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Aug. 31, 2015 - Art Bell
02:15:51
Art Bell MITD - David Darling Asteroids & The Cosmos
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From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good
morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be across the world in all its time zones,
and everyone covered completely by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
What a great name for a show, Midnight in the Desert.
All right, so the rules of the program are easy.
We have only two rules, no bad language, because we don't need it to make a point, and only one call per show, because you'd probably get boring.
So, um, thank you, Belgab.
I want to throw that in tonight.
Good friends over at Belgab helped out so much with this show.
And other thank yous go out to Telos, Joe Talbot.
Thank you, Joe.
I don't believe that he was here in town.
I call Tellos and they say, well, you know, our chief engineer lives in Pahrump.
Right.
Keith Roland, my webmaster.
Heather Wade, my producer.
Streamguys.
LB.net.
They had a big van out there doing something to my internet today.
Sales of Pete Eberhardt.
And TuneIn Radio, of course.
Lee Ashcraft, our dark matter news guy.
And I want to thank Tonight, my wife, Erin, and Asia both, for putting up with me, because, you know, I have cut such a big slice out of life with them, by doing this.
You know, I mean, one day I go to my wife and say, hey, hon, you know, I think I want to do a show, I want to build a studio, and I want to do a show.
Really?
Hmm.
So, you know, that's like a big slice of... Speaking of big slices of life, I had this weekend, right?
Wrong.
I didn't have this weekend.
I have three computers in this room with me.
Two of the laptops, they're fine.
and then I have this desktop computer.
It hasn't been right now in months.
You know, the operating system disk was flawed.
Something was wrong with it.
It crashed all the time.
I was over here Saturday night.
It began to throw runtime errors on programs.
And I said a lot of bad language.
And yeah, I do sometimes say it.
And then I spent hours trying to fix it.
I finally, I gave up.
Went over to the house, got another Windows 7 disk, brought it over here, wiped the drive.
That was the best feeling, actually.
I, you know, it was like a feeling of revenge or something against the computer.
I said, enough!
You're done!
You're done, baby!
Format!
So, I did, and that then took a day and a half of my life to put it all back together again.
Total piece of silicon.
Day and a half of your life gone.
All right, anyway.
Where am I?
News.
There's a little bit of news that I thought was interesting.
On the one hand, the Justice Department is saying that Clinton, thus far, has done nothing illegal, you know, about the emails and stuff, right?
But it's kind of weird because they're redacting about 150 of the censored emails,
these emails that they're going to release to the public, and they're saying their redacted information was
classified in preparation for the public release of the emails.
What the heck?
That just doesn't make sense to me.
Why don't they just release the damn things?
I mean, if you're going to redact 150 of them, then you're not going to think that they're telling you the truth, are you?
It's a mystery to me.
Her campaign, of course, is suffering mightily because of it, and I guess it's not going to go away.
A crew testing how a small group of humans might cope with a trip to Mars has begun their 12-month mission.
No, they didn't blast off.
But they'll have to eat, communicate, and live exactly as they would on Mars in a tiny little dome in Hawaii.
I guess the goal is for them not to kill each other.
Six people began a year of isolation behind a dome in Hawaii on Friday to help NASA prepare for a human mission to Mars.
Really?
Is that going to go before the one where you've got to volunteer for the one-way trip?
They'll live in a dome 36 feet 11 meters wide and 20 feet 6 meters tall on the slope of Moana Loa with no animals and little vegetation.
Oh, that sounds like so much fun.
Let's see.
Do we have any women?
Now, we've got a German physicist, a French astrobiologist, four Americans, a pilot, an architect, a doctor, and a soil specialist.
What does the pilot do, I wonder?
I mean, they're sitting on the ground in Hawaii, right?
Anyway, I think that's interesting.
It will be fun, you know, to watch.
By the way, somebody sent me a wormhole message asking Art, wondering if you read the wormhole when you're not on the air.
That was sent when I'm not on the air.
Yes, obviously, I do.
I like the wormhole.
I read it all the time.
All right.
As a member of the National Cartoonist Society, this is an email to me.
I just thought it was cool.
Last week, I was on a USO tour drawing cartoons for the US troops stationed across Southwest Asia and part of Africa.
It was a fantastic experience, giving a little something back to those men and women of the armed services who sacrificed so much overseas and away from their families.
I thought you'd be happy to know that throughout the tour, I was able to download The Midnight in the Desert podcast whenever we had Wi-Fi access And on the last stop, was even able to listen live at 7 a.m.
local time, wherever that was, Africa or something, via TuneIn.
Wanted you to let you know how awesome it is being an Art Bell Time Traveler and having you along on the trip.
Roswell's Eddie in Central Florida.
Cool, Eddie!
Yes, the podcast is kick-butt cool.
No question about it.
Really is.
All right, coming up now.
David Darling, Dr. Darling, is a British astronomer and science writer who has written many books on subjects such as extraterrestrial life, the origin of the universe, mega-catastrophes, look, gotta love those, and the nature of consciousness, and you know I love that.
He lectures widely, plays in a rock band, How many astronomers play in a rock band?
And runs a popular science website, www.daviddarling.info.
You might want to check it out.
His latest books are Mayday, about pioneering aviators, and a new edition of the Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia.
He lives in Dundee, Scotland.
What an interesting place to be.
I would love To go to Scotland.
I have been around the world no less than three or four times, and I have never touched the ground in Scotland.
I don't know why.
I never have.
Anyway, coming up in a moment, Dr. Darling, and we will talk about things above.
Things that may enter here below.
I'm Art Bell.
This is Midnight.
in the desert.
In the darkest time between dusk and dawn, from the high desert.
Hi, Art, how are you doing?
Has been a while, hasn't it?
I think it's been about, I don't know, 11 years or so since I've spoken to Dr. Darling.
So 11 years really.
So hello Darling.
Hi Art, how are you doing?
Has been a while, hasn't it?
Yes sir, it certainly has.
And it's been too long.
So welcome back.
It's great to have you and I guess you've been prolific in writing books and stuff like that since we have last talked Yeah, I can't stop writing books.
I guess it's in my blood.
I think I've written a few since we last spoke, and on various subjects, life in the universe
and strange ways the world might end, and the most recent book was,
it would be on these pioneers of aviation.
So yeah, I keep cranking those out and looking after my website and getting involved in music.
And so quite a few different things going on.
And I forgot to mention to everybody that you are not around the corner
because you sound like you are, you're in Dundee, Scotland.
I am, I am, and it's just gone 5 a.m. here, so I've got the strong coffee on.
And yeah, west coast of Scotland is where I'm based.
The East Coast of Scotland, rather.
I think I mentioned to you prior to the show, I've been around the world about three or four times now, and never set foot in Scotland.
I've flown over it, but never have set foot, and it's a place I want to go.
It's a bucket list thing.
Oh, you should come.
It's great, yeah.
Beautiful scenery and great people, yeah.
All right.
Let me start out here, if I can, Doctor.
I had to listen to a show on my own network while I was in here repairing this godforsaken piece of silicone.
Well I know, but you deserve it.
Okay, yeah.
In my opinion, you deserve it.
Alright, so I had to listen to a show on my own network while I was in here repairing
this godforsaken piece of silicone.
And I listened to a show on my own network and they were saying, I can't remember exactly,
but Planet X was coming around the bend.
Planet X was going to kill all of us.
Planet X, Planet X, Planet X. I've been hearing about this since before you and I did the interview a long time ago.
And Planet X still has not hit us.
Something as big as a planet, I mean by contemporary standards, Pluto has got its planetary things stripped away.
So it would have to be pretty big, right?
Well, when you think of a planet, you think of something Earth-sized or bigger.
You know, Jupiter's a planet as well, so planets come in a variety of sizes.
But, you know, you're reckoning on something that's thousands of miles across.
Yes.
So we're not talking about, you know, a pebble or an asteroid.
We're talking about a sizable object, which you can normally expect to see coming, you know.
Well, I will give these people this much.
There was recently a pretty big rock that came in and exploded over Russia.
I know you know about that.
And we didn't see it coming.
We did not see it.
It came out of the sun, kind of like the Japanese zeros used to like to try to do to fool people.
It would come out of the sun, so when it does come out of the sun, you can't see it, right?
Yeah, but we're talking about something in the case of the Russian object that was a small asteroid, something that maybe is a hundred feet across.
We're not talking about something that's miles across or thousands of miles across.
So we're talking about a totally different scale of thing there.
And it's certainly true that small asteroids like that could still creep up on us unexpected.
and could cause a lot of damage if they made landfall. That one actually blew up as you know,
you know, a few miles up and still caused a lot of damage in terms of broken windows and it's,
lucky people weren't killed in that, but you know, it caused a lot of structural damage, but still
we're not talking about anything, even, we're not even talking about a large asteroid, we're
talking about a small asteroid and a planet as something the size of the Earth is.
We're talking about a different scale of things altogether.
So something the size of the Earth couldn't come out of the Sun or the direction of the Sun without us knowing about it a long, long time in advance.
We've got a lot of big telescopes trained on virtually all directions in space and astronomers are not
going to be blind to a earth-sized object barreling down upon us. Well I think
that people need something like that to worry about, something to talk about,
even if it's fictional and it is fictional, but so anyway... It makes
life more interesting you know I mean And of course, scientists are open to all kinds of crazy ideas.
There's all kinds of crazy ideas in science.
Well, there's enough real stuff out there that can kill us, right?
Oh yeah, sure there is.
Actually, let's talk about that for a second.
What size rock would it take to collide with our planet to be an E.L.E., you know, an E.L.E., an extinction event thing?
Well, to cause life to go extinct, or at least human life, you'd be talking about something that was probably a few miles across.
So, certainly bigger than a mile across, maybe something that's 5 miles across or 10 miles across.
You know, the object that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was probably 10 miles or more across.
So you're talking about an object on that kind of scale, several miles at least across, to cause even remotely an extinction event.
Okay.
Let's say something that big was coming and it came out of the sun.
Would we know about that?
Or not so much?
Yeah, we would know about it.
We would know about it in advance.
It's not like these things... Of course, they're travelling fast in space, but they're not travelling so fast that they could creep up on you overnight, as it were.
Astronomers have got a pretty good handle on the big asteroids that could collide with the Earth now.
They're not so clever on the smaller ones, obviously like the Russian thing, and even ones that are maybe ten times bigger than that, which could devastate a city.
I mean, they could certainly, if it fell on New York or London or wherever, it would destroy the city.
It would be like a very large nuclear weapon going off.
So that would obviously be devastating.
But it wouldn't wipe out civilization.
It would cause a heck of a lot of disruption.
Because the chances are it would probably land in Siberia or Northern Canada or the ocean.
I mean, most of the Earth is actually uninhabited.
So the overwhelming possibility is that it would land somewhere that didn't wipe out a city.
But it would still cause a lot of disruption if something, say, half a mile across.
collided with the earth. Wherever it hit, it would cause quite a lot of destruction.
There you are. You know what I really... I'm sorry, doctor.
You know what I really hate?
I hate newspaper stories that start out like this.
Yesterday, the earth really had a close call.
Yeah, and it's like something pretty big passed the earth really close, and we didn't hear about
it until the day after.
Exactly.
Well, you know, the thing is that we're getting better at tracking these things.
