ET is (probably) out there -- get ready
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0:00 - 0:01Is E.T. out there?
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0:01 - 0:04Well, I work at the SETI Institute.
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0:04 - 0:05That's almost my name. SETI:
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0:05 - 0:08Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
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0:08 - 0:09In other words, I look for aliens,
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0:09 - 0:13and when I tell people that at a cocktail party, they usually
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0:13 - 0:16look at me with a mildly incredulous look on their face.
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0:16 - 0:18I try to keep my own face somewhat dispassionate.
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0:18 - 0:21Now, a lot of people think that this is kind of idealistic,
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0:21 - 0:23ridiculous, maybe even hopeless,
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0:23 - 0:27but I just want to talk to you a little bit about why I think
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0:27 - 0:31that the job I have is actually a privilege, okay,
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0:31 - 0:33and give you a little bit of the motivation for my getting into
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0:33 - 0:35this line of work, if that's what you call it.
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0:35 - 0:38This thing — whoops, can we go back?
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0:38 - 0:41Hello, come in, Earth.
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0:41 - 0:42There we go. All right.
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0:42 - 0:44This is the Owens Valley Radio Observatory
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0:44 - 0:48behind the Sierra Nevadas, and in 1968,
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0:48 - 0:50I was working there collecting data for my thesis.
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0:50 - 0:54Now, it's kinda lonely, it's kinda tedious, just collecting data,
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0:54 - 0:56so I would amuse myself by taking photos at night
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0:56 - 0:59of the telescopes or even of myself,
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0:59 - 1:04because, you know, at night, I would be the only hominid
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1:04 - 1:06within about 30 miles.
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1:06 - 1:08So here are pictures of myself.
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1:08 - 1:12The observatory had just acquired a new book,
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1:12 - 1:13written by a Russian cosmologist
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1:13 - 1:17by the name of Joseph Shklovsky, and then expanded
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1:17 - 1:19and translated and edited by a little-known
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1:19 - 1:22Cornell astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan.
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1:22 - 1:24And I remember reading that book,
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1:24 - 1:26and at 3 in the morning I was reading this book
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1:26 - 1:29and it was explaining how the antennas I was using
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1:29 - 1:34to measure the spins of galaxies could also be used
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1:34 - 1:36to communicate, to send bits of information
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1:36 - 1:39from one star system to another.
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1:39 - 1:40Now, at 3 o'clock in the morning when you're all alone,
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1:40 - 1:43haven't had much sleep, that was a very romantic idea,
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1:43 - 1:47but it was that idea -- the fact that you could in fact
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1:47 - 1:48prove that there's somebody out there
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1:48 - 1:51just using this same technology --
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1:51 - 1:53that appealed to me so much that 20 years later I took a job
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1:53 - 1:55at the SETI Institute. Now, I have to say
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1:55 - 2:00that my memory is notoriously porous, and I've often
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2:00 - 2:02wondered whether there was any truth in this story,
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2:02 - 2:03or I was just, you know, misremembering something,
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2:03 - 2:06but I recently just blew up this old negative of mine,
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2:06 - 2:07and sure enough, there you can see
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2:07 - 2:10the Shklovsky and Sagan book underneath that
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2:10 - 2:12analog calculating device.
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2:12 - 2:13So it was true.
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2:13 - 2:15All right. Now, the idea for doing this, it wasn't very old
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2:15 - 2:17at the time that I made that photo.
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2:17 - 2:21The idea dates from 1960, when a young astronomer
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2:21 - 2:23by the name of Frank Drake used this antenna
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2:23 - 2:27in West Virginia, pointed it at a couple of nearby stars
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2:27 - 2:30in the hopes of eavesdropping on E.T.
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2:30 - 2:32Now, Frank didn't hear anything.
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2:32 - 2:34Actually he did, but it turned out to be the U.S. Air Force,
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2:34 - 2:37which doesn't count as extraterrestrial intelligence.
