Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We spend so much time looking outward,
you know, scanning the cosmos for signals, dreaming of distant worlds.
But what if some of the most mind bending possibilities,
some of the most profound questions about life and technology
beyond Earth aren't waiting for us light years away, right
What if they're right next door, waiting for us on
a planet we feel like we know, like Mars. Hmmm,
Welcome to the deep dive Today. We're diving into a
truly fascinating stack of sources. We're pulling together cutting edge
explorations of Mars deep dives into our own advanced space technology.
Discussions about the possibility of encountering technology that might not
be human.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one, and the.
Speaker 1: Complex, messy challenge of searching for and potentially communicating with
intelligence far different from our own.
Speaker 2: Our mission in this deep dive isn't really to give
you easy answers or settle any debates. These topics are
just well, they're far too vast and mysterious for that. Instead,
we want to guide you through this material, show you
the key insights, the surprising facts, and the interconnected questions
that scientists, engineers, philosophers are wrestling with right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see how it all fits together exactly.
Speaker 2: You'll see why looking for ancient microbes and Martian rocks
and listening for alien radio signals are kind of two
sides of the same fundamental human curiosity. Are we alone?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And what does that question and the search for answers
tell us about ourselves and our place in the universe? Okay,
let's really get into it.
Speaker 1: And where better to start than the place that has
captivated our imaginations for centuries.
Speaker 2: Marsh Mars, the red planet not just a point of
light in the sky. It feels attainable, reachable, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It does so close.
Speaker 2: That proximity, combined with hints from early observations, has made
it the focus of our search for life outside of
Earth for a very long time. Is it just a barren,
dusty world? Or is there something more, something hidden beneath
the surface or locked in its ancient past?
Speaker 1: And that search for life on Mars it's not a
recent thing, is It goes way back decades, specifically with
the Viking missions in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Viking huge.
Speaker 1: These weren't just orbiters taking pictures The Viking Landers were
explicitly designed with life detection experiments on board.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The Viking program put two landers on the Martian surface,
Viking one and Viking two, each equipped with this like
miniaturized biology laboratory.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: They had three different experiments designed to test for metabolic
activity in the Martian soil. There was the gas exchange experiment,
the pyrolytic release experiment, and the labeled release experiment.
Speaker 1: And it was that labeled release experiment the LR that
initially sent waves through the scientific community right caused a
big stir.
Speaker 2: Precisely in the labeled release experiment, the Lander scoop would
deliver a soil sample into a chamber. A drop of
nutrient solution tagged with radioactive carbon fourteen was added. The
idea was that if there were microbes in the soil,
they would consume the nutrients and release gases potentially containing
that radio of carbon. And initially the results from both
Viking Landers showed a positive response a rapid release of
tagged gas.
Speaker 1: WHOA.
Speaker 2: This looked exactly like what you'd expect if biological organisms
were metabolizing nutrients.
Speaker 1: Which must have been incredibly exciting finding life.
Speaker 2: Oh imagine, Yeah, but the science is about scrutinizing results, right,
And the debate quickly ensued. It wasn't that simple, right,
What happened? It did? While one experiment showed this positive sign,
the other two life detection experiments didn't produce results easily
interpreted as biological And crucially, the gas camatograph mass spectrometer the.
Speaker 1: GCMs, Okay, what did that do?
Speaker 2: That was designed to look for organic molecules, the carbon
based building blocks of life, and it found none above
its detection limits in the areas tested.
Speaker 1: No organics, but the other test suggested metabolism exactly.
Speaker 2: This lack of detected organic matter seemed contradictory to the
idea of active lives producing gases. It was a puzzle.
Speaker 1: So if it wasn't life, what else could it possibly be?
Speaker 2: Well. This led to the development of alternative explanations, focusing
on purely chemical reactions in the highly reactive Martian.
Speaker 1: Soil chemistry not biology.
Speaker 2: One prominent theory involves strong oxidizing agents, maybe like hydrogen
peroxide or perchlorates, which, by the way, we now know
are present on Mars thanks to later missions like Phoenix.
These chemicals could react with the labeled nutrients in the
LR experiment, releasing gases without any biological activity involved just
aggressive chemistry, And there.
Speaker 1: Was also the idea about clays playing a role. I
remember hearing something about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's another fascinating angle that emerged from later analysis.
Some researchers studying the properties of specific minerals suggested that
certain types of smectite clays known to exist on.
Speaker 1: Mars semectype clays yes.
Speaker 2: Specifically iron rich clay is like nontronite. They suggested these
could mimic biological activity under the conditions of the Viking experiments.
These clays have catalytic properties, meaning they can speed up
chemic reactions. The argument was that these clays, particularly if
exposed to something like hydrogen peroxide, could catalyze the breakdown
of the labeled nutrient, producing the observed gas release, completely
independent of any biological process.
Speaker 1: So what looks like breathing could have just been rocks
and chemicals.
Speaker 2: Reacting, potentially a complex inorganic surface chemistry involving reactive oxidants
and catalytic clays. It really highlights how difficult it is
to interpret data from a completely alien environment, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely you don't have the same baseline, and the debate
certainly didn't end there. Years later, the discovery of the
eighty four thousand and one media write brought the whole
conversation roaring back, but this time about ancient life.
Speaker 2: Absolutely alh eighty four thousand and one a piece of
Mar is found here on Earth in Antarctica, about four
billion years old. When scientists examined it back in the nineties,
they found several features that when you looked at them
all together, well, some interpreted them as potential evidence of
past biological activity on Mars.
Speaker 1: Features are we talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, there were carbonate globules which could have formed in water.
There were these tiny microscopic features that looked to somemize
strikingly like fossilized bacteria, like microfossils exactly, and maybe most significantly,
the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs phs.
Speaker 1: Those are organic molecules, right they are, and.
Speaker 2: On Earth they are often associated with biological processes like
the decay of organic matter, though importantly they can also
be formed inorganically, like in car exhaust or during star formation.
Speaker 1: So finding them in the Metia write was suggestive, but
not prove, and I remember research like from Clement and
Zar arguing these phs were definitely Martian, not contamination from Earth.
Speaker 2: Correct. Their analysis suggested these pah were intrinsic to the
metiorite baked into it and not something picked up in Antarctica.
They argued, it pointed to their origin on Mars. Now,
they were careful not to claim this was proof of life,
but it was seen as a significant piece of circumstantial
evidence actually when you considered it alongside those potential microfossil
shapes and the carbonate globules.
Speaker 1: But just like with Viking, the inorganic counter arguments were strong,
weren't they They.
Speaker 2: Were very strong. Critics supported by studies like Bell's work,
argued that the PAH could have formed through non biological
processes right there on Mars, or even during the impact
event that blasted the rock off Mars in the first place.
Speaker 1: How would that work?
Speaker 2: The idea was shock decomposition. The immense pressure and heat
of a giant asteroid impact could break down carbonate minerals
like ciderite or iron oxides like magnetite that were already
in the Martian rock and rearrange the atoms to form PAHs,
no life required, okay. Furthermore, those features interpreted as microfossils,
many argue they were just way too small, much smaller
than known terrestrial fossil bacteria and could easily be purely
mineralogical formations. Weird crystal shapes that just happened to look
a bit like.
Speaker 1: Bacteria, and the broader missing organics issue from Viking factored
in here too. Right, people asked, if life was there,
where's the rest of the organic evidence?