You know, years and years ago, of course, these objects still passed relatively close, sometimes closer than the Moon to the Earth, but we weren't aware of them.
We didn't have the equipment to detect these type of objects.
Now we do.
And so newspapers are able to whip up scare stories based on what are not really close calls.
You're still talking about something that's passing you by a million miles away.
There's no remote chance of collision.
But because it's an object of a scary size that came, well, you know, reasonably close, they say, oh, well, it could have hit the Earth.
Well, no, it couldn't have hit the Earth.
It was never on a collision course in the first place.
And these things can't change direction in the last minute.
And space is big.
I think a lot of people don't realize how big it is compared to the size of objects in it.
The Earth seems big when you're on the Earth.
But once you get away from it in space, it's a tiny dot, you know.
And so are these objects that are flying around.
So the gaps between objects are just vast compared to the size of objects themselves.
So, you know, the chances of collision are very, very remote.
Of course, we know they happen.
They've happened in the past and they will happen again in the future.
At some point in the future, almost inevitably, the Earth will be hit by an extinction event asteroid.
Statistically, it's almost guaranteed, but it could be millions and millions of years in the future.
If it was five years in the future and it was headed our way, number one, how soon would we know about it?
We're talking about something, say, six miles and a solid rock.
How soon would we know about it?
That's the first question.
And the second question is, what could we do about it?
If we're talking about something that big and that was going to hit within a few years' time, first of all we would almost certainly know about it now, but let's say for the sake of argument we didn't, and let's say that the discovery was made tomorrow that this thing was on a collision course.
Five years out.
Let's assume that for some strange reason we'd missed it, and it was five years out.
It would be, in fact, and we're talking about something that's several miles across, it would in fact be extremely difficult to do anything about it.
You know, probably the only thing you could do would be to try to break it up, but that could cause more problems than the original event itself, because all of those pieces of shrapnel, as it were, would still be on a collision course with the Earth, so you'd just be hit by many Moderate-sized pieces rather than one big piece which would probably cause as much damage anyway, I know and be unpredictable and there would be no Certainty that you could actually blow up something that big with say nuclear weapons It may not actually break the thing up of course you call you'd call Bruce Willis right away.
I You get on to Bruce and hope that he could pull something out of the bag, and he probably could, but in all seriousness, apart from blowing up the thing, which is an unlikely scenario, the only other way you can stop an asteroid is to deflect it.
You basically put a rocket engine on the side of it and you nudge it out of the way.
Okay, well that's exactly where I was going to go.
We would immediately have to contact the Russians because we don't really have the hardware anymore.
And if they could get a rocket to it, of course that's a very long manned mission, but if they, assuming they could get a rocket to it while it was still far enough out, I guess it could be nudged.
Yeah, and obviously if we knew for sure... The other thing is, of course, you can't be sure even once you've found the thing and it seems to be coming kind of your way.
You don't know whether it's going to hit you or not because you have to be very, very precise about that.
As I say, objects are tiny compared to the spaces between you.
So it's like one dust moat hitting another dust moat.
The chances are it would miss us.
What would happen if you put some sort of rocket deflector on and you made the terrible mistake of actually knocking it onto a collision course whereas before it was going to just slightly miss you?
I suppose all you could, you know, and if you discovered something you wouldn't know its orbit precisely right away.
It usually takes a year or two to refine your knowledge of it.
So you wouldn't actually know whether it's going to hit you or not.
All you would know is it's coming close.
So it would be hard to compute how much deflection you need to do, if any at all.
So we'd be in a real pickle if we found something that was just a few
years out and that was that big.
We wouldn't know whether to deflect it or not.
And actually launching a mission of that complexity, I don't know whether we would be capable of doing it,
even if we threw all the world's resources into it.
I don't know whether we would actually be able to pull it off in that timeframe,
five years, maybe 20 years we could, but not five years, I don't think.
Really?
That's a little concerning.
You think we would see it, let's say it's six miles.
We'll just work with that.
We would see that how far in advance?
Almost later?
Well, to be frank with you, we would already know of its existence.
So we were talking about a hypothetical situation here, but somehow we've missed an object that big that is on a potential collision course and, you know, Most scientists in the know would say we would already know about that now.
There's no way that we could have missed something that big.
Something half a mile, maybe, but not six miles across.
We know about all the objects that size already.
We do?
Pretty much sure of it.
You mean there could not be rogue objects in an orbit that only returns every, I don't know, 10,000 years?
Well, then you're talking more of a comet.
And yes, in that case, if it's not in a sort of a regular small orbit around the sun, it is possible that a comet, for example, from way out in the solar system, If you've talked about a few years, probably not.
We would probably even know about that by now, because comets brighten as they approach the sun.
We would know about it.
It's very, very unlikely.
But let us say, let us stretch the point and say it's a very dark object on a very unusual course that we don't have our telescopes trained on.
So we entertain that as a possibility, which is likely.
Then we've got a six mile wide object that is five years out.
Yes, it's within the bounds of possibility because pretty much everything is within the bounds of possibility.
We would be really, really stretched to do actually anything about it other than watch it and try to prepare contingency plans here on Earth for a large object hitting us.
I don't think there's very much we could do to move it out of the way in that kind of time frame.
Oh darn!
Could we, while it's still way out there, compute pretty much exactly where it would
hit?
I guess it wouldn't matter, would it?
Unless you got closer.
You know, when you suddenly see something, when you suddenly make a discovery, say of
a comet or an asteroid, you don't know its orbit precisely.
You have a rough idea of where it's traveling.
It's only over a period of time, as you gather data, that you can compute its orbit.
And it's only after quite a long period of time that you can give an exact prediction.
It would have to be pretty close before you knew that it was actually going to hit.
Again, it's down to this size thing, you know, very, very small object hitting another very, very small object.
And it has to get very close before you can say it's going to actually land in the Atlantic or it's actually going to hit the Earth at all.
And by that time, it would be way, way too late to do anything in terms of stopping it or destroying it.
Then it would be just a question of preparing the population for, you know, this major event that was going to happen.
The end, actually.
Six Mile?
Yeah, it's like that old science fiction film, you know, when worlds collide.
It'd be that kind of situation, yeah.
Okay, alright.
Um, I have a challenging question for you, uh, when we get back, about exactly this scenario.
I give it sailing out there in silent space, tumbling a little bit, very dark rock against a very dark background
of space.
In that darkest time between dusk and dawn, from the high desert, it's Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert.
Now, here's Art.
My guest is Dr. David Darling from All the way from Scotland.
Very nice to have him here.
And again, I ask you just, you know, it's night time.
Close your eyes and just imagine for a moment this six mile object.
Six miles in size.
That's pretty darn big actually, right?
And it's tumbling.
It's very dark.
It's solid rock, probably iron.
And tumbling in the darkness, and it's tumbling our way.
Anyway, Dr. Darling, so after imagining all that, it's coming toward us.
We get anywhere from five to ten years warning, but we cannot stop it, as you have suggested.
So, if you were the one who discovered it, and you were the one who told the government, or whoever you tell, I guess everybody, Really, if you thought about it, Doctor, do you think that you really would recommend or that it would be a good idea to tell the world that it's about to be done, and that if we get hit, it's all over, we'll all be dead, or would it be better to let people have six to ten years of happy life, not waiting for the end?
Well, given the scenario, let's assume that this is what's happening without looking into the chances of that.
Being the case, let's assume.
Now we're on to the different subject of how do we deal with the news of it.
First of all, it would be very difficult, I think, to keep that kind of news quiet.
I mean, let's say I'm the discoverer, so I'm a professional scientist and I've made this startling discovery.
It's unusual for scientists to work in such isolation that they would be able to keep that kind of news quiet.
But again, let's make the assumption that I'm a group.
I'm in it with a group of scientists who've made this discovery, and rather than make a sort of a sensational announcement that the Earth is doomed, we consult the government and say, well, this is what we think is going to happen.
What do you think we should do about it?
By the way, is that what you would do, Doctor?
You would consult the government first?
Well, I don't know whether I'd consult the government first.
I think I would consult my scientific colleagues first of all, and I would look for verification of it.
I wouldn't just take my own figures and facts as definitive.
I think that's the way scientists work.
They're collaborative by nature, so they want to share the information, they want to get it verified.
That's how science works.
It works by you know, peer checking of other work.
So that's what you'd do.
You'd say, you check on this for me.
Do you think this is right?
And then I think at that point, it would actually be rather difficult to keep it quiet,
but let's assume you did.
I think at some point you would have to consult other agencies as to how you go about releasing this news.
It's the same thing as if we discovered extraterrestrial intelligence, what we would do there.
Something that is world-changing, although in this case it might be world-destroying.
Well, the reason I say this, Doctor, is because not only would people have that many years left of happy, not-knowing life, but if you did announce it, And it became increasingly apparent that it was going to hit.
You know, there would be riots, there would be all kinds of horrible things that would go on, looting, people loot when they get blinked at the wrong way.
So, you know, it would be bad.
And I would think the agencies you would talk to would probably say, better not to say anything.
If I was the ruler of the world, I would release the information.
I would let people know exactly what was happening.
And yes, you're right.
It would cause panic, obviously.
I prefer people to know what's happening anyway so they can then make their own decisions about it.
And there may be some rational decisions you can make.
It may be even an object of that size isn't necessarily going to wipe out all life or even human life if we made some sensible precautions.
Certainly with several years to go you could make, for example, large underground bunkers into which you could probably send thousands, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of
thousands of people so that the race might survive after it's safe to go back to the surface.
Those sort of preparations would be difficult to make in the dark.
So my own preference would be to release the information, and in fact I think that's probably what would happen.
I think people would get wind of it, and I think...
That's a sort of a computerized thing.
about it there would be panic obviously there'd be a lot of discussion as well
there would be people who say what a minute I'm not sure I'm prepared to
believe this let's make sure let's check you know because these are difficult
things we wouldn't know we wouldn't know that far out that it was actually on a
collision course all we could say is that it's going to come fairly close
all right all right um I've got a message from Chelsea through the wormhole
that's a sort of a computerized thing people can send me messages
and she says I've always thought she's obviously seen the movie always
thought if you uh broke up an asteroid or a comet even if the
remaining pieces were headed for earth they'd be small enough to burn up
harmlessly in the atmosphere Is that right?
Well, the small pieces would.
Anything smaller than about, say, 100 feet across probably would.
That's what happened with the Russian asteroid, or meteor, if you like.
It's what happened in, was it 1908, with the Tunguska event?
that was another big, even bigger object actually, that exploded over Siberia.
Oh yes.
And flattened a wide area of trees, would have flattened a city if it had come down over a city.
So objects that size do vaporize, but anything that's bigger than that,
for example, say half a mile across, would not, that would penetrate through to the surface.
So you would, if you broke up something that was several miles across,
you would end up with, presumably, a number of big chunks that certainly
wouldn't burn up in the atmosphere.
They would make it to the surface.
Well, from a cosmic point of view, our lives are very short.
And in my short life, well, fairly short, I've already seen several of these events occur.
So that makes a person think, yeah, you know, it could happen.
It could happen in the sense that there could be regional destruction, possibly, at this stage.
But you see, in your lifetime, we've become a lot better at knowing what's out there, certainly in terms of the large asteroids.
When you and I were born, we knew of virtually no asteroids that came close to the Earth.
Now we know virtually all of them, in fact, probably all of them, that are extinction events.
