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, all right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that probably doesn't look quite as impressive on the library card as Earth-2 would be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, and they actually showed a picture of it.
		You know, it had an atmosphere.
		You could see continents.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, all of that is an artist's impression.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you got it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They haven't actually seen this thing.
		This was found by the Kepler Space Telescope, which is a NASA telescope up in orbit.
		And it was launched, what, four or five years ago?
		And what it does is what it did, up until part of it broke, up until about a year ago, it would just stare at 170,000 stars and just measure the brightness all the time.
		Every 30 seconds, it would download the brightness of each one of those 170,000 stars.
		And a particular star had planets going around it and they were oriented the right way, well, that planet would get in front of the star and just reduce the brightness of the star.
		An Earth-like planet doesn't reduce the brightness very much because it's small compared to the star.
		It will reduce it by about one part in 10,000, so 0.01% typically.
		And this was one that they found in the data that did that.
		And it was about the same size as the Earth.
		It was also in the same sort of orbit as the Earth because it's a year.
		They know that because of the time between, you know, it dims the star and then a certain period of time later, it dims it again, then it dims it again.
		And the period of time was 385 days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pretty close.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Not yet.
		It's pretty close.
		So, you know, if you lived on that planet, you would age a little bit less quickly.
		At least the birthdays wouldn't come quite as quickly.
		And it also is orbiting a star that really is very similar to the sun, a little bit brighter, but not much different than the sun.
		So here you have a planet.
		It turns out to be about the same size as the Earth, a little bigger, 60% bigger.
		It has the same year.
		We don't know if it has the same day or anything like that, but we know the temperatures on that planet are going to be somewhat similar to Earth because it's the same distance from its star.
		So that's why it's called Earth 2.
		It's a cousin of the Earth, we think, maybe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		That is neat stuff.
		So it's very much like Earth in most ways that we can see, including perhaps the temperatures.
		I guess we have no way yet to detect if it has water, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's hard to do.
		The problem is there are ways you could think of to determine if it has water.
		If you could get a little bit of light from that planet and pass that light through a prism and then analyze things, you know, the rainbow and all that stuff, these are things that astronomers do all the time, you might see water vapor in the atmosphere, that sort of thing.
		But you have to get some light from the planet.
		And the problem is this star system is, what is it, I think it's 1,400 light years away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		That means, folks, that if you could travel at the speed of light, you would have to travel for 1,400 years to get there.
		Correct, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Well, if you could travel at the speed of light, you get there essentially instantaneously from your point of view.
		But from anybody watching you go, they say, well, Luigi took 1,400 years to get there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute, wait a minute.
		What have I got wrong here?
		If it's 1,400 light-years away and you're traveling at the speed of light, it takes 1,400 years to get there.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Depends on whom you ask.
		That's just special relativity.
		You know that clocks don't all run at the same speed, the same rate.
		This is what Einstein figured out and published in 1905.
		If you're in a car, you've got a watch, and it's set to the same time as my watch, and I'm just standing on the side of the road watching you drive by, I would see that your watch seems to go slower than my watch.
		Now, at 60 miles an hour, that didn't make really much of a difference.
		But if you're going at the speed of light, then your watch stops.
		So from your point of view, it took you no time to get there.
		But of course, you can't go at the speed of light, so maybe that's maybe not the right way to look at it.
		Maybe the right way to look at it is if you could go, say, 99% of the speed of light or something like that, then from the standpoint of somebody on the ground, they would say, okay, it took them a little over 1,400 years to get there.
		But from the standpoint of the crew on the spacecraft, they would say, well, that only took a couple of months.
		They would have only aged a couple of months.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They would have only aged a couple of months.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But still, they would have spent 1,400 linear years in travel, wouldn't they?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Only by the calendar and the clock back on Earth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		The clocks on their ship would have said, well, you've been here for three months.
unidentified		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Or whatever it was.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's relativity.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's non-intuitive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's relatively cool.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is relatively cool.
		It's also relatively strange.
		But, I mean, in some sense, that's the big hope for ever going to the stars.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, you want calls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're ringing off the hook, so let's take a couple, okay?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here you are.
		It's midnight with Seth.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Mary.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Welcome back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		But some of us, you know, having to go through the art bell withdrawal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you located, Mary?
unidentified		Okay, I'm calling from Niagara Falls, New York.
unidentified		New York.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, here's Seth.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, Seth.
		Number one is I've been a big fan of the SETI at home software.
		I've been running it for years, and I recently stopped for a while, but that's beside the point.
		You guys started to address what I was about to ask.
		I see one of the problems is that while you're searching for a signal, if you're trying to get a signal from a star system that is, say, a million light years from here, well, then you're betting on a civilization that is,
		you know, a million years more advanced than us because it's going to take a million years for that signal to reach you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's pretty good point.
unidentified		Is that a correct thinking?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think it is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Relatively speaking.
		Just a couple of things.
		I didn't get your name.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mario.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Are you super?
		Okay, Mario.
		Well, you're absolutely right about that.
		That means that if it was from a million light years away that the signal was sent a million years ago, and that means that they would have had to have developed powerful radio transmitters a million years before we did.
		That's not impossible.
		The universe is 13 billion years old.
		The Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
		In other words, the universe has been here three times as long as the Earth has.
		So most of the stars out there are billions of years older than our own.
		So, you know, what the heck?
		Why couldn't they be a million years more advanced?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, go ahead.
unidentified		Just like our television signals have left this planet and is traveling throughout space.
		Okay, someone could be watching I Love Lucy, even though I don't think it's gotten that far to another star system yet.
		Okay, so that race really doesn't have to be that much more advanced than us, but the idea is trying to pick up a signal, that race would have to be a million times more advanced than us for that signal to have left that star system for you to receive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Got it.
		I really do have it.
		Thank you.
		Thank you, Mario.
		Well, all right.
		Let's take off from there.
		First of all, why does everybody use I Love Lucy?
		That always has to be the thing received.
		Anyway.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think it's written into law somewhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If we received a signal from a planet that far away, what did he say, 1,000 light years?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He said a million light years.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's much farther than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Overdoing it.
		Say 1,000 light years.
		That would mean that we were essentially looking 1,000 light years into the past when they had radio.
		And so if they still exist now in the now-now, they will have been that much more advanced.
		And to them, if they even paid attention to our puny little answer, assuming we sent one, we'd be to them as ants are to us.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a lot, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that could be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It could be, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		A couple of things.
		To begin with, in general, we're looking tens, hundreds of light-years away.
		So, you know, the difference isn't that enormous.
		But the point is still valid.
		But so what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what do you mean, so what?
		They would wish us gone, and we'd be gone if that's what they wanted.
		That's how powerful they would be.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They could be very powerful.
		But again, all we did was pick up their signal.
		They didn't know that we did that.
		And the other thing is the fact that it's old information.
		In this case, your example there are, 1,000 years old.
		So what?
		I read Julius Caesar in high school.
		That information was 2,000 years old.
		It was still interesting to read, and Julius Caesar wasn't going to attack me for it.
		And I didn't have to worry about the fact that if I talked back to him, he was now more advanced, anything like that.
		So, what?
		I mean, the fundamental point is that if you pick up a signal, yes, it's old.
		It might only be 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or 500 years old.
		It might be 1,000 years old.
		A million is much, much farther than any of us ever have looked at it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's stay in the middle, but 500.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		500 years, my God, Seth, think of us, if you can even try and imagine us, 500 years from now.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, that's scary.
		Well, I hope we have the cure for death, Art.
		But yes, okay, but there's an advantage to all this, too.
		And Mario may have been going in this direction, that if you hear from a society that's very much more advanced than we are, right, I mean, maybe you hear from them just when they're at the same level that we are, but it's more likely they're more advanced because they really need those powerful transmitters for us to hear them, then maybe they can teach us something.
		And the fact that they're not there anymore or their society has moved on to who knows what, you know, well, that's just the way it is.
		But it might still be very interesting to hear from them, even though you're reading newspapers, if you will, from last week or last month or 10 years ago.
		But if it's the only newspaper you get, it's still interesting to read it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would be interesting.
		I certainly agree with you, but it also could be catastrophic.
		That thought in mind, Walnut Creek, you're on the air with Seth.
		It's midnight.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		It's an honor to speak to you.