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. For some scientists, the fact that missions like
Viking hadn't detected abundant complex organic molecules widespread on the
Martian surface, even with sensitive instruments, well, it made the
idea of widespread ancient life or even recent life harder
to swallow.
Speaker 1: Where are the leftovers?
Speaker 2: Right? If life was once abundant, where were the widespread
chemical remains now? It's fair to say later missions like
Curiosity have found some simple organic molecules, which is fascinating
in itself, but the initial lack from Viking definitely complicated
the picture for interpreting ALH eighty four thos ro A one. Biologically,
it felt like the pieces didn't quite fit together neatly.
Speaker 1: So incredibly compelling clues, both with Viking and alh eighty
four thousand and one, but neither provided that slam dunk
definitive answer. But the possibility of past life is strongly
linked to another critical factor for life as we know it. Water.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, liquid water is the solvent of life on Earth.
It's essential, and the evidence for abundant liquid water on
early Mars it's become incredibly robust over the years. We're
not just talking about a little bit of dampness.
Speaker 1: We're talking lakes, oceans, even.
Speaker 2: Yes, studies strongly suggest that early Mars had periods with
a thicker atmosphere, warmer conditions, allowing for a significant hydrological cycle.
I think rain, rivers, lakes, maybe even a northern ocean.
Speaker 1: And we see the evidence carved into the landscape.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, We see geological features that look exactly like
those carved by flowing water on Earth. Vast outflow channels
that look like megafloods happened, river deltas where a sediment
was deposited into standing bodies of water, Intricate networks of
valleys that look just like river.
Speaker 1: Systems, like Warrogo valleys.
Speaker 2: That's one example right precisely. Observations of features like Warrego
Valleys show these dendritic drainage patterns like the branches of
a tree. That's indicative of extensive surface runoff, like a
river system carving into the landscape over long periods. It's
really hard to explain with just wind or ice. It
screams liquid water shaping the surface billions of years ago.
There's also evidence suggesting impact events could have played a role.
A large meteorrite impact could fracture the crust, release underground
water or ice, and the impact heat could create localized
temporary hot springs or subsurface hydrothermal.
Speaker 1: Systems like little warm havens.
Speaker 2: Exactly environments where life might have gained a foothold or
even flourished, even if the wider surface was becoming cold
and dry.
Speaker 1: So past water seems almost certain, offering a window a
real possibility for past life. But what about today? Could
anything possibly be surviving on Mars now in its current
incredibly harsh conditions.
Speaker 2: That's the next big question, isn't it? The current Martian
surface is incredibly challenging, extremely cold temperatures, very low atmospheric pressure,
intense radiation. Because Mars lacks a global magnetic field and
has only a thin atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And its bone dry and extremely dry.
Speaker 2: Yes, However, scientists are seriously looking at the possibility of
life existing today but in protected niches, particularly in subsurface
habitats where conditions are less severe, like.
Speaker 1: Deep underground shield from the radiation may be warmer from
geothermal heat.
Speaker 2: Exactly that the concept of chemosynthetic ecosystems becomes really relevant here.
Speaker 1: Chemosynthetic meaning life that doesn't need sunlight.
Speaker 2: Precisely, on Earth, we have entire ecosystems miles underground or
at the bottom of the ocean around hydrothermal vents completely
cut off from sunlight. They thrive on chemical energy derived
from minerals or gases in their environment. It's entirely plausible
that similar chemosynthetic life could exist in subsurface environments on Mars,
maybe fueled by geological processes or chemical reactions happening between
rocks and any subsurface water.
Speaker 1: Ice and Earth offers these incredible examples of extremophiles, life
that just loves conditions we'd think of as deadly.
Speaker 2: We learn so much about the sheer, tenacity and adaptability
of life by studying Earth's extremophiles. It really stretches our
definition of habitable. Consider bacteria found deep in Siberian permafrost. Okay,
these aren't just dormant spores. Surviving analysis suggest they're capable
of metabolism and maybe even reproduction at temperatures as low
as and in a ten degrees celsius that's fourteen fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: Wow, actively living that cold.
Speaker 2: It seems so. And while many parts of Mars are
much colder than that, subsurface temperatures, especially if there's some
geothermal heat or if they're insulated by thick layers of
rock or ice, could potentially be within this range.
Speaker 1: Okay, so maybe the cold isn't an absolute barrier. What
about the extreme pryness. Mars is incredibly arid.
Speaker 2: That's where another fascinating real analogy comes in halite deliquescence,
particularly seen in places like Earth's Atacama Desert.
Speaker 1: Halite that's rock salt, right, and deliquescence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically rock salt and deliquescence is this amazing property
some salts have. The Atacama is one of the driest
places on Earth, yet microbial life exists within salt crystals.
Speaker 1: There inside the salt.
Speaker 2: How these salt crystals can absorb tiny amounts of water
vapor directly from the incredible dry atmosphere when the humidity
gets just high enough, even if it's still extremely low. Overall,
this absorbed water creates tiny transient pockets of liquid brine
within the custal structure.
Speaker 1: Wow, like little microscopic water bottles inside the.
Speaker 2: Salt kind of And this process deliquescence provides just enough
moisture for the microbes tucked inside the salt to survive,
maybe even metabolize a bit in an otherwise lethally dry environment.
If similar salts exist on Mars, and we know salts
are present, and if the humidity conditions are right, perhaps
seasonally or in specific locations.
Speaker 1: It could offer a little refuge from the dryness.
Speaker 2: Exactly a potential survival strategy.
Speaker 1: Okay, cold dryness. What about the radiation that seems like
a huge barrier on the surface it is unshielded.
Speaker 2: The cosmic and solar radiation levels on the Martian surface
are very high, potentially sterilizing. But again, Earth provides a
powerful counter example. Have you heard of the bacterium Dinococcus radiodurans.
Speaker 1: Vaguely it's tough.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly tough. It's famous for its extraordinary resistance to
ionizing radiation. It can survive doses thousands of times higher
than what would kill a human or most other known organisms.
It has amazing DNA repair mechanisms.
Speaker 1: So life can evolve to handle intense radiation.
Speaker 2: It suggests that radiation tolerance is biologically possible. While the
Martian surface radiation is intense, perhaps life in the subsurface
where it's shielded by meters of rock and soil, could survive.
Or maybe surface life, if it exists, has evolved similar
or even better radiation resistance. It shows radiation isn't necessarily
an insurmountable barrier for life itself.
Speaker 1: So while the surface is incredibly hostile, these Earth analogies
show that life can find ways to survive an extreme cold,
extreme dryness, and high radiation. It definitely points towards the
possibility of life existing in protected, underground or shielded environments
on Mars today. Finding it, though, that's the trick.
Speaker 2: And finding it is the enormous challenge. Our current missions,
as incredible as they are technologically, has severe limitations in scope.
Just think about the Mars exploration rovers spirit and Opportunity amazing.
Speaker 1: Mission, absolutely legendary, rovers totally but spirit.
Speaker 2: Over its entire six year mission only drove about four
point eight miles or seven point seven kilometers. Opportunity, which
lasted in incredible fourteen years, covered about twenty eight miles
or forty five kilometers.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like much when you think about a
whole planet.
Speaker 2: It really isn't. Those distances, while amazing feats of engineering
and endurance, are minuscule compared to the total surface area
of Mars. Mars has roughly the same land area as
all the continents on Earth combined.
