WEBVTT 00:00:00.044 --> 00:00:01.037 Is E.T. out there? 00:00:01.037 --> 00:00:04.016 Well, I work at the SETI Institute. 00:00:04.016 --> 00:00:05.251 That's almost my name. SETI: 00:00:05.251 --> 00:00:07.658 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. 00:00:07.658 --> 00:00:09.277 In other words, I look for aliens, 00:00:09.277 --> 00:00:12.945 and when I tell people that at a cocktail party, they usually 00:00:12.945 --> 00:00:15.706 look at me with a mildly incredulous look on their face. 00:00:15.706 --> 00:00:18.039 I try to keep my own face somewhat dispassionate. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:18.039 --> 00:00:20.799 Now, a lot of people think that this is kind of idealistic, 00:00:20.799 --> 00:00:23.049 ridiculous, maybe even hopeless, 00:00:23.049 --> 00:00:26.754 but I just want to talk to you a little bit about why I think 00:00:26.754 --> 00:00:30.568 that the job I have is actually a privilege, okay, 00:00:30.568 --> 00:00:32.666 and give you a little bit of the motivation for my getting into 00:00:32.666 --> 00:00:35.021 this line of work, if that's what you call it. 00:00:35.021 --> 00:00:38.029 This thing — whoops, can we go back? 00:00:38.029 --> 00:00:40.728 Hello, come in, Earth. 00:00:40.728 --> 00:00:42.079 There we go. All right. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:42.079 --> 00:00:44.072 This is the Owens Valley Radio Observatory 00:00:44.072 --> 00:00:47.508 behind the Sierra Nevadas, and in 1968, 00:00:47.508 --> 00:00:50.417 I was working there collecting data for my thesis. 00:00:50.417 --> 00:00:53.758 Now, it's kinda lonely, it's kinda tedious, just collecting data, 00:00:53.758 --> 00:00:56.291 so I would amuse myself by taking photos at night 00:00:56.291 --> 00:00:59.052 of the telescopes or even of myself, 00:00:59.052 --> 00:01:04.286 because, you know, at night, I would be the only hominid 00:01:04.286 --> 00:01:06.034 within about 30 miles. 00:01:06.034 --> 00:01:08.043 So here are pictures of myself. 00:01:08.043 --> 00:01:11.631 The observatory had just acquired a new book, 00:01:11.631 --> 00:01:13.381 written by a Russian cosmologist 00:01:13.381 --> 00:01:16.999 by the name of Joseph Shklovsky, and then expanded 00:01:16.999 --> 00:01:19.452 and translated and edited by a little-known 00:01:19.452 --> 00:01:22.061 Cornell astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:22.061 --> 00:01:24.058 And I remember reading that book, 00:01:24.058 --> 00:01:26.066 and at 3 in the morning I was reading this book 00:01:26.066 --> 00:01:28.759 and it was explaining how the antennas I was using 00:01:28.759 --> 00:01:33.706 to measure the spins of galaxies could also be used 00:01:33.706 --> 00:01:36.018 to communicate, to send bits of information 00:01:36.018 --> 00:01:38.610 from one star system to another. 00:01:38.610 --> 00:01:40.078 Now, at 3 o'clock in the morning when you're all alone, 00:01:40.078 --> 00:01:43.009 haven't had much sleep, that was a very romantic idea, 00:01:43.009 --> 00:01:46.898 but it was that idea -- the fact that you could in fact 00:01:46.898 --> 00:01:48.382 prove that there's somebody out there 00:01:48.382 --> 00:01:51.098 just using this same technology -- 00:01:51.098 --> 00:01:53.328 that appealed to me so much that 20 years later I took a job 00:01:53.328 --> 00:01:55.301 at the SETI Institute. Now, I have to say 00:01:55.301 --> 00:01:59.751 that my memory is notoriously porous, and I've often 00:01:59.751 --> 00:02:01.584 wondered whether there was any truth in this story, 00:02:01.584 --> 00:02:03.088 or I was just, you know, misremembering something, 00:02:03.088 --> 00:02:05.836 but I recently just blew up this old negative of mine, 00:02:05.836 --> 00:02:07.435 and sure enough, there you can see 00:02:07.435 --> 00:02:09.546 the Shklovsky and Sagan book underneath that 00:02:09.546 --> 00:02:12.023 analog calculating device. 00:02:12.023 --> 00:02:12.926 So it was true. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:12.926 --> 00:02:15.367 All right. Now, the idea for doing this, it wasn't very old 00:02:15.367 --> 00:02:17.031 at the time that I made that photo. 