1
00:00:00,044 --> 00:00:01,037
Is E.T. out there?

2
00:00:01,037 --> 00:00:04,016
Well, I work at the SETI Institute.

3
00:00:04,016 --> 00:00:05,251
That's almost my name. SETI:

4
00:00:05,251 --> 00:00:07,658
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

5
00:00:07,658 --> 00:00:09,277
In other words, I look for aliens,

6
00:00:09,277 --> 00:00:12,945
and when I tell people that at a cocktail party, they usually

7
00:00:12,945 --> 00:00:15,706
look at me with a mildly incredulous look on their face.

8
00:00:15,706 --> 00:00:18,039
I try to keep my own face somewhat dispassionate.

9
00:00:18,039 --> 00:00:20,799
Now, a lot of people think that this is kind of idealistic,

10
00:00:20,799 --> 00:00:23,049
ridiculous, maybe even hopeless,

11
00:00:23,049 --> 00:00:26,754
but I just want to talk to you a little bit about why I think

12
00:00:26,754 --> 00:00:30,568
that the job I have is actually a privilege, okay,

13
00:00:30,568 --> 00:00:32,666
and give you a little bit of the motivation for my getting into

14
00:00:32,666 --> 00:00:35,021
this line of work, if that's what you call it.

15
00:00:35,021 --> 00:00:38,029
This thing — whoops, can we go back?

16
00:00:38,029 --> 00:00:40,728
Hello, come in, Earth.

17
00:00:40,728 --> 00:00:42,079
There we go. All right.

18
00:00:42,079 --> 00:00:44,072
This is the Owens Valley Radio Observatory

19
00:00:44,072 --> 00:00:47,508
behind the Sierra Nevadas, and in 1968,

20
00:00:47,508 --> 00:00:50,417
I was working there collecting data for my thesis.

21
00:00:50,417 --> 00:00:53,758
Now, it's kinda lonely, it's kinda tedious, just collecting data,

22
00:00:53,758 --> 00:00:56,291
so I would amuse myself by taking photos at night

23
00:00:56,291 --> 00:00:59,052
of the telescopes or even of myself,

24
00:00:59,052 --> 00:01:04,286
because, you know, at night, I would be the only hominid

25
00:01:04,286 --> 00:01:06,034
within about 30 miles.

26
00:01:06,034 --> 00:01:08,043
So here are pictures of myself.

27
00:01:08,043 --> 00:01:11,631
The observatory had just acquired a new book,

28
00:01:11,631 --> 00:01:13,381
written by a Russian cosmologist

29
00:01:13,381 --> 00:01:16,999
by the name of Joseph Shklovsky, and then expanded

30
00:01:16,999 --> 00:01:19,452
and translated and edited by a little-known

31
00:01:19,452 --> 00:01:22,061
Cornell astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan.

32
00:01:22,061 --> 00:01:24,058
And I remember reading that book,

33
00:01:24,058 --> 00:01:26,066
and at 3 in the morning I was reading this book

34
00:01:26,066 --> 00:01:28,759
and it was explaining how the antennas I was using

35
00:01:28,759 --> 00:01:33,706
to measure the spins of galaxies could also be used

36
00:01:33,706 --> 00:01:36,018
to communicate, to send bits of information

37
00:01:36,018 --> 00:01:38,610
from one star system to another.

38
00:01:38,610 --> 00:01:40,078
Now, at 3 o'clock in the morning when you're all alone,

39
00:01:40,078 --> 00:01:43,009
haven't had much sleep, that was a very romantic idea,

40
00:01:43,009 --> 00:01:46,898
but it was that idea -- the fact that you could in fact

41
00:01:46,898 --> 00:01:48,382
prove that there's somebody out there

42
00:01:48,382 --> 00:01:51,098
just using this same technology --

43
00:01:51,098 --> 00:01:53,328
that appealed to me so much that 20 years later I took a job

44
00:01:53,328 --> 00:01:55,301
at the SETI Institute. Now, I have to say

45
00:01:55,301 --> 00:01:59,751
that my memory is notoriously porous, and I've often

46
00:01:59,751 --> 00:02:01,584
wondered whether there was any truth in this story,

47
00:02:01,584 --> 00:02:03,088
or I was just, you know, misremembering something,

48
00:02:03,088 --> 00:02:05,836
but I recently just blew up this old negative of mine,

49
00:02:05,836 --> 00:02:07,435
and sure enough, there you can see

50
00:02:07,435 --> 00:02:09,546
the Shklovsky and Sagan book underneath that

51
00:02:09,546 --> 00:02:12,023
analog calculating device.

52
00:02:12,023 --> 00:02:12,926
So it was true.

53
00:02:12,926 --> 00:02:15,367
All right. Now, the idea for doing this, it wasn't very old

54
00:02:15,367 --> 00:02:17,031
at the time that I made that photo.