Speaker 1: Wow. That really puts it into perspective. It's like trying
to understand the biodiversity of Earth by studying a single
city park exactly.
Speaker 2: Or maybe even just a backyard. It means that any
conclusions we draw about the potential for life on Mars,
whether past or present, based on observations from a specific
landing site like vikings or curiosities or perseverances, must be
extrapolated to the entire higher planet with extreme caution.
Speaker 1: We've barely scratched the surface.
Speaker 2: We've examined less than a geological pinprick on the Martian surface.
We've hardly begun the search. In terms of physical exploration,
there could be habitats teeming with microbial life just over
the next crater rim or deep underground that we simply
haven't reached yet.
Speaker 1: So why does this matter to you listening right now?
Why should you care if we find evidence of life
past or present on Mars? Well? Because it fundamentally changes
our understanding of life itself.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: If life arose independently on another planet, even in nearby
one with some similarities to early Earth, it suggests that
life isn't some unique, incredibly improbable fluke of our planet's.
Speaker 2: History, right, not a one off miracle.
Speaker 1: Instead, it could be a natural, perhaps even common, outcome
of cosmic processes bubbling up wherever conditions are even marginally favorable.
That shifts life from a miracle to a potential inevitability,
profoundly changing our perspective on our place in the use.
Are we unique or just one example of a widespread phenomenon?
Finding Martian life past or present would be the first
concrete step towards answering.
Speaker 2: That, and the search itself pushes us exactly.
Speaker 1: The search for life on Mars pushes the limits of
our technology, the machines we can build and send across space,
and that connects directly to our next section, technology itself,
not just our own capabilities, but the possibility of encountering
technology built by someone or something else.
Speaker 2: Moving from the physical search for life on Mars using
rovers and sophisticated instruments, let's talk about the cutting edge
technology we're developing right here on Earth for off world environments,
and how our own technological ambition mirrors in a way,
the idea of searching for other technological civilizations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're pushing the boundaries of engineering just to explore
places like Mars effectively. A great example is the Space
Exploration Vehicle the SEV. Sounds cool.
Speaker 2: The SEV is essentially a futuristic space rover, but it's
more than just a dune buggy. It's designed to be
a verse vehicle and a habitat for astronauts exploring the
Moon or Mars for extended periods.
Speaker 1: Like a little mobile home base exactly.
Speaker 2: It's not just for smooth terrain. It's designed to handle
extremely challenging, complex landscapes. And to test this capability, NASA
has a place called a Planetary Analog Test Site, often
nicknamed the Rockyard at the Johnson Space Center.
Speaker 1: The Rockyard sounds pretty intense. What exactly do they do there?
Sounds like my backyard?
Speaker 2: Actually huh. Maybe. It's essentially a highly controlled outdoor test
area specifically designed to mimic the geological features found on
the Moon and Mars. They have massive boulders, jagged rocks,
simulated craters, steep soft slopes. It's an obstacle course from Hell, basically.
Speaker 1: And they just drive the SEV over it.
Speaker 2: They put the SEV through incredibly rigorous tests driving it
over these obstacles. The challenge isn't just moving forward, but
maintaining stability and traction on incredibly uneven and unpredictable surfaces.
You don't want your multimillion dollar Mars RV tipping over.
Speaker 1: No kidding. And the SEV has some specific tech to
handle that ice.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. One of his key features is an advanced
active suspension system. Unlike your car's passive suspension, which just reacts,
the SEV system can actively adjust the height and angle
of each of his twelve wheels independently.
Speaker 1: Twelve wheels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a beast. So if it encounters a large
rock or dips into a small crater. The suspension can articulate,
lifting wheels, shifting weight, doing whatever it needs to keep
the main cabin relatively stable and level. And importantly, this
allows it to climb over obstacles that would totally high
center or flip a conventional vehicle. It's built for resilience
in harsh alien landscapes.
Speaker 1: Incredible engineering. So we're mastering the technology to explore other
worlds physically getting around on their surfaces. But what about
the technology needed to get to those worlds or even
further out into deep space?
Speaker 2: Right? That brings us to propulsion systems designed for the
vacuum of space, systems that can operate efficiently over vast
distances and long durations. A prime example, and one that's
actually flying on missions now, is the ion thruster.
Speaker 1: Ion thrusters they sound very sci fi, but they're real
different from chemical rockets.
Speaker 2: Right, very different. Chemical rockets give you that huge, powerful
burst of thrust for liftoff getting you off Earth, but
they burn through propellant incredibly quickly, so they're not very
efficient for long journeys in space where you need gradual
changes in velocity. Ion thrusters are the opposite.
Speaker 1: How do they work? Is it complicated?
Speaker 2: The basic principle is actually quite elegant. They take a propellant,
usually in inert gas like xenon, and they use electricity,
typically from large solar panels, to ionize it. That means
stripping electrons off the zenon atoms to create positively charged ions.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've got charged atoms, then what then?
Speaker 2: Strong electric fields created by charged grids inside the thruster
accelerate these ions out the back of the engine at
incredibly high speeds, often tens of thousands of miles per.
Speaker 1: Hour, pushing ions out really fast.
Speaker 2: And by Newton's third law, for every action, there's an
equal and opposite reaction. Pushing those ions out one way
provides a tiny, tiny push or thrust to the spacecraft
in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tiny push? How tiny is it even useful?
Speaker 2: We're talking very very low thrust compared to a chemical rocket,
often just a fraction of a pound of force, maybe
like the weight of a single piece of paper resting
on your hand.
Speaker 1: That's it. How does that get you anywhere?
Speaker 2: Ah? But critically, it can operate continuously for months or
even years using very very little propellant. Compared to chemical rockets.
Over time, this constant, gentle acceleration builds up immense speed.
Think of it like pushing a car. One big shove
doesn't do much, but if you could push constantly gently
for days, you'd eventually get it going very fast.
Speaker 1: Got it slow and steady wins the space race in
many cases.
Speaker 2: Yes, this makes them perfect for long duration missions in
deep space, like sending probes to asteroids like Vesta and Series,
which the Dawn mission did using ion thrusters, or exploring
the planets. You need to change velocity by a large
amount over a long period, rather than needing explosive power upfront.
Missions like Dawn or Deep Space one proved how effective
ion propulsion can be.
Speaker 1: So we're developing incredibly sophisticated technology to explore the Solar
System and potentially beyond. This human drive to build and
explore naturally leads to the thought what if other beings
have done the same, maybe gone much much further. And this,
of course is the core idea behind SETI exactly.
Speaker 2: The search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The fundamental premise is that
if technological civilizations exist elsewhere in the galaxy or the universe,
they might produce some kind of signature or evidence of
their technology, something artificial that we could potentially detect from Earth.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't always just science fiction. This idea really
gained scientific traction back in the late nineteen fifties, didn't it.
Speaker 2: It did. A really key seminal paper was published in
the journal Nature in nineteen fifty nine by two physicists,
Giuseppe Coccone and Philip Morrison, who weren't astronomers. They were
particle physicists, but they thought about communication.
Speaker 1: What did they suggest?
Speaker 2: They suggested that the microwave region of the radio spectrums,
specifically around the twenty one centimeter wavelength that's about fourteen
hundred and twenty mediicers, would be a logical listening channel
for interstellar communications.
Speaker 1: Why twenty one centimeters.