00:02:17.031 --> 00:02:20.509 The idea dates from 1960, when a young astronomer 00:02:20.509 --> 00:02:23.005 by the name of Frank Drake used this antenna 00:02:23.005 --> 00:02:26.615 in West Virginia, pointed it at a couple of nearby stars 00:02:26.615 --> 00:02:30.004 in the hopes of eavesdropping on E.T. 00:02:30.004 --> 00:02:31.600 Now, Frank didn't hear anything. 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:34.009 Actually he did, but it turned out to be the U.S. Air Force, 00:02:34.009 --> 00:02:36.974 which doesn't count as extraterrestrial intelligence. 00:02:36.974 --> 00:02:39.740 But Drake's idea here became very popular 00:02:39.740 --> 00:02:42.197 because it was very appealing — and I'll get back to that — 00:02:42.197 --> 00:02:45.613 and on the basis of this experiment, which didn't succeed, 00:02:45.613 --> 00:02:47.468 we have been doing SETI ever since, 00:02:47.468 --> 00:02:49.502 not continuously, but ever since. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:49.502 --> 00:02:51.388 We still haven't heard anything. 00:02:51.388 --> 00:02:53.066 We still haven't heard anything. 00:02:53.066 --> 00:02:54.859 In fact, we don't know about any life beyond Earth, 00:02:54.859 --> 00:02:57.659 but I'm going to suggest to you that that's going to change 00:02:57.659 --> 00:03:00.028 rather soon, and part of the reason, in fact, 00:03:00.028 --> 00:03:02.803 the majority of the reason why I think that's going to change 00:03:02.803 --> 00:03:04.068 is that the equipment's getting better. 00:03:04.068 --> 00:03:07.005 This is the Allen Telescope Array, about 350 miles 00:03:07.005 --> 00:03:09.021 from whatever seat you're in right now. 00:03:09.021 --> 00:03:11.026 This is something that we're using today 00:03:11.026 --> 00:03:13.030 to search for E.T., and the electronics have gotten 00:03:13.030 --> 00:03:14.500 very much better too. 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:17.026 This is Frank Drake's electronics in 1960. 00:03:17.026 --> 00:03:19.047 This is the Allen Telescope Array electronics today. 00:03:19.047 --> 00:03:22.536 Some pundit with too much time on his hands 00:03:22.536 --> 00:03:25.543 has reckoned that the new experiments are approximately 00:03:25.543 --> 00:03:30.038 100 trillion times better than they were in 1960, 00:03:30.038 --> 00:03:31.534 100 trillion times better. 00:03:31.534 --> 00:03:33.623 That's a degree of an improvement that would look good 00:03:33.623 --> 00:03:36.030 on your report card, okay? 00:03:36.030 --> 00:03:38.664 But something that's not appreciated by the public is, 00:03:38.664 --> 00:03:41.389 in fact, that the experiment continues to get better, 00:03:41.389 --> 00:03:44.037 and, consequently, tends to get faster. 00:03:44.037 --> 00:03:45.726 This is a little plot, and every time you show a plot, 00:03:45.726 --> 00:03:47.364 you lose 10 percent of the audience. 00:03:47.364 --> 00:03:49.673 I have 12 of these. (Laughter) 00:03:49.673 --> 00:03:54.093 But what I plotted here is just some metric 00:03:54.093 --> 00:03:56.647 that shows how fast we're searching. 00:03:56.647 --> 00:03:58.755 In other words, we're looking for a needle in a haystack. 00:03:58.755 --> 00:04:01.042 We know how big the haystack is. It's the galaxy. 00:04:01.042 --> 00:04:03.753 But we're going through the haystack no longer 00:04:03.753 --> 00:04:06.045 with a teaspoon but with a skip loader, 00:04:06.045 --> 00:04:08.016 because of this increase in speed. 00:04:08.016 --> 00:04:09.451 In fact, those of you who are still conscious 00:04:09.451 --> 00:04:12.011 and mathematically competent, 00:04:12.011 --> 00:04:14.089 will note that this is a semi-log plot. 00:04:14.089 --> 00:04:18.481 In other words, the rate of increase is exponential. 00:04:18.481 --> 00:04:21.214 It's exponentially improving. Now, exponential is an 00:04:21.214 --> 00:04:23.533 overworked word. You hear it on the media all the time. 00:04:23.533 --> 00:04:25.070 They don't really know what exponential means, 00:04:25.070 --> 00:04:27.081 but this is exponential. 00:04:27.081 --> 00:04:30.001 In fact, it's doubling every 18 months, and, of course, 00:04:30.001 --> 00:04:32.005 every card-carrying member of the digerati knows 00:04:32.005 --> 00:04:33.497 that that's Moore's Law. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:33.497 --> 00:04:36.098 So this means that over the course of the next 00:04:36.098 --> 00:04:40.010 two dozen years, we'll be able to look at a million star systems, 00:04:40.010 --> 00:04:42.038 a million star systems, looking for signals 00:04:42.038 --> 00:04:43.547 that would prove somebody's out there. 00:04:43.547 --> 00:04:46.045 Well, a million star systems, is that interesting? 00:04:46.045 --> 00:04:49.059 I mean, how many of those star systems have planets? 00:04:49.059 --> 00:04:51.204 And the facts are, we didn't know the answer to that 00:04:51.204 --> 00:04:53.978 even as recently as 15 years ago, and in fact, we really 00:04:53.978 --> 00:04:56.501 didn't know it even as recently as six months ago. 00:04:56.501 --> 00:04:59.379 But now we do. Recent results suggest 00:04:59.379 --> 00:05:03.018 that virtually every star has planets, and more than one. 00:05:03.018 --> 00:05:06.344 They're like, you know, kittens. You get a litter. 00:05:06.344 --> 00:05:08.084 You don't get one kitten. You get a bunch. 00:05:08.084 --> 00:05:11.018 So in fact, this is a pretty accurate estimate 00:05:11.018 --> 00:05:15.014 of the number of planets in our galaxy, 00:05:15.014 --> 00:05:17.041 just in our galaxy, by the way, 00:05:17.041 --> 00:05:19.811 and I remind the non-astronomy majors among you 00:05:19.811 --> 00:05:22.056 that our galaxy is only one of 100 billion 00:05:22.056 --> 00:05:24.040 that we can see with our telescopes. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:25.563 That's a lot of real estate, but of course, 00:05:25.563 --> 00:05:27.472 most of these planets are going to be kind of worthless, 00:05:27.472 --> 00:05:29.564 like, you know, Mercury, or Neptune. 00:05:29.564 --> 00:05:31.654 Neptune's probably not very big in your life. 00:05:31.654 --> 00:05:36.001 So the question is, what fraction of these planets 00:05:36.001 --> 00:05:37.683 are actually suitable for life? 00:05:37.683 --> 00:05:39.088 We don't know the answer to that either, 00:05:39.088 --> 00:05:41.326 but we will learn that answer this year, thanks to 00:05:41.326 --> 00:05:43.082 NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, 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, 00:05:47.104 --> 00:05:50.533 the smart money is suggesting that the fraction of planets 00:05:50.533 --> 00:05:54.569 that might be suitable for life is maybe one in a thousand, 00:05:54.569 --> 00:05:57.876 one in a hundred, something like that. 00:05:57.876 --> 00:06:00.016 Well, even taking the pessimistic estimate, that it's 00:06:00.016 --> 00:06:03.127 one in a thousand, that means that there are 00:06:03.127 --> 00:06:05.656 at least a billion cousins of the Earth 00:06:05.656 --> 00:06:07.383 just in our own galaxy. 00:06:07.383 --> 00:06:09.636 Okay, now I've given you a lot of numbers here, 00:06:09.636 --> 00:06:13.562 but they're mostly big numbers, okay, so, you know, 00:06:13.562 --> 00:06:16.041 keep that in mind. There's plenty of real estate, 00:06:16.041 --> 00:06:18.054 plenty of real estate in the universe, 00:06:18.054 --> 00:06:21.003 and if we're the only bit of real estate in which there's 00:06:21.003 --> 00:06:24.038 some interesting occupants, that makes you a miracle, 00:06:24.038 --> 00:06:26.719 and I know you like to think you're a miracle, 00:06:26.719 --> 00:06:28.629 but if you do science, you learn rather quickly that 00:06:28.629 --> 00:06:30.512 every time you think you're a miracle, you're wrong, 00:06:30.512 --> 00:06:33.040 so probably not the case. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:33.040 --> 00:06:35.091 All right, so the bottom line is this: 00:06:35.091 --> 00:06:38.054 Because of the increase in speed, and because of the 00:06:38.054 --> 00:06:43.005 vast amount of habitable real estate in the cosmos, I figure 00:06:43.005 --> 00:06:45.050 we're going to pick up a signal within two dozen years. 00:06:45.050 --> 00:06:48.021 And I feel strongly enough about that to make a bet with you: 00:06:48.021 --> 00:06:50.458 Either we're going to find E.T. in the next two dozen years, 00:06:50.458 --> 00:06:54.076 or I'll buy you a cup of coffee. 