We're certainly out for the next century or more.
As you say, it is possible that something could come on us, unexpected, that is dark and an unusual object, because we're discovering things out there all the time, new stuff, so we can't rule that out.
But in terms of near-Earth asteroids, we've got them pretty well nailed down, the ones that are a few miles across, but something that was coming from deep space on an unusual orbit, it is possible, yes, just about.
And if you're wrong, you won't have to apologize.
Exactly.
That's right.
That's the way it goes, isn't it?
I guess it is the way it goes.
I really hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it when my news guide beats me.
I had a picture put up on the website earlier.
It is an interesting picture, Doctor.
It's from NASA's space probe Dawn.
And it was sent from the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres, and it has revealed this pyramid-shaped object with a flat top.
As a matter of fact, I've got a photograph of it at artbell.com right now.
It's quite a good photograph.
And the astronomers that are looking at it right now are saying they have never seen anything like it in the entire solar system.
That's quite a statement.
Yeah, and possibly stretching it a little bit far, it is very unusual.
First of all, to say it's pyramid-shaped I think is a little bit provocative, if I may say so.
It's unusual, and it does kind of look geometric in the sense that it looks like it's got shaped sides, but it's not really a pyramid like the pyramids of the Egyptian desert, for example.
It doesn't have four flat sides.
It's an unusual looking thing and it has bright sides to it and a sort of flattish top.
And it is very unusual, certainly on series that we haven't yet seen anything else like it.
There are some features on Pluto that look a little bit like it.
And there are some objects actually here on Earth in the sort of Arctic regions they're called pingos and they're not so not as big as this this is a huge thing but then again Ceres is a small world it has a low gravity pull so you know things that stick up could stick up higher and further than they would perhaps on Earth.
There are these things called pingos, I'm not sure why they're called that, it's a strange name, but they are caused by ice swelling beneath the surface pushing the soil up and you get this sort of odd plateau, raised plateau, that look sort of miniature versions of this thing.
And so, yeah, I just want to say, well, it's unique, unique on series, but there are things that look kind of like it somewhere else.
So it's not totally unique.
And I think it's wrong to say it's pyramid shaped.
It gives a kind of the wrong impression.
It's just very, very unusual, I think.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's that's what they're saying anyway, pyramid shaped.
And I thought, boy, when Richard sees this, he's going to lose his mind.
I'm sure he'll be commenting on it later.
Okay, so let's talk for a second about Pluto.
There was another gigantic surprise.
And, you know, somehow you think of Pluto out there as kind of like a billiard ball.
Just cold, round, uninteresting, hardly even a planet anymore, actually.
And here our spacecraft goes by, takes these photographs, we see 11,000 foot plus mountains, and everybody went berserk.
How do you think, how can you account for those mountains?
Well, Pluto, like Ceres, is a surprising... whenever you see a new world for the first time, and you know, we've grown up with Pluto since 19... it was discovered in 1930, you know, and since we, you and I were children, we've known about Pluto, and it's just been a dot in the sky, just a star-like point, and people have always imagined what it might be like, and it's lost its status, of course, as a real planet, now we call it a dwarf planet, But nobody had really any clue what it was going to be like.
So whenever you see a world for the first time, whether it's Ceres or Pluto or anywhere like that, you're going to find some surprises.
The surprise with Pluto is that it looks to be so active.
It looks like there's stuff still happening on Pluto, that it's not the dead, frozen ball of rock and ice that we previously presumed it to be.
Yeah, but it ought to be, right?
Well, it ought to be, but obviously it still has some residual internal heat that is driving these things, and that's the only way that these features could be formed.
And it's obvious that something has happened on Pluto in the relatively recent past, and we're talking, of course, millions of years still, but in terms of the lifetime of the planet, that's pretty recent.
You know, there's been resurfacing events, there's obviously been occasions where the ice has melted and stuff has been upthrust through the crust, and so that tells you that there is something driving that, and that has to be internal heat which is left over from the formation of Pluton, and so that is a surprise, considering its size.
But not explained.
thing is also happening on Ceres as well and the Ceres is even smaller than Pluto.
So there is some activity on the surface that is really unexpected.
But not explained.
In other words, you can talk about it but you don't really know exactly what causes
it, right?
No, no, exactly.
And that, again, is kind of what you expect.
You expect the unexpected when you come across a new world.
And then sometimes, because of the unique situation of that planet, it's produced interesting new features.
It doesn't mean that they're not explainable in the long run.
It's just that at the moment we don't have all the answers.
And in the case of Pluto, of course, we're not planning to go back there any time soon.
So we have to make do with the data that New Horizons has sent back to us.
Actually, actually, Doctor, we're really not planning on going much of anywhere.
I mean, I hear some fairly loose talk about Mars, and, you know, there's some guys sitting in a dome in Hawaii right now sort of practicing, but Mars is going to be really expensive, and it seems like after we did the moon, we sort of threw in the towel.
I hate to put it that way, but We kind of did.
I mean, these days we want to go into space, we have to say, please, Russians, help.
Yeah, well, we haven't really gone any further than low Earth orbit since the moon days.
But the robots are doing a good job, and the robots are doing an increasingly good job
as time goes on.
They're more and more capable, their on-board computers are more powerful,
their equipment is more sensitive, sending back good scientific data.
So in the long run, you've got to think, well, maybe the robots are the best way to go,
unless you really, really want to send people out there.
And people are a problem, because you have to send life support systems with them.
And it's a much, much bigger investment, and more dangerous, and Mars is 100 times
further away than the moon.
People think, oh, it's the next step.
It's not really the next step at all.
It's a giant, giant step, a giant leap.
And just getting aboard a big spacecraft and going out there,
Mars is not a friendly place.
You know, people think, oh, it's more like the Earth than the Moon is.
It's not a friendly place.
It's a highly alien environment.
No, no, no, wait a minute.
Mars is a little more like the Earth than the Moon.
That's fair, isn't it?
Yes, it is a little more like the Earth, but its soil is toxic, it has no breathable atmosphere, the gravity pull is a third that of Earth, so long-term habitation on Mars is very, very problematic.
Just getting people out there into orbit and bringing them back again is a huge technical challenge.
Actually landing them on the surface and creating an environment where they can live For months or years on end, a huge, huge challenge, a massive challenge.
You know, these ideas of sending out parties of people, in some cases largely unqualified people, signing up for trips to Mars is ridiculous.
They wouldn't last five minutes on the Sun.
And yet they're doing it.
They're asking for volunteers, people who will, you know, agree to a one-way only Trip and I think that part of it is certainly going to be
true. It's going to be a one-way deal You're a very short one-way deal as well. It's not like
they're gonna live there for a few few years I don't think they would last more than a few weeks on Mars
They have no idea what a difficult situation that is And it's underplayed to a large. I realize
I understand the excitement of going to a new world and pioneering.
It's in our blood as humans to do that.
But I don't think people realize the difficulty of going to somewhere that's tens of millions of miles away and having to survive on your own.
There's no backup plan if things go wrong.
You're stuck there on your own.
Not getting dumped in Montana.
Not exactly, no.
Not even like getting dumped on the moon, because at least on the moon you're only a few days away.
On Mars, you're a year away, and there's no rescue plan at all.
You're there on your own.
Very, very difficult situation.
I don't think people realize the challenges involved.
You really think so?
I mean, these people obviously are volunteering, and by the way, there's no shortage of volunteers.
In fact, they had An enormous number of people volunteer for this one-way trip.
Does that surprise you?
No, it doesn't surprise me at all.
I think people are romantic by nature.
They see themselves as pioneers.
But if you look at the people that we sent to the moon, the first space pioneers, they were all trained fighter pilots.
They had years and years of experience dealing with incredibly difficult situations.
They were psychologically prepared for it.
You know, fighter pilots, test pilots, they're not the romantic type, they're not the poetic dreamer type, they're practically minded, highly skilled, very, very psychologically stable individuals.
The people signing up for this trip to Mars were people like me, who are totally ill-equipped for that sort of situation.
It sounds great in principle, you know, living on another planet, But the reality is very, very, very, very different.
These people that are signing up, they're just ordinary folk off the street, really.
They wouldn't have a clue how to deal with that situation.
Well, I assume they are vetted psychologically, and that is sort of a subject of its own.
Could you be considered stable once you know the facts of what you're going to, if you make it to Mars?
If you make it to Mars, how could you be psychologically stable and say, okay, send me?
It depends what we're talking about.
It depends if we're talking about these, uh, where the public can sign up, uh, for it.
I think this was the, was it the Mars 100 mission?
I can't remember what it was called.
Something like that, yes.
By a Dutch company, uh, and then there's also this, uh, this new initiative where people are, uh, being, uh, holed up for a year in this sort of Mars simulation.
All right.
Doctor, I'm sorry.
I've got to break you off there and hold on.
We're at a break, so we'll be back.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
Dr. David Darling is my guest.
this is going to be his really good stuff.
Any sip and any suck, will you partake of that last offered cup,
or disappear into the potter's ground?
It's not radio, but it is what's next.
Exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
Now, here's Art.
Here I am.
My guest is Dr. David Darling, all the way from Scotland, and we are talking of many, many things, and none of them were on the list here, so I guess we ought to get to some of that.
You have written a number of books about extraterrestrial life.
Do you think that we're going to find the first signs of alien life soon?
Maybe on Europa?
Maybe Mars?
I don't know.
Is that coming soon?
Do you think they'll be announcing, aha, we have detected at least microbial life?
Well, the exciting thing is that we now know of quite a few places in the solar system Where there might be life.
As you mentioned there, Europa, which a number of years ago we would never have thought of as a place where anything could live.
Mars, yes, Mars has always been on the cards, but places like Europa and some of the other moons of the outer planets, we always thought were just cold, frozen, dead places.
But now it seems that there may be Liquid water oceans underneath the surface, for example, of Europa.
And Saturn's large moon Titan is another possibility.
We know there's hydrocarbons on the surface and possibly the building blocks for life there at least.
But you know, I think, my personal opinion is that we will have signs of extraterrestrial life, and I know people have been saying this for years, but I believe that within the next 10 years or so, say 10 to 15 years, we will have definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life. I don't think it will come from
within the solar system. It's possible, but we don't really have any life detection missions on the
horizon that would provide proof, say, of life on Mars or Europa. But we do know of a couple
of thousand planets now going around other stars. And you might say, well, how on earth could we
find life on these planets that we know Right.
But we can look at the light coming from these planets, and we can look at the type of substances that are in their atmospheres.
And we are getting to the stage where we can do that.
And over the next 10 to 15 years, we will get much better at that.
And we will be able to, by looking at the light reflected from the surface of these exoplanets, Be able to see what kinds of gases are in their atmosphere.
And if we find, for example, that an exoplanet has an oxygen-rich atmosphere, that is a very strong indication that there might be life on the surface.
Because to have an oxygen-rich atmosphere is pretty unusual, unless it's caused by biology.
And certainly if you get a combination of gases like, for example, oxygen and methane, That is almost proof that there is life there.
Now, if you've got a couple of thousand, and that number is growing rapidly, soon it's going to be many, many thousands of planets out there, and we can check the light signatures from all those planets, I personally think that that is where we're going to find the first evidence of life.
We won't necessarily know what kind of life it is, just that there is some sort of biology going on on the surface.
Interesting.
So some kind of life.