		And I'm calling from Walnut Creek, California.
		Good evening.
		Seth, I'm not a comedian.
		I'm not trying to be funny.
		There's just some weird things that pop up in my head every so often.
		And I've wondered, nobody can seem to answer this question.
		I'll email people.
		Nobody gets back to me.
		Nobody has an answer.
		I'm wondering, is there anything slower than not moving?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything slower than not moving?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's an interesting twist on how high is the sky, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You know, by definition, if you're not moving, that's about as slow as you can go.
		But maybe it's worth pointing out that essentially it's impossible not to move at all.
		You might think you're not moving, but of course, if you're just sitting there in a chair, you are moving because the Earth is rotating, and then the Earth's going around the Sun, and then the Sun is headed off into the galaxy.
		And the galaxy is moving, so everything's moving.
		You say, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, there must be something that's not moving.
		Turns out that there's really nothing that's not moving.
		You can take a bunch of atoms and you cool them down, and they slow down when you cool them down.
		And if you could cool them to absolute zero, then they would stop in theory.
		But in fact, they never stop.
		They never stop.
		So everything is always moving.
		So I guess in that sense, you know, complete stop is kind of a misnomer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, caller, are you worried you're lazy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess he's gone.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here he is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Stop listening.
unidentified		Caller?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you just weren't moving quick enough.
unidentified		No, I know I'm lazy.
unidentified		I just.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just.
		There are subatomic things moving really slowly, so slowly you can't see them.
		Or so tiny.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've never heard anybody.
		Thank you.
		I've never heard anybody ask that question.
		So just based on that alone, you should win something.
		I don't know what, but you should win something.
		Let's see.
		We have to take a quick break.
		So why don't I go ahead and do that?
unidentified		Oh, baby.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've let this roll for a little bit.
		It's been so long.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
		No one can take your place.
		Come on, men and women.
		Skype up.
		Call Midnight in the Desert at MITD51.
		That's MITD51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right, folks.
unidentified		Skype up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I love that term, Skype Up.
		My guest is the Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research, Seth Shosak.
		And he admits that in all the years, including the WoW signal, which probably wasn't as wow-y as we think, that we haven't heard anything yet.
		And we'll explore those implications as well, too.
		Seth, welcome back on.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Eric.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's always fun to have you on the air.
		I really enjoy you on the air.
		You've got a certain bounce back to you that I like.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it keeps me awake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear your computer making little noises, by the way.
unidentified		Really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't know where that is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I've been trying to turn it off, but I'll just turn off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's all right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'll just turn off this Skype connection here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		Be careful.
		Don't turn me off.
		All right.
		So lots and lots and lots of people want to talk to you, and I have stuff I want to sprinkle in.
		For example, if Donald Trump were to give the SETI Institute enough money, would you be willing to call it the Trump dish set?
		You know, Connie, need an answer here.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the answer is yes.
		The answer is yes.
		You know, look, you know, I could make excuses and so forth and so on, but the facts are we would do that.
		And there's a lot of historical precedent for naming telescopes after the guy who writes the check.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he really likes stuff named after him.
		So there you have it.
		Let's go where to.
		I don't know.
		Wilmington, North Carolina.
		Hi.
		It's midnight.
		You're on with Seth.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		This is Gabrielle with Eastern Paranormal, and I've sent you a message through the wormhole.
		What I would like to ask your guest is Frank Sumption, he was the developer of the first ghost boxes that we had, and now we have the Shack Hacks and Ghost Boxes, and people are making them.
		We're getting voices coming through them claiming that they're interdimensional beings.
		All right, now, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is a really cool story, but I'm not sure it fits in for Seth.
unidentified		Yeah, this is the question.
		I was about to finish it.
		And we're getting a lot of them saying they're space aliens, which is a type of dimensional being.
		And so my question to him is: what does he think about that?
		Where does he think these voices come through?
		I posted a video in the DM talk thing here that he can look at if he's on it.
		But I'll get off and listen to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, don't go away yet.
		Actually, I'm glad you have asked this question.
		Now, Seth, you're listening with very powerful dishes and computers looking at millions of frequencies.
		But how can you rule out the possibility that the communication will come in some way that we simply don't expect?
		Maybe even one like she's talking about right now.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know the details of the ghost boxes, I have to say.
		I don't have one in my home.
		But in terms of could it come in a different way?
unidentified		Could the signal, could the proof come through a ghost box?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe I should look into them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you should have a ghost box.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Young lady, can you get Seth a ghost box?
unidentified		I absolutely could get Seth a ghost box.
		There's also another question is we have these apps you can download on your iPhone.
		I have an iPhone too, and you can get them on Android.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		They're coming saying it on the apps.
		Yeah, you should have Danny Bigbeard from the Echo Vox.
		Danny Bigbeard.
		He's got the Echo Vox on, and they come through and they talk through them.
		And like I said, some say we're ghostly mitted.
		I have one of those.
		But I have a ton of them that say we're aliens, we're on the moon, they say they're on Mars, they say they're in all kinds of things.
		Okay, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you would please send a ghost box post-haste to Seth Shostak at SETI Research Center, and I know he'll be looking for that box.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I will.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Probably have it X-rayed in.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Just to follow up there a little bit, because you asked, could it be that the proof that there's somebody out there comes out of, if you will, left fields?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I wasn't totally joking, Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really, I wasn't.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not joking with my answer, because the answer to that question is, yeah, could happen.
		In fact, again, if you look at some of the most interesting discoveries in physics or astronomy, those are the fields that I personally know best, but some of them came out of experiments that weren't designed to find that.
		That could happen.
		And in the case of finding ET, one thing that I think is a good contender for turning up something that we're not expecting is simply the increasing amount of imaging of the sky being done with really big telescopes.
		And they keep building big telescopes.
		You know, when I was a kid, the biggest telescope was the one in Mount Palomar, the 200-inch telescope in Southern California.
		Today, there are telescopes that are much, much bigger than that.
		And they're building one in Hawaii that the mirror is 30 meters across.
		Well, that's like 100 feet.
		You know, the Palomar telescope is 200-inch.
		It's 100 feet across.
		And, you know, when you have those kinds of instruments looking at the sky, I mean, who's to say?
		They might trip across something that we don't expect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Moreover, who's to say that somebody doesn't invent some silly little thing that they call a ghost box that resonates in some crazy way that would make you and I laugh just thinking about it right now, but actually works?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wish them the best of luck.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, personally, I'm not sure they have a ghost of a chance for doing that, but I wish them the best of luck.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Ken, on Skype, you're on the air with Seth.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
unidentified		Good talk with Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, yes.
unidentified		I couldn't think of a better show to pose this question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		It kind of goes along with the lines of your last caller.
		It's regards to the frequencies that you span, I know most of it's in microwave spectrum, but from what I understand, gravitational waves travel much faster.
		And another thing that you might want to add to that comment from the other caller is our brains have magnetite in them, and we're subject to magnetic field influences and possibly gravitational waves.
		Could it not be that what she's trying to relate to is that mental communication with the brain is a possibility and much faster than speed of light if it's on a gravitational wave?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I sure don't rule it out, Jeff?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Ken, here's the thing.
		I do get quite a number of emails, maybe one or two a month, from people who say, you guys are wasting your time with radio waves or light waves because they only go at the speed of light.
		So why not use gravitational waves?
		Why not look for gravity waves coming from deep space?
		There are experiments, by the way, to look for gravity waves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even, Seth, from another dimension.
unidentified		It could be spooky matter, related to spooky matter.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Spooky matter.
		Well, there is spooky action at a distance.
		That was Einstein's word.
		But Ken, just to make sure that you get this, according to Einstein, gravity waves travel at the speed of light.
		They don't go faster than light.
		They don't go faster than radio waves.
		And they're really hard to detect because we haven't even detected them yet.
		We've got millions of dollars worth of equipment looking for gravity waves, and they still haven't scored.
		And to generate a gravity wave that's strong enough for somebody to pick it up on some other star system, requires doing something really impressive, like shaking your planet or shaking a star or something like that.
		It's hard.
unidentified		What if it's brain-to-brain communication?
unidentified		I mean, ESP has been long known as a possibility.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's not been demonstrated.
		I think there's a big experiment, Ken, you may want to consider that's testing whether, you know, ESP actually works.
		and that experiment is called Las Vegas.