Speaker 2: Because that's the frequency at which neutral hydrogen atoms naturally
emit radio waves. Hydrogens are the most abundant element in
the entire universe, so its natural radio emission at twenty
one centimeters is a universal marker, a fundamental frequency of nature.
Cocone and Morrison reasoned that any technologically advanced civilization wanting
to signal its existence might choose this frequency or frequencies
related to it as a kind of obvious universal Hello.
Speaker 1: A cosmic water cooler channel kind of.
Speaker 2: And almost immediately after that paper was published someone acted
on the idea.
Speaker 1: That was Frank Drake.
Speaker 2: Yes. The very next year, in nineteen sixty, a young
radio astronomer named Frank Drake conducted Project OZMA at the
Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. He used their radio
telescope to listen for signals around that twenty one centimeter wavelength,
pointing it at two nearby sun like stars Taucetti and
Epsilon Eridani.
Speaker 1: Did you find anything?
Speaker 2: No signals were detected, unfortunately, but it's a very modest
search by today's standards. The important thing was it was
the first intentional, scientifically designed effort to listen for extraterrestrial signals.
It kicked off the whole field.
Speaker 1: And Frank Drake is also famous for the Drake equation,
which everyone sort of knows, even if they don't know
the details.
Speaker 2: Right. The Drake equation isn't really meant to give you
a precise number because we don't know most of the
values in it. It's more of a probabilistic framework a
way to organize our ignorance. Really, it helps us think
about all the factors that would influence the potential number
of communicating civilizations in our galaxy. It multiplies together terms
like the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars
that have planets, the average number of planets per star
that could potentially support life, the habitable zone.
Speaker 1: Idea right, the Goldilocks zone.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Then the fraction of those planets where life actually arises,
the fraction of those where intelligent life evolves, the fraction
of those that develop technology capable of interstellar communication, and finally,
the big unknown, the average lifetime of such a communicating civilization.
Speaker 1: That last one seems crucial and impossible to know.
Speaker 2: It's the killer variable, even if all the other factors
are high. If civilizations tend to destroy themselves quickly after
developing technology, the number detectable now could be very low,
maybe even just one us. But contemplating the equation forces
you to consider all the hurdles involved in getting from
a galaxy full of gas and dust to a galaxy
potentially buzzing with conversation.
Speaker 1: And pioneers like Bernard Oliver and especially Jill Tarter were
absolutely crucial in pushing SETI forward scientifically and technologically over
the decades. Weren't they?
Speaker 2: Oh, there were giants in the field, absolutely essential. Bernard Oliver,
who is VP of R and D at Hewlett Packard,
was a brilliant engineer. He co authored a study in
the nineteen seventies called Project Cyclops.
Speaker 1: Cyclops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was this incredibly detailed engineering study for truly
massive radio telescope array, hundreds or even thousands of dishes
working together, specifically designed for SETI. It was visionary, way
ahead of its time, although it was never built on
that scale due to.
Speaker 1: Cost and Jill Tarter she's almost synonymous with SETI for
many people.
Speaker 2: She really is. Jill Charter has dedicated her entire career
to observational SETI. She's led numerous search projects using large
radio telescopes around the world. She pioneered many of the
advanced signal processing techniques needed to sip through cosmic noise
for artificial signals, and she serves as the director of
the SETI Institute, Center for SETI Research for years and yes,
she was famously the inspiration for the Jodie Foster character
Eli Aroway in Carl Sagan's novel and the movie Contact
a true pioneer.
Speaker 1: And for a while NASA itself even had a dedicated
SETI program, didn't they It wasn't all always just private efforts.
Speaker 2: They did, yes, Starting somewhat informally in the late seventies
and then becoming more formalized in the eighties, NASA planned
a very ambitious program called the High Resolution Microwave Survey
or HRMS, scheduled to begin in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: What was the plan for HRMS?
Speaker 2: It had two main components, a targeted search which would
carefully examine about one thousand nearby sun like stars over
a wide range of frequencies, and an all sky survey
which would sweep the entire sky but with less sensitivity.
It was really well thought out, scientifically rigorous program.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Why isn't NASA doing SETI now?
Speaker 2: Politics and budgets. Basically, like many ambitious scientific programs, it
faced political opposition and budget scrutiny. Despite being technologically ready
to go. Funding for NASA's SETI efforts was ultimately canceled
by the US Congress in nineteen ninety three. It was
famously derided by one senator as searching for little green
men at taxpair expense.
Speaker 1: That's frustrating, But that wasn't the end of SETI.
Speaker 2: Was it not at all. The scientific unity involved was
passionate and dedicated. They quickly transitioned to seeking private funding.
The SETI Institute, which had actually been contracted by NASA
to run the targeted search portion of HRMS they called
it Project Phoenix, managed to continue that work thanks to
funding from private donors, particularly philanthropists and tech leaders in
Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: So Project Phoenix rose from the ashes of the NASA program.
Speaker 2: Exactly, nice pun and other initiatives also sprang up or continued,
like Project Argists, which was organized by the nonprofit SETI League,
that aimed to mobilize amateur radio astronomers around the world
using their own equipment for a continuous all sky listening project.
So the search continued, just without direct government funding in
the US for many years, demonstrating the commitment of the
scientists involved.
Speaker 1: And it's really important, like you touched on earlier, to
clarify what SETI is actually looking for. It's not blurry
photos of lights in the sky or claims of alien
encounters exactly.
Speaker 2: That's crucial. Mainstream SETI, the kind conducted by the Seti
Institute and university radio observatories is primarily looking for unassailable,
unambiguous evidence of a technological civilization.
Speaker 1: And usually that means radio signals primarily.
Speaker 2: Yes, the optical SETI looking for powerful laser pulses is
also a growing area, But for radio SETI, they're looking
for artificial signals, the specific characteristics that cannot be explained
by any known natural astrophysical phenomenon. We're talking about things
like very narrowband signals. Natural cosmic radio sources tend to
emit over broad frequencies, while transmitters are often narrowband or
pulse signals with specific patterns or signals carrying complex modulation,
something that looks clearly engineered, not like random cosmic static.
Speaker 1: So the goal is to find a signal that screams
made by technology.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it's about finding a signal that definitively says we're
here and we possess the technology to build powerful transmitters
and manipulate electromagnetic radiation in controlled ways. It's the technology
they're looking for the signature of INTELLI. It's capable of
engineering things on a large scale, not necessarily little green
men themselves.
Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. If they're out there in advance,
they've likely built things that leave a trace. But what
if we've already encountered evidence of advanced technology that isn't ours,
and we just haven't recognized it yet or maybe can't
explain it.
Speaker 2: This is where the conversation takes a turn into the
truly intriguing and often highly debated territory. The material we
reviewed includes discussion around phenomena like the footage officially released
by the US Department of Defense, particularly the video known
as Gimbal.
Speaker 1: Right the UAP footage Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. These are the
videos from Navy pilots showing objects that couldn't identify yes, and.
Speaker 2: The perspective presented in some of our source material articulated
by individuals like astrophysicist Travis Taylor, author Mike Barra, and
analyst Sam Edwards, is that this footage, specifically the gimbal video,
depicts objects displaying capabilities far beyond any known convention aircraft,
or even beyond highly classified advanced human technology that might exist.
Speaker 1: What kind of capabilities are they talking about?
Speaker 2: The key characteristic repeatedly highlighted is the objects of parent
ability to perform extreme maneuvers that seem to defy our
current understanding of aerodynamics and propulsion, things like instantaneous acceleration,
sudden stops from high speed, making turns at incredible g
forces with no apparent aerodynamic surfaces like wings or control surfaces,
and seemingly operating without any visible means of propulsion like
exhaust plumes.