00:06:54.076 --> 00:06:56.710 So that's not so bad. I mean, even with two dozen years, 00:06:56.710 --> 00:06:58.569 you open up your browser and there's news of a signal, 00:06:58.569 --> 00:07:00.320 or you get a cup of coffee. 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:04.293 Now, let me tell you about some aspect of this that 00:07:04.293 --> 00:07:06.331 people don't think about, and that is, 00:07:06.331 --> 00:07:10.039 what happens? Suppose that what I say is true. 00:07:10.039 --> 00:07:12.404 I mean, who knows, but suppose it happens. 00:07:12.404 --> 00:07:13.891 Suppose some time in the next two dozen years 00:07:13.891 --> 00:07:16.068 we pick up a faint line that tells us 00:07:16.068 --> 00:07:17.756 we have some cosmic company. 00:07:17.756 --> 00:07:20.051 What is the effect? What's the consequence? 00:07:20.051 --> 00:07:22.015 Now, I might be at ground zero for this. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:22.015 --> 00:07:23.836 I happen to know what the consequence for me would be, 00:07:23.836 --> 00:07:26.745 because we've had false alarms. This is 1997, 00:07:26.760 --> 00:07:29.044 and this is a photo I made at about 3 o'clock in the morning 00:07:29.044 --> 00:07:31.053 in Mountain View here, when we were watching 00:07:31.053 --> 00:07:33.368 the computer monitors because we had picked up a signal 00:07:33.368 --> 00:07:36.446 that we thought, "This is the real deal." All right? 00:07:36.446 --> 00:07:39.814 And I kept waiting for the Men in Black to show up. Right? 00:07:39.814 --> 00:07:44.017 I kept waiting for -- I kept waiting for my mom to call, 00:07:44.017 --> 00:07:47.021 somebody to call, the government to call. Nobody called. 00:07:47.021 --> 00:07:50.191 Nobody called. I was so nervous 00:07:50.191 --> 00:07:52.015 that I couldn't sit down. I just wandered around 00:07:52.015 --> 00:07:55.005 taking photos like this one, just for something to do. 00:07:55.005 --> 00:07:57.039 Well, at 9:30 in the morning, with my head down 00:07:57.039 --> 00:07:59.069 on my desk because I obviously hadn't slept all night, 00:07:59.069 --> 00:08:01.406 the phone rings and it's The New York Times. 00:08:01.406 --> 00:08:04.032 And I think there's a lesson in that, and that lesson is 00:08:04.032 --> 00:08:07.012 that if we pick up a signal, the media, the media will be on it 00:08:07.012 --> 00:08:11.346 faster than a weasel on ball bearings. It's going to be fast. 00:08:11.346 --> 00:08:13.024 You can be sure of that. No secrecy. 00:08:13.024 --> 00:08:16.007 That's what happens to me. It kind of ruins my whole week, 00:08:16.007 --> 00:08:18.630 because whatever I've got planned that week is kind of out the window. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:18.630 --> 00:08:21.050 But what about you? What's it going to do to you? 00:08:21.050 --> 00:08:23.057 And the answer is that we don't know the answer. 00:08:23.057 --> 00:08:23.942 We don't know what that's going to do to you, 00:08:23.942 --> 00:08:27.066 not in the long term, and not even very much in the short term. 00:08:27.066 --> 00:08:29.894 I mean, that would be a bit like 00:08:29.894 --> 00:08:33.000 asking Chris Columbus in 1491, "Hey Chris, 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:35.014 you know, what happens if it turns out that there's a 00:08:35.014 --> 00:08:38.550 continent between here and Japan, where you're sailing to, 00:08:38.550 --> 00:08:41.325 what will be the consequences for humanity 00:08:41.325 --> 00:08:43.071 if that turns out to be the case?" 00:08:43.071 --> 00:08:45.301 And I think Chris would probably offer you some answer 00:08:45.301 --> 00:08:48.012 that you might not have understood, but it probably 00:08:48.012 --> 00:08:50.846 wouldn't have been right, and I think that to predict 00:08:50.846 --> 00:08:52.605 what finding E.T.'s going to mean, 00:08:52.605 --> 00:08:53.685 we can't predict that either. 00:08:53.685 --> 00:08:55.307 But here are a couple things I can say. 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. 00:08:59.464 --> 00:09:01.088 You're not going to hear from alien Neanderthals. 00:09:01.088 --> 00:09:02.378 They're not building transmitters. 