		If ESP works...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, that's yet a different direction.
		Although you can also use that in Vegas.
		You can try that in Vegas, too.
		But, you know, if somebody did, here's my answer.
		If somebody did win a lot of money in Vegas, I mean tons of money, using some special power like ESP, they probably wouldn't advertise it, Seth.
unidentified		Yeah, they wouldn't.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, but the casinos might toss them out after a while.
		I don't know.
		But ESP has been tested.
		Occasionally, they've run some experiments and they say, okay, look, you claim you can do it.
		And they put people who claim they can do it into a testing situation where they're trying to send the color of a card or whatever it is to somebody in another room.
		And it doesn't work.
		it doesn't work.
unidentified		Just one last comment.
unidentified		The CIA has used it in remote viewing, so I know that some of it's proven, some of it's not, but I appreciate all those answers, and it was really good talking to you, and keep up the good work.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All right, Ken, thanks.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Seth.
unidentified		Hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are at this nice longer bottom-of-the-hour break.
		I'm Art Bell.
		Midnight in the desert, raging in the nighttime.
		Stay right where you are.
unidentified		Listen to the wind blow.
		Watch the sun rise.
		No, no, no, no, no.
		I'll tell you what's wrong before I get off the floor.
		Don't bring me down.
		Come on, men and women.
		Skype.
		Call Midnight in the Desert at MITD51.
		That's MITD51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I want to encourage.
		We've got a full bank of calls here, but we love Skype calls.
		Really, we do.
		We love Skype calls.
		So MITD51 is the way to do it.
		When you come in on Skype, you know, if you're wearing a headset, mic, boy, do you sound good.
		And if you're not, then just get up really, really close to where the microphone is on your computer, if you can find it.
		It's like a little hole or something.
		And you can use that.
		But you have the potential to sound really good on Skype.
		And by the way, here once again is the Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research, Seth Chostak, along with somebody named Michelle somewhere else in the world.
		Hi, Michelle.
		Where are you?
unidentified		Hi, I'm from Japan.
unidentified		I actually called you last week, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's right, Japan.
		From Japan.
		Okay, excellent.
unidentified		First of all, did you get the picture of Mount Fuji I sent you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have not yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You sent it to artbell at artbell.com?
unidentified		Hopefully you'll get it.
		Okay.
		So the question I had was a couple years ago, I heard a news story about a research telescope like this that had detected signals that they determined were not natural.
		It was somewhere in South America.
		And when they brought it back, and I guess they demodulated it or something, they found that it was Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s that had gone out to space, and the signals had hit an interstellar object of some sort and bounced back and had come back.
		And they were really excited because these episodes had all been destroyed by the BBC.
		And I hadn't heard anything about that since.
		And I thought, who better to ask?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I haven't ever heard about this.
		No, that's really cool.
		Stop right there.
		Michelle, hold on, hold on.
		Stop right there.
unidentified		Seth, have you heard anything about this?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No.
		The news of Doctor Who has not made it to me.
		I mean, Michelle, I could say this.
		You know, you send out a TV signal, and it's true.
		It goes out into space.
		That part's right.
		And if it hits something, some of the signal bounces back.
		But even if it hit the moon, right, which is a pretty big object in the sky compared to anything else that you can think of, it's much bigger than, for example, Saturn looks in the sky and so forth.
		Even if it hit the moon and bounced back, and that would take three seconds, you would get the show three seconds later.
		That's hardly much of a delay at all.
		But the real point is it would be very much weaker because only part of the signal actually hits the object, and even less of what is the object actually makes it back to you.
		It's kind of a poor man's radar, really.
		And to do radar with Doctor Who, I don't know, doesn't sound right to me, Michelle, I've got to say.
unidentified		Well, like I said, you know, this was a news story that I had heard that was all over the internet for a little bit and then went away.
		So who knows?
		It could have been fake or something.
		But maybe do better to ask.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, Michelle, if it's on the Internet, it's got to be true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everybody knows that.
unidentified		Oh, of course, right?
		But I believe the BBC was actually talking about it because they were hoping that in the future they would be able to get some of these back because the tapes were destroyed.
		And so there's all these missing episodes.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, thank you very much for the question and for calling.
		And, Seth, what about that?
		I mean, it is possible, isn't it, that something out there could...
		You're a radio guy, all right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I swear to you, what I'm about to tell you is the truth, okay?
		I used to operate very high power on the 75-meter band, which is 3.5 to roughly 3.9 megahertz.
		Yes?
		Okay?
		On singles high band.
		I would love to have you explain this.
		There were several times that I heard my own signal come back to me three or even almost four seconds later.
		I swear to you, this is true.
		They're called LDEs, long-delayed echoes.
		It's not an echo when it comes that long.
		Nobody knows how it's done or how it could be done, because after all, radio travels at slightly less than the speed of light, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends on the medium, but nobody.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's not going to travel at the speed of light, at least in a vacuum.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it's slightly under, I think, the speed of light.
		Anyway, whatever.
		It goes fast, right?
unidentified		So it couldn't even be the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you do the math, three, almost four seconds, it couldn't even be the moon, Seth.
		And there are a lot of ham operators that back me up.
		This is true.
		I grant you I'm operating high power, legal limit, all that stuff, big antenna, yeah?
		But it's not possible.
		Now, you're going to say somebody was screwing around with you, playing you back to yourself.
		No.
		Because in order to prove it to myself, I went sliding up a few kilohertz one way or the other several times, and each time it came back On the same frequency.
		How could that be?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure I can answer the question.
		Long-delay echoes have certainly heard about them.
		And, you know, depending on the angle of the antenna and all that, it's conceivable maybe the signal bounce from the ionosphere back to Earth and back up to the ionosphere all the way around the Earth.
		Maybe, maybe.
		That doesn't sound good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even if it did, the math doesn't work.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends on the angle to bounce.
		But the moon, you ruled out the moon, but you shouldn't rule out the moon.
		The moon is a quarter of a million miles away.
		So to go there and back is a half a million mile.
		So the 500,000 miles, the speed of light is 186,000 miles a second.
		So to go to the moon and back takes a little over three seconds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So there you go.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe it did moon bounce.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, fellow hams.
		Hear me when I tell you, my own signal coming back to me was 20 over 9.
		Now, that's a strong darn signal, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't think it was moon bounce because of that, because you wouldn't expect it to be so strong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not even close.
		Not even close.
		All right, back to the phones we go.
		Mount Pleasant.
		Hello.
		Hello there.
		Turn your device off, please.
unidentified		It is off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, excellent.
		Thank you.
		All right, it's midnight.
		You're on with Seth.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
		How are you doing?
		This is Wade.
		Ham Radio Operators Around the World will listen to you this evening.
		And I've got a question about the reason you need high-powered transmitters to listen.
		The spacecraft that just did the Pluto flyby has a maximum output of 12 watts.
		12 watts isn't a lot of power.
		And it's got about a 30 dB gain antenna.
		That's one.
		And the other one it is called a long path.
		And the signal does skip around the world.
		And a lot of times I've been unable to workstations pointing my beam-type antenna directly at them, but been able to operate with them through the long path.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, opposite direction.
unidentified		It goes all the way around the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Opposite direction.
		It does go all the way around the world, but no way in the world does it take anywhere near three to four seconds.
		So that's inexplicable.
		And even if it does, it doesn't arrive back at 20 over 9.
		No way.
unidentified		No.
		No.
		And another thing, a quick invitation.
		Come back 3973 and step back to the show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		Thank you very, very much for the call.
		No, there's just really no way to explain it, Seth.
		No way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't give up art.
		I think there is a way to explain it.
		I've got to say the moon would work, but the 20 over 9, which, of course, is Hamlingo for a really powerful repeat signal.
		Yes.
		You know, that's the hard part.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's impossible, Seth.
		It's just not mathematically possible, but I guarantee you would happen.
		All right, James.
		James on Skype.
		You're on with Seth.
		It's midnight.
unidentified		Go.
		Yes, sir.
		How are you doing tonight?
		Really well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		All right.
		Hey, since we're talking about airspace, and hopefully this question wasn't asked earlier, but I saw something in the news about a live feed for the ISS, like a golden orange UFO of some type.
		And of course, NASA cut the live feed.