Speaker 1: And their analysis suggests these maneuvers aren't ours, not some
secret US tech.
Speaker 2: That's the core argument they make based on their analysis
of the objects, kinematics, and behavior. They explicitly state that
the maneuvers reportedly resemble nothing known to be built by
humans publicly, or they speculate even in secret. This leads
them deposed. The central provocative question is the origin of
this highly advanced propulsion system man made, maybe some breakthrough
we don't know about, or is something else entirely something
non human?
Speaker 1: And have they tried to analyze the video itself in detail?
Speaker 2: Yes, The sources describe attempts to analyze the footage closely.
This includes trying to stabilize the shaky camera motion from
the targeting pod to get a clear picture of the
object's trajectory and movements. They also mentioned using techniques like
creating basic computer graphics models to try and replicate the
objects apparent size, shape, and the way it moves as
seen in the video to better understand its.
Speaker 1: Dynamics anything else unusual.
Speaker 2: They also specifically point out observations like an unusual light
source or glow that appears to follow or be associated
with the craft in the gimbal video, adding another layer
of mystery to the phenomenon they're trying to understand.
Speaker 1: It's certainly fascinating and unsettling to consider the possibility that
this isn't just misidentified conventional aircraft or some weird atmospheric phenomena,
but something genuinely unknown and technologically sophisticated beyond our current paradigms.
Speaker 2: That's the provocative question being raised, Yes, and it leads
some researchers or authors to look for parallels or mentions
of advanced, unexplained technologies elsewhere, sometimes even in historical accounts
or ancient texts. Though we have to be extremely careful here, right.
Speaker 1: Like the source material mentioned ancient Indian texts, the Vaimonica Schistra.
Speaker 2: Yes, that text was brought up It's described as being
reportedly compiled in the early twentieth century, but claiming to
be based on much older, now lost writings. It contains
these incredibly intricate, though often fantastical, and physically questionable descriptions
of flying machines called.
Speaker 1: Vimanas zumanas flying machines.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the source highlights a specific story mentioned within
these broader traditions about a figure named Druva who is
said to have traveled in the physical craft of Vimana
to another solar system, specifically mentioned reaching a place called
Vishnu Loka.
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds pretty mythological.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, this is firmly in the realm of ancient literature, mythology,
religious texts. It's not scientific evidence by any stretch of
the imagination. However, some people find it compelling or at
least curious, that such detailed descriptions of complex aerial or
even space vehicles in concepts like interstellar travel appear in
ancient writings from cultures long before our modern scientific and
technological era. They suggest it points to a long standing
human fascination with, or perhaps even fragmented cultural memories or
interpretations of advanced technologies or phenomena that were perhaps witnessed
but not understood.
Speaker 1: So we have modern unexplained aerial phenomena that challenge our
current tech understanding, and we have these historical accounts that
some interpret as hinting at advanced technology beyond what should
have existed. Then this ties into a really powerful idea
about how we recognize things in the first place, the
concept of intellectual context.
Speaker 2: This is a crucial point and perhaps one of the
most profound takeaways from digging into this material, especially when
thinking about SETI or UAP. The argument is that our
ability to even perceive, let alone interpret, evidence of intelligence
or technology fundamentally depends on having the necessary intellectual framework,
the right mental context to make sense of it.
Speaker 1: Can you give an example? The source used one about
chipped rocks?
Speaker 2: Yes, The analogy used is the story of eighteenth century
European scholars and their encounters with strangely chipped rocks. Imagine
these scholars, maybe antiquarians or early geologists, doing field work.
They would undoubtedly come across flint or other stones that
had clearly been chipped or flaked in a deliberate, non
natural way.
Speaker 1: What we'd instantly call stone tools today, arrowheads, hand axes exactly.
Speaker 2: Today, we immediately recognize those as tools made by prehistoric humans.
But back in the eighteenth century, the prevailing intellectual context,
the accepted understanding of the world, simply didn't include the
concept of deep human antiquity or humans existing in a
primitive tool making state millions of years ago. The common belief,
often tied to religious interpretations, was that human history was
relatively short, maybe only a few thousand years old.
Speaker 1: So they literally couldn't see the tool, even though it
was right there.
Speaker 2: Precisely, they saw the rock, they saw the chip marks,
but they didn't perceive a tool made by ancient humans.
They interpreted them as naturally fractured rocks, perhaps caused by
frost or tumbling in rivers, or maybe even geological oddities
sports of nature. The physical evidence was right in front
of them, but they lacked the necessary intellectual framework, the
possibility of ancient humans making stone tools, to interpret it.
Speaker 1: Correctly, until the context changed.
Speaker 2: Exactly only later in the nineteenth century, when the concept
of vast geological time scales became accepted and the idea
of human evolution began to gain traction. When the intellectual
context fundamentally shifted were scholars like Jacques boucheted parrots in
France predisposed to look those same kinds of chipped rocks,
especially when found directly alongside the bones of extinct animals
like mammoths and undisturbed ancient river gravels, and say, wait
a minute, this must be evidence of extremely ancient human activity.
The association the physical evidence provided the necessary context to
force the intellectual shift.
Speaker 1: That's a really powerful analogy, and the implication for SETI
or for understanding phenomena like those in the gimbal video
is pretty striking, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is the provocative suggestion made in the source materials
that maybe, just maybe we are like those eighteenth century
scholars today. Perhaps evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence or advanced alien
technology is all around us. Maybe it's signals we've dismissed
as noise. Maybe it's phenomena like UAPs that we label
unexplained or misidentification. Maybe it's artifacts on other planets that
we've interpreted as purely geological features because we simply lack
the necessary intellectual context, the right mental framework, to recognize
them for what they truly are.
Speaker 1: We don't have the prehistoric human tool making equivalent concept
for genuinely alien technology or intelligence. Yet we don't know
what to look for.
Speaker 2: Maybe right we might be looking for something too much
like ourselves or too much like our own technology. The
source poses the question, could changing the radio frequency we're
listening on in SETI or analyzing UAP data with a
completely different set of physical assumptions. We're looking at Martian
geology with an eye for artificiality. Could that be the
equivalent of those later scholars looking at the chipped rocks
with the new intellectual lens, finally seeing them as tools.
It suggests the biggest barrier might not be finding the evidence,
but being able to recognize it when it's right under
our noses or flying over our heads.
Speaker 1: It really forces you to question your own assumptions about
what's possible and what forms intelligence or technology might take.
How would recognizing something as definitively alien technology fundamentally change
your view of the universe? Does that idea resonate with you?
The possibility that we might be surrounded by evidence we
just can't see it.
Speaker 2: It's a humbling thought, definitely, and maybe a little unnerving too.
Speaker 1: It is so okay, we've explored the potential for life
on Mars, our own impressive technological ambitions, and this intriguing,
difficult possibility that alien technology might be present but unrecognized.
But let's say we do find something, we detect a
clear signal from SETI, or we confirm an object is
non human technology. That's just the first step, isn't it.
The next, perhaps even more daunting challenge, is understanding it.
What does it mean? What are they saying? And that
leads us to the profound complexities of communication itself and
the very nature of intelligence and culture across potentially cosmic distances.