55
00:02:17,031 --> 00:02:20,509
The idea dates from 1960, when a young astronomer

56
00:02:20,509 --> 00:02:23,005
by the name of Frank Drake used this antenna

57
00:02:23,005 --> 00:02:26,615
in West Virginia, pointed it at a couple of nearby stars

58
00:02:26,615 --> 00:02:30,004
in the hopes of eavesdropping on E.T.

59
00:02:30,004 --> 00:02:31,600
Now, Frank didn't hear anything.

60
00:02:31,600 --> 00:02:34,009
Actually he did, but it turned out to be the U.S. Air Force,

61
00:02:34,009 --> 00:02:36,974
which doesn't count as extraterrestrial intelligence.

62
00:02:36,974 --> 00:02:39,740
But Drake's idea here became very popular

63
00:02:39,740 --> 00:02:42,197
because it was very appealing — and I'll get back to that —

64
00:02:42,197 --> 00:02:45,613
and on the basis of this experiment, which didn't succeed,

65
00:02:45,613 --> 00:02:47,468
we have been doing SETI ever since,

66
00:02:47,468 --> 00:02:49,502
not continuously, but ever since.

67
00:02:49,502 --> 00:02:51,388
We still haven't heard anything.

68
00:02:51,388 --> 00:02:53,066
We still haven't heard anything.

69
00:02:53,066 --> 00:02:54,859
In fact, we don't know about any life beyond Earth,

70
00:02:54,859 --> 00:02:57,659
but I'm going to suggest to you that that's going to change

71
00:02:57,659 --> 00:03:00,028
rather soon, and part of the reason, in fact,

72
00:03:00,028 --> 00:03:02,803
the majority of the reason why I think that's going to change

73
00:03:02,803 --> 00:03:04,068
is that the equipment's getting better.

74
00:03:04,068 --> 00:03:07,005
This is the Allen Telescope Array, about 350 miles

75
00:03:07,005 --> 00:03:09,021
from whatever seat you're in right now.

76
00:03:09,021 --> 00:03:11,026
This is something that we're using today

77
00:03:11,026 --> 00:03:13,030
to search for E.T., and the electronics have gotten

78
00:03:13,030 --> 00:03:14,500
very much better too.

79
00:03:14,500 --> 00:03:17,026
This is Frank Drake's electronics in 1960.

80
00:03:17,026 --> 00:03:19,047
This is the Allen Telescope Array electronics today.

81
00:03:19,047 --> 00:03:22,536
Some pundit with too much time on his hands

82
00:03:22,536 --> 00:03:25,543
has reckoned that the new experiments are approximately

83
00:03:25,543 --> 00:03:30,038
100 trillion times better than they were in 1960,

84
00:03:30,038 --> 00:03:31,534
100 trillion times better.

85
00:03:31,534 --> 00:03:33,623
That's a degree of an improvement that would look good

86
00:03:33,623 --> 00:03:36,030
on your report card, okay?

87
00:03:36,030 --> 00:03:38,664
But something that's not appreciated by the public is,

88
00:03:38,664 --> 00:03:41,389
in fact, that the experiment continues to get better,

89
00:03:41,389 --> 00:03:44,037
and, consequently, tends to get faster.

90
00:03:44,037 --> 00:03:45,726
This is a little plot, and every time you show a plot,

91
00:03:45,726 --> 00:03:47,364
you lose 10 percent of the audience.

92
00:03:47,364 --> 00:03:49,673
I have 12 of these. (Laughter)

93
00:03:49,673 --> 00:03:54,093
But what I plotted here is just some metric

94
00:03:54,093 --> 00:03:56,647
that shows how fast we're searching.

95
00:03:56,647 --> 00:03:58,755
In other words, we're looking for a needle in a haystack.

96
00:03:58,755 --> 00:04:01,042
We know how big the haystack is. It's the galaxy.

97
00:04:01,042 --> 00:04:03,753
But we're going through the haystack no longer

98
00:04:03,753 --> 00:04:06,045
with a teaspoon but with a skip loader,

99
00:04:06,045 --> 00:04:08,016
because of this increase in speed.

100
00:04:08,016 --> 00:04:09,451
In fact, those of you who are still conscious

101
00:04:09,451 --> 00:04:12,011
and mathematically competent,

102
00:04:12,011 --> 00:04:14,089
will note that this is a semi-log plot.

103
00:04:14,089 --> 00:04:18,481
In other words, the rate of increase is exponential.

104
00:04:18,481 --> 00:04:21,214
It's exponentially improving. Now, exponential is an

105
00:04:21,214 --> 00:04:23,533
overworked word. You hear it on the media all the time.

106
00:04:23,533 --> 00:04:25,070
They don't really know what exponential means,

107
00:04:25,070 --> 00:04:27,081
but this is exponential.