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2:37 - 2:40But Drake's idea here became very popular
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2:40 - 2:42because it was very appealing — and I'll get back to that —
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2:42 - 2:46and on the basis of this experiment, which didn't succeed,
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2:46 - 2:47we have been doing SETI ever since,
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2:47 - 2:50not continuously, but ever since.
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2:50 - 2:51We still haven't heard anything.
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2:51 - 2:53We still haven't heard anything.
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2:53 - 2:55In fact, we don't know about any life beyond Earth,
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2:55 - 2:58but I'm going to suggest to you that that's going to change
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2:58 - 3:00rather soon, and part of the reason, in fact,
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3:00 - 3:03the majority of the reason why I think that's going to change
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3:03 - 3:04is that the equipment's getting better.
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3:04 - 3:07This is the Allen Telescope Array, about 350 miles
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3:07 - 3:09from whatever seat you're in right now.
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3:09 - 3:11This is something that we're using today
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3:11 - 3:13to search for E.T., and the electronics have gotten
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3:13 - 3:14very much better too.
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3:14 - 3:17This is Frank Drake's electronics in 1960.
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3:17 - 3:19This is the Allen Telescope Array electronics today.
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3:19 - 3:23Some pundit with too much time on his hands
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3:23 - 3:26has reckoned that the new experiments are approximately
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3:26 - 3:30100 trillion times better than they were in 1960,
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3:30 - 3:32100 trillion times better.
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3:32 - 3:34That's a degree of an improvement that would look good
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3:34 - 3:36on your report card, okay?
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3:36 - 3:39But something that's not appreciated by the public is,
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3:39 - 3:41in fact, that the experiment continues to get better,
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3:41 - 3:44and, consequently, tends to get faster.
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3:44 - 3:46This is a little plot, and every time you show a plot,
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3:46 - 3:47you lose 10 percent of the audience.
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3:47 - 3:50I have 12 of these. (Laughter)
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3:50 - 3:54But what I plotted here is just some metric
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3:54 - 3:57that shows how fast we're searching.
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3:57 - 3:59In other words, we're looking for a needle in a haystack.
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3:59 - 4:01We know how big the haystack is. It's the galaxy.
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4:01 - 4:04But we're going through the haystack no longer
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4:04 - 4:06with a teaspoon but with a skip loader,
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4:06 - 4:08because of this increase in speed.
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4:08 - 4:09In fact, those of you who are still conscious
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4:09 - 4:12and mathematically competent,
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4:12 - 4:14will note that this is a semi-log plot.
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4:14 - 4:18In other words, the rate of increase is exponential.
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4:18 - 4:21It's exponentially improving. Now, exponential is an
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4:21 - 4:24overworked word. You hear it on the media all the time.
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4:24 - 4:25They don't really know what exponential means,
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4:25 - 4:27but this is exponential.
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4:27 - 4:30In fact, it's doubling every 18 months, and, of course,
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4:30 - 4:32every card-carrying member of the digerati knows
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4:32 - 4:33that that's Moore's Law.
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4:33 - 4:36So this means that over the course of the next
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4:36 - 4:40two dozen years, we'll be able to look at a million star systems,
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4:40 - 4:42a million star systems, looking for signals
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4:42 - 4:44that would prove somebody's out there.
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4:44 - 4:46Well, a million star systems, is that interesting?
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4:46 - 4:49I mean, how many of those star systems have planets?
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4:49 - 4:51And the facts are, we didn't know the answer to that
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4:51 - 4:54even as recently as 15 years ago, and in fact, we really
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4:54 - 4:57didn't know it even as recently as six months ago.
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4:57 - 4:59But now we do. Recent results suggest
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4:59 - 5:03that virtually every star has planets, and more than one.
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5:03 - 5:06They're like, you know, kittens. You get a litter.
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5:06 - 5:08You don't get one kitten. You get a bunch.
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5:08 - 5:11So in fact, this is a pretty accurate estimate
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5:11 - 5:15of the number of planets in our galaxy,
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5:15 - 5:17just in our galaxy, by the way,
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5:17 - 5:20and I remind the non-astronomy majors among you
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5:20 - 5:22that our galaxy is only one of 100 billion
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5:22 - 5:24that we can see with our telescopes.