Speaker 2: Deciphering a potential message from an alien civilization is arguably
the most complex intellectual puzzle humanity could possibly face. And here, again,
just like with recognizing technology, the field of archaeology offers
some crucial insights and maybe some cautionary tales.
Speaker 1: How does digging up old civilizations help us think about
decoding alien messages? Seems like a stretch.
Speaker 2: Well, think about what archaeologists do. They reconstruct long lost civilizations,
their beliefs, their social structures, their daily lives, their history,
often from incredibly fragmentary evidence, broken pieces of pottery, the
foundations of ruined buildings, may some inscriptions, and critically, sometimes
they have to decipher ancient texts written in completely unknown
languages or scripts, right.
Speaker 1: Like Egyptian Hiway glyphs or Mayan glyphs.
Speaker 2: Exactly in essence, a Seti scientist who detects a structured
signal is doing something analogous. They're trying to understand a sender,
a whole civilization, perhaps based on incomplete, potentially baffling and
fundamentally alien data. It's like archaeology, but without the shared
human context.
Speaker 1: And the history of deciphering those ancient languages on Earth.
It wasn't always straightforward, was it. There were mistakes.
Speaker 2: Made, Oh absolutely, It's full of lessons learned the hard way.
Think about the great successes Jean Francois champollon deciphering Egyptian
hieroglyphs using the Rosetta stone, Michael Ventris cracking linear b
the script of Mycenian Greece, or the decades long effort
to decipher the complex Maya script. These were monumental intellectual achievements.
It is possible, it is, but they weren't magic. They
almost always relied on having some form of leverage, some
critical piece of information, or making some valid initial.
Speaker 1: Assumptions, like the Resetta stone having the same text in Greek,
which they could read a bilingual key exactly.
Speaker 2: That was crucial for hieroglyphs. For linear b Ventus made
the inspired guess, which turned out to be correct that
the underlying language was an early form of Greek. For Maya,
recognizing dates and celindrical information helped. They also relied, perhaps unconsciously,
on the fact that these were structured writing systems created
by human minds. Humans, despite all our cultural diversity, share
certain fundamental cognitive structures, certain ways of thinking about the world,
maybe even cultural universals that provide some common ground even
across millennia.
Speaker 1: And just looking at the script itself could help, like
how many characters.
Speaker 2: It had, Yes that structural analysis provides initial clues. For instance,
if a writing system has only twenty forty unique characters,
it's almost certainly alphabetic, representing individual sounds. If it has
around fifty to one hundred characters, it's often syllavic, where
each symbol represents a syllable like bah or co, and
systems with many hundreds or thousands of distinct symbols might
be logographic. Where symbols represent whole words or ideographic representing
ideas or mix Knowing the type of system is a
big first step, even if you don't know the meaning.
Speaker 1: So even without knowing the language, you can learn something
about how it works.
Speaker 2: Yes, but there were major pitfalls that stalled progress for centuries.
In some cases. A big one that hindered the decipherment
of both Egyptian hieroglyphs and myaglyphs for a long time
was what scholars now call the ideographic myth.
Speaker 1: The ideographic myth.
Speaker 2: What's that it was the incorrect assumption held by many
early scholars that these complex picture like symbols primarily represented
ideas or objects directly, like simple pictures, rather than representing
the sounds of a spoken language syllables or individual phonetic sounds.
Speaker 1: So they thought a symbol that looked like a bird
just meant the concept of bird, instead of maybe representing
the B sound or the syllable burr in word.
Speaker 2: Precisely, they were stuck thinking of it like modern emojis
or extremely simple pictograms, where the picture is the meaning.
This myth prevented them from realizing that, in fact, many,
if not most, of the symbols in hieroglyphs and maascript
were phonetic components directly tied to the sounds of the
spoken Egyptian and Mayan languages. Overcoming this myth required a
fundamental shift in how they thought about what writing is
and how it relates to speech. Cracking. The phonetic code
was the key.
Speaker 1: And this connects to how we might mistakenly approach an
alien message.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We might see a pattern, say based on prime numbers,
and assume its meaning is the mathematical concept itself universally understood,
but maybe even that needs interpretation based on how their
minds perceive number or sequence.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this is where the work at the philosopher Charles
Sanders peers on semiotics. The study of signs and meaning
becomes incredibly relevant, and it's mentioned in our source material.
Pierce argued very persuasively that meaning isn't just inherent sitting
there within the sign or signal itself.
Speaker 1: Meaning isn't in the sign where is it? Then?
Speaker 2: Piercit A sign like the word dog or smoke or
an alien radio pulse refers to an object, the furry animal, fire,
the alien transmitter, but it only acquires meaning when it
creates something called an interpretant in the mind of the recipient.
Speaker 1: An interpretant What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 2: Think of it like the understanding, the idea, or the
connection that the sign generates in your mind. If you
see smoke, the sign it points to fire the object,
but the smoke only means fire. If you, the observer,
have learned through experience or teaching, to connect smoke and fire,
that mental connection, that idea or habit of thought. Smoke
means fire that the sign triggers in you, that's the interpretant.
The meaning isn't magically inherent in the smoke itself. It
arises in your interpretation based on your knowledge and context.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I get it. The meaning isn't just
beamed over with the signal. It has to be constructed
or generated by the receiver based on their own mental
framework in exis experience exactly.
Speaker 2: And for an interstellar message, this is a profound challenge.
It means the sener can't just tell us what the
message means in their language, because we wouldn't understand the
telling part the language itself. They have to somehow find
ways to show the meaning. They have to construct the sign.
The signal in such a way that it prompts the
necessary interpreted, the right understanding in a recipient mind that
likely has a vastly different biological, evolutionary, and cultural background.
Speaker 1: It's like the difference between showing and telling in creative writing,
but on a cosmic scale.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. A writer who just tells you
says character X was angry boring. A writer who shows
you describes clenched fists, a red face, shouting signs that
allow you, the reader to generate the interpretant of anger.
For an alien message, you can't just start with we
are the globinfiv civilization from Zeta reticulae. You have to
somehow show that the signal is artificial, that it contains structure,
perhaps by using universal constants of physics or fundamental mathematical
relationships like pi or prime numbers that function as indicase
signs that point directly to their object physical reality, and
a way that might transcend language.
Speaker 1: Like sending a picture based on binary code.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's one idea that's been proposed, like their Receivable
Message tried to do. But even then, interpreting what those
indices or pictures mean in terms of the center's biology,
their history, their intentions. That remains the monumental task is
is a map, a warning, a recipe. The sign itself
doesn't guarantee the correct interpretant.
Speaker 1: So the challenge isn't just decoding symbols like a cryptographer.
It's bridging potentially fundamental differences in how intelligences perceive the universe,
how they think, and how they create meaning in the
first place. And this brings in the anthropological challenge the
vast difference that alien culture and alien biology could make.
Speaker 2: This is where anthropology becomes absolutely critical and perhaps historically
has been underestimated in some SETI discussions. Contact with a
genuinely extraterrestrial intelligence wouldn't be like meeting a pre previously
uncontacted human tribe on Earth technology, or like biologists studying
a newly discovered animal species. That's ethology.
Speaker 1: It's something totally new.
Speaker 2: It's something entirely new, a type of contact scenario that
lies at the intersection of species level biological difference and
culture level difference, but potentially on an utterly alien scale
we can barely comprehend.
Speaker 1: And our natural tendency is to be very anthropocentric, isn't
it assuming aliens will be like us in key ways.