00:09:02.378 --> 00:09:04.304 They're going to be ahead of us, maybe by a few thousand 00:09:04.304 --> 00:09:07.371 years, maybe by a few millions years, but substantially 00:09:07.371 --> 00:09:09.600 ahead of us, and that means, if you can understand 00:09:09.600 --> 00:09:13.386 anything that they're going to say, then you might be able 00:09:13.386 --> 00:09:16.476 to short-circuit history by getting information from a society 00:09:16.476 --> 00:09:18.050 that's way beyond our own. 00:09:18.050 --> 00:09:21.001 Now, you might find that a bit hyperbolic, and maybe it is, 00:09:21.001 --> 00:09:23.654 but nonetheless, it's conceivable that this will happen, 00:09:23.654 --> 00:09:26.027 and, you know, you could consider this like, I don't know, 00:09:26.027 --> 00:09:28.496 giving Julius Caesar English lessons and the key 00:09:28.496 --> 00:09:29.603 to the library of Congress. 00:09:29.603 --> 00:09:32.058 It would change his day, all right? NOTE Paragraph 00:09:32.058 --> 00:09:34.053 That's one thing. Another thing that's for sure 00:09:34.053 --> 00:09:37.553 going to happen is that it will calibrate us. 00:09:37.553 --> 00:09:41.491 We will know that we're not that miracle, right, 00:09:41.491 --> 00:09:43.053 that we're just another duck in a row, 00:09:43.053 --> 00:09:45.048 we're not the only kids on the block, and I think that that's 00:09:45.048 --> 00:09:48.002 philosophically a very profound thing to learn. 00:09:48.002 --> 00:09:51.103 We're not a miracle, okay? NOTE Paragraph 00:09:51.103 --> 00:09:54.402 The third thing that it might tell you is somewhat vague, 00:09:54.402 --> 00:09:56.525 but I think interesting and important, 00:09:56.525 --> 00:09:58.630 and that is, if you find a signal coming from a more 00:09:58.630 --> 00:10:00.861 advanced society, because they will be, 00:10:00.861 --> 00:10:03.513 that will tell you something about our own possibilities, 00:10:03.513 --> 00:10:08.295 that we're not inevitably doomed to self-destruction. 00:10:08.295 --> 00:10:10.091 Because they survived their technology, 00:10:10.091 --> 00:10:11.203 we could do it too. 00:10:11.203 --> 00:10:13.094 Normally when you look out into the universe, 00:10:13.094 --> 00:10:15.555 you're looking back in time. All right? 00:10:15.555 --> 00:10:17.594 That's interesting to cosmologists. 00:10:17.594 --> 00:10:21.038 But in this sense, you actually can look into the future, 00:10:21.038 --> 00:10:23.053 hazily, but you can look into the future. 00:10:23.053 --> 00:10:28.590 So those are all the sorts of things that would come from a detection. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:28.590 --> 00:10:31.022 Now, let me talk a little bit about something that happens 00:10:31.022 --> 00:10:35.234 even in the meantime, and that is, 00:10:35.234 --> 00:10:40.012 SETI, I think, is important, because it's exploration, and 00:10:40.012 --> 00:10:42.464 it's not only exploration, it's comprehensible exploration. 00:10:42.464 --> 00:10:45.329 Now, I gotta tell you, I'm always reading books about 00:10:45.329 --> 00:10:48.044 explorers. I find exploration very interesting, 00:10:48.044 --> 00:10:51.025 Arctic exploration, you know, people like Magellan, 00:10:51.025 --> 00:10:54.021 Amundsen, Shackleton, you see Franklin down there, 00:10:54.021 --> 00:10:57.345 Scott, all these guys. It's really nifty, exploration. 00:10:57.345 --> 00:10:59.584 And they're just doing it because they want to explore, 00:10:59.584 --> 00:11:01.700 and you might say, "Oh, that's kind of a frivolous opportunity," 00:11:01.700 --> 00:11:05.028 but that's not frivolous. That's not a frivolous activity, 00:11:05.028 --> 00:11:07.059 because, I mean, think of ants. 00:11:07.059 --> 00:11:09.056 You know, most ants are programmed to follow one another 00:11:09.056 --> 00:11:11.304 along in a long line, but there are a couple of ants, 00:11:11.304 --> 00:11:14.000 maybe one percent of those ants, that are what they call 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:16.175 pioneer ants, and they're the ones that wander off. 00:11:16.175 --> 00:11:18.076 They're the ones you find on the kitchen countertop. 00:11:18.076 --> 00:11:20.074 You gotta get them with your thumb before they 00:11:20.074 --> 00:11:21.658 find the sugar or something. 