And this would be detected by light.
Of course we have presently no clue how to get close and take a real look.
So that's how you think we will discover other life.
You don't think we'll suddenly get a Jodie Foster type signal or something like that.
Well, that's always on the cards.
And that is, of course, would be intelligent life, and it would be in the form of some sort of a signal that was being sent out by an intelligent race.
I was just talking about life in general.
Yes.
but just because we can't get there or send probes there, and of course we can't send
probes to other stars, not at the moment and not in the foreseeable future, but we are
getting extraordinarily good at looking at the messages, the light that is coming from
these worlds, and we could not just eventually look for gases like oxygen and methane, for
example, we may also be able to look for industrial pollutants in those atmospheres, so the type
of things that would indicate a technological civilization.
So if we find a planet where there is life, we can then look for more details to see if
there is possibly intelligent life out there, and there is always that possibility that
we will get a signal out of the blue, or the black as it were, and that would immediately
there is an intelligent out there but there's a huge difference between life in general
and intelligent life and how often that transition happens.
Let's talk for a moment about intelligent life, doctor.
Isn't it possible that intelligent life could evolve in an utterly different way than we
have evolved and they don't have radio transmitters, they don't have iPhone 6s or any of that stuff
because they don't need it because they've evolved in some utterly alien way?
Yes.
Yes, that's the short answer to that interview.
And if you think of the progress that, even if you look at a species like ourselves, the human race, how far we've come in the past century or so.
Amazingly.
We've only had powered flights since, what was it, 1903, the Wright Brothers.
That was just over a century ago.
You go back to the 1950s, 1940s, that's when the first electronic computers were.
Here and now we virtually carry a supercomputer around in our pocket, in our smartphones.
So that the rate of technological progress is absolutely dramatic.
And if you extend that a few more centuries into the future, you know, goodness knows what we're going to be doing.
What we're doing then, if we survive, is going to be like magic in terms of our technology.
We are already developing brain-computer links.
It's quite possible that in some way we will merge with our machines to become some kind
of synthetic intelligence or combined biological and artificial intelligence.
And if you project along those lines, then an advanced race out there may be more in
the form of a machine than a biological species.
They may be communicating by means that we have no conception of and not able to tap
into at present.
Right.
Right.
Um, yeah.
If you had to hazard a guess, Doctor, how common do you think intelligent life might be?
Let's see.
As far as we can see, what is it?
Almost how many billion years?
15? 13?
Yeah, the universe itself is about, you know, just over 14 billion years old, so obviously you wouldn't get life evolving right at the start, but it could be, there could be life out there that is billions of years older than ourselves, yes.
Would it not probably regard, well, alright, let me just go straight to this.
Do you think it's possible that aliens are observing us, that aliens perhaps noticed when we lit off the first atomic bomb, I don't know, whatever we did that would have them keeping an eye on us?
I think it's a definite possibility if there is intelligent life out there certainly within a reasonable distance Because obviously the further away these beings are, when they look at the Earth, they're seeing the Earth as it was in the past.
That's one of the features of space.
The further you look out there, the further you look back in time.
But if say there was intelligent life within one or two hundred light years of the Earth, So they're seeing us as we were, say, a century or so ago.
They would be aware if they had the instruments.
And these are the same kind of instruments that we are already developing.
We were just talking a moment ago about our ability to be able to look at exoplanets and see whether there might be life there or not.
Obviously, the other way around, if they're more advanced than us, they can tell more about what's happening on the Earth.
so they will know that there is life on earth and they will probably know if
they're within a reasonable distance that there is intelligent life on earth
and then of course they will tend to watch it more closely just as we would
the other way around and possibly they may if they have the technology be able
to send out instrumented probes to to take a closer look So I think it's a very real possibility.
And I tend to be on the optimistic end of the spectrum.
There's quite a few scientists who think that intelligent life is probably very, very uncommon.
I happen to think that it's perhaps more common than they would suggest.
So, I think it's a very real possibility that we're being observed, yes.
Doctor, I don't rule out ufology.
I mean, I have seen things that, you know, most people that you talk to have.
Now, sure, a lot of them are balloons, some of them are experimental aircraft and what have you, but I don't rule out the possibility that we're being observed, that some of what we see Doing impossible things in our atmosphere may be from elsewhere.
Neither do I. I mean, just from a sort of theoretical point of view, there's nothing unreasonable about that.
It's a perfectly fine scientific hypothesis.
Really?
Yeah, of course.
I would think a number of your colleagues wouldn't be happy with you saying that at all.
Well, I don't think they would have a problem with the idea behind it.
They might have a problem with the actual evidence itself.
They might say, well, yes, OK, maybe we are being observed.
Show me the evidence that I can actually believe.
And that's when the problems start, because a lot of it is personal evidence.
The whole issue behind UFOs is that this is a phenomenon that is only occasionally observed and almost at random.
So you have personal testimony to back it up.
You don't often see very large groups of people seeing the same thing with very, very good photographic evidence.
Yes, but sometimes, Doctor, you do have large numbers of people seeing virtually the same thing.
Yes, we do.
As my friend Richard C. Hoagland, who follows this show, says, and you only need one white crow to prove that there are white crows.
That's assuming it is a white crow.
In fact, if you had definitive proof of one, then yes.
If you had a white crow, then there's no disputing it.
If you put it in a, you trap the white crow and show it to the world, then yes, that's right.
Then the white crow, there could be other white crows.
But the evidence for UFOs, and this is the problem, even if a large number of people see a phenomenon, it doesn't necessarily mean it's an alien spacecraft.
It just means that it's something that we can't explain.
So UFO means Unidentified Flying Object, which could, as you know, I don't have to say that to you, doesn't say it's an alien spacecraft.
It could be some phenomenon we don't understand.
For example, like ball lightning, just to throw out an example.
A phenomenon that rarely occurs, that is seen occasionally and unpredictably, and is difficult therefore for science to study. Science
likes to be able to reproduce things and in the case of UFOs these are things that are seen and
there's no doubt that of the the veracity of some of these sightings in the sense that
people aren't making it up.
It's obvious that there are some strange phenomena occurring but what is behind it.
Are these intelligently controlled things?
Or is it some sort of natural phenomenon that we don't understand?
The evidence to me is still not compelling that they are intelligently controlled.
Well, actually, there is fairly compelling evidence of things doing stuff that they shouldn't be able to do.
theory of aliens observing us but let's get some evidence that's not just
fuzzy objects moving in the sky. Well actually though there is fairly compelling evidence of
things doing stuff that they shouldn't be able to do I mean if something's
doing 20,000 miles an hour through the atmosphere and it makes a sharp right
hand turn I have a problem with that.
And they've observed that kind of thing on radar.
Now, maybe you can say, oh, it's a radar glitch, I guess, but boy, they've seen some strange stuff.
Yes, they have.
It depends who they are and how well documented it is.
I don't want to sound like a stick-in-the-mud scientist.
No, no, it's okay.
Whenever somebody tells me something, first of all, I don't just take for granted what they say.
I mean, if there's somebody I know well, I'll say, well, obviously you're honest, you're telling me something, what you believe you saw.
But I like to go to the original source.
So if I hear something or somebody writes something, I like to go to, wait a minute, where did this come from?
Where is the evidence?
First of all, is what they're telling me the actual case?
Either they've misinterpreted it or they're passing on something they've heard.
Let's get to the actual best-known scenario.
Once we've got the data, then we can work from that.
So if we see an object that's traveling at 20,000 miles an hour and it takes a right-hand turn, Where is the documented case of that, the evidence of that, the actual source of that information?
Is it the case that that object actually exists?
If it does, yes, we have a problem explaining it, because there's no natural phenomenon that behaves like that.
So what do we do then?
Either it's a natural phenomenon that we don't understand, Or it's an entirely different phenomenon.
Or, Doctor, how about this?
We have objects that have hovered above our strategic rocket areas and actually disabled ICBMs in their launch silos.
Now, that's pretty well documented.
Whether they actually were the agents that disabled them or not, I don't know, but that did in fact happen.
So, let's pick up on that when we get back.
We're at a break point here.
Dr. David Darling, astronomer, is with us.
And, man!
Good stuff!
All the way from Scotland.
I'm Art Bell and this is Midnight in the Desert.
In this episode, we're going to explore the desert.
In this episode, we're going to explore the desert.
Coming to you at the speed of light in the darkness, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
Now, here's Art.
Well, alright.
Why don't I give you the phone numbers?
Actually, we only have one phone number.
We have many lines, but one number.
So, if you have a question for Dr. David Darling, And I bet you do.
The public line is area code 952-225-5278.
One more time.
Put a 1 in front of it.
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one more time put a one in front of it
one nine five two two two five
five two seven eight then also we have as you know
i'm trying to train people with skype so if you've got a an android or an
iphone for heaven's sakes put skype on it
and then uh... it's ever so easy I know I hear the groans.
I'm going to keep doing this until people start to get it right.
Put Skype on your phone.
It's a free download.
Free, free, free.
Put Skype on there.
And then after you've done it, go to add a contact, the little plus sign.
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And if you're in North America, America or Canada, simply enter MITD, the letters MITD51.
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And after you have initiated that, I don't have to, you know, accept you as anything.
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Free of charge.
All right.
Back now to Dr. David Darling.
If there is intelligent life out there, a doctor, and I mean a way out there, and they have been observing us, which is I think it's fair to conclude that we might be, and I think you feel the same way, we might be observed right now.
And they look at how we're behaving, our wars, the way we're treating our own biosphere, the Earth, what's going on right now.
I personally think we're in the middle of poisoning our own planet.
But that's just me.
A lot of people think there is nothing that we can do that could possibly harm Mother Nature in any way.
I don't know, if they looked at us and they were to judge us, how do you think we'd make out?
Well, I think that other intelligent species have probably been through the same problems As we are currently going through.
And if you think of a race that is dominant on its planet, has risen to dominance over a period of millions and billions of years, as we have done, to become what we perceive to be, as it were, the top dog in terms of intelligence and technology, they probably have been through similar crises to us.
You don't get to be the top dog without being a fairly vicious self-serving species and so you probably have the
aggression built into you. It's a question of whether you can control it and come
out on the other side. With us, we're in the balance at the moment and
things are not looking too good and I'm certainly exactly in agreement
with you that we are causing untold damage to our biosphere at the moment
and it's us to Only we can fix it, or stop doing the harm we're doing.
But I think other species probably, too, have been through that situation, so I think they would understand us.
I'm sure that aliens who have intelligent aliens who have uh... mastered their world are
are are have that belligerent streak in them so i think they would see
possibly some similarities and maybe have some sort of sympathy with what's
happening here at the moment
whether they would actually intervene to help us or or want to quarantine us or not is another matter uh... but
uh... yeah i don't think they would think it was particularly unusual
what's happening here
well you know uh... dismiss them if you will but most of the
supposed alien contact whether it's by abduction or by some message delivered in a crop circle or something
else most of it seems
to suggest that you had better change your way meeting us
or you are going to lose the planet you're living on and And I don't know that, I mean, maybe we will change, but I don't know that we're going to do it in time.
And so Interviewing people like Dr. Kaku suggests that, you know what?
We had better figure a way to get to another planet eventually because we're going to need it.
Well, the only other planets available to us are in the solar system.
We can't reach other stars.
We have no technology available to... As of yet, right.