108
00:04:27,081 --> 00:04:30,001
In fact, it's doubling every 18 months, and, of course,

109
00:04:30,001 --> 00:04:32,005
every card-carrying member of the digerati knows

110
00:04:32,005 --> 00:04:33,497
that that's Moore's Law.

111
00:04:33,497 --> 00:04:36,098
So this means that over the course of the next

112
00:04:36,098 --> 00:04:40,010
two dozen years, we'll be able to look at a million star systems,

113
00:04:40,010 --> 00:04:42,038
a million star systems, looking for signals

114
00:04:42,038 --> 00:04:43,547
that would prove somebody's out there.

115
00:04:43,547 --> 00:04:46,045
Well, a million star systems, is that interesting?

116
00:04:46,045 --> 00:04:49,059
I mean, how many of those star systems have planets?

117
00:04:49,059 --> 00:04:51,204
And the facts are, we didn't know the answer to that

118
00:04:51,204 --> 00:04:53,978
even as recently as 15 years ago, and in fact, we really

119
00:04:53,978 --> 00:04:56,501
didn't know it even as recently as six months ago.

120
00:04:56,501 --> 00:04:59,379
But now we do. Recent results suggest

121
00:04:59,379 --> 00:05:03,018
that virtually every star has planets, and more than one.

122
00:05:03,018 --> 00:05:06,344
They're like, you know, kittens. You get a litter.

123
00:05:06,344 --> 00:05:08,084
You don't get one kitten. You get a bunch.

124
00:05:08,084 --> 00:05:11,018
So in fact, this is a pretty accurate estimate

125
00:05:11,018 --> 00:05:15,014
of the number of planets in our galaxy,

126
00:05:15,014 --> 00:05:17,041
just in our galaxy, by the way,

127
00:05:17,041 --> 00:05:19,811
and I remind the non-astronomy majors among you

128
00:05:19,811 --> 00:05:22,056
that our galaxy is only one of 100 billion

129
00:05:22,056 --> 00:05:24,040
that we can see with our telescopes.

130
00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:25,563
That's a lot of real estate, but of course,

131
00:05:25,563 --> 00:05:27,472
most of these planets are going to be kind of worthless,

132
00:05:27,472 --> 00:05:29,564
like, you know, Mercury, or Neptune.

133
00:05:29,564 --> 00:05:31,654
Neptune's probably not very big in your life.

134
00:05:31,654 --> 00:05:36,001
So the question is, what fraction of these planets

135
00:05:36,001 --> 00:05:37,683
are actually suitable for life?

136
00:05:37,683 --> 00:05:39,088
We don't know the answer to that either,

137
00:05:39,088 --> 00:05:41,326
but we will learn that answer this year, thanks to

138
00:05:41,326 --> 00:05:43,082
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope,

139
00:05:43,082 --> 00:05:47,104
and in fact, the smart money, which is to say the people who work on this project,

140
00:05:47,104 --> 00:05:50,533
the smart money is suggesting that the fraction of planets

141
00:05:50,533 --> 00:05:54,569
that might be suitable for life is maybe one in a thousand,

142
00:05:54,569 --> 00:05:57,876
one in a hundred, something like that.

143
00:05:57,876 --> 00:06:00,016
Well, even taking the pessimistic estimate, that it's

144
00:06:00,016 --> 00:06:03,127
one in a thousand, that means that there are

145
00:06:03,127 --> 00:06:05,656
at least a billion cousins of the Earth

146
00:06:05,656 --> 00:06:07,383
just in our own galaxy.

147
00:06:07,383 --> 00:06:09,636
Okay, now I've given you a lot of numbers here,

148
00:06:09,636 --> 00:06:13,562
but they're mostly big numbers, okay, so, you know,

149
00:06:13,562 --> 00:06:16,041
keep that in mind. There's plenty of real estate,

150
00:06:16,041 --> 00:06:18,054
plenty of real estate in the universe,

151
00:06:18,054 --> 00:06:21,003
and if we're the only bit of real estate in which there's

152
00:06:21,003 --> 00:06:24,038
some interesting occupants, that makes you a miracle,

153
00:06:24,038 --> 00:06:26,719
and I know you like to think you're a miracle,

154
00:06:26,719 --> 00:06:28,629
but if you do science, you learn rather quickly that

155
00:06:28,629 --> 00:06:30,512
every time you think you're a miracle, you're wrong,

156
00:06:30,512 --> 00:06:33,040
so probably not the case.

157
00:06:33,040 --> 00:06:35,091
All right, so the bottom line is this:

158
00:06:35,091 --> 00:06:38,054
Because of the increase in speed, and because of the

159
00:06:38,054 --> 00:06:43,005
vast amount of habitable real estate in the cosmos, I figure

160
00:06:43,005 --> 00:06:45,050
we're going to pick up a signal within two dozen years.