00:11:21.658 --> 00:11:24.063 But those ants, even though most of them get wiped out, 00:11:24.063 --> 00:11:27.355 those ants are the ones that are essential to the survival 00:11:27.355 --> 00:11:30.929 of the hive. So exploration is important. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:30.929 --> 00:11:34.309 I also think that exploration is important in terms of 00:11:34.309 --> 00:11:39.179 being able to address what I think is a critical 00:11:39.179 --> 00:11:42.380 lack in our society, and that is the lack of science literacy, 00:11:42.380 --> 00:11:46.023 the lack of the ability to even understand science. 00:11:46.023 --> 00:11:48.065 Now, look, a lot has been written about the 00:11:48.065 --> 00:11:51.463 deplorable state of science literacy in this country. 00:11:51.463 --> 00:11:54.015 You've heard about it. 00:11:54.015 --> 00:11:56.067 Well, here's one example, in fact. 00:11:56.067 --> 00:11:58.386 Polls taken, this poll was taken 10 years ago. 00:11:58.386 --> 00:12:00.515 It shows like roughly one third of the public thinks 00:12:00.515 --> 00:12:02.479 that aliens are not only out there, we're looking for them 00:12:02.479 --> 00:12:04.097 out there, but they're here, right? 00:12:04.097 --> 00:12:06.396 Sailing the skies in their saucers and occasionally 00:12:06.396 --> 00:12:09.512 abducting people for experiments their parents wouldn't approve of. 00:12:09.512 --> 00:12:12.685 Well, that would be interesting if it was true, 00:12:12.685 --> 00:12:14.564 and job security for me, but I don't think the evidence is 00:12:14.564 --> 00:12:18.036 very good. That's more, you know, sad than significant. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:18.036 --> 00:12:20.055 But there are other things that people believe 00:12:20.055 --> 00:12:23.466 that are significant, like the efficacy of homeopathy, 00:12:23.466 --> 00:12:27.017 or that evolution is just, you know, sort of a crazy idea 00:12:27.017 --> 00:12:30.048 by scientists without any legs, or, you know, evolution, 00:12:30.048 --> 00:12:32.604 all that sort of thing, or global warming. 00:12:32.604 --> 00:12:36.005 These sorts of ideas don't really have any validity, 00:12:36.005 --> 00:12:38.080 that you can't trust the scientists. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:40.323 Now, we've got to solve that problem, because that's 00:12:40.323 --> 00:12:44.401 a critically important problem, and you might say, 00:12:44.401 --> 00:12:47.030 "Well, okay, how are we gonna solve that problem with SETI?" 00:12:47.030 --> 00:12:49.429 Well, let me suggest to you that SETI obviously can't 00:12:49.429 --> 00:12:51.092 solve the problem, but it can address the problem. 00:12:51.092 --> 00:12:54.035 It can address the problem by getting young people 00:12:54.035 --> 00:12:57.033 interested in science. Look, science is hard, it 00:12:57.033 --> 00:13:00.086 has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, 00:13:00.086 --> 00:13:05.021 and that's the result of 400 years of science, right? 00:13:05.021 --> 00:13:07.500 I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century 00:13:07.500 --> 00:13:10.090 you could become an expert on any field of science 00:13:10.090 --> 00:13:13.004 in an afternoon by going to a library, 00:13:13.004 --> 00:13:15.025 if you could find the library, right? 00:13:15.025 --> 00:13:18.641 In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab, 00:13:18.641 --> 00:13:21.388 you could make major scientific discoveries 00:13:21.388 --> 00:13:23.613 in your own home. Right? Because there was all this 00:13:23.613 --> 00:13:26.488 science just lying around waiting for somebody to pick it up. 00:13:26.488 --> 00:13:28.081 Now, that's not true anymore. 00:13:28.081 --> 00:13:30.509 Today, you've got to spend years in grad school 00:13:30.509 --> 00:13:34.007 and post-doc positions just to figure out what 00:13:34.007 --> 00:13:36.063 the important questions are. 00:13:36.063 --> 00:13:38.058 It's hard. There's no doubt about it. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:38.058 --> 00:13:40.367 And in fact, here's an example: the Higgs boson, 00:13:40.367 --> 00:13:42.276 finding the Higgs boson. 00:13:42.276 --> 00:13:44.076 Ask the next 10 people you see on the streets, 00:13:44.076 --> 00:13:46.414 "Hey, do you think it's worthwhile to spend billions 00:13:46.414 --> 00:13:49.055 of Swiss francs looking for the Higgs boson?" 