As of yet, yes.
And as of within the foreseeable future, to move any large number of people to another star in any kind of realistic time scale is out of the question.
So if you're looking at a sort of a lifeboat world to go to, you would be looking at somewhere like Mars, for example.
My own view of that is that unless we can look after our own world, there's not much chance that we're going to be able to fix up some other world so that we can survive on that.
I think that's a non-starter.
To move to Mars, for example, and set up a human Uh, settlement there that may eventually be, you know, the future for the human race, I think is completely unreasonable.
Mars doesn't have a life support system.
We can't, we can't suddenly terraform Mars into something that's a nice, pleasant world to live.
And if we can't fix our own world, I don't think there's any chance that we can make a go of it elsewhere.
I think going, colonizing other worlds is something that may possibly happen in the future, but we better sort out our own problems here because this planet at present is dying and and uh... and within a century or
or or two uh... we're going to have major major problems here i i
think the idea that we're going to sort of find another world to escape to is
is completely unreasonable i'd just don't agree with that view at all and
i don't think there's any possibility of us being able to do that
you don't think that the phrase the planet is dying is overly dramatic
No, I don't think so.
If you look at all of the indicators at the moment, well, it is dramatic, yes, of course it's dramatic, but if you look at all, yeah, exactly, it is dramatic, but if you look at the indicators, it's looking pretty grim, shall we say.
We are in the midst of another mass extinction.
I don't think that's an overstatement.
If you look at the species that are dying out and look like they might be dying out over the coming decades, that is certainly not an overstatement and for the humans
to bring about a mass extinction
within our lifetime uh... is close to saying that the planet is dying
uh... and if we destroy the the biosystem around us we're going to
destroy ourselves there will be survivors the bacteria will always
survive uh... but whether any of the higher life forms will be
still here in a thousand years time i think is an open question at the
moment Um, yeah.
If you were the dictator of the world, you alluded to something like that earlier, what would you be now ordering?
Well, it depends what you allow to be controllable.
Oh, you're an absolute dictator.
Well, if I was a benign dictator and people followed what I was going to say, I would say we have to manage the resources we've got, and we can't do that if we keep increasing the world's population.
There's a limit to how many people the world can support.
At the moment, the population is growing outside of What about killings?
Also, we have to learn to work within the resources, so we can't just keep mining stuff
out of the earth and hoping this is just going to go on forever.
All right, Doctor, hold tight.
Fossil fuels are limited, so we're going to have to learn how to use other forms of energy
pretty soon.
Okay, hold it right there.
We'll be right back.
What about killing fish?
Is there a time?
What about all the things that you said they were?
Is yours or mine?
I'm going to kill you.
The clock strikes 12, and Midnight in the Desert is pounding packets your way on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
Well, all right.
Dr. David Darling is my guest.
He's coming to us all the way from Dundee, Scotland, and we're talking about, well, things up there.
And we're about to go to the line, so if you have something you want to ask, now would be just a spiffy time.
One last question, well actually two.
One from the audience, Dan in Anaheim writes through the wormhole, seems to me, he says, like mainstream scientists fall victim to the old adage that says that when a man has a hammer, all problems begin to look like nails.
They all want to measure volume with a ruler.
What makes them think our tools are adequate to study aliens?
You have any response?
No, he's quite right, and I don't think scientists are that close-minded.
Scientists have considered all possible forms that aliens might take.
We're not close-minded that we think they have to look like us, or behave like us, or be like us.
All possibilities are open, but if you're going to try to detect aliens, the presence of aliens, You have to start looking for things that you're familiar with and with the tools that are available.
It doesn't mean you're not open to other possibilities, but you have to work with the tools that you have to hand.
Perhaps in the future we'll have better tools.
Well, God help them if they look like ten penny nails.
Alright, yes, let us take some questions.
Lewis on Skype, hello.
Yeah, hello Mr. Bell.
Dr. Darling, I'd appreciate Some elaboration on an answer you gave to an earlier line of questions, Mr. Bell, regarding others observing us, UFOs, and not just entities observing us from a billion light years away.
Are you suggesting that perhaps faster-than-light travel might be possible, or fill in the blank, if you would, as to how they might have arrived here?
And that's my question, sir.
Okay.
Do you want to hang on in case you've got a follow-up?
I'm curious, too.
Well, again, we don't know how faster-than-light travel is possible at the moment.
There are restrictions within physics, but we also know possibly of ways, speculative ways, that you get around them.
Obviously, people have heard of wormholes and shortcuts through space-time, if you like.
We have no idea how you would be able to do that, but certainly faster-than-light travel,
faster-than-light communication is not out of the question.
My response would be that if beings have arrived here, if they've arrived in their spacecraft,
or if we ever hope to travel to other stars ourselves, we will probably need some form
of faster-than-light travel.
So I certainly don't rule out that possibility, and it would be my guess that if there are
spacecraft in the vicinity of the Earth, it's quite possible that they have found this means
of faster-than-light travel.
They could also have taken the sub-light route as well.
But that obviously prevents you from traveling great distances, really, because interstellar
distances are so huge.
Well, I appreciate getting that on the record, and thank you, Mr. Bell.
All right, thank you very much for the call.
Winter Haven, something Florida, probably on the phone.
Hi.
Hey, Art, this is Tom from Florida, former juror.
Oh, okay, hi.
Hi, how you doing?
Yes, doctor, I had a question.
We were talking about a catastrophe from an impact and everything earlier.
I was wondering, what would happen if something catastrophic was to happen to our moon?
Like, it was to break up somehow or explode?
How would that affect the Earth?
Yeah, good question.
It would be catastrophic for the Earth if the Moon were to explode.
But I wonder what mechanism you think might cause that.
The only way the Moon could be destroyed would be by something very large hitting it very hard.
There is no other possible way in which the Moon could explode other than by a collision.
So, and it would have to be hit by a planetary-sized object, so the passage of that planetary-sized object in itself would cause problems to the Earth, never mind whether it hit the Moon or not.
The destruction of the Moon is an extraordinarily unlikely event.
If it did happen, then obviously large pieces of the Moon would, some of them at least, would head our way, and that would be disastrous, but a very, very, very unlikely occurrence.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you very much for the call, and take care.
Let's go outside the country somewhere.
Art, hello.
Hello, Art.
Hopefully you can hear me.
There's jitter in the line.
I'm down in the Baja in Mexico.
Oh, I hear you fine.
Go ahead.
Off the grid.
I'm living on the Sea of Cortez, south of San Felipe.
Okay.
And boy, is it hot down here, let me tell you.
Anyway, I've been listening to you, Art, since I was studying mechanical engineering at the University of Utah in one of the old buildings they tore down now, overnight, pulling overnighters to get ready for exams and that and thermodynamics and whatever.
And so I've studied mathematics to a pretty high degree, and I have a mathematical probability study.
That I derived using Carl Sagan's figures out of Cosmos.
Absolutely proving that evolution is mathematically impossible.
Really?
Yes.
I have the figures.
They're pretty simple, actually.
You just need to know the law of addition of exponents in algebra.
No higher than that.
Evolution is impossible in layman's terms.
Why?
Because the probabilities are so astronomical, for instance, there's a term in mathematics called permutation.
And you have 22 amino acids that are building blocks for protein.
Well, one protein, 100 amino acids long, the number of permutations is 20 to the 100th power available.
Just combinations from that One length of 20 amino acids.
Okay, that means it's complicated but not impossible.
In other words... Well, let me finish.
Okay.
The probability of that happening, just that one protein randomly forming over, I've given 10 billion years as the limit for what could have evolved, I put 10 Earths around each star that Carl Sagan says exists, which he says was 10 to the 22nd power, and put 10 Earths around each star, filled each Earth's oceans with amino acids instead of water, which our Earth has about 10 to the 46th power water molecules in the oceans, and had all of these amino acids combine every second
over 10 billion years into proteins exactly 100 amino acids long.
And the chances of this one protein, not an entire ecosystem or the body itself, to randomly form is 1 over 10 to the 43rd power, which is zero.
And I sent this to Michio Kaku asking him for His reply?
He never gave me a reply, of course.
All right, well, you've got Dr. David Darling here, so let's see what he says.
Doctor?
Well, this is not a new argument, the idea that things come together to give molecules, biochemical molecules, and then life.
The chances of atoms flying together in a certain way to give a life form, for example, Are incredibly remote.
It would never happen.
But that's not the way evolution works.
And this is the fallacy behind it.
It's not a random process at all.
It's a synthetic process.
So once you have a simple molecule, amino acids, they do tend to form together into polypeptides and then into proteins.
There is a natural process there which happens and which occurs.
It's not a random process at all.
And if you expect, you know, small components to fly together, for example, to form some sort of a model of a car, it would never happen.
It doesn't.
It's not a random process.
And this is the fallacy of this argument.
Evolution follows a course of one thing building on another, and once that stage has been reached, it's no longer a random process.
It is not a designed process, but there is some synthetic process going on that is not random, and to treat evolution in that way is a fallacy.
It doesn't work that way.
It's the same way that more complex organisms have arisen from simpler ones.
It's a competitive process and the successful things that emerge at the end are not due to a random process.
They're due to a selection process, a natural selection process.
Okay.
Anonymous, hello there.
You're on the air with Dr. Darling.
Hey, Dr. Darling.
How are you doing?
Hi, Art.
It's good to have you back.
Thank you.
I've got a question for you.
I've been following what's been going on for a long time now.
Since like the early 80s, 1983, where they put the IRS up and the money, I say always follow the money.
They've been spending trillions of dollars building these underground bases, seed vaults.
The Vatican built, you know, the telescope over there in Arizona.
They've built them down there in the Antarctic.
and uh... in australia and they all seem to be looking for something
and uh... i know you guys don't believe in planet x from what i'm listening
uh... you mentioned that uh... if something was going to hit us
that's all the things that you would do it just seems like that's what they're
doing in that's what they've done
so uh... is that is that uh... sir is that i'm really curious uh... are you a
planet xer well what do you mean a planet extra? Well I... I believe
you, I believe you.
I believe in Planet X. I believe that something is coming.
I believe that they have spent trillions of dollars on it.
I mean, you look all around.
They're building these underground bases.
They're stocking it to the hilt.
They're building seed vaults.
They've built observatories in the Antarctic.
They've built observatories In Australia, the Vatican built one in... Okay, but all these things that you're describing, wouldn't they be prudent measures to take for any disaster?
I mean, not just Planet X, which I don't believe in, but anything else that might happen that would be awful?
Trillions of dollars?
All the governments around the world are doing this, and this whole thing with Jade Helm now looks to me like they're getting ready for martial law.
In preparation to lock down the country.
It's like a convergence.
Jade Helm.
Yeah, Jade Helm.
They've moved all the military around the country getting ready to lock it down for martial law.
You know, they have been talking about martial law coming since I have been broadcasting.
It's always coming.
It's always around the corner.
It is.
It's right around the corner.
I believe that you're going to see it within the next six months.
Six months?
Okay.
Not September?
In the immortal words of Malachi Martin, keep your eyes to the skies.
Well, I'll go along with that.
All right.
You know what learning is, right?
I do.
Okay, you understand the whole scenario of it, right?
I do.
I keep up with things here, so yes, I know about Planet X. I know about Jade Helm.
I know about all the stuff going around, even the September stuff.