Maybe they'll value logic, or have similar senses, or follow
a similar path of technological development.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we often project our own evolutionary history and values
onto the cosmos. We assume intelligence like ours is maybe
an inevitable outcome of evolution, or that technological advancement naturally
leads to certain societal structures or ethical frameworks, or that
logic and reason as we understand them are universal constants
in their application. Maybe not, but the sources rightly remind
us to question these assumptions. Look at Earth. High level
distract intelligence, the kind needed for technology is incredibly rare. Hominoids,
some cetaceans. They're tiny exceptions among millions and millions of
species over billions of years, and only one species, US
has developed technology capable of even contemplating interstellar communication. Is
intelligence like ours inevitable? The data from Earth suggests. Maybe not.
It might be a very contingent, rare outcome, and.
Speaker 1: Even the nature of intelligence itself might not be a
single thing, right, It might be diverse exactly.
Speaker 2: We tend to think of intelligence in a very human centric,
often psychometric way, like the analytical problem solving skills measured
by standard IQ tests, but psychologists themselves propose broader models.
Think of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences linguistic, logical, mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily, kinesthetic, interpersonal, interpersonal, naturalist.
Speaker 1: Right people can be intelligent in different ways.
Speaker 2: Or Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory, which includes analytical, creative, and
practical intelligence. The point is, even human intelligence is diverse.
Alien intelligence might operate along dimensions entirely outside these frameworks,
based on sensory inputs we don't possess, like sensing magnetic
fields or exotic particles, or cognitive structures. We can't even imagine.
How would we recognize creative intelligence if it's expressed through
manipulating space, time topology, or practical intelligence applied to navigating
extra dimensions.
Speaker 1: Wow? Okay, And then there's a whole concept of culture.
How do anthropologists even define that? And why is it
so relevant to communicating with.
Speaker 2: Et Anthropology grapples deeply with defining culture. It's not simple.
One view sees culture primarily as a bounded shared system
of beliefs, values, symbols, and practices, like a collective social
memory that defines a particular group, provides shared understanding and
has passed down through generations. It gives the group cohesion.
Speaker 1: Okay, like shared traditions and language.
Speaker 2: Right. But another perspective sees culture as something more dynamic,
perhaps more individualized. Maybe it's more about the compan lex
process happening within each individual mind, or that individual actively
organizes and interprets the raw sensory data they receive from
the world by constantly triangulating it against their unique personal
memories and the shared experiences and information available within their
group or society.
Speaker 1: So less like a fixed library of rules and more
like an ongoing interpretation process exactly.
Speaker 2: A more fluid personal way of making sense of experience,
shaped by, but not solely determined by the group.
Speaker 1: How does that distinction affect our thinking about et communication?
Why does it matter?
Speaker 2: It's potentially critical if culture is primarily this fluid, individualized
process of interpreting experience. Now consider alien beings with vastly
different sensory organs and ways of perceiving the universe. They
might process light, sound, temperature, gravity, or even entirely different
physical phenomena in ways we can't remotely grasp their raw
data about the universe would be fundamentally different from ours.
Speaker 1: So even if we're looking at the same star, their
experience of that star might be completely alien.
Speaker 2: Precisely, and even if somehow they shared common memories or
derive the same scientific facts like the speed of light,
how they interpret that data, how they integrate it into
their own unique biological and sensory reality and translate it
into their own cultural frameworks. Their understanding of what is
real or what is important could be utterly alien to us.
Speaker 1: So they could derive the same physics equations as us
no EMC core, but their actual experience of mass or
energy or space time might be so radically different that
the culture they build around that knowledge, their philosophy, their art,
their politics would be completely unrecognizable, maybe even incomprehensible exactly.
Speaker 2: The sources make this point strongly. Even if et somehow
shared abstract knowledge like the universal constants of physics, their
interpretation of that knowledge, and crucially, what they decide to
do about things like, say, the existence of other technological
intelligences like humans, could be wildly diverse and even hotly
debated and contested within their own society, Just as decisions
about space exploration or potential contact are debated here on Earth.
Speaker 1: They might not have one unified opinion about us.
Speaker 2: Why should they, and the pologies constantly highlight that even
within human diversity, achieving genuine cross cultural understanding is incredibly difficult.
The meaning of a simple word like dog isn't universal.
It's embedded in a whole complex web of cultural associations, emotions,
and experiences that vary hugely between human societies. Trying to
interpret an alien picture, symbol, or concept would be infinitely
harder if their fundamental way of experiencing and interpreting the
world itself is alien. Assumptions about shared understanding, even based
on science, might be dangerously naive.
Speaker 1: Okay, So understanding any message, or even understanding the nature
of the intelligence behind it is a massive, maybe insurmountable barrier.
Given these deep complexities and the potential for profound misunderstanding
or even unforeseen danger, there is a significant debate within
the SETI community and beyond about whether we should even
be deliberately sending messages out into space, the idea of
active SETI or METI messaging extraterrestrial intelligence.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a very active and sometimes contentious debate. As
we discussed. Most SETI efforts historically have been passive SETI,
just listening quietly. The argument is that listening is inherently
low risk. You learn about the cosmos without revealing your
own presence or location.
Speaker 1: But we have sent messages, haven't we. It's not purely hypothetical.
Speaker 2: We have beyond the constant, unintentional leakage of our everyday
radio and television broadcasts, which have been expanding outwards in
a bubble for decades, though they become very weak, very quickly,
specific powerful intentional transmissions have been sent.
Speaker 1: What kind of messages? What did we say?
Speaker 2: Well, the most famous intentional one was the Recibo message,
transmitted from the Arecibo radio telescope and Puerto Rico back
in nineteen seventy four. It was beamed towards the globular
star cluster M thirteen, which is about twenty five thousand
light years away, so it won't get there for a
long time, and M thirteen is a poor target.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I was in the Racibo message.
Speaker 2: It was a simple pictorial message encoded in binary. It
to pict things like our numbering system one to ten,
the atomic numbers of key elements like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen
et cetera. Formulas for sugars and bases in DNA, a
graphic of the DNA double helix, a simple figure of
a human, the population of Earth at the time, a
diagram of our solar system showing Earth's position, and a
graphic of the Ercibo telescope itself. Kind of a basic Hello,
this is us snapshot.
Speaker 1: And there have been others since.
Speaker 2: Yes, later messages were transmitted, often sponsored by private groups.
Examples include the Cosmic Call, messages set from Ukrainian radio
telescope in nineteen ninety nine two thousand and three, and
even messages submitted as part of a contest run by
Penguin Books in twenty ten were transmitted. So messages are
being sent, though perhaps intermittently and not as part of
a coordinated global effort.
Speaker 1: So the stable doors are already slightly ajar. Maybe, but
there are still serious concerns about doing more active STI,
or doing it more powerfully or systematically.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, there are significant political, legal, and ethical questions involved.
Who gets to decide if humanity deliberately broadcasts his presence
to the cosmos. Should such a decision be made by
a single nation, a private company or even a small
group of scientists, or does it require some kind of
broad global consultation and consensus, given that it potentially affects
all of humanity? How would you even achieve that consensus?
And beyond the process are their potential risks we haven't
fully considered, And.
Speaker 1: The arguments for caution, for maybe just listening for a
while longer are quite compelling, aren't they?