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5:24 - 5:26That's a lot of real estate, but of course,
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5:26 - 5:27most of these planets are going to be kind of worthless,
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5:27 - 5:30like, you know, Mercury, or Neptune.
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5:30 - 5:32Neptune's probably not very big in your life.
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5:32 - 5:36So the question is, what fraction of these planets
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5:36 - 5:38are actually suitable for life?
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5:38 - 5:39We don't know the answer to that either,
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5:39 - 5:41but we will learn that answer this year, thanks to
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5:41 - 5:43NASA's Kepler Space Telescope,
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5:43 - 5:47and in fact, the smart money, which is to say the people who work on this project,
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5:47 - 5:51the smart money is suggesting that the fraction of planets
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5:51 - 5:55that might be suitable for life is maybe one in a thousand,
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5:55 - 5:58one in a hundred, something like that.
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5:58 - 6:00Well, even taking the pessimistic estimate, that it's
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6:00 - 6:03one in a thousand, that means that there are
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6:03 - 6:06at least a billion cousins of the Earth
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6:06 - 6:07just in our own galaxy.
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6:07 - 6:10Okay, now I've given you a lot of numbers here,
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6:10 - 6:14but they're mostly big numbers, okay, so, you know,
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6:14 - 6:16keep that in mind. There's plenty of real estate,
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6:16 - 6:18plenty of real estate in the universe,
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6:18 - 6:21and if we're the only bit of real estate in which there's
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6:21 - 6:24some interesting occupants, that makes you a miracle,
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6:24 - 6:27and I know you like to think you're a miracle,
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6:27 - 6:29but if you do science, you learn rather quickly that
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6:29 - 6:31every time you think you're a miracle, you're wrong,
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6:31 - 6:33so probably not the case.
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6:33 - 6:35All right, so the bottom line is this:
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6:35 - 6:38Because of the increase in speed, and because of the
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6:38 - 6:43vast amount of habitable real estate in the cosmos, I figure
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6:43 - 6:45we're going to pick up a signal within two dozen years.
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6:45 - 6:48And I feel strongly enough about that to make a bet with you:
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6:48 - 6:50Either we're going to find E.T. in the next two dozen years,
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6:50 - 6:54or I'll buy you a cup of coffee.
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6:54 - 6:57So that's not so bad. I mean, even with two dozen years,
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6:57 - 6:59you open up your browser and there's news of a signal,
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6:59 - 7:00or you get a cup of coffee.
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7:00 - 7:04Now, let me tell you about some aspect of this that
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7:04 - 7:06people don't think about, and that is,
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7:06 - 7:10what happens? Suppose that what I say is true.
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7:10 - 7:12I mean, who knows, but suppose it happens.
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7:12 - 7:14Suppose some time in the next two dozen years
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7:14 - 7:16we pick up a faint line that tells us
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7:16 - 7:18we have some cosmic company.
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7:18 - 7:20What is the effect? What's the consequence?
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7:20 - 7:22Now, I might be at ground zero for this.
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7:22 - 7:24I happen to know what the consequence for me would be,
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7:24 - 7:27because we've had false alarms. This is 1997,
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7:27 - 7:29and this is a photo I made at about 3 o'clock in the morning
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7:29 - 7:31in Mountain View here, when we were watching
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7:31 - 7:33the computer monitors because we had picked up a signal
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7:33 - 7:36that we thought, "This is the real deal." All right?
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7:36 - 7:40And I kept waiting for the Men in Black to show up. Right?
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7:40 - 7:44I kept waiting for -- I kept waiting for my mom to call,
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7:44 - 7:47somebody to call, the government to call. Nobody called.
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7:47 - 7:50Nobody called. I was so nervous
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7:50 - 7:52that I couldn't sit down. I just wandered around
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7:52 - 7:55taking photos like this one, just for something to do.
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7:55 - 7:57Well, at 9:30 in the morning, with my head down
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7:57 - 7:59on my desk because I obviously hadn't slept all night,
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7:59 - 8:01the phone rings and it's The New York Times.