161
00:06:45,050 --> 00:06:48,021
And I feel strongly enough about that to make a bet with you:

162
00:06:48,021 --> 00:06:50,458
Either we're going to find E.T. in the next two dozen years,

163
00:06:50,458 --> 00:06:54,076
or I'll buy you a cup of coffee.

164
00:06:54,076 --> 00:06:56,710
So that's not so bad. I mean, even with two dozen years,

165
00:06:56,710 --> 00:06:58,569
you open up your browser and there's news of a signal,

166
00:06:58,569 --> 00:07:00,320
or you get a cup of coffee.

167
00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:04,293
Now, let me tell you about some aspect of this that

168
00:07:04,293 --> 00:07:06,331
people don't think about, and that is,

169
00:07:06,331 --> 00:07:10,039
what happens? Suppose that what I say is true.

170
00:07:10,039 --> 00:07:12,404
I mean, who knows, but suppose it happens.

171
00:07:12,404 --> 00:07:13,891
Suppose some time in the next two dozen years

172
00:07:13,891 --> 00:07:16,068
we pick up a faint line that tells us

173
00:07:16,068 --> 00:07:17,756
we have some cosmic company.

174
00:07:17,756 --> 00:07:20,051
What is the effect? What's the consequence?

175
00:07:20,051 --> 00:07:22,015
Now, I might be at ground zero for this.

176
00:07:22,015 --> 00:07:23,836
I happen to know what the consequence for me would be,

177
00:07:23,836 --> 00:07:26,745
because we've had false alarms. This is 1997,

178
00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:29,044
and this is a photo I made at about 3 o'clock in the morning

179
00:07:29,044 --> 00:07:31,053
in Mountain View here, when we were watching

180
00:07:31,053 --> 00:07:33,368
the computer monitors because we had picked up a signal

181
00:07:33,368 --> 00:07:36,446
that we thought, "This is the real deal." All right?

182
00:07:36,446 --> 00:07:39,814
And I kept waiting for the Men in Black to show up. Right?

183
00:07:39,814 --> 00:07:44,017
I kept waiting for -- I kept waiting for my mom to call,

184
00:07:44,017 --> 00:07:47,021
somebody to call, the government to call. Nobody called.

185
00:07:47,021 --> 00:07:50,191
Nobody called. I was so nervous

186
00:07:50,191 --> 00:07:52,015
that I couldn't sit down. I just wandered around

187
00:07:52,015 --> 00:07:55,005
taking photos like this one, just for something to do.

188
00:07:55,005 --> 00:07:57,039
Well, at 9:30 in the morning, with my head down

189
00:07:57,039 --> 00:07:59,069
on my desk because I obviously hadn't slept all night,

190
00:07:59,069 --> 00:08:01,406
the phone rings and it's The New York Times.

191
00:08:01,406 --> 00:08:04,032
And I think there's a lesson in that, and that lesson is

192
00:08:04,032 --> 00:08:07,012
that if we pick up a signal, the media, the media will be on it

193
00:08:07,012 --> 00:08:11,346
faster than a weasel on ball bearings. It's going to be fast.

194
00:08:11,346 --> 00:08:13,024
You can be sure of that. No secrecy.

195
00:08:13,024 --> 00:08:16,007
That's what happens to me. It kind of ruins my whole week,

196
00:08:16,007 --> 00:08:18,630
because whatever I've got planned that week is kind of out the window.

197
00:08:18,630 --> 00:08:21,050
But what about you? What's it going to do to you?

198
00:08:21,050 --> 00:08:23,057
And the answer is that we don't know the answer.

199
00:08:23,057 --> 00:08:23,942
We don't know what that's going to do to you,

200
00:08:23,942 --> 00:08:27,066
not in the long term, and not even very much in the short term.

201
00:08:27,066 --> 00:08:29,894
I mean, that would be a bit like

202
00:08:29,894 --> 00:08:33,000
asking Chris Columbus in 1491, "Hey Chris,

203
00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:35,014
you know, what happens if it turns out that there's a

204
00:08:35,014 --> 00:08:38,550
continent between here and Japan, where you're sailing to,

205
00:08:38,550 --> 00:08:41,325
what will be the consequences for humanity

206
00:08:41,325 --> 00:08:43,071
if that turns out to be the case?"

207
00:08:43,071 --> 00:08:45,301
And I think Chris would probably offer you some answer

208
00:08:45,301 --> 00:08:48,012
that you might not have understood, but it probably

209
00:08:48,012 --> 00:08:50,846
wouldn't have been right, and I think that to predict

210
00:08:50,846 --> 00:08:52,605
what finding E.T.'s going to mean,

211
00:08:52,605 --> 00:08:53,685
we can't predict that either.

212
00:08:53,685 --> 00:08:55,307
But here are a couple things I can say.

213
00:08:55,307 --> 00:08:59,464
To begin with, it's going to be a society that's way in advance of our own.

214
00:08:59,464 --> 00:09:01,088
You're not going to hear from alien Neanderthals.