		And I was just wondering if Seth or you had seen that or had any comment on that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me explain that to Seth.
		Thank you for the call.
		Seth, again, this is the truth, or at least here's what I saw.
		They had a live feed from the ISS.
		It was just a static feed.
		You could see part of the little piece of the space station.
		And then beyond it, clearly, you could see objects leaving our atmosphere and going to space, two or three of them.
		And by the time about the third one came along, NASA cut the feed like that.
		Now, for some folks out there, Seth, that makes them really suspicious.
		Would you like to comment?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I think I did see this.
		I actually looked at the video.
		Oh, okay.
		And what you see is indeed this fixed camera there on the ISS, and it's looking at the limb of the Earth.
		And you see these little dots, these white dots, and they're moving.
		It looks like they're coming up out of the atmosphere kind of thing.
		But of course, to draw that conclusion that they're coming up out of the atmosphere, you need to know how far away they are.
		And I've talked to plenty of people in the space program about these things, which they see all the time.
		And what they are are drops of oil or water or whatever that are actually coming off the space station, and they're like, you know, 30 feet away or 20 feet away, and they're catching a little bit of sunlight.
		So they're not far away at all.
		They're not craft coming off the Earth.
		So you see these a lot, actually.
		And so if you see them a lot, and then the transmission goes down for whatever reason, maybe they're over a part of the Earth and they don't have a good downlink and the signal goes away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure that's it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's very, very convenient to say, well, all right, NASA doesn't want you to see these saucers.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe NASA doesn't want you to see oil drops.
unidentified		Well, maybe not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But there are a lot of us who look at something like that, and frankly, it really did look like they were coming up out of the atmosphere.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it does.
		It does.
		But that's a common problem, actually, in the whole UFO realm that people will say, you know, well, it was moving at thousands of miles an hour and it was this far away and that kind of thing.
		And, you know, if you're going to say that, you need some way to gauge that.
		You can't just say, because that's what it seemed like to you, that it was moving very fast, because you can only tell how fast it's moving if you know either, well, you need to know how far away it is.
		You need to know how far away it is.
		And if it's something in the night sky, it's pretty hard to tell how far away it is.
		It might be 100 miles up, and it might be 1,000 miles up, and it might be 10 feet up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's a drop of oil, huh?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Or water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe water.
		Okay.
		Virginia, all the way to the state of Virginia.
		It's midnight for you, and you're on with Seth.
unidentified		Seth, this is Plato in Richmond, Virginia.
		I'm listening on shortwave on 50-85 kilohertz.
		And I've got a question for you.
		I saw a UK Mir reporter ask you an article that was published kind of worldwide on August 4th about this creature, alleged creature, crab creature on Mars.
		And you kind of dispensed with that very abruptly according to what she reported.
		I don't know if you were quoted correctly as being this paraidolia thing.
		And that's sort of a reptilian brain thing.
		Now, there's four images that were taken by the rover, and they were taken on Sol 710, which was on August 5th, 2014, over a year ago.
		It was widely reported to be taken in July.
		I think that caused a lot of confusion.
		So about 372 days ago, rover's driving by this cliff face, and it's taking photos, and it caught four photos of this object, which was widely reported as a crab.
		In reality, I've done some analysis, and I can assure you, I'm not seeing things that aren't there.
		I'm doing a exobioanalysis, a reverse engineering of exobioengineering to try to see exactly what this creature is composed of.
		And I found that it has 50 ball joints and sockets in its limbs.
		It's got 10 limbs, and they're bifurcated like legs at the knee that split out into two lower leg segments with opposable...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
unidentified		It's really there in four different pictures that's on the raw data.
		And I'd like to dispense with the idea that this might just be somebody conjuring up an image in their reptilian brain, because it's real.
		It's in all four images.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you presented this to Richard C. Hogan?
unidentified		I wouldn't really want to do that without further analysis.
		What I'm trying to do is put together a multi-layered image showing all the different body parts and how they fit together.
		All right.
		Well, when you get that, send it to me immediately.
		This thing has to have about two and a half times the limb motor function control, and therefore it's got to be probably more intelligent than a human in terms of its motor controls in its brain.
		And if you're looking for intelligence, I'd be happy to give you any data that I might have and let you look at it because I think this is really important.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Send it to me.
		I'm serious.
		Be my guest.
		Send it to me.
		It's hard for Seth to comment on this.
		I don't know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I did comment on the crab.
		It's always good to talk to a fellow Virginian, I have to say.
		But, you know, what I saw, the crab photo, the whole body of data, and no pun intended there, the whole body of data was a few hundred pixels, right?
		So how you can do all this analysis about how many ball joints it has and so forth.
		But let me put it to you this way.
		You know, I've seen photos on Mars.
		Well, there was one, what, today, about, you know, some little woman standing there on Mars.
		You know, I think that these are all the same phenomena.
		I really do think they're periodogia.
		But if you were to see something that looked like, I don't know what, a carburetor lying on the surface of Mars, and you'd say, well, that's pretty unusual carburetor.
		But would you believe that?
		If somebody claimed, I found a carburetor sitting on Mars, you'd say, you know, you're just seeing things in the rocks.
		It's like looking in the clouds and you're seeing things that look familiar to you.
		Okay?
unidentified		And I agree with you about the woman's image.
unidentified		What that looks like to me is very thin layers of dry sense supplemented so thin it looks just like he's not kind of seen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, with the number of pixels that he mentioned, the resolution, how can you possibly be coming up with this analysis?
unidentified		Well, I have actually many more pixels than that.
		These are very high-resolution pictures taken with the mass cam.
		And the data is in there.
		I've been able to tease it out and look at it at very many different layers of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But when you go too deep with not enough pixels, you're the one who gets teased.
unidentified		Yeah, but there is enough pixels.
		And we've been able to look at the ball joints themselves and how they're configured.
		And this is not imaginary.
		This thing is braced at its own.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Send it to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay?
unidentified		I will promise to send it to you, and I'll send it to Seth as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Excellent.
		Thank you.
		I do think that's what happens.
		When you go too deep with not enough pixels, you begin to see, frankly, what you want to see.
		Or your imagination can run.
		It's like looking at clouds, kind of.
		Do you agree with that, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, absolutely.
		That's the problem.
		I mean, our brains are really good at recognizing things that we already know about in complicated visual images, like in a forest and so on.
		I mean, you can see we're so good at that because 100,000 years ago, it was really important that you recognize things like predators, for example, in a complicated landscape.
		And yet, a lot of times you would think, oh, man, that's a lion.
		I better get out of here.
		And it's not a lion.
		But it's better to err on the side of caution from the standpoint of your own survival and your own genetic inheritance than not to.
		So we're really good at that.
		We're really good at seeing things with very little information.
		We are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Denton, Texas, your turn.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's midnight for you.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm very well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		I missed the first part of the show, but I had a question for Seth.
unidentified		Are you publicly funded?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the SETI Institute, which is where I work here, it's a nonprofit research organization.
		And most of the scientists down the hall here from where I'm talking to you are what are called astrobiologists.
		So they're studying things like the history of water on Mars, the possibility of microbial life on some of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, that kind of thing.
		And that is funded mostly by, you know, they get grants.
		So that money does come from the government, mostly NASA.
		The SETI project, which is the listening experiments to try and find intelligent life elsewhere, that's funded by donations.
		That's all.
		There's no government money there.
unidentified		Okay, I was curious if you had to give a presentation to a board or something, and then what do you present on your progress to get funding?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, you do have to present that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, that's a very good question.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but the board doesn't really give you too much money.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it would be nice to have a board that consists of people who could, in fact, help out in a very significant way in the funding of the organization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, yes.
		But, Seth, if you had to go in front of them and say, look, you haven't found a darn thing yet.
		You've been looking since, what was it?
		70.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the first modern SETI experiment, Frank Drake's, was 1960.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		60, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Since 1960, what kind of argument do you make in front of that board?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, the board is well aware of that, of course.
		They know the history of SETI, but they also know this thing that we actually discussed very briefly at the beginning of the show, and that is that whatever experiment you're doing this year is faster than every previous experiment.
		Because of the improvement in mostly compute power, what you can do every year gets faster.