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8:01 - 8:04And I think there's a lesson in that, and that lesson is
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8:04 - 8:07that if we pick up a signal, the media, the media will be on it
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8:07 - 8:11faster than a weasel on ball bearings. It's going to be fast.
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8:11 - 8:13You can be sure of that. No secrecy.
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8:13 - 8:16That's what happens to me. It kind of ruins my whole week,
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8:16 - 8:19because whatever I've got planned that week is kind of out the window.
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8:19 - 8:21But what about you? What's it going to do to you?
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8:21 - 8:23And the answer is that we don't know the answer.
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8:23 - 8:24We don't know what that's going to do to you,
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8:24 - 8:27not in the long term, and not even very much in the short term.
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8:27 - 8:30I mean, that would be a bit like
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8:30 - 8:33asking Chris Columbus in 1491, "Hey Chris,
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8:33 - 8:35you know, what happens if it turns out that there's a
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8:35 - 8:39continent between here and Japan, where you're sailing to,
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8:39 - 8:41what will be the consequences for humanity
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8:41 - 8:43if that turns out to be the case?"
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8:43 - 8:45And I think Chris would probably offer you some answer
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8:45 - 8:48that you might not have understood, but it probably
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8:48 - 8:51wouldn't have been right, and I think that to predict
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8:51 - 8:53what finding E.T.'s going to mean,
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8:53 - 8:54we can't predict that either.
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8:54 - 8:55But here are a couple things I can say.
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8:55 - 8:59To begin with, it's going to be a society that's way in advance of our own.
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8:59 - 9:01You're not going to hear from alien Neanderthals.
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9:01 - 9:02They're not building transmitters.
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9:02 - 9:04They're going to be ahead of us, maybe by a few thousand
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9:04 - 9:07years, maybe by a few millions years, but substantially
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9:07 - 9:10ahead of us, and that means, if you can understand
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9:10 - 9:13anything that they're going to say, then you might be able
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9:13 - 9:16to short-circuit history by getting information from a society
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9:16 - 9:18that's way beyond our own.
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9:18 - 9:21Now, you might find that a bit hyperbolic, and maybe it is,
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9:21 - 9:24but nonetheless, it's conceivable that this will happen,
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9:24 - 9:26and, you know, you could consider this like, I don't know,
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9:26 - 9:28giving Julius Caesar English lessons and the key
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9:28 - 9:30to the library of Congress.
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9:30 - 9:32It would change his day, all right?
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9:32 - 9:34That's one thing. Another thing that's for sure
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9:34 - 9:38going to happen is that it will calibrate us.
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9:38 - 9:41We will know that we're not that miracle, right,
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9:41 - 9:43that we're just another duck in a row,
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9:43 - 9:45we're not the only kids on the block, and I think that that's
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9:45 - 9:48philosophically a very profound thing to learn.
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9:48 - 9:51We're not a miracle, okay?
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9:51 - 9:54The third thing that it might tell you is somewhat vague,
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9:54 - 9:57but I think interesting and important,
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9:57 - 9:59and that is, if you find a signal coming from a more
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9:59 - 10:01advanced society, because they will be,
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10:01 - 10:04that will tell you something about our own possibilities,
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10:04 - 10:08that we're not inevitably doomed to self-destruction.
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10:08 - 10:10Because they survived their technology,
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10:10 - 10:11we could do it too.
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10:11 - 10:13Normally when you look out into the universe,
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10:13 - 10:16you're looking back in time. All right?
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10:16 - 10:18That's interesting to cosmologists.
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10:18 - 10:21But in this sense, you actually can look into the future,
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10:21 - 10:23hazily, but you can look into the future.
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10:23 - 10:29So those are all the sorts of things that would come from a detection.
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10:29 - 10:31Now, let me talk a little bit about something that happens
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10:31 - 10:35even in the meantime, and that is,
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10:35 - 10:40SETI, I think, is important, because it's exploration, and
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10:40 - 10:42it's not only exploration, it's comprehensible exploration.