215
00:09:01,088 --> 00:09:02,378
They're not building transmitters.

216
00:09:02,378 --> 00:09:04,304
They're going to be ahead of us, maybe by a few thousand

217
00:09:04,304 --> 00:09:07,371
years, maybe by a few millions years, but substantially

218
00:09:07,371 --> 00:09:09,600
ahead of us, and that means, if you can understand

219
00:09:09,600 --> 00:09:13,386
anything that they're going to say, then you might be able

220
00:09:13,386 --> 00:09:16,476
to short-circuit history by getting information from a society

221
00:09:16,476 --> 00:09:18,050
that's way beyond our own.

222
00:09:18,050 --> 00:09:21,001
Now, you might find that a bit hyperbolic, and maybe it is,

223
00:09:21,001 --> 00:09:23,654
but nonetheless, it's conceivable that this will happen,

224
00:09:23,654 --> 00:09:26,027
and, you know, you could consider this like, I don't know,

225
00:09:26,027 --> 00:09:28,496
giving Julius Caesar English lessons and the key

226
00:09:28,496 --> 00:09:29,603
to the library of Congress.

227
00:09:29,603 --> 00:09:32,058
It would change his day, all right?

228
00:09:32,058 --> 00:09:34,053
That's one thing. Another thing that's for sure

229
00:09:34,053 --> 00:09:37,553
going to happen is that it will calibrate us.

230
00:09:37,553 --> 00:09:41,491
We will know that we're not that miracle, right,

231
00:09:41,491 --> 00:09:43,053
that we're just another duck in a row,

232
00:09:43,053 --> 00:09:45,048
we're not the only kids on the block, and I think that that's

233
00:09:45,048 --> 00:09:48,002
philosophically a very profound thing to learn.

234
00:09:48,002 --> 00:09:51,103
We're not a miracle, okay?

235
00:09:51,103 --> 00:09:54,402
The third thing that it might tell you is somewhat vague,

236
00:09:54,402 --> 00:09:56,525
but I think interesting and important,

237
00:09:56,525 --> 00:09:58,630
and that is, if you find a signal coming from a more

238
00:09:58,630 --> 00:10:00,861
advanced society, because they will be,

239
00:10:00,861 --> 00:10:03,513
that will tell you something about our own possibilities,

240
00:10:03,513 --> 00:10:08,295
that we're not inevitably doomed to self-destruction.

241
00:10:08,295 --> 00:10:10,091
Because they survived their technology,

242
00:10:10,091 --> 00:10:11,203
we could do it too.

243
00:10:11,203 --> 00:10:13,094
Normally when you look out into the universe,

244
00:10:13,094 --> 00:10:15,555
you're looking back in time. All right?

245
00:10:15,555 --> 00:10:17,594
That's interesting to cosmologists.

246
00:10:17,594 --> 00:10:21,038
But in this sense, you actually can look into the future,

247
00:10:21,038 --> 00:10:23,053
hazily, but you can look into the future.

248
00:10:23,053 --> 00:10:28,590
So those are all the sorts of things that would come from a detection.

249
00:10:28,590 --> 00:10:31,022
Now, let me talk a little bit about something that happens

250
00:10:31,022 --> 00:10:35,234
even in the meantime, and that is,

251
00:10:35,234 --> 00:10:40,012
SETI, I think, is important, because it's exploration, and

252
00:10:40,012 --> 00:10:42,464
it's not only exploration, it's comprehensible exploration.

253
00:10:42,464 --> 00:10:45,329
Now, I gotta tell you, I'm always reading books about

254
00:10:45,329 --> 00:10:48,044
explorers. I find exploration very interesting,

255
00:10:48,044 --> 00:10:51,025
Arctic exploration, you know, people like Magellan,

256
00:10:51,025 --> 00:10:54,021
Amundsen, Shackleton, you see Franklin down there,

257
00:10:54,021 --> 00:10:57,345
Scott, all these guys. It's really nifty, exploration.

258
00:10:57,345 --> 00:10:59,584
And they're just doing it because they want to explore,

259
00:10:59,584 --> 00:11:01,700
and you might say, "Oh, that's kind of a frivolous opportunity,"

260
00:11:01,700 --> 00:11:05,028
but that's not frivolous. That's not a frivolous activity,

261
00:11:05,028 --> 00:11:07,059
because, I mean, think of ants.

262
00:11:07,059 --> 00:11:09,056
You know, most ants are programmed to follow one another

263
00:11:09,056 --> 00:11:11,304
along in a long line, but there are a couple of ants,

264
00:11:11,304 --> 00:11:14,000
maybe one percent of those ants, that are what they call

265
00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:16,175
pioneer ants, and they're the ones that wander off.

266
00:11:16,175 --> 00:11:18,076
They're the ones you find on the kitchen countertop.

267
00:11:18,076 --> 00:11:20,074
You gotta get them with your thumb before they

268
00:11:20,074 --> 00:11:21,658
find the sugar or something.