		In fact, every two years, you can more or less double the speed of your search.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, would that be enough of an argument to get you to approve the money?
unidentified		Honestly, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's what I thought.
unidentified		All right.
unidentified		Well, see, that's what you're up against.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is Midnight in the Desert.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And boy, are we rocking tonight?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stay right where you are.
unidentified		Gonna take the life to take me away from you Feels nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do This is Midnight in the Desert.
		To call the show.
		If you're east of midnight, call 1-952.
		Call ART.
		If you're west of midnight, call 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Love that.
		Pay attention.
		And by the way, Skype is M-I-T-D51.
		M-I-T-D-51.
		And if you've got good audio, boy, you'll just sound great on Skype.
		All right.
		Once again, the senior astronomer, we're kidding around with him a lot, this, a very serious scientist, actually.
		Senior astronomer and director of the SENI Center for SETI Research, Seth Shostak.
		Seth, that last caller at the end said, frankly, no, wouldn't fund you.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		So well, you know, he might not have funded Captain Cook either.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's his expectation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		True, true, true.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And you don't know when you're going to discover something.
		And the fact that you've sailed around for a couple of months and haven't found anything, I mean, that might mean there's nothing to find.
		It might mean that you shouldn't give up too early.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fair enough.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's return to those that are there.
unidentified		Oh, boy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dave?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Dave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I heard you say, oh, boy.
unidentified		Yeah, well, you would just talk about something very dear to my heart, and that's prospecting.
		And we have a saying, you're going to lose.
		You're not going to win anything.
		You're not going to find anything if you just don't go out.
		And if you don't go out, you can't complain.
		Never find anything.
		So for art, remember your antenna story where you were saying you're developing a voltage, a static voltage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, yes, yes.
unidentified		Well, you know, if you could commutate that with one of those Tesla commutators, those Tesla static motors, then you could get a voltage on a transformer and maybe use it to charge a phone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, and maybe for more than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, there is a company I found out, sir, there is a company actually working with antennas like mine that are producing voltage like mine, and they're working on putting it to practical use.
unidentified		Well, Tesla wasn't going crazy.
		He actually knew that this could be done, and just a little bit of antenna wire could prove it.
		But we're talking something a little longer than that to be useful for the United States.
		And for Seth, man, I don't want to disp, you know, you.
		You're a man of great inspiration for me.
		But in order to communicate with these folks so far away, we should be using light, and we should be modulating the light by phase.
		Maybe even with this time stamp, periods of light on and off, representing the distance between, say, the core of our galaxy and our Earth.
		What do you think?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, light is perfectly okay with me.
		In fact, we do some light.
		We have a whole project.
		We're developing some new instruments for looking for light flashes in the sky.
		Light works.
		I mean, it's just, you know, it's another form of radio, if you will, or radio is another form of light, whichever way you want to look at it.
		And it's the other way.
		It's because you could get more bits per second on a light beam than you can get on a radio beam.
		And if you want to send a lot of information, better to use a fiber optic than a radio wave.
		But I also got to say that there's dust hanging between the stars.
		So if you're trying to send stuff great distances, the kind of light that you can see with your eye is not really the best way to do it.
unidentified		True, there'll be occlusion.
		Now, one more thing.
		This idea of LDE, reflection of radio waves.
		What if enough electromagnetic bodies were floating in our greater ionosphere that creates occasionally a reflective cone?
		And I'm not talking about, you know, 20.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe, but again, you know, the distances involved just, they don't work with the math, even if you're talking about it bouncing all the way around the Earth.
unidentified		Of the Van Ehlen belt?
		Oh.
		I'm just saying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, you're getting further out now.
unidentified		Well, I see that's far enough where you can get that kind of reflection, and it's got an electromagnetic wave to it, and it could build up enough to reflect ion spherically.
		I'm just saying.
		Anyway, brother, it is so good talking to you.
		Welcome back.
		This is a bellwether day indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's very kind.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Art, if I can say, somebody sent me a link to a BBC article on those 47-year-old television signals, you know, of the Doctor Who signals coming back to Earth that were supposedly picked up, according to the article, using the Aerocibu Observatory in Puerto Rico.
		And the BBC was happy about this because indeed the tapes were gone and this sort of thing, and they could get Doctor Who back into their archive.
		However, it's maybe worth noting that this article was published on the 1st of April.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		The 1st of April.
		Well, I bet that's a bad day for you all around, isn't it?
unidentified		Let's go back for a second to protocols.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You said you wrote the protocols.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, but I didn't write them, but I was chair of the committee that revised the protocols.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we never got to the protocols, did we?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, and I want to get to them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, if you received a signal, give me the official version of what would happen.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, official.
		First, I got to make a disclaimer.
		There is no official version.
		There are these protocols indeed.
		They're a document that fits on, I don't know, three sheets of paper or something like that.
		But they are a gentleman's agreement in the sense that there's no force of law.
		It isn't that the U.N. has stamped these babies and said everybody's got to pay attention to this.
		In fact, there's some people doing SETI who never even signed these things because they said, you know, come on.
		I don't have to sign a piece of paper to be honest about what I'm doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, hold on one second.
		Marty, I know you're there.
		Just be quiet and listen.
		We'll get you on the air in a bit, okay?
unidentified		Okay, Doki, thanks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, good.
		Proceed.
		Well, okay, maybe we better not because Marty can't be quiet.
		Marty, where are you calling from?
unidentified		I'm calling from Bristol in the UK.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Since we've took it, you've got a little background noise, so I can't have you be quiet, so just go ahead and ask your question.
		And we'll go back to the next question.
unidentified		Sorry about the noise.
		It was basically referring to the caller a couple of calls ago about the NASA footage that was suddenly cut super abruptly.
		Yes.
		My mind was cast back 20 or so years ago about a similar situation of NASA footage, which shows objects entering and leaving the Earth.
		And then a blast, seemingly looked like maybe a projectile of some sort, was fired.
		And these objects changed direction, which couldn't be explained.
		So it seems to me that they are under intelligent control.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I've got it.
		And let's address that, Seth.
		He's right.
		I have seen objects like your oil that you were talking about.
		Like the oil, and they've changed direction.
		Now, how do you account for that one?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They've changed direction.
unidentified		Yeah.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, we're talking about these little things that were leaving the atmosphere, right?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And many times you see film footage of those things that don't go straight like the ones we saw, but they suddenly take a right-hand jog.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How about that?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You're talking about these ISS photos and that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, yes.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, sorry.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I was still on the protocols.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll go back to the protocols.
		I'm sorry.
		It was England, so I answered.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay.
		I don't know that they changed direction.
		I haven't seen that, so I can't speak to that.
		I really can't.
		The videos I saw, they were just slowly drifting, which is what you expect because they don't, you know, unless you give them a big push somehow, they're just going to slowly lift off.
		They're, you know, in free fall, just like everything else in orbit there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so if I were to show you a similar thing with objects that actually change direction in the trajectory, would that make you go, hmm?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I would definitely go, hmm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, good, good, good, good.
		All right.
		Look forward to it.
		I'll get it to you.
		All right, so back to protocols.
		Signal comes, then what?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's exactly what I said.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		But you check it out, and you check it out as thoroughly as you can on your own instruments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Because, you know, you don't want to bug somebody else if it's just some sort of equipment failure, a software bug, who knows what.
		Or more likely than any of that, is it just some satellite that's gone overhead that has a transmitter, of course, and it's just fooling you.
		But at some point, it might take a couple of days, but after you've done everything you can and you're still convinced this is the big one or could be the big one, then you call up somebody at another observatory.
		More likely than not, they're probably in another country.
		And you just say, look, you know, we don't want to force you to interrupt what you're doing.
		But here's some coordinates on the sky and a frequency range.
		See if you can find any signal in there.
		And if they find it too, then at that point, you probably would just, you know, just have a press conference.
		But the facts are that by then, it's already in the papers.
		It's already out there.
		That's our experience, because there's no policy of secrecy.
		So every time you find a signal, people are putting it on their blog or they're sending emails to their friends.
unidentified		Hmm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I I would like to believe that what you're telling me is the absolute truth, although it would come down.
		But if it was obviously a really big signal, it was intelligent life.
		Yeah, I guess it might leak out.
		But also, I'm thinking that you would have to notify.
		I mean, there would be an official chain.
		I'm sure there is.
		In your protocols, there's got to be more than a press conference.