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10:42 - 10:45Now, I gotta tell you, I'm always reading books about
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10:45 - 10:48explorers. I find exploration very interesting,
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10:48 - 10:51Arctic exploration, you know, people like Magellan,
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10:51 - 10:54Amundsen, Shackleton, you see Franklin down there,
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10:54 - 10:57Scott, all these guys. It's really nifty, exploration.
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10:57 - 11:00And they're just doing it because they want to explore,
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11:00 - 11:02and you might say, "Oh, that's kind of a frivolous opportunity,"
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11:02 - 11:05but that's not frivolous. That's not a frivolous activity,
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11:05 - 11:07because, I mean, think of ants.
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11:07 - 11:09You know, most ants are programmed to follow one another
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11:09 - 11:11along in a long line, but there are a couple of ants,
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11:11 - 11:14maybe one percent of those ants, that are what they call
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11:14 - 11:16pioneer ants, and they're the ones that wander off.
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11:16 - 11:18They're the ones you find on the kitchen countertop.
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11:18 - 11:20You gotta get them with your thumb before they
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11:20 - 11:22find the sugar or something.
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11:22 - 11:24But those ants, even though most of them get wiped out,
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11:24 - 11:27those ants are the ones that are essential to the survival
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11:27 - 11:31of the hive. So exploration is important.
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11:31 - 11:34I also think that exploration is important in terms of
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11:34 - 11:39being able to address what I think is a critical
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11:39 - 11:42lack in our society, and that is the lack of science literacy,
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11:42 - 11:46the lack of the ability to even understand science.
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11:46 - 11:48Now, look, a lot has been written about the
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11:48 - 11:51deplorable state of science literacy in this country.
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11:51 - 11:54You've heard about it.
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11:54 - 11:56Well, here's one example, in fact.
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11:56 - 11:58Polls taken, this poll was taken 10 years ago.
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11:58 - 12:01It shows like roughly one third of the public thinks
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12:01 - 12:02that aliens are not only out there, we're looking for them
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12:02 - 12:04out there, but they're here, right?
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12:04 - 12:06Sailing the skies in their saucers and occasionally
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12:06 - 12:10abducting people for experiments their parents wouldn't approve of.
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12:10 - 12:13Well, that would be interesting if it was true,
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12:13 - 12:15and job security for me, but I don't think the evidence is
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12:15 - 12:18very good. That's more, you know, sad than significant.
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12:18 - 12:20But there are other things that people believe
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12:20 - 12:23that are significant, like the efficacy of homeopathy,
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12:23 - 12:27or that evolution is just, you know, sort of a crazy idea
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12:27 - 12:30by scientists without any legs, or, you know, evolution,
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12:30 - 12:33all that sort of thing, or global warming.
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12:33 - 12:36These sorts of ideas don't really have any validity,
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12:36 - 12:38that you can't trust the scientists.
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12:38 - 12:40Now, we've got to solve that problem, because that's
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12:40 - 12:44a critically important problem, and you might say,
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12:44 - 12:47"Well, okay, how are we gonna solve that problem with SETI?"
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12:47 - 12:49Well, let me suggest to you that SETI obviously can't
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12:49 - 12:51solve the problem, but it can address the problem.
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12:51 - 12:54It can address the problem by getting young people
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12:54 - 12:57interested in science. Look, science is hard, it
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12:57 - 13:00has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard,
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13:00 - 13:05and that's the result of 400 years of science, right?
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13:05 - 13:08I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century
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13:08 - 13:10you could become an expert on any field of science
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13:10 - 13:13in an afternoon by going to a library,
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13:13 - 13:15if you could find the library, right?
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13:15 - 13:19In the 19th century, if you had a basement lab,
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13:19 - 13:21you could make major scientific discoveries
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13:21 - 13:24in your own home. Right? Because there was all this
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13:24 - 13:26science just lying around waiting for somebody to pick it up.
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13:26 - 13:28Now, that's not true anymore.
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13:28 - 13:31Today, you've got to spend years in grad school
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13:31 - 13:34and post-doc positions just to figure out what
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13:34 - 13:36the important questions are.