269
00:11:21,658 --> 00:11:24,063
But those ants, even though most of them get wiped out,

270
00:11:24,063 --> 00:11:27,355
those ants are the ones that are essential to the survival

271
00:11:27,355 --> 00:11:30,929
of the hive. So exploration is important.

272
00:11:30,929 --> 00:11:34,309
I also think that exploration is important in terms of

273
00:11:34,309 --> 00:11:39,179
being able to address what I think is a critical

274
00:11:39,179 --> 00:11:42,380
lack in our society, and that is the lack of science literacy,

275
00:11:42,380 --> 00:11:46,023
the lack of the ability to even understand science.

276
00:11:46,023 --> 00:11:48,065
Now, look, a lot has been written about the

277
00:11:48,065 --> 00:11:51,463
deplorable state of science literacy in this country.

278
00:11:51,463 --> 00:11:54,015
You've heard about it.

279
00:11:54,015 --> 00:11:56,067
Well, here's one example, in fact.

280
00:11:56,067 --> 00:11:58,386
Polls taken, this poll was taken 10 years ago.

281
00:11:58,386 --> 00:12:00,515
It shows like roughly one third of the public thinks

282
00:12:00,515 --> 00:12:02,479
that aliens are not only out there, we're looking for them

283
00:12:02,479 --> 00:12:04,097
out there, but they're here, right?

284
00:12:04,097 --> 00:12:06,396
Sailing the skies in their saucers and occasionally

285
00:12:06,396 --> 00:12:09,512
abducting people for experiments their parents wouldn't approve of.

286
00:12:09,512 --> 00:12:12,685
Well, that would be interesting if it was true,

287
00:12:12,685 --> 00:12:14,564
and job security for me, but I don't think the evidence is

288
00:12:14,564 --> 00:12:18,036
very good. That's more, you know, sad than significant.

289
00:12:18,036 --> 00:12:20,055
But there are other things that people believe

290
00:12:20,055 --> 00:12:23,466
that are significant, like the efficacy of homeopathy,

291
00:12:23,466 --> 00:12:27,017
or that evolution is just, you know, sort of a crazy idea

292
00:12:27,017 --> 00:12:30,048
by scientists without any legs, or, you know, evolution,

293
00:12:30,048 --> 00:12:32,604
all that sort of thing, or global warming.

294
00:12:32,604 --> 00:12:36,005
These sorts of ideas don't really have any validity,

295
00:12:36,005 --> 00:12:38,080
that you can't trust the scientists.

296
00:12:38,080 --> 00:12:40,323
Now, we've got to solve that problem, because that's

297
00:12:40,323 --> 00:12:44,401
a critically important problem, and you might say,

298
00:12:44,401 --> 00:12:47,030
"Well, okay, how are we gonna solve that problem with SETI?"

299
00:12:47,030 --> 00:12:49,429
Well, let me suggest to you that SETI obviously can't

300
00:12:49,429 --> 00:12:51,092
solve the problem, but it can address the problem.

301
00:12:51,092 --> 00:12:54,035
It can address the problem by getting young people

302
00:12:54,035 --> 00:12:57,033
interested in science. Look, science is hard, it

303
00:12:57,033 --> 00:13:00,086
has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard,

304
00:13:00,086 --> 00:13:05,021
and that's the result of 400 years of science, right?

305
00:13:05,021 --> 00:13:07,500
I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century

306
00:13:07,500 --> 00:13:10,090
you could become an expert on any field of science

307
00:13:10,090 --> 00:13:13,004
in an afternoon by going to a library,

308
00:13:13,004 --> 00:13:15,025
if you could find the library, right?

309
00:13:15,025 --> 00:13:18,641
In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab,

310
00:13:18,641 --> 00:13:21,388
you could make major scientific discoveries

311
00:13:21,388 --> 00:13:23,613
in your own home. Right? Because there was all this

312
00:13:23,613 --> 00:13:26,488
science just lying around waiting for somebody to pick it up.

313
00:13:26,488 --> 00:13:28,081
Now, that's not true anymore.

314
00:13:28,081 --> 00:13:30,509
Today, you've got to spend years in grad school

315
00:13:30,509 --> 00:13:34,007
and post-doc positions just to figure out what

316
00:13:34,007 --> 00:13:36,063
the important questions are.

317
00:13:36,063 --> 00:13:38,058
It's hard. There's no doubt about it.

318
00:13:38,058 --> 00:13:40,367
And in fact, here's an example: the Higgs boson,

319
00:13:40,367 --> 00:13:42,276
finding the Higgs boson.

320
00:13:42,276 --> 00:13:44,076
Ask the next 10 people you see on the streets,

321
00:13:44,076 --> 00:13:46,414
"Hey, do you think it's worthwhile to spend billions

322
00:13:46,414 --> 00:13:49,055
of Swiss francs looking for the Higgs boson?"