		You don't go straight to the press, do you, really?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we don't go to the press, actually.
		The press comes to us.
		That's what happens.
		You know, when we've had these false alarms, it isn't that we start calling the papers because we still hadn't checked a doubt.
		You know, we found this really interesting signal, and we thought, you know, this has all the hallmarks.
		Maybe this is it.
		You know, I wasn't going home and going to sleep.
		I was just staying at the Institute looking at the computer screen.
		Okay.
		And everybody else was, too.
		I was pretty sleepy.
		At 9 in the morning, I'm half asleep at my desk.
		We couldn't follow the signal at that point because the Earth rotates and the star just dropped below the horizon.
		So we had to wait something like 12 hours before we could see it again.
		But when I'm half asleep on the desk, at the desk, the phone rings and it's in the New York Times.
		So that's what actually happens.
		It's the media calling you.
		And the difficulty here is not due with secrecy.
		It's the fact that they're going to be interested in stories even when you haven't verified the signal.
		So you can expect that there are going to be false alarms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I'm Frank Rothschild calling you from the New York Times.
		Now, we understand you've received a signal.
		Is that true?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, I don't lie to the New York Times.
		It wasn't Frank Rothschild, whoever Frank is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have no idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just picked a name.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, it was Bill Broad, actually.
		He still writes for the New York Times.
		And he, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I've actually met the guy.
		And he said, so what about that signal you're following?
		That's what he said.
		That was his first sentence.
		And I said, well, we are following a signal, but, you know, we're trying to check it out, and I'll know more in three hours.
		Can you wait three hours?
		He says, I'll call you back in three hours.
		And in three hours, we had tracked it down.
		It was a European solar research satellite, and the telemetry, the signals coming back from that satellite with the data that was necessary for that satellite, happened to be on the same frequencies we were looking, and it was in the right part of the sky and all that.
		So there was little doubt that that's what it was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you flatly deny that you would have to, you know, if the big thing came in, you'd have to notify the government before whoever from the New York Times.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I will flatly deny that.
		It's true.
		There's no law that says if SETI finds a signal, the first thing you do is call the White House or call the State Department or anything else.
		You know, call the IRS, call whoever you want to call.
		But no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know how you can deny this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I saw the movie.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, all right.
		You got me there.
		But the facts are that this is research.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And research is, you know, it's fun to think that there's all this kind of conspiracy, but the facts are it's a very open process.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, don't discard conspiracy completely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Massam, is that correct?
unidentified		On Skype?
		Yes.
		Hi, how are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine.
		Get very close to the microphone on your computer, please.
		You sound like you're hollow.
unidentified		Of course.
		I'm very glad listening to your conversation and lecture from Seth Shostack.
		I'm one of your fans, Seth Shostack, since 2013.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you calling from?
unidentified		Actually, I'm in Los Angeles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Los Angeles.
		All right.
		Do you have a question for Seth?
unidentified		Actually, I wanted to just say something.
		It was last year.
		I experienced something very strange.
		I was listening to Setup Stack's lectures.
		I don't remember what was that.
		Something strange happened.
		I have the video that was recorded from my office.
		Actually, he was talking about lots of things related to astronomy.
		And then the voice changed to robotic, actual voice.
		And after just very short sentences, it just went like robotic noise.
		And then something happened, very strange, was that I think the electromagnetic wave around my office just influenced the electricity and the power in my office, that changed the actually light in my office.
		I wanted to talk to this, I mean, talk about this to Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, Seth is here.
		I don't know what he's going to make out of that, nor what I make out of it, but we will find out right now, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Mazam, I don't know.
		You said that my voice turned into a robotic voice?
		Is that what you heard?
		It suddenly became robotic?
unidentified		Yeah, I can play to you.
unidentified		Let me do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's hear a little bit of it.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		All right.
		I can handle it from here.
		That was a digital recording or a digital playback that obviously began to get in trouble.
		And it wasn't a robotic voice you heard.
		You heard digital stuttering is the way to put it.
		Seth, you want to back that up?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, that's a real effect.
		I mean, I don't really talk like that.
		There are people who are, you know, their eyes glaze over like doughnuts when they listen to me.
		So maybe they think I have a robotic voice, but it doesn't suddenly do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I wasn't actually sure.
		He said an astronomer.
		I wasn't sure whether it was you or somebody else.
		The tape was not clear enough, but the digital stuttering was really easy to nail down.
		So that's what you heard.
		It was not like something from another planet.
		I guarantee.
		Well, almost guarantee anyway.
		This is midnight in the desert.
unidentified		Her hair is hollow gold.
		Let's read back.
		The love you gave me nothing that can save me every time.
		When you're gone, how can I even try to go on?
		Midnight in the desert, exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network with Art Bell.
		Invite you to call now, 1-952.
		Call ART.
		That's 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or if you're on Skype and in North America, anywhere, you can call us at M-I-T-D51.
		That's midnight in the desert, 51.
		Don't spell it all out, just the initials, M-I-T-D-51.
		And it's a free call on Skype.
		All right, back now to Dr. Seth Shostak.
		He is the senior astronomer and director of the Center for SETI Research.
		No small matter at all.
		And we're on the spot.
		I've been having a lot of fun with you, but we're very honored to have you here, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, thanks, Arch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thanks.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You should mention that that's at the SETI Institute, by the way.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They might want to know the way the organization is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And you're actually located in lovely, glamorous Mountain View, California, which is Silicon Valley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not a bad place to be, actually.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Google's about a mile away from where we are, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to resist making a wise remark and just say, I think it's Dallin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that your name?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On Skype?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air with Seth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Midnight.
unidentified		Go.
unidentified		I just wanted to see what your thoughts were on the idea of a multiverse and it being fractal and the idea of a simulation theory existing within a multiverse.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, Don, that's a whole bunch of stuff.
		I can't say much about whether it's fractal or not fractal.
		The idea of a multiverse, the fact that there may be more than one universe or people who are not into multi-universes, there's something appealing about it in that it kind of provides a natural explanation for why so many things in our universe are kind of nifty set up for life.
		The value of the gravitational constant, to give a very trivial one, if that were a little bit stronger, then you'd have problems in one direction with planets and life and so forth.
		If the gravitational constant was a lot smaller, then you might not have stars or planets at all, that kind of thing.
		And if you have a lot of universes, when I say a lot, I don't mean 10 or 100, but if you have a gazillion, whatever that number is, you have an enormous number of them, then by chance, some of them are going to be just right for life.
		And those are the ones where we're going to be sitting around asking the question about why is our universe so great?
		So that's the appeal of the multi-verse.
		It kind of provides a possible explanation for that.
		But nobody's been able to prove whether they exist or not.
		I mean, that's something it's just an idea at this point.
		You had another question in there.
		Can you remind me what the third question was?
		Because the second one was about fractals.
unidentified		Just my thoughts on it are that it could be fractal in nature.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Well, I mean, I don't know if it's fractal or not.
		I think, oh, now I know what you were saying.
		You were saying the idea that there could be simulations.
		This is the idea of a guy at Oxford University by the name of Nick Bostrom.
		He's the one that's made this perhaps best known.
		The idea that, you know, what we think is reality, our daily lives and so forth, is not real at all.
		It's just a computer simulation being run in the future by maybe our descendants, right, in what's called an ancestor simulation.
		When computers are very much more powerful, and they seem to be getting more powerful all the time, you can imagine that in 50, 100, 200 years, you might have a computer powerful enough to simulate, you know, a kind of like sim-Earth kind of simulation, but a much, much better one that can simulate everything that you're experiencing.
		And you're just code running in a computer.
		It's not real what we're experiencing.
		It's not really sitting there, you know, in Nevada, and I'm not really sitting here in California.
		This is all just computer code.
		And, you know, it's hard to disprove that, but it leads to some, I mean, it's a real head-scratching exercise.
		I don't know what it really says.
		I asked the guy, Nick Bostrom, once, if this is true, do I have to lead a moral existence?
		Can I just have fun?
		If I'm just computer code, I mean, what's the harm?
		And he said I should lead a moral existence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Well, at the very least, it's fun to think about.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		Can I, all right, thank you, Caller.
		Can I ask a fractal question?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		You can, but I may give you only a partial answer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right, here we go.
		They're making fractal antennas now.
