Dean explores METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) with astrobiologist Julia DeMarines. Discover the potential risks and rewards of humanity 'making noise' in the cosmos.
Send us your thoughts at lookingup@wvxu.org or post them on social media using #lookinguppodcast
Additional resources referenced in this episode:
- Sullivan, W. (1966). We are not alone: Search for extraterrestrial life [Documentary].
- U.S. Senate. (1993, September 21). Senate session. Congressional Record.
- Sagan, C., & Drake, F. (n.d.). Carl Sagan and Frank Drake on life in the universe (featuring Steven Spielberg) [Video].
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean Regas: Are we alone in the universe? I mean, with 300 billion stars or so in our Milky Way galaxy, there should be, like, tons of options. Our latest figure is that one out of every five stars in our galaxy has a planet. So, that's like 60 billion planets. And that's just in our galaxy. Multiply that by the approximate 2 trillion galaxies in our universe.
I mean, you gotta think. One of those planets, at least one, is similar in size to Earth, has a similar origin, history, atmosphere, temperature. One planet. Out there has to have the same things that we had to start life. It's just statistics, probabilities. It's definite, right? From the studios of Cincinnati Public Radio, I'm your host, Dean Regas, and this is Looking Up.
The show that takes you deep into the cosmos or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so great.
My guest today is Julia DeMarines, an astrobiologist, National Geographic Explorer and educator, and science communicator based in Berkeley, California.
So, whenever I start thinking about the possibility of life out there in the universe, I kind of go back to this thing called the Drake Equation, this kind of exercise that was formulated by an American astrophysicist named Frank Drake back in the 1960s.
[Archival Audio, Frank Drake]: Some years ago, it was suggested by Professors Morrison and Cocconi at Cornell that There might be other civilizations in space attempting to send us messages.
Dean Regas: The ultimate thing is we're trying to figure out how many intelligent civilizations, uh, might be out there. You know, some places that might have at least our level of technology, meaning, you know, that they could send signals to us, that they could receive our signals, that kind of thing.
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: This is one of the great questions.
How many advanced civilizations capable At least of radio astronomy are there in the Milky Way galaxy?
Dean Regas: Drake made this equation, and it factors in lots of different things that would help answer that question. You know, how many of these civilizations might there be?
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: Let's call the number of such civilizations by the capital letter N.
Depends on. The total number of stars in the Milky Way, let's call that, um, N sub star.
Dean Regas: He factors in things like the fraction of stars that have planets.
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: Let's call that F sub P.
Dean Regas: The fraction of planets that could support life.
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: Let's call that n sub E.
Dean Regas: The fraction of those that could develop life at some point.
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: Call that F sub L.
Dean Regas: And the fractions of those that go on to make not just life, but intelligent life.
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: Let's call that F sub I.
Dean Regas: The problem is, all those things that go into the Drake equation, we don't know the values of any of them. They are all unknowns. And so, it's basically like, how can we come up with the right answer if we don't know any of the things that go into the equation?
It's not an answer in itself. And I guess some people would say it's not even an equation, but it's an exercise.
[Archival Audio, Carl Sagan]: This equation, due mainly to Frank Drake of Cornell, is only a sentence. The verb is equals.
Dean Regas: And the whole point of the exercise is that when you plug in even the most conservative values for all these unknowns, the answer, no matter what, will come back with the number of civilizations being more than one.
That means, even the worst case scenario, there’s something else out there, or is there?
Well, Julia, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me. I think a lot of people can picture an astronaut and maybe to some degree an astronomer, but what does an astrobiologist do?
Julia DeMarines: So, if you just think about the word astrobiology, when you think of astro, you might think of like what you said, like astronaut or astronomy or things in space.
And biology is the study of life. So, when you combine the two. It's the search for life in the universe.
Dean Regas: Very important to say. Well, would we know life if we saw it? What, what are kind of the things or signatures that we should be looking for with our various telescopes and instruments?
Julia DeMarines: Right. That's a great question because a lot of what astrobiology is, is kind of looking for ourselves.
Earth, we have, A rich example of the diversity of life. So, we can start our search based on what we know life can do here. And there's a lot of like biogeochemists that could probably answer in more details as to sort of the biosignature searches that we are looking at and a biosignature. Could be a lot of different things.
Biosignature or any sort of science of biology, which could range anything from something as simple as like, you know, the oxygen that plants put out, the CO2 that we breathe out, methane from methanogens, or, you know, something as silly as like poop. Like poop is a biosignature. A shell is a biosignature.
So, if we found fossils on Mars, that would be a biosignature. And then we can search for techno signatures. So, techno signature is a sign of technology. We are communicating over long distances via radio waves and other forms of light, like electromagnetic radiation. And the way we transmit is not a natural, I would say, way.
Techno signatures are unnatural phenomena that cannot be explained by natural reasons.
Dean Regas: Is SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, is that still as active as it once was? Are we still listening actively for alien signals?
Julia DeMarines: SETI searches have, like, waxed and waned throughout history. In fact, in 1993, there was an amendment sent out.
[Archival Audio, Senate Session]: Modestly, we made a step with respect to the elimination of a program, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Julia DeMarines: Basically, saying like, we don't want taxpayer dollars to go for finding little green men.
[Archival Audio, Senate Session]: The SETI program, which has taken on new life in a recast name, but the same old program, which is targeted to spend a hundred million dollars over the next 10 years.
And the Senate have taken a step on that.
Julia DeMarines: That amendment is still in existence, and it's quite complex for government agencies like NASA to allocate funding for SETI searches. Our current SETI searches have really expanded, thanks in large part to philanthropy. One of the coolest features, I would say, of this sort of new SETI campaign is that they're doing something called commensal observing, where They're sort of tapping into existing astronomical research.
So, if someone books time on a telescope. They can also sort of get that data and just run it through some algorithms to be like, is there anything funky that's happening in that sector without taking up telescope time dedicated for pure SETI. So that's also happening and a lot more telescopes are coming online.
And yeah, I would say right now it's a, it's quite a growing field, which is exciting.
Dean Regas: So, I saw your presentation this summer at the Bryce Canyon National Park Astronomy Festival and. You threw out this other idea, which I thought was really fascinating, this idea of METI, messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence, because the idea is, well, why should we wait to hear from them?
Maybe we should send them some signals. How, how are we broadcasting to the universe?
Julia DeMarines: Yeah, great question. So, because we communicate using radio waves, you know, Wi Fi, Bluetooth, all of those radio towers you see. And we also communicate to our long distance, uh, satellites through the deep space network, also in the radio spectrum.
Now, METE, Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, that would be, like, not just our unintentional chatter, but these would be dedicated, Messages that are being sent with the intent of eliciting a response.
Dean Regas: Well, I mean, it sounds like we're a pretty loud civilization. We're, you know, broadcasting out here.
And I think one of the, the really interesting questions you posed to the audience was that