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13:36 - 13:38It's hard. There's no doubt about it.
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13:38 - 13:40And in fact, here's an example: the Higgs boson,
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13:40 - 13:42finding the Higgs boson.
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13:42 - 13:44Ask the next 10 people you see on the streets,
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13:44 - 13:46"Hey, do you think it's worthwhile to spend billions
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13:46 - 13:49of Swiss francs looking for the Higgs boson?"
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13:49 - 13:51And I bet the answer you're going to get, is,
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13:51 - 13:53"Well, I don't know what the Higgs boson is,
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13:53 - 13:54and I don't know if it's important."
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13:54 - 13:56And probably most of the people wouldn't even know
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13:56 - 13:59the value of a Swiss franc, okay?
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13:59 - 14:01And yet we're spending billions of Swiss francs on this problem.
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14:01 - 14:03Okay? So that doesn't get people interested in science
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14:03 - 14:05because they can't comprehend what it's about.
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14:05 - 14:07SETI, on the other hand, is really simple.
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14:07 - 14:08We're going to use these big antennas and we're going to
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14:08 - 14:11try to eavesdrop on signals. Everybody can understand that.
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14:11 - 14:13Yes, technologically, it's very sophisticated,
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14:13 - 14:15but everybody gets the idea.
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14:15 - 14:19So that's one thing. The other thing is, it's exciting science.
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14:19 - 14:21It's exciting because we're naturally interested
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14:21 - 14:24in other intelligent beings, and I think that's
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14:24 - 14:25part of our hardwiring.
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14:25 - 14:27I mean, we're hardwired to be interested
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14:27 - 14:29in beings that might be, if you will, competitors,
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14:29 - 14:33or if you're the romantic sort, possibly even mates. Okay?
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14:33 - 14:35I mean, this is analogous to our interest in things that
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14:35 - 14:37have big teeth. Right?
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14:37 - 14:39We're interested in things that have big teeth, and you
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14:39 - 14:41can see the evolutionary value of that, and you can also see
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14:41 - 14:45the practical consequences by watching Animal Planet.
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14:45 - 14:47You notice they make very few programs about gerbils.
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14:47 - 14:49It's mostly about things that have big teeth.
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14:49 - 14:52Okay, so we're interested in these sorts of things.
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14:52 - 14:56And not just us. It's also kids.
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14:56 - 14:59This allows you to pay it forward by using this subject as a
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14:59 - 15:03hook to science, because SETI involves all kinds of science,
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15:03 - 15:05obviously biology, obviously astronomy,
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15:05 - 15:08but also geology, also chemistry, various scientific
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15:08 - 15:12disciplines all can be presented in the guise of,
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15:12 - 15:13"We're looking for E.T."
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15:13 - 15:18So to me this is interesting and important, and in fact,
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15:18 - 15:21it's my policy, even though I give a lot of talks to adults,
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15:21 - 15:24you give talks to adults, and two days later they're back where they were.
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15:24 - 15:27But if you give talks to kids, you know,
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15:27 - 15:31one in 50 of them, some light bulb goes off, and they think,
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15:31 - 15:33"Gee, I'd never thought of that," and then they go,
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15:33 - 15:34you know, read a book or a magazine or whatever.
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15:34 - 15:36They get interested in something.
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15:36 - 15:41Now it's my theory, supported only by anecdotal,
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15:41 - 15:43personal anecdotal evidence, but nonetheless,
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15:43 - 15:46that kids get interested in something between the ages
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15:46 - 15:48of eight and 11. You've got to get them there.
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15:48 - 15:51So, all right, I give talks to adults, that's fine, but I try
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15:51 - 15:53and make 10 percent of the talks that I give,
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15:53 - 15:55I try and make those for kids.
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15:55 - 15:58I remember when a guy came to our high school, actually,
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15:58 - 16:01it was actually my junior high school. I was in sixth grade.
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16:01 - 16:04And he gave some talk. All I remember from it
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16:04 - 16:05was one word: electronics.
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16:05 - 16:08It was like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," right,
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16:08 - 16:10when he said "plastics," whatever that means, plastics.