323
00:13:49,055 --> 00:13:51,376
And I bet the answer you're going to get, is,

324
00:13:51,376 --> 00:13:53,033
"Well, I don't know what the Higgs boson is,

325
00:13:53,033 --> 00:13:54,265
and I don't know if it's important."

326
00:13:54,265 --> 00:13:56,064
And probably most of the people wouldn't even know

327
00:13:56,064 --> 00:13:58,511
the value of a Swiss franc, okay?

328
00:13:58,511 --> 00:14:01,041
And yet we're spending billions of Swiss francs on this problem.

329
00:14:01,041 --> 00:14:03,194
Okay? So that doesn't get people interested in science

330
00:14:03,194 --> 00:14:05,070
because they can't comprehend what it's about.

331
00:14:05,070 --> 00:14:06,687
SETI, on the other hand, is really simple.

332
00:14:06,687 --> 00:14:08,303
We're going to use these big antennas and we're going to

333
00:14:08,303 --> 00:14:11,055
try to eavesdrop on signals. Everybody can understand that.

334
00:14:11,055 --> 00:14:13,064
Yes, technologically, it's very sophisticated,

335
00:14:13,064 --> 00:14:15,070
but everybody gets the idea.

336
00:14:15,070 --> 00:14:19,008
So that's one thing. The other thing is, it's exciting science.

337
00:14:19,008 --> 00:14:21,422
It's exciting because we're naturally interested

338
00:14:21,422 --> 00:14:23,647
in other intelligent beings, and I think that's

339
00:14:23,647 --> 00:14:25,071
part of our hardwiring.

340
00:14:25,071 --> 00:14:26,631
I mean, we're hardwired to be interested

341
00:14:26,631 --> 00:14:29,432
in beings that might be, if you will, competitors,

342
00:14:29,432 --> 00:14:33,015
or if you're the romantic sort, possibly even mates. Okay?

343
00:14:33,015 --> 00:14:35,026
I mean, this is analogous to our interest in things that

344
00:14:35,026 --> 00:14:37,047
have big teeth. Right?

345
00:14:37,047 --> 00:14:38,521
We're interested in things that have big teeth, and you

346
00:14:38,521 --> 00:14:41,066
can see the evolutionary value of that, and you can also see

347
00:14:41,066 --> 00:14:44,754
the practical consequences by watching Animal Planet.

348
00:14:44,754 --> 00:14:47,088
You notice they make very few programs about gerbils.

349
00:14:47,088 --> 00:14:49,144
It's mostly about things that have big teeth.

350
00:14:49,144 --> 00:14:52,091
Okay, so we're interested in these sorts of things.

351
00:14:52,091 --> 00:14:56,026
And not just us. It's also kids.

352
00:14:56,026 --> 00:14:59,453
This allows you to pay it forward by using this subject as a

353
00:14:59,453 --> 00:15:02,685
hook to science, because SETI involves all kinds of science,

354
00:15:02,685 --> 00:15:04,675
obviously biology, obviously astronomy,

355
00:15:04,675 --> 00:15:08,009
but also geology, also chemistry, various scientific

356
00:15:08,009 --> 00:15:12,009
disciplines all can be presented in the guise of,

357
00:15:12,009 --> 00:15:13,338
"We're looking for E.T."

358
00:15:13,338 --> 00:15:17,795
So to me this is interesting and important, and in fact,

359
00:15:17,795 --> 00:15:21,033
it's my policy, even though I give a lot of talks to adults,

360
00:15:21,033 --> 00:15:23,701
you give talks to adults, and two days later they're back where they were.

361
00:15:23,701 --> 00:15:26,623
But if you give talks to kids, you know,

362
00:15:26,623 --> 00:15:30,775
one in 50 of them, some light bulb goes off, and they think,

363
00:15:30,775 --> 00:15:32,576
"Gee, I'd never thought of that," and then they go,

364
00:15:32,576 --> 00:15:34,368
you know, read a book or a magazine or whatever.

365
00:15:34,368 --> 00:15:36,050
They get interested in something.

366
00:15:36,050 --> 00:15:41,024
Now it's my theory, supported only by anecdotal,

367
00:15:41,024 --> 00:15:43,047
personal anecdotal evidence, but nonetheless,

368
00:15:43,047 --> 00:15:45,520
that kids get interested in something between the ages

369
00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:48,056
of eight and 11. You've got to get them there.

370
00:15:48,056 --> 00:15:50,676
So, all right, I give talks to adults, that's fine, but I try

371
00:15:50,676 --> 00:15:53,001
and make 10 percent of the talks that I give,

372
00:15:53,001 --> 00:15:55,078
I try and make those for kids.

373
00:15:55,078 --> 00:15:58,054
I remember when a guy came to our high school, actually,

374
00:15:58,054 --> 00:16:01,030
it was actually my junior high school. I was in sixth grade.