		And I was wondering if you might not get a really big bump if that thing out at the end of the dish contained some new version of a fractal antenna in what it was sending into you.
		You know, that's a much higher gain potentially.
		Is that something being looked into?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, we have looked into fractal antennas.
		In fact, a guy by the name of Nathan Cohen in Massachusetts, I think he started a company to make fractal antennas.
		So he was certainly into it.
		And he was also very much into SETI, and he was looking into the application of fractal antennas for SETI.
		You know, it turns out in a way there's no free lunch.
		If you really want to be able to pick up very weak signals from the cosmos, you just need a big bucket.
		And so you need just a big antenna.
		And it's hard to get around that.
		I mean, the fractal antenna may help you in some ways.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		High gain, low noise, you know?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it might.
		It might be broadband, that kind of thing.
		Those are things that you might look at.
		We're building some new feeds, some new receivers, if you will, that are able to tune the radio dial all the way from 1 gigahertz to 15 gigahertz, thanks to a gentleman down in San Diego who's given the money for that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very exciting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very exciting.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They don't use fractal antennas.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of straightforward antennas, but they have very much better amplifiers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so many calls, so little time.
		Hello there.
		You're on the air with Seth.
		There you go.
		I'm sorry.
		I didn't have you turned up.
		Try again.
		Where are you calling from?
unidentified		I'm from Indianapolis, and I wanted to ask some kind of challenging questions to Seth.
unidentified		I heard him on Larry King five years ago make a statement that to me was a bit indicative of his wanting to find out for sure if life was out there, if it wasn't out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you say?
unidentified		Well, I can give you the exact quote, I think.
		My screen comes up here.
		But he said that he wanted to finally find out if Earth was a miracle or if it was actually just an accidental infection of life.
		And basically he was saying, you know, by doing SETI, he would find out if we have an atheistic evolutionary origin or if God had to be involved for us to be the only ones there.
		Kind of like what Arthur C. Clarke said about how it was terrifying either way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, listen, we're out of break.
		I want you to hold on.
		Don't go Anywhere, okay?
		All right, good.
		Seth, did you actually use the word infection?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Cosmic infection?
		I very well could have.
		I've used that term.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure I like being referred to as an infection.
		All right, hold on.
		We'll get back to you from the high desert, great American Southwest.
		This is Midnight in the Desert.
		I'm Art Bell.
		My guest is Seth Shostak.
unidentified		The Black Lives Matter Look at Midnight Matter can be explored on Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
		If using Skype from your computer, please be sure to use a headset mic and call MITD51.
		That's MITD51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's really hard to get people to use a headset mic.
		It really is.
		But folks, when you do, you sound like you're right in the studio with me.
		So if at all possible when using a computer, really do get a headset mic.
		There's some good ones.
		You know, you can go out to, I don't know, Walmart or wherever.
		They've got them all over the place.
		And boy, do they make a gigantic difference.
		All right, back now to our guest, Seth Shostak, and our caller, who was talking about a quote that he read from Larry King.
		Caller?
unidentified		Yes, this was an exact quote.
		He said, the big question is, is the Earth a miracle or is life just a cosmic infection?
		I think the latter is probably true, but let's go look and prove it one way or the other.
		And you kind of pressed him on this earlier where you wanted to know at what point was he going to give up.
		And he said, I think he said, even in the year 2050, he still wouldn't give up.
		And he just looked for a different way.
		But that means he's philosophically bound to the idea that life must be out there.
		And that isn't a falsifiable question.
		In science, you're supposed to have falsifiability.
		And he's never going to falsify his belief.
		That's my challenge for him.
		Is there any point where you would answer the question one way or the other?
		And the other might be, yes, we are alone.
		It might be terrifying.
		It's kind of related to his answer about the multiverse, too.
		Yes, there are a lot of nifty just-so features of our universe.
		And if you reject the idea of God making it just-so, then you pretty much do have to resort to something crazy like a multiverse to explain that.
		And I appreciate that he said that.
		So anyway, I'm going to challenge him.
		How do you falsify the idea that we're not alone?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, the caller's right in the sense that this is a little different than, you know, I don't know, middle school science.
		They teach you you have a hypothesis and then you try and falsify it.
		And he's quite right.
		You can't falsify the hypothesis that there's somebody out there.
		There's no way you can prove that they're not out there.
		Okay, so I agree with that.
		But keep in mind, this is not that kind of science.
		This is exploration.
		This is exploration.
		And in exploration, you know, you send Captain Cook out there and he sails around the South Pacific for three months and he doesn't find anything.
		It doesn't mean that there aren't any islands out there.
		He didn't falsify that hypothesis.
		He just didn't find any.
		If you send him out again, maybe you will, maybe you won't.
		If you send him out enough times, the chances get pretty good that he'll find something.
		So this is exploration.
unidentified		Or you'll find nothing and still prove the null hypothesis.
unidentified		No, no, but in the absence of it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		All you can do is prove that it is true.
		You can't prove that it's not true.
		And by the way, I would say this.
		You know, I did say 2050, if we don't pick up a signal with our SETI experiments, I would say, you know, I'd be inclined to think, all right, are we doing the right experiment?
		But I think long before 2050, we're going to find life in space, and not of the intelligent variety necessarily.
		You know, it could be that we will find microbes dead or alive on Mars.
		But there are six other places in the solar system besides Mars that we know about already where you could have life.
		Microbial life, it's true.
		It's not going to be something that holds up its side of the conversation.
		But if you found biology, for example, on one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, what would that say?
		Well, they'd say, well, at least biology is not anything terribly special because there are several worlds in our own solar system that have it, and there are a trillion planets in the galaxy and 100 billion other galaxies, each with a trillion planets.
		So I guess that's what I'm really saying when I say a miracle.
		When I say a miracle, you shouldn't interpret this as some sort of religious statement.
		It isn't that.
		What it is is saying, did we win an incredibly lottery ticket out of 10,000 billion, billion lottery tickets, we got the winner?
		Or are there a lot of winners out there?
		That's really the question.
unidentified		But your statement was you ought to prove it one way or the other.
unidentified		And wouldn't you agree that when Frank Drake first turned on his radio telescope or whatever he used, he expected probably within a week to hear half a dozen different ET signals.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I've never heard him say that.
unidentified		Well, no, but I'd say if it was as pervasive out there as what was once thought, first of all, it's been proved that there is not a single ET civilization who wants to broadcast itself to the galaxy and has the capability to do it.
unidentified		Wouldn't you agree to that, Seth?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, not proven.
		Not proven.
		Now you're on the wrong side of it, Color.
		Not proven, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no.
		No, the fact that you haven't found a signal doesn't prove that they're not doing that.
		It means you haven't found a signal.
		Maybe you've been listening to the wrong part of the radio dial.
		Maybe you don't have enough sensitivity.
		Maybe you've been pointing the antennas in the wrong direction.
		That's just to name three things you could be doing wrong, and there are many more.
		So the fact that you haven't found them yet, I wouldn't lose hope.
		If this is something you hope for, I wouldn't give up just because you've looked at this is what it comes down to.
		You've looked at one acre of Africa and decided, well, no megafauna in Africa because he didn't see any elephants in that one acre.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I had more of a feeling that he was hoping you wouldn't find anything.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, I you know, I think there's actually a faith-based component to all this.
		But I didn't want to get into argument about religion because this isn't about religion.
		When I say a miracle, what I mean is some sort of incredibly improbable event that in a trillion planets in our galaxy, this is the only one where anything interesting is happening.
		That makes us very special.
		And ever since Copernicus, scientists are always a little bit cherry of believing that they're that special because in the past, every time we thought we were special, we were wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me modify a statement I've made in the past.
		And here it is.
		If E.T. contacted us and then landed and the ramp came down and a little guy and we were in communication with him and a little guy came down and somebody before he got to the bottom of the ramp said hey do you believe in the bible and he said oh bible he'd be so full of lead actually he'd be full of lead either way but he'd be so full of lead that he'd just roll down the rest of the way of the ramp well i i appreciate your sunny interpretation
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		what would happen with contact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do, and you know I'm not wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not deep in your heart, you know I'm right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		No, there's probably a lot of truth in that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's go to iCamp Tawala.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that right?
unidentified		Yes, hey, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Tawala, where are you?
unidentified		I am in Chicago bearing the noise and having flyover surveillance currently going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, don't we all.
unidentified		Oh, it's kind of crazy.