00:13:49.055 --> 00:13:51.376 And I bet the answer you're going to get, is, 00:13:51.376 --> 00:13:53.033 "Well, I don't know what the Higgs boson is, 00:13:53.033 --> 00:13:54.265 and I don't know if it's important." 00:13:54.265 --> 00:13:56.064 And probably most of the people wouldn't even know 00:13:56.064 --> 00:13:58.511 the value of a Swiss franc, okay? 00:13:58.511 --> 00:14:01.041 And yet we're spending billions of Swiss francs on this problem. 00:14:01.041 --> 00:14:03.194 Okay? So that doesn't get people interested in science 00:14:03.194 --> 00:14:05.070 because they can't comprehend what it's about. 00:14:05.070 --> 00:14:06.687 SETI, on the other hand, is really simple. 00:14:06.687 --> 00:14:08.303 We're going to use these big antennas and we're going to 00:14:08.303 --> 00:14:11.055 try to eavesdrop on signals. Everybody can understand that. 00:14:11.055 --> 00:14:13.064 Yes, technologically, it's very sophisticated, 00:14:13.064 --> 00:14:15.070 but everybody gets the idea. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:15.070 --> 00:14:19.008 So that's one thing. The other thing is, it's exciting science. 00:14:19.008 --> 00:14:21.422 It's exciting because we're naturally interested 00:14:21.422 --> 00:14:23.647 in other intelligent beings, and I think that's 00:14:23.647 --> 00:14:25.071 part of our hardwiring. 00:14:25.071 --> 00:14:26.631 I mean, we're hardwired to be interested 00:14:26.631 --> 00:14:29.432 in beings that might be, if you will, competitors, 00:14:29.432 --> 00:14:33.015 or if you're the romantic sort, possibly even mates. Okay? 00:14:33.015 --> 00:14:35.026 I mean, this is analogous to our interest in things that 00:14:35.026 --> 00:14:37.047 have big teeth. Right? 00:14:37.047 --> 00:14:38.521 We're interested in things that have big teeth, and you 00:14:38.521 --> 00:14:41.066 can see the evolutionary value of that, and you can also see 00:14:41.066 --> 00:14:44.754 the practical consequences by watching Animal Planet. 00:14:44.754 --> 00:14:47.088 You notice they make very few programs about gerbils. 00:14:47.088 --> 00:14:49.144 It's mostly about things that have big teeth. 00:14:49.144 --> 00:14:52.091 Okay, so we're interested in these sorts of things. 00:14:52.091 --> 00:14:56.026 And not just us. It's also kids. 00:14:56.026 --> 00:14:59.453 This allows you to pay it forward by using this subject as a 00:14:59.453 --> 00:15:02.685 hook to science, because SETI involves all kinds of science, 00:15:02.685 --> 00:15:04.675 obviously biology, obviously astronomy, 00:15:04.675 --> 00:15:08.009 but also geology, also chemistry, various scientific 00:15:08.009 --> 00:15:12.009 disciplines all can be presented in the guise of, 00:15:12.009 --> 00:15:13.338 "We're looking for E.T." 00:15:13.338 --> 00:15:17.795 So to me this is interesting and important, and in fact, 00:15:17.795 --> 00:15:21.033 it's my policy, even though I give a lot of talks to adults, 00:15:21.033 --> 00:15:23.701 you give talks to adults, and two days later they're back where they were. 00:15:23.701 --> 00:15:26.623 But if you give talks to kids, you know, 00:15:26.623 --> 00:15:30.775 one in 50 of them, some light bulb goes off, and they think, 00:15:30.775 --> 00:15:32.576 "Gee, I'd never thought of that," and then they go, 00:15:32.576 --> 00:15:34.368 you know, read a book or a magazine or whatever. 00:15:34.368 --> 00:15:36.050 They get interested in something. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:36.050 --> 00:15:41.024 Now it's my theory, supported only by anecdotal, 00:15:41.024 --> 00:15:43.047 personal anecdotal evidence, but nonetheless, 00:15:43.047 --> 00:15:45.520 that kids get interested in something between the ages 00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:48.056 of eight and 11. You've got to get them there. 00:15:48.056 --> 00:15:50.676 So, all right, I give talks to adults, that's fine, but I try 00:15:50.676 --> 00:15:53.001 and make 10 percent of the talks that I give, 00:15:53.001 --> 00:15:55.078 I try and make those for kids. 00:15:55.078 --> 00:15:58.054 I remember when a guy came to our high school, actually, 00:15:58.054 --> 00:16:01.030 it was actually my junior high school. I was in sixth grade. 