I know about it all.
That doesn't mean I buy into it all.
I know about it.
So there you go, Doctor.
There's a lot of, you know, no offense to that guy, but there are so many people now that believe essentially what he just said, and he took it pretty light, frankly.
Yeah, well obviously he talked about a lot of stuff and he was stringing a lot of stuff together that people might not necessarily think go together.
The fact that we build seed vaults is a sensible measure if plants are becoming extinct.
We would like to be able to keep those seeds for the future so that when conditions improve we can replant them.
that's not anything to do with Planet X, it's to do with retaining the biosphere
and preserving our biological heritage for the future.
If you're talking about observatories in various parts of the world, for example, the Antarctic,
they're not looking for Planet X, the observatories in the Antarctic
are looking for cosmic neutrinos, as it happens, they're built for a specific purpose.
Other observatories are built for looking at the universe in general, not looking at Planet X.
As far as martial law goes, that's, you're bringing in all sorts of things
and trying to make it seem like it's a theory when it's not, it's just a personal opinion
and a personal attitude towards things.
And it doesn't wash with me at all that.
If you're going to make these sort of extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary evidence,
not just wishy-washy hand-waving.
All right, Skye.
Timothy, you're on the air with Dr. Darling.
Hi, Dr. Darling.
Okay, back away from your microphone a little bit, sir.
I'm sorry.
That's better.
I'm talking on my Android phone.
That's fine.
My question for Dr. Darling was, what was his thoughts on fast radio bursts?
I think the last one happened in Australia in May 2014.
I missed it.
Fast what?
Fast radio bursts.
Signals heard from space.
The last one was May 2014.
I wasn't aware of this.
I'm not.
Yeah, I guess fast radio bursts.
I'm not so familiar with that.
Is this some sort of astrophysical or something like gamma ray bursts or do you know anything more about it?
I believe they're shortwave radio communications, just about 20 seconds of some sort of audio at a time, and they've been heard since 2001.
At least that's the records I can find at the moment, and the last one happened last year in May of 2014.
Okay, well I monitor shortwave, sir, myself, very carefully.
I'm a ham operator, and I haven't seen any news about what you're talking about in the shortwave bands.
Would you be so kind as to send me something on this?
Do you have anything written?
Uh, I've found newspaper articles, Art, about it, and I can send it to you over Twitter, over your Twitter feed.
Uh, well, Twitter's not long enough to explain that.
Can you send it by email?
Yes.
Okay.
I'll do that.
Okay, alright.
Thank you.
Art Bell at artbell.com.
I don't, you know, reject this sort of thing out of hand, but, uh, nor do I accept it.
I haven't heard about this, so...
Well, if it's a short radio burst across a fairly broad range of wavelengths, then it's probably, and it's not coming from the Earth, it's not an artificial signal, it's probably an astrophysical source, probably extra-galactic.
Uh, the only thing you'd have to be, uh, interested in, really, is if it was a very narrow-band signal.
That's what you'd be looking for in there.
If he's kind of saying, well, might it be artificial in terms of, you know, some civilization sending out a signal, that would tend to be a narrow-band signal.
And that would speak of it being artificial, but if it's across a range of wavelengths, then it's probably a natural, you know, astrophysical type of thing.
Probably, but if it's in the short-wave range of frequencies, frankly, it's so congested and such a mess that you probably wouldn't know it, even if you heard it, certainly wouldn't know the origin.
Deming, New Mexico, I think.
You're on the air with Dr. Darling.
Hi.
Yeah, you got it.
It's Steve, and I are, and Doctor, you are I have just a thought.
I was going to say a theory, but it's not a theory.
I have just a thought, I was going to say a theory, but it's not a theory.
First of all, before I express it, I am very much in agreement with your discussions on
the possibilities of us being watched or whatever may be going on out there in the vastness
of the universe.
I have always had a thought that maybe, just maybe, because we are aware of ourselves and
we have our egos, with all the vastness out there, why would there be an interest in us
unless possibly we were a transplant or something?
We were placed here maybe, but in all that vastness, I always thought, isn't it a little egotistical of us to think that they'd be interested in us?
What are your thoughts?
My thought, sir, would be the same.
If it were not for the fact that we can and we are developing the means to look at other planets and possibly detect life on those worlds.
Now, if we do, in the future, over the next few years, we start looking at exoplanets and we see some that have life on them, they will become natural focuses of interest for us and therefore we will tend to zero in on them.
All right, hold it right there, doctor.
We've got a break.
We'll be right back.
I'm Art Bell.
Did you see the light?
And baby, all the year round you?
Did you hear the music?
To observe the light?
You can feel it.
Higher and higher, baby.
It's a living thing.
The clock strikes twelve, and Midnight in the Desert is counting packets your way
on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
What a fascinating opportunity to speak with somebody like Dr. David Darling,
all the way from Dundee, Scotland.
I'm Art Bell, and I want to ask this, Doctor, before we go back to the poems very quickly.
A lot of people want to talk to you, but you have looked into the nature of consciousness, and that is one of my favorite topics, period.
And so I guess I would ask what you have concluded about its nature.
Well, I wrote two books on that subject back in the 1990s.
One was called Soul Search and the other one was called Zen Physics.
And the Zen Physics, as you can probably gather from the title, was a An inquiry into both Eastern and Western views of the nature of consciousness.
As a scientist, I've kind of got some very unconventional views on this subject.
In other areas, I'm open-minded, but I tend to follow the party line unless I see extreme evidence.
But in the case of consciousness, I don't think science has a very good handle.
I agree.
My belief is that consciousness is a lot more fundamental than what science would lead us to believe.
Obviously, science believes that consciousness comes about through the workings of the brain, and when the brain dies, so does consciousness.
I am of the opinion that consciousness is more fundamental than that, that it is something that is kind of out there.
And what the brain really does is not create consciousness, but acts almost as a filter or at least a receiver of consciousness.
And the books really kind of play around with that idea.
It's more, I guess, more of an Eastern view of what the mind is and what consciousness is.
It's a more all-embracing concept.
We tend to focus in the West a lot more on the ego and ourselves and we build them up to be quite important things
Ourself is really just a narrative a little story that builds up during our lifetime
Consciousness is a lot more basic and more important than that
I think it's a fundamental rather like energy and time and things like that. I think it's a something that our brains
have evolved to tap into but the when the brain dies
That's when consciousness expands because in fact it it lies beyond the brain. Okay?
Well, that's quite a step for you to take now if you're willing to take that step then are you willing to take this
step?
beyond That suggests there is a creator. There is a God a lot of
scientists don't believe in God I don't think the two are necessarily related.
That doesn't mean that one discounts the other or approves it in any way.
I think you can conceive of this idea of consciousness being out there without there being a God.
And by the way, if you ask somebody or ask me whether I believe in God or not, the first thing I'm going to say is, what do you mean by God?
and then I might be able to give you an answer. If you mean something that is supernatural
and existed before the universe, then that is one thing. If you say, okay, it's some sort of
intelligence behind the universe, then that would be another thing. You could imagine a highly
advanced alien intelligence could almost have god-like powers. So if you're going to ask about
that, then you need to define exactly what you mean by God.
A Christian God, an Eastern God, some kind of other God, you know?
And I'm open-minded about that.
Any kind of God?
I'm open-minded about it.
I guess I would regard myself as a spiritual person, in the sense that I think there are things beyond science.
And I can buy into the idea of a benign intelligence behind the universe, but I don't have a strong commitment to it.
I don't have a strong fear.
I certainly don't follow any particular orthodox religions, but I'm open to the idea that there is a being behind the universe.
If you have looked into the Eastern religions, then what about the concept of reincarnation?
Well, it took me a whole book to explain that.
That was what Zen physics was about, really.
It was called the science of death and the logic of reincarnation, but not reincarnation in a sort of a Buddhist sense.
But in the sense of the continuation of consciousness after death.
So I believe that what happens when we die, when our brains die, is that consciousness continues.
And that from our perspective, it doesn't really make any difference the fact that we lose ourselves.
We lose our memories of this person that existed before.
But other beings are constantly coming into existence.
And I think just as, for example, people fear death because they fear losing themselves.
But we don't fear the time before death.
when we didn't exist. And I believe it's just a series of adventures in consciousness and therefore I don't have any
problem with the idea of us continuing after we die. It's just that it's not
us as an individual, it's someone else. But that's not a problem because it's
happened before.
That's a pretty remarkable position for a scientist, I believe.
Well, yeah, scientists do have remarkable views.
If you talk to them in private, they don't all just follow what's in the textbook, you know.
Everybody has their own personal views.
And you find Christian scientists, you find atheist scientists, they all have their own personal beliefs, you know.
So everybody has unusual ideas.
And the universe is an extraordinary place.
Whatever the explanation for the universe, it's remarkable.
Right, but you don't find too many scientists willing to express that belief on a big radio program.
No, but I'm basically a science writer.
I don't hold a position at a university.
Maybe if I did, I'd be a little more careful with what I said, because you can easily lose tenure by putting your foot in things.
So, yeah, I speak my mind, and that's a happy... Yeah.
All right.
Hilo, Hawaii.
Hello.
Wow.
Incredible show.
Dr. Darling, is it?
He has some insight, I gotta say.
Art Bell, I like the way you're coming across it.
Blake Cousins right here at Third Phase Moon.
I've got two questions.
First of all, I wanted to ask Dr. Darling this big one.
How many people have gone through the death process since the beginning of man?
Sorry, is that your question?
How many people have gone through the death process?
Since the beginning of man, is what he said.
How many people have died?
Yeah.
Yeah, I got the number, I could give it to you.
I don't know, obviously in the billions, but I have no idea, depends what you mean by when do you start counting from, 10,000 years ago, 100,000, a million, I don't know.
Good point.
I suppose there were fewer people back in the long ago, but obviously it's in the billions, I don't have a figure off the top of my head.
Well, you know, it comes out to be about 130 billion people have been born and died since the beginning of man.
So there is this process that is still unexplained.
We haven't figured it out.
Back to the celestial thing that we've been talking about earlier real quick.
I just want to get it out, breaking news.
Maui had an incredible celestial event captured by multiple eyewitnesses.
I just sent it to your Art Bell at artbell.com.
Contact Art.
I think you should take a look at this.
All right, what is it?
Well, it's basically some kind of, well, the DOD says it's a space operations, well, The Vandenberg saying that it's from the Cosmos 1315 payload launched in 1981, but they're not exactly sure.
They're just speculating that's what it is.
Is this something that re-entered the Earth's atmosphere?
Is that what you're saying?
Absolutely.
It looks like when you could have imagined Columbia coming down over Hawaii at night.
Really?
Absolutely stunning, but this is the thing.
Darling, Dr. Darling states that our technology is this great and fantastic and we could predict an asteroid coming from a, you know, from a long ways, but we can't even predict this?
Even the DoD doesn't have direct answers?
Can Dr. Darling explain why?
Alright, excuse me, where did this thing come down again?
This came over Maui.
Over Maui, okay.
And so it was like a trail of fire over Maui, is that right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I spoke with an eyewitness today right on the ground that witnessed it last night as well.
He didn't know what it was.
And even the DOD doesn't know what it is.
They're saying it's something from 1981.
All right.
Well, Doctor, it's a good point, I guess.
We can't even track our own space junk.