		I can email you, so I'll get to that.
		But for Seth, you know, living next to the airport, there's been a lot of different things flying over the back.
		You know, let me see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mostly airplanes, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Four or five years.
unidentified		Like stuff out of the ordinary that's very quiet, you would say it's probably at about 2,000 to 4,000 feet.
		And I don't know if Seth is familiar with different types of formations or anything of that sort, because one time I've seen a bundle that was in a trapezoid shape, and what they did was they stayed in a formation, very quiet,
		and once they were probably about 15 miles up out of sight, they all came together, bundled, swirled really fast, and just shot in every direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Caller, you're not preaching to the choir here at all, because Seth doesn't believe that they're here.
		So no matter what you say, it's really not going to matter.
		He's searching for signals out there and is absolutely convinced they have not yet come here.
unidentified		But I mean, there's so many things that people have seen and so much footage, and I just don't understand why.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't either.
unidentified		You know, just because we haven't heard a signal.
		I mean, is the government testing something?
		Maybe.
		But I really doubt that we're that advanced to make something like that and look like a firework, and then just every bit just shoot very nicely into every direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you very much for the call, but you're not going to get anywhere with Seth on this one.
		As a matter of fact, let me go to the – I've got this thing called the wormhole.
		They send me messages during the show.
		Mart in Bakersfield is obviously a big Seth fan.
		He says, This Seth is a – quoting here – a fast-talking paid propagandist whose mission it is to explain to the world that there is no such things as UFOs or extraplanetary intelligence based upon not hearing them send any electronic – excuse me, electromagnetic RF waves.
		There you have it, Seth.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, I'll respond very briefly.
		I'm glad to hear that I'm at least paid to do this.
		I'm intriguing at least.
		Disinformation officer.
		Well, you know, this isn't what my job description is, but it's an interesting interpretation.
		You know, I'm not – there are several misstatements in there.
		To begin with, I'm quite sure there are UFOs.
		I hear from people every day who have seen something, and those are UFOs.
		They're undenvied.
		And, you know, the question is, why are they?
		And they're not people calling up to tell me about a hoax.
		They've seen something.
		The question is what they've seen.
		But I point out this to Mark, that, you know, everybody has really good cameras now.
		Thirty years ago, you would see something in the sky, and you get this kind of blurry photo, and they usually didn't have very much information in it.
		Today, people have very good cameras with them on their phones and their video and all that.
		And the pictures of the UFOs haven't gotten any better as far as I can tell.
		So I think that that says something.
		But, you know, I'm not saying that there's nothing on planets out there.
		I think quite the contrary.
		But unlike the UFO community, the SETI community does not claim that we found them.
		You heard me say all night, we haven't found them yet.
		We have not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I remain optimistic we might find them, and maybe we won't.
		But we don't say that we have.
		Whereas the UFO community says they do have good evidence.
		And so that's what it really comes down to.
		If you have really good evidence, take it to the local, you know, science museum.
		See if they'll put it on display.
		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From Trenton, New Jersey, midnight for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here is Seth.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Seth.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, Seth.
		I just dedicated an Alienware laptop that I have to Boynick for SETI at home.
		I was hoping he can talk a little bit about that and how it works.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You bet.
		Of course he can.
		Seth, we haven't talked about SETI at home, and we haven't talked about it in a long, long time.
		What is SETI at home?
		How can people help?
		Is it still a viable thing to be doing?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
		It's not our project, though.
		I have to say that.
		You're talking about Boynick.
		That's the, I guess, the operating system for you.
		it, the environment in which it runs.
		But that's a University of California Berkeley project.
		They do SETI as well.
		In fact, they just got a very large private donation to do more SETI.
		But that's SETI at Home, I think, has had on the order of 10 million people that have downloaded the SETI at Home screensaver.
		And it's used to reduce the data that they collect.
		They use the Arecibo telescope primarily for those data.
		And, you know, you get tremendous compute power when you have 10 million people running their home computers.
		So it's a great project.
		It's a great project.
		We don't do it.
		What we do, because we control the telescope, when we find signals, we don't farm out those data to the public and have them process it because we want to know right away, should we continue to spend time looking in this direction?
		So we check it out right away.
		We have the ability to do that.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tiffan, Ohio, you're on with Seth.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, good evening, gentlemen.
		Yes, I got a real quick question for Seth.
		If he's ever heard of the Black Knight satellite that's supposedly orbiting the Earth, and, you know, has he seen anything or know anything about it?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		And I don't have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, what do you know about it, Color?
unidentified		Well, it's just been on different talk shows before.
		Supposedly it's this ancient satellite, black satellite that's orbiting backwards from all the other ones, from pole to pole.
		And, you know, it's supposedly supposed to be there.
		They've got pictures of it and stuff.
		So, you know, I just wonder if Seth knew anything about it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
		I guess I don't have the right clearance to know.
		No, I don't know anything about it.
		I'm sorry.
		It's hard to launch.
		By the way, just as a point, launching a satellite that goes, if you will, the wrong direction is a little bit harder than launching one that goes in the right direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think you might have been intimating that it wasn't launched at all, Seth, that it was put into orbit.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's harder yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From elsewhere, not if you've got the technology.
		Skype, you're on the air with Seth.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello?
		Hello.
		Hi, Er.
		I guess this question is reflecting the mindset of a lot of the callers and your fans.
		But is there anyone else at SUTI that has this sort of mindset that we have?
		What a lot of the callers are calling for?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you mean that thinks that there's good evidence for visitation?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that kind of thing.
unidentified		Yeah, are you dealing with this with coworkers as well?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I doubt it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		They certainly get questions about it.
		I don't think they get as many questions as I do, but I might be wrong.
		Maybe they're keeping it quiet, but I don't think that they would.
		I mean, they occasionally ask me, they say, what do you say when somebody calls you up and asks you about Roswell?
		Or something like that.
		But look, I think that the bottom line here is that if people, the scientists I know, who are all very skeptical that we're being visited, if they thought there was good evidence, they'd spend all their time working on it.
		And they've said that.
		They've said that.
		You know, it'd be incredibly important if you could prove that we are being visited.
		What could be more interesting?
		But the evidence is not good enough to convince many scientists, and you certainly don't see it in the science museums and that kind of thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what would it take to convince you?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Some good physical evidence.
		Witness testimony is absolutely worthless in science, so that isn't good enough.
		Photos, if they're unambiguous, are really good photos.
		That might be convincing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you can't depend on photos anymore.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's hard.
		I agree with you.
		That's a difficulty.
		So, yeah, we have physical evidence.
		You just pick something up that you can cart to a local lab.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, thank you very much for the call.
		And I want to give you a moment.
		We're coming to the end of the show already so quickly.
		But I want you to talk to people and tell them how they can contact you, how they can help, what they can do.
		People are interested, Seth, in SETI.
		They really are.
		So what do you say to them here at the end of the program?
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, I welcome their interest.
		I really do.
		I think it's important that people be interested in this.
		And, you know, we're an open research organization.
		Our observatory is open to visitors, all that.
		I mean, there's no secrecy here.
		And if they want to get in touch, I mean, the first thing they should do is just go to the SETI Institute website.
		It's just SETI.org.
		It's a nonprofit, SETI.org.
		And of course, you can find my email address, but I'll give it out on the air.
		Art warned me not to do this years ago, and I got hundreds of emails.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Include your cell number.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
		I have to drop my cell off at a six floor.
		Whatever.
		The email address is simple.
		It's seth at SETI.org.
unidentified		That's it.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		That's all there is to it.
		And I'll try and answer as many as I can.
		But, hey, look, you know, we're interested in science.
unidentified		We're interested in hearing from you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, my friend, as always, you know, having you on the air is just such a pleasure.
		I really enjoy it.
		I know I have a lot of fun with you, and you're welcome to have fun back.
		And we'll have you back again if you're willing.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Seth, take care, my friend.
seth shostak ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Good night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert, Great American Southwest.
		Good night all over the world.
		All the world's time zones.
		Have a great night.
		See you tomorrow.
unidentified		Tomorrow will the sun shine on you.
unidentified		Good night in the desert.

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