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16:10 - 16:12All right, so the guy said electronics. I don't remember
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16:12 - 16:14anything else. In fact, I don't remember anything
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16:14 - 16:16that my sixth grade teacher said all year,
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16:16 - 16:18but I remember electronics.
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16:18 - 16:21And so I got interested in electronics, and you know,
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16:21 - 16:23I studied to get my ham license. I was wiring up stuff.
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16:23 - 16:26Here I am at about 15 or something, doing that sort of stuff.
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16:26 - 16:28Okay? That had a big effect on me.
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16:28 - 16:29So that's my point, that you can have a big effect
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16:29 - 16:32on these kids.
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16:32 - 16:36In fact, this reminds me, I don't know, a couple years ago
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16:36 - 16:39I gave a talk at a school in Palo Alto
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16:39 - 16:41where there were about a dozen 11-year-olds
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16:41 - 16:42that had come to this talk.
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16:42 - 16:45I had been brought in to talk to these kids for an hour.
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16:45 - 16:47Eleven-year-olds, they're all sitting in a little semi-circle
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16:47 - 16:49looking up at me with big eyes, and I started,
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16:49 - 16:51there was a white board behind me, and I started off
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16:51 - 16:54by writing a one with 22 zeroes after it, and I said,
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16:54 - 16:56"All right, now look, this is the number of stars
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16:56 - 16:59in the visible universe, and this number is so big
-
16:59 - 17:02there's not even a name for it."
-
17:02 - 17:05And one of these kids shot up his hand, and he said,
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17:05 - 17:06"Well, actually there is a name for it.
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17:06 - 17:09It's a sextra-quadra-hexa-something or other." Right?
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17:09 - 17:13Now, that kid was wrong by four orders of magnitude,
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17:13 - 17:15but there was no doubt about it, these kids were smart.
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17:15 - 17:17Okay? So I stopped giving the lecture.
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17:17 - 17:20All they wanted to do was ask questions.
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17:20 - 17:24In fact, my last comments to these kids, at the end I said,
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17:24 - 17:26"You know, you kids are smarter
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17:26 - 17:31than the people I work with." Now — (Laughter)
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17:31 - 17:32They didn't even care about that.
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17:32 - 17:35What they wanted was my email address
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17:35 - 17:39so they could ask me more questions. (Laughter)
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17:39 - 17:42Let me just say, look, my job is a privilege
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17:42 - 17:44because we're in a special time.
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17:44 - 17:47Previous generations couldn't do this experiment at all.
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17:47 - 17:48In another generation down the line,
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17:48 - 17:50I think we will have succeeded.
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17:50 - 17:54So to me, it is a privilege, and when I look in the mirror,
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17:54 - 17:56the facts are that I really don't see myself.
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17:56 - 17:58What I see is the generation behind me.
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17:58 - 18:00These are some kids from the Huff School, fourth graders.
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18:00 - 18:03I talked there, what, two weeks ago, something like that.
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18:03 - 18:08I think that if you can instill some interest in science
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18:08 - 18:11and how it works, well, that's a payoff
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18:11 - 18:13beyond easy measure. Thank you very much.
-
18:13 - 18:19(Applause)
- Title:
- ET is (probably) out there -- get ready
- Speaker:
- Seth Shostak
- Description:
-
SETI researcher Seth Shostak bets that we will find extraterrestrial life in the next twenty-four years, or he'll buy you a cup of coffee. At TEDxSanJoseCA, he explains why new technologies and the laws of probability make the breakthrough so likely -- and forecasts how the discovery of civilizations far more advanced than ours might affect us here on Earth.
(Filmed at TEDxSanJoseCA.) - Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 18:40
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for ET is (probably) out there -- get ready | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for ET is (probably) out there -- get ready | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for ET is (probably) out there -- get ready | ||
Thu-Huong Ha accepted English subtitles for ET is (probably) out there -- get ready | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for ET is (probably) out there -- get ready | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for ET is (probably) out there -- get ready | ||
Thu-Huong Ha added a translation |