Well, we do track it, and sometimes we know when things are coming down, and then apparently sometimes we don't.
Well, it's fair to say.
I think we know where most of the large pieces of space junk are, as far as I know.
The two things are unrelated.
Tracking large asteroids and tracking the re-entry of space junk is not quite the same thing.
There are different systems involved in doing that.
If a bright object is seen re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, well, it could be artificial, or it could be a meteorite.
I don't know about this.
It's hard to comment on something when I don't know the details, but if something has been seen coming down, it doesn't have to be artificial, because meteorites fall to the Earth all the time, so we'd have to know what it was.
Right.
So, I don't have anything more to say about that, really.
Okay.
All right.
William on Skype.
Hello?
Mark?
Yes, sir.
Art, this is such an honor.
Okay, get a little closer to your microphone.
Wherever your mic is, get close to it.
Okay.
Okay.
It's right near my head.
Okay.
So I've been listening to your show since 1995, when I was living in Taiwan and handing out episodes to everybody I knew, mostly of the shows you did with Michiyu Kaku, which is what I want to ask Dr. Darling about today.
This is what drives me crazy about the whole conversation about space travel.
And it's the issue of the multiverse and the fact that particle physicists now think there are at least 11 dimensions.
Now, if that's true, and if we're completely oblivious to most of these dimensions, doesn't that kind of open up infinite possibilities for extraterrestrial presence?
travel, and also this confluence of science and religion, art, which is something that you have made a contribution to human civilization with, so I thank you for that as well.
That was the thrust of my question, Dr. Darling.
I'd love you to touch on that.
This is something Michio Kaku talks about all the time, and I think it's a very profound issue.
Okay, all right, multiverse, Doctor.
OK, well, yeah, it's now a commonly accepted theory.
We don't know if it's true or not, but there's certainly no...
Disbelief in the idea that there may be many, many other universes out there.
We may be just one of many.
Just like there are billions of stars, there may be billions of other universes.
It's not so much of a controversial theory anymore.
It's kind of mainstream, really, in science.
So, from that perspective, yes, really anything goes.
The laws could be different in these other universes.
Many of them may be sterile.
Many of them may have forms of life.
We don't know.
Anything goes, really.
they would each have their own starting conditions and laws of physics, so the possibilities are endless.
So in general that's a reasonable comment.
As far as the dimensions go, of the 11 dimensions, and we don't know about this,
there are various theories, some involve fewer, some involve more dimensions,
but the number 11 is kicked around quite a lot.
The three of course we're familiar with, the three dimensions of space and the one of time,
But the other dimensions are not macroscopic dimensions, they're quantum level dimensions.
So, in other words, space is curled up very, very small along those dimensions.
shelter i'm sorry i have to do this but we we have we have to break so
hold tight and welcome back and discuss i was a damn builder across the river deep and wide
where steel and water didn't collide Midnight in the Desert doesn't screen calls.
We trust you.
But remember, the NSA... Well, you know.
To call the show, please dial 1-952-225-5278.
That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
You can't help but laugh at the way he does that.
Good stuff.
My guest is Dr. David Darling.
All the way from Dundee, Scotland.
You can't help but laugh at the way he does that.
Good stuff.
My guest is Dr. David Darling, all the way from Dundee, Scotland, and what an appearance
it has been.
I wonder if perhaps as we discuss other dimensions, and we discuss this song, can't put them together,
and it may well be that you get reincarnated to another dimension.
Doctor, welcome back.
Good to be back.
Is that a possibility?
I mean, if you embrace the concept of reincarnation, perhaps reincarnation to another dimension is as likely as anything.
Well, yes, I suppose it depends how things are arranged when we fully understand the universe.
Anything is possible.
At the moment, you know, science is a very, very Curious a place when we can talk about multiple dimensions
and multiple universes and quantum events It's really is an it's it's a wonderland of a place
And so there's so much that we don't know dark energy dark matter. We don't know what they are
We don't know what more than three-quarters of the universe is so there's a lot of unknown stuff out there
Boy, there sure is all right any further comment on You were in the middle of talking about dimensions beyond our three.
Yeah, I was just making the point, really, that we're talking about two different things there.
You mentioned the multiverse, and that really refers to many other universes out there, of which we have no knowledge.
Which could host life and all kinds of other things that we don't know about as far as the dimensions of The particle physicists refer to these 11 dimensions or 23 or however many we have the three large dimensions of space that we know about that we live in but these other dimensions are Microscopic will sub microscopic their quantum level dimensions.
They're curled up as it were into a very small size So they're of a different I'm doing fine.
This is Matthew, the Sunday School teacher.
as we know about, so we need to be clear that we're talking about different things there.
Oh yes, indeed. All right, let's see where to go. Where do you want to go? Ah, we'll go to Skype.
Hello Skype, Matthew. Art Bell, praise the Lord. How are you doing? I'm doing fine. This is Matthew,
the Sunday school teacher. And Dr. Darling, you're a wonderful guest and you have a wonderful accent,
but I'm disappointed that you're not a religious man.
well you have a lot of a lot of them to call them but i bet you are
I think you are, but these people are calling in, telling that Planet X will bring retribution, but the only retribution has come from the Lord God.
And, Dr. Darling, reincarnation is a wicked and idolatrous doctrine.
That's not a question, that's a statement.
It is a statement, and it sounds like one coming from somebody that I... might be relative of somebody I know.
Well, I love the show, Art.
Dr. Darling, please just tell us a little bit more about these extra dimensions, but I'll take my answer off the air.
Thank you.
Wicked, huh?
You really think wicked?
I'm not sure what the question was there.
I think we just had a comment, and I don't know.
Everybody's entitled to their own opinion.
It's a free world, isn't it?
Or we hope to.
That it is.
I recognize the tone, if nothing else.
Let's go to La Jolla, California.
Hello.
Yes, hi.
Tom again.
You made a reference to Jodie Foster in Contact earlier.
I did.
And as an aside, Agent Darling was in The Silence of the Lambs.
My question is back to the subject of detecting an inbound comet or asteroid or something.
Oh yes.
And the conversation about making an attempt to re-divert it or move it.
And it reminded me of another phrase that was in the movie Contact, which is, why build
one when you can build two at twice the cost.
And it was a great line at the time, but it makes you wonder if such a small variance to detect whether the inbound object could strike Earth, that people could manipulate that minuscule variance in the data and actually create a panic and a good revenue stream to build a couple devices to try to protect the Earth.
So, I wouldn't put it past the industrialists or the bankers to... I'm trolling for conspiracy theorists.
Well, I'm sure you'll find them.
You know, think about this.
If an alien wanted to destroy humanity, they wouldn't even have to touch foot on the planet.
They could take one good look at us, say, what a bunch of baloney going on down there.
Go on out to where the big rocks are, and, you know, reorient one in our direction, and that'll be it.
Sneeze on it, and it's here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, that's true.
If they wanted to destroy us, if there was an advanced intelligence out there, there's a whole lot we could do about it.
Why they would go to the trouble is another matter, you know?
Well, I mean, if they felt that we were dangerous in some manner, and not good to be venturing out from our little globe, then that would be an easy way to get rid of us.
You'd never have to touch Earth, just... gone.
So I guess my question really is, the people detecting asteroids or comets, is there some built-in protection that we won't get fooled?
Well, what sort of built-in protection would you I mean, scientists don't go into science to pull the wool over people's eyes.
They go into science to learn the truth.
They're not trying to cover stuff up.
Governments do that, I agree.
They have their various motives, but scientists don't cover things up.
Why would they want to?
They want to discover unusual things.
It's the same with the extraterrestrial life.
Why would they cover up The discovery of it.
That's the whole point of science is to discover new things and well known to the world.
So well, I don't have it.
Okay, doctor.
Wait, well, there is the Brookings report, right?
I mean, that was commissioned by government.
And basically, it said that if ET life was discovered, the disruption to institutions, to our basic everything would be so great that it should not be disclosed.
Well, that's an opinion of that group, or a few people that were involved in it, and it's a valid thing.
It would cause panic, but it's not the entire scientific consensus, and it's just one possibility.
Well, you mentioned yourself, governments cover things up, and that sounds like one they might want to cover up.
It's a possibility.
It's a possibility, yes.
But I don't think the information would be able to be kept secret.
I think it would get out anyway if it's something that big.
But who knows?
I don't know everything.
Or to the contrary, create something to put us in fear in one more way.
Yeah, that's fair.
Okay, thanks Art.
Alright, thank you very much for the call.
Take care.
And let's see.
Let's go to Phoenix, Arizona.
Hello in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hi, Eric.
How you doing?
Just fine, sir.
Good, good.
Hi, Doctor.
I've got a couple good questions for you.
Now, we've been talking about this.
I know that Dr., let's see, Professor Stephen Hawkins, he's looking for extraterrestrial life as we speak.
I guess him and a bunch of scientists are forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars to find this life.
Now, my question to you, let's just say, what if?
Let's say they find this life.
Who is going to be the representative of the world, or the Earth, planet Earth, to talk to them?
Because you know, like, South America, Europe, they can sit there and say, yes, this life does exist.
The United States, they say, our government says, oh, it doesn't exist.
So you know our government's going to hide this information from us.
Well, let me turn it around on you, Culler.
If you were to pick somebody to represent humanity, who would you pick?
Basically, scientists.
You'd pick a scientist?
Yes.
Like the good doctor here, because he is basically, he wants to know.
He's not going to sit there, okay, he's not going to go for technology.
He's not going to go for Let's do this with this and just skyrocket the dollar here.
It's more likely, let's see what would benefit us.
Why do you make the assumption that governments will be trying to cover this up?
I don't follow that line of thought at all.
Why would they cover it up?
The United States government covers up everything.
Look at Roswell.
Look at Roswell.
Harry 51.
Look at all this.
Now we have reports from, let's see, South America, Russia, stuff like that.
These reports say yes, UFOs do exist.
They are here.
Well, we have no government officially recognizing that UFOs are alien craft.
that I know of.
On the one hand you're talking about UFOs and then you were talking about signals from
SETI programs.
Those are two different issues as well.
There is a scientific search or searches going on for signals from other stars and that's
a separate process from the business of UFOs.
So you can't lump those two together.
As for how we would react, again I think if a signal did come in it would very quickly
be public knowledge because the people that are doing the detection are scientists, they
are free thinking people and that information would very, very quickly spread around the
world especially with the internet now.
There have been false alarms in the past and we know that information goes out.
Governments couldn't keep it a secret, I don't believe.
All right, hold tight, Doctor.
Area code 952-225-5278.
That's a public number.
952-225-5278.
225-5278. That's a public number. 952-225-5278. Otherwise Skype here or worldwide.
We're just an estimation.
We'd love to have you join us.
Dr. David Darling, here, all the way from Dundee, Scotland, is our guest.
well please coordinate your phalanges and call 1952 225 52 78 that's 1952 call art
those are the numbers we'd love to have you join us dr david darling here all the way
from uh dundee scotland is our guest and we are talking about space stuff
So if you have a question, we'd love to hear from you.
And we also touched on consciousness.
I have a feeling, Doctor, we could do a whole show on consciousness.
What do you think?
I think so.
It's a great subject.
It's a great, great subject and an important one, too, because it's our world, isn't it?
Consciousness is what life is all about.
I have thought in the past that consciousness May turn out eventually, once it's all known, to be the most powerful force in the universe.