375
00:16:01,030 --> 00:16:03,510
And he gave some talk. All I remember from it

376
00:16:03,510 --> 00:16:05,085
was one word: electronics.

377
00:16:05,085 --> 00:16:07,646
It was like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," right,

378
00:16:07,646 --> 00:16:10,044
when he said "plastics," whatever that means, plastics.

379
00:16:10,044 --> 00:16:12,039
All right, so the guy said electronics. I don't remember

380
00:16:12,039 --> 00:16:14,043
anything else. In fact, I don't remember anything

381
00:16:14,043 --> 00:16:16,053
that my sixth grade teacher said all year,

382
00:16:16,053 --> 00:16:18,067
but I remember electronics.

383
00:16:18,067 --> 00:16:20,719
And so I got interested in electronics, and you know,

384
00:16:20,719 --> 00:16:23,044
I studied to get my ham license. I was wiring up stuff.

385
00:16:23,044 --> 00:16:26,022
Here I am at about 15 or something, doing that sort of stuff.

386
00:16:26,022 --> 00:16:27,605
Okay? That had a big effect on me.

387
00:16:27,605 --> 00:16:29,317
So that's my point, that you can have a big effect

388
00:16:29,317 --> 00:16:32,033
on these kids.

389
00:16:32,033 --> 00:16:35,694
In fact, this reminds me, I don't know, a couple years ago

390
00:16:35,694 --> 00:16:39,020
I gave a talk at a school in Palo Alto

391
00:16:39,020 --> 00:16:41,033
where there were about a dozen 11-year-olds

392
00:16:41,033 --> 00:16:42,005
that had come to this talk.

393
00:16:42,005 --> 00:16:44,521
I had been brought in to talk to these kids for an hour.

394
00:16:44,521 --> 00:16:46,795
Eleven-year-olds, they're all sitting in a little semi-circle

395
00:16:46,795 --> 00:16:49,039
looking up at me with big eyes, and I started,

396
00:16:49,039 --> 00:16:50,695
there was a white board behind me, and I started off

397
00:16:50,695 --> 00:16:53,533
by writing a one with 22 zeroes after it, and I said,

398
00:16:53,533 --> 00:16:55,896
"All right, now look, this is the number of stars

399
00:16:55,896 --> 00:16:58,768
in the visible universe, and this number is so big

400
00:16:58,768 --> 00:17:02,116
there's not even a name for it."

401
00:17:02,116 --> 00:17:04,581
And one of these kids shot up his hand, and he said,

402
00:17:04,581 --> 00:17:06,086
"Well, actually there is a name for it.

403
00:17:06,086 --> 00:17:09,020
It's a sextra-quadra-hexa-something or other." Right?

404
00:17:09,020 --> 00:17:13,016
Now, that kid was wrong by four orders of magnitude,

405
00:17:13,016 --> 00:17:15,488
but there was no doubt about it, these kids were smart.

406
00:17:15,488 --> 00:17:17,456
Okay? So I stopped giving the lecture.

407
00:17:17,456 --> 00:17:20,039
All they wanted to do was ask questions.

408
00:17:20,039 --> 00:17:24,031
In fact, my last comments to these kids, at the end I said,

409
00:17:24,031 --> 00:17:26,063
"You know, you kids are smarter

410
00:17:26,063 --> 00:17:31,005
than the people I work with." Now — (Laughter)

411
00:17:31,005 --> 00:17:32,334
They didn't even care about that.

412
00:17:32,334 --> 00:17:35,028
What they wanted was my email address

413
00:17:35,028 --> 00:17:39,013
so they could ask me more questions. (Laughter)

414
00:17:39,013 --> 00:17:42,172
Let me just say, look, my job is a privilege

415
00:17:42,172 --> 00:17:43,795
because we're in a special time.

416
00:17:43,795 --> 00:17:46,580
Previous generations couldn't do this experiment at all.

417
00:17:46,580 --> 00:17:48,405
In another generation down the line,

418
00:17:48,405 --> 00:17:50,021
I think we will have succeeded.

419
00:17:50,021 --> 00:17:53,502
So to me, it is a privilege, and when I look in the mirror,

420
00:17:53,502 --> 00:17:56,309
the facts are that I really don't see myself.

421
00:17:56,309 --> 00:17:58,073
What I see is the generation behind me.

422
00:17:58,073 --> 00:18:00,099
These are some kids from the Huff School, fourth graders.

423
00:18:00,099 --> 00:18:03,044
I talked there, what, two weeks ago, something like that.

424
00:18:03,044 --> 00:18:07,654
I think that if you can instill some interest in science

425
00:18:07,654 --> 00:18:10,613
and how it works, well, that's a payoff

426
00:18:10,613 --> 00:18:13,056
beyond easy measure. Thank you very much.

427
00:18:13,056 --> 00:18:19,047
(Applause)