00:16:01.030 --> 00:16:03.510 And he gave some talk. All I remember from it 00:16:03.510 --> 00:16:05.085 was one word: electronics. 00:16:05.085 --> 00:16:07.646 It was like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," right, 00:16:07.646 --> 00:16:10.044 when he said "plastics," whatever that means, plastics. 00:16:10.044 --> 00:16:12.039 All right, so the guy said electronics. I don't remember 00:16:12.039 --> 00:16:14.043 anything else. In fact, I don't remember anything 00:16:14.043 --> 00:16:16.053 that my sixth grade teacher said all year, 00:16:16.053 --> 00:16:18.067 but I remember electronics. 00:16:18.067 --> 00:16:20.719 And so I got interested in electronics, and you know, 00:16:20.719 --> 00:16:23.044 I studied to get my ham license. I was wiring up stuff. 00:16:23.044 --> 00:16:26.022 Here I am at about 15 or something, doing that sort of stuff. 00:16:26.022 --> 00:16:27.605 Okay? That had a big effect on me. 00:16:27.605 --> 00:16:29.317 So that's my point, that you can have a big effect 00:16:29.317 --> 00:16:32.033 on these kids. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:32.033 --> 00:16:35.694 In fact, this reminds me, I don't know, a couple years ago 00:16:35.694 --> 00:16:39.020 I gave a talk at a school in Palo Alto 00:16:39.020 --> 00:16:41.033 where there were about a dozen 11-year-olds 00:16:41.033 --> 00:16:42.005 that had come to this talk. 00:16:42.005 --> 00:16:44.521 I had been brought in to talk to these kids for an hour. 00:16:44.521 --> 00:16:46.795 Eleven-year-olds, they're all sitting in a little semi-circle 00:16:46.795 --> 00:16:49.039 looking up at me with big eyes, and I started, 00:16:49.039 --> 00:16:50.695 there was a white board behind me, and I started off 00:16:50.695 --> 00:16:53.533 by writing a one with 22 zeroes after it, and I said, 00:16:53.533 --> 00:16:55.896 "All right, now look, this is the number of stars 00:16:55.896 --> 00:16:58.768 in the visible universe, and this number is so big 00:16:58.768 --> 00:17:02.116 there's not even a name for it." 00:17:02.116 --> 00:17:04.581 And one of these kids shot up his hand, and he said, 00:17:04.581 --> 00:17:06.086 "Well, actually there is a name for it. 00:17:06.086 --> 00:17:09.020 It's a sextra-quadra-hexa-something or other." Right? 00:17:09.020 --> 00:17:13.016 Now, that kid was wrong by four orders of magnitude, 00:17:13.016 --> 00:17:15.488 but there was no doubt about it, these kids were smart. 00:17:15.488 --> 00:17:17.456 Okay? So I stopped giving the lecture. 00:17:17.456 --> 00:17:20.039 All they wanted to do was ask questions. 00:17:20.039 --> 00:17:24.031 In fact, my last comments to these kids, at the end I said, 00:17:24.031 --> 00:17:26.063 "You know, you kids are smarter 00:17:26.063 --> 00:17:31.005 than the people I work with." Now — (Laughter) 00:17:31.005 --> 00:17:32.334 They didn't even care about that. 00:17:32.334 --> 00:17:35.028 What they wanted was my email address 00:17:35.028 --> 00:17:39.013 so they could ask me more questions. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:17:39.013 --> 00:17:42.172 Let me just say, look, my job is a privilege 00:17:42.172 --> 00:17:43.795 because we're in a special time. 00:17:43.795 --> 00:17:46.580 Previous generations couldn't do this experiment at all. 00:17:46.580 --> 00:17:48.405 In another generation down the line, 00:17:48.405 --> 00:17:50.021 I think we will have succeeded. 00:17:50.021 --> 00:17:53.502 So to me, it is a privilege, and when I look in the mirror, 00:17:53.502 --> 00:17:56.309 the facts are that I really don't see myself. 00:17:56.309 --> 00:17:58.073 What I see is the generation behind me. 00:17:58.073 --> 00:18:00.099 These are some kids from the Huff School, fourth graders. 00:18:00.099 --> 00:18:03.044 I talked there, what, two weeks ago, something like that. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:03.044 --> 00:18:07.654 I think that if you can instill some interest in science 00:18:07.654 --> 00:18:10.613 and how it works, well, that's a payoff 00:18:10.613 --> 00:18:13.056 beyond easy measure. Thank you very much. 00:18:13.056 --> 00:18:19.047 (Applause)