Speaker 2: They are, and they come from various perspectives. Michael Michau,
a former diplomat who has written extensively on the policy
implications of contact, advocates for a reconnaissance first approach. His
view is listen, gather as much information as possible about
the galactic environment and any potential neighbors, but do not
immediately respond or broadcast our location more powerfully until we
understand the situation better makes sense.
Speaker 1: Listen before you leap.
Speaker 2: Radio astronomer Dan Werthmer, a leading figure in SETI searches,
has suggested that maybe we, as a relatively young and
potentially naive technological civilization, should just listen for perhaps hundreds
or even thousands of years, to learn about the universe
and other potential civilizations before deciding whether it's wise to
announce our presence more strongly.
Speaker 1: Patience is a virtue, especially on cosmic time scals.
Speaker 2: And then you have figures like science fiction author and
physicist David Brinn, who is a very vocal proponent of caution,
sometimes called the Seti cautious position. He points directly to
humanity's own history, centuries of exploration, often leading to conflict, colonialism, aggression,
and the subjugation or destruction of left powerful cultures. He
argues that prudence dictates we should be wary of announcing
our location to the cosmos until we have a better
sense of whether interstellar norms are peaceful or predatory.
Speaker 1: The dark forest hypothesis essentially, maybe staying quiet is safer.
Speaker 2: That's one way to frame it. Now, there's a counter argument,
a more optimistic view that any civilization long lived enough
to achieve widespread interstellar communication or travel must have overcome
its own tendencies towards self destruction and aggression, and is
therefore likely to be peaceful, wise, and sustainable.
Speaker 1: The idea that only the peaceful ones survive long enough, right.
Speaker 2: But as the cautious voices point out, that's a probability,
an assumption based on hope not a certainty. First contact
could hypothetically be with a civilization that has very different values, motivations,
or intentions than we assume, or maybe even with a
non biological machine intelligence with inscrutable goals.
Speaker 1: And then there's that really unsettling hypothetical risk mentioned in
one of the sources, apparently drawn from a Reddit discussion
of all places, about the danger of a mind virus.
That sounds wild.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a truly thought provoking, if highly speculative
risk scenario. The core idea is that maybe advanced civilizations
don't need to physically destroy each other with weapons. Perhaps
civilizational collapse could be triggered simply by the trans mission
of a dangerous idea itself.
Speaker 1: An idea can destroy a civilization.
Speaker 2: How The hypothesis posits a concept, a piece of information,
perhaps philosophical, mathematical, or technological, that is so fundamentally destabilizing, nihilistic,
self destructive, or despair inducing that once a susceptible civilization
encounters it, it inevitably spreads like a virus, infecting minds,
leading to a breakdown of purpose, societal cohesion, loss of
will to live or reproduce, and eventual collapse. All irrespective
of the sender's intentions, The idea itself could be the
weapon or just an unintended consequence of contact.
Speaker 1: Wow, So the risk is an alien invaders, but an
alien idea that our culture just can't handle, like discovering
a mathematical proof that free will doesn't exist, or getting
the technology for uploading consciousness before we're ethically ready for.
Speaker 2: It, something along those lines. The hypothetical question raised is
could contact with an utterly alien mind or just receiving
a message containing a concept completely outside our evolutionary and
cultural experiences expose us to such an infectious idea that
our own civilization is uniquely vulnerable to. Could it lead
to our downfall not by invasion or attack, but by
a kind of intellectual or existential implosion triggered by encountering
a foreign concept.
Speaker 1: That's a chilling thought that the greatest danger might not
be advanced weapons or hostile intent, but simply information an
idea we can't cope with.
Speaker 2: It really highlights the profound uncertainty inherent in any potential
interstellar communication. We have absolutely no framework for predicting the
nature of truly alien thought, alien culture, alien values, or
the potential psychological and societal impact of encountering a genuinely
alien consciousness, or even just a single potent alien idea.
Speaker 1: So, given all these layers upon layers of complexity, the
immense difficulty of just deciphering a message across potential biological
and cultural divides, the complex ethical and political questions around
broadcasting our own presence, the potential, however remote, for unfort
seen risks like that mind virus's idea, and the fundamental
uncertainty about the nature of alien thought. It really makes
you wonder, what kind of message do you think we
should send, if we send anything at all. How does
looking at our own incredible diversity here on Earth, the
different languages, cultures, histories, our own struggles with understanding each other,
even within our own species, how does that inform how
we might attempt to understand or be understood by others
across the cosmic ocean.
Speaker 2: It's a question that really turns the search outward right
back onto ourselves, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It absolutely does. We've certainly traversed some incredible intellectual terrain today,
haven't we. We started close to home exploring the enduring
mystery of Mars, the tantalizing hints from Viking, the controversial
meteorite ALH eight eight four thousand or one, the strong
evidence for past water, and the compelling though still unproven
possibilities for past or even present life surviving in extreme
environments beneath the.
Speaker 2: Surface, for Martian microbes, potential or real to our own technology.
Speaker 1: We looked at the amazing engineering behind things like the
space exploration vehicle built to crawl over alien landscapes, and
the elegant physics of ion thrusters pushing spacecraft gently across
the void. And then we contemplated the flip side, the
possibility of encountering technology not made by humans, whether it's
the decades long search by SETI for artificial signals or
the ongoing debate about unexplained aerial phenomena, and the challenge
of recognizing something truly alien, even if it's right in
front of us, that idea of intellectual context.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the chip rock's analogy orre we missing something obvious exactly?
Speaker 1: And finally we plunged into the really deep end, the
monumental challenges of communication itself, thinking about how meaning is made,
the lessons from archaeology about deciphering lost languages, the profound
difficulties posed by potentially vast differences in alien biology, perception, intelligence,
and culture, drawing on insights from anthropology, and grappling with
the complex debates and potential risks surrounding active SETI should
we shout into the jungle or just listen quietly for
a while.
Speaker 2: This deep dive, as we said at the start, wasn't
about delivering a single need answer to the ultimate question
are we alone? That question is still wide open. Instead,
we hope we've shown you the incredible richness and layering
of that question, the diverse lines of scientific and philosophical inquiry.
It touches upon, from planetary science and astrobiology to engineering, semiotics, anthropology,
and ethics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it connects everything.
Speaker 2: And hopefully we've conveyed the profound ways this whole search
forces us to think differently, differently about life's potential resilience
and distribution in the universe, Differently about the nature and
limits of technology, both ours and potentially others, differently about
the very definition of intelligence and culture, and ultimately differently
about ourselves, our own assumptions, and our tiny but potentially
significant place in this incredibly vast and mysterious cosmos where
it turns out to be crowded with others or just.
Speaker 1: Empty, And just to leave you with one final thought,
tom all over, let's circle back to that idea of
intellectual context, of maybe even not being able to recognize
alien intelligence even if it's here. Think about that possibility
that evidence might be all around us, but we lack
the framework to see it, And then combine that with
that chilling hypothetical from the communication section. What if encountering
a truly alien form of intelligence, or even just a
single potent idea from it, is actually the most dangerous
thing of all. What if the biggest barrier isn't the
vastness of space, or the limits of our technology, or
even the difficulty of cracking an alien code, but simply
recognizing the form that alien intelligence takes. And what if
the very act of finally recognizing it, of gaining that
new intellectual context is the thing that fundamentally changes us,
maybe disrupts our civilization in ways we can't possibly predict
and potentially can't survive. What if seeing is believing but
also the beginning of the end. It leads you with
a lot to ponder, doesn't it