I know that's a real stretch, but I honestly feel that way.
I think so too.
It's one of those questions that if you had three questions you could have answered, tell me what the nature of consciousness is, what it actually is.
That would be one of my big three.
I'm with you.
Alright, let's go back to the lines and say hello to I believe it's Kalasher.
Is that right?
That's right, Art.
Can you hear me?
I hear you.
It's actually Johnny from PA.
It's my first time using Skype.
I just wanted to try it out.
Oh, it's working great.
Sounds like you're right here.
My question is, I took Dr. David Jacobs' course at Temple University.
It's called UFOs in American Society, and I'm wondering if the guest is familiar with his work, especially that the first part of his course was really just about UFOs.
Oh, listen, trust me, we're going to have Dr., we're already scheduled, well, I hate to give away things for the future, but we're going to have Dr. Jacobs on.
And he does not necessarily feel that aliens, and he does think they're real, and he does think abductions are real, but he doesn't think they're friendly.
And I'm right there with him, Art, as far as that goes.
I am too.
The question is, the guest seemed to indicate that he didn't, I guess I got the feeling that he didn't I think that the UFO side of it had been credibly proven.
Yeah.
Well, I agree with him.
It hasn't.
Well, I mean, if you take the number, the raw number of sightings and witness testimony, you can make an argument that it amounts to a credible thing.
But, you know, scientifically, plastic Scientific, provable, repeatable stuff?
No.
Not that.
True.
That's true.
And I brought it up in Dr. Jacobs' course.
All of the evidence is anecdotal.
But like you said, the raw number and the credibility of some of the witnesses, like the pilots.
I know.
Trust me, I know.
Doctor, any comments?
Well, again, I think there's this sort of opinion abroad that scientists, you know, have no time for UFOs.
It's not the case at all.
Many scientists believe it's entirely possible that the Earth has been visited or is being visited by extraterrestrials.
There's nothing unscientific about that.
It isn't that scientists are against this idea.
They just simply want the evidence.
They don't want fuzzy patches in the sky.
And by the way, even if a pilot sees something unusual, it may be is something unusual, but it may be natural, or
it may be artificial.
We don't know. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's an alien intelligence behind it. That's all
I'm saying is that there are many, many... You should always look for the most mundane explanation
first. Eliminate all of that. Don't jump to the conclusion that it's something extraordinary to
begin with.
That's all I'm saying is that's the approach that most scientists take.
They go for the mundane first, eliminate all that.
If anything is left at the end, then yes, that possibility is now open to us.
So it's just a question of the way you look at these things, really.
All right.
All right.
Caller, thank you.
I'm going to give you something to look at or listen to, and you tell me what Occam's razor would say about this.
I was on my way home with my wife.
My wife saw something coming up from behind the car late at night, 1145, quiet, dead quiet, doctor, dead quiet.
We got out of the car, looked behind us, and coming up from behind us was this monstrous triangle, metallic-looking triangle.
It wasn't going quick.
It was going 35, 40 miles an hour at best, if that.
It was not more than 150 feet above us.
It was dead silent.
Could hear crickets, you know, a quarter of a mile away, half mile away, whatever.
This thing didn't make a sound.
Not a sound.
It passed directly over us, then went out over the Trump Valley.
And many, many people here in my little town saw this craft and had identical descriptions of it that hit the newspaper.
Local Air Force Base said it was a C-130, which is silly, but that's what they said.
The Air Force Base said, yeah, secret mission over Pahrump, C-130, ha ha.
So when you see something like that, apply Occam's razor.
What did I experience?
If I'd seen it, I would be as puzzled as you are.
And I'm not doubting that you did see it.
I have no explanation for it.
I have no explanation for it at all.
My initial feeling would be, is it a... Are there military bases nearby?
Oh, yes.
But this thing was not... Doctor, it was not flying.
At 30, 35 miles an hour, 40 at best, it was not flying.
It was either floating or defying gravity.
OK, OK.
Well, you know, again, I have no explanation.
I have no explanation for it, literally no explanation for it.
So, you know, I would have to look into it more.
I'd have to talk to you.
I'd have to talk to other eyewitnesses.
Is there some Explanation we can come up with that is feasible from what we know.
I don't know.
I have nothing to say on that except that I simply don't know.
It's one of these personal experiences or group experiences that you hear about, but until you start digging around looking at more evidence and the basic evidence, you can't even come up with a theory.
All you can say is that I simply don't know, and that's an honest answer.
All right, and I can't expect more.
Woodlands, California?
Yes, sir.
Hi.
So I just wanted to make a comment about why the government may possibly be covering up any of the situations.
According to Dr. Michio Kaku, when you cross an anthill, you don't go down and give them all your technology.
When you do what to an anthill?
I'm sorry, when you do what to an anthill?
If you cross an anthill, you don't go down and give them all your technology because they would not be able to understand it.
You know, according to Moore's Law, technology advances for us at a rate of, you know, it doubles every 18 months or so.
For an alien civilization or whatever, their expansion is going to be at least as fast as the universe expands.
Not only would we not be able to use it, their technology, but our brains most likely would not be able to understand it.
So, it would honestly be pointless for them to tell us.
Also, in the movie Interstellar, the technology was so advanced, the beings had to create a... take a three-dimensional depiction of their world because As I said, we would be unable to comprehend what was going on.
Also, just a quick thing that I came up with was the possibility that maybe we could be from another source or another planet, and maybe we possibly seeded life to our planet.
And this kind of goes along with the time-traveling humans Um, are actually the UFOs, um, but possibly the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs may have been a seed with our life.
And maybe we found that Earth was a planet that could support life.
So we sent the asteroids not only to kill the dinosaurs, but to feed our planet, uh, killing two, uh, you know, two birds with one stone, no pun intended.
But I don't know if the doctor has any suggestions or comments about that.
Maybe I would like to see them. I can take this cancer offline.
Okay.
Okay, well we did talk about the idea that if there is alien intelligence,
the chances are, first of all, that it's far more advanced than us.
We've only had high technology in the form of being able to fly and have computers from over the past century or so.
You can imagine how advanced an intelligence that was a thousand or ten thousand or a million years ahead of us would be.
The crawler is right.
It would seem like magic and we wouldn't even, even if we looked at their technology, we might not recognize it as such or it may not be visible to us.
So there's certainly truth in that matter.
As far as the seeding of life goes, of course this is an old theory, the panspermia theory, that life can spread from one world to another either accidentally Or in the case of directed panspermia, where it's actually planted on other worlds.
Yes, but the fact that that asteroid that struck the Earth and did for the dinosaurs was a local asteroid.
It came from within the solar system.
Doctor, what about the idea that Mars, which once I believe had an atmosphere, Once was perhaps even a livable planet, we don't know.
It had its atmosphere stripped away.
Something hit it good and hard.
And isn't it possible that life was seeded from Mars to Earth?
Yes, it is possible.
And it's possible the other way around, too.
We know that meteorites have arrived on Earth from Mars.
We know that for certain.
We have those meteorites.
Right.
And so it is possible, and that's actually a mainstream idea, that we may be Martians, basically, that life may have evolved on Mars and transferred to Earth.
There's nothing really controversial about that.
It's entirely possible.
In fact, it would be surprising if life hadn't evolved on Mars a long time ago, whether there's life still there or not.
We'd have some explaining to do if it hadn't evolved there.
It's perfectly reasonable that it would have done.
There you go.
Hello there.
You're on the air with Dr. Darling.
Hello.
Going once.
Yes.
Hi.
Thank you for having me on the show.
Sure.
I just have a quick question.
I know that Dr. Darling was mentioning earlier about overpopulation or perhaps there being too many people so that it's unsustainable for the planet.
Right.
I'm curious if the doctor would have anything to say regarding the Pugnan conclusion or the paradox of life in and of itself being a value, and therefore having
more and more children would be plus happiness for the people who are born. I'm
not saying that I agree with that, but I'm just curious to hear what his take would
be on that. Thank you.
Well, I don't know what the limit is as to what the earth can support, but there
has to be a limit.
The human population is growing quite rapidly.
I'm not saying that's the cause of all the problems.
I think the way that we live our lives as well as the number of people is a problem.
We all use far too many resources than we need to.
But I think more and more people, obviously at some point there has to be a limit to how many the Earth can sustain.
And if it has too many, then that's not going to improve life for anyone.
I guess we're going to find out pretty soon.
Skype, Michael, you're on the air with Dr. Darling.
How are you doing tonight, Art?
Fine.
I was just curious what the doctor would think What if humanity has evolved, excuse me, what if there was an ancient race that lived here, evolved and moved on, and that's what we're going to find out there in our own solar system, and they left behind.
You mean find ourselves, essentially?
Yeah, we were the left behind, we were the leftovers.
Okay, why not?
What do you think about something like that?
Well, I think it's an interesting idea.
It would make a great story.
Nothing wrong with it in principle.
I mean, humans started to evolve millions of years ago.
There was certainly time for us to have several civilization peaks in the past.
And to have evolved space travel.
There was actually time for it.
The question is, where's the evidence that it actually happened?
So, I've got nothing wrong with the idea in principle.
It's just, you know, tell me why I should believe in it.
But if we do find life, you know, relics of advanced life in the solar system, whether they are our ancestors or not, who knows?
I don't see the evidence that there was that actually happening.
That would be my point.
Okay, let's see, short on time to be sure, but you're on the air with Dr. Darling.
Hello?
Hello?
Yes, hi.
Is this me?
It's, well, yes.
Only you know that for sure, but yes, you.
Well, okay.
Hey, I didn't catch the beginning of the program, but regarding consciousness, did you discuss Dr. Oliver Sacks in his classing?
No, we didn't talk about him.
No, I've read his books in the past.
I think he's a fascinating man and excellent books.
We haven't actually talked about him, no.
Maybe as a suggestion, Mr. Bell, you could have him just go over his works and refresh everyone.
I'm sure you know who that is.
He's just such a... I didn't know what a fascinating man he really was until his passing, and I'm sad that it was after the fact.
I'm sorry, who were you talking about?
Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Okay.
He wrote a number of books, including Awakenings... Awakenings.
Awakenings.
Right.
There was a hallucination one and he lived to be 82 or 83, I believe, and he's just a fascinating man in retrospect.
I implore you to check it out.
I have referred to his work several times in my own books, so I'm familiar.
He was a great man, a great writer, but we haven't discussed him on the show so far.
I'm going to let you go.
Thank you.
Right.
Thank you, Colin.
Take care.
Yes, I'm a big, big believer, Doctor, in the power of consciousness.
I conducted some experiments with concentrated intent, you know, using a lot of the audience to try to cause things to happen.
And I must say, I had some amazing, startling Stuff that even scared me a little bit that occurred.
It was so successful.
Can we do this again, Doctor?
Let's do it again.
That would be fun, wouldn't it?
Oh yes, it's something.
Dr. David Darling, thank you for being here, my friend, and is there anything you want to plug?
You can visit my website for all the stuff I've done, daviddarling.info, and it's been a pleasure being on your show.
Thank you, my friend, and good night.
All right.
Well, there you have it.
Dr. David Darling.
And, uh, what a show.
What can I say?
We'll be back tomorrow night to do the same thing again.
Well, not the same thing.
Always something a little different from the high desert and the great American southwest.
On behalf of Midnight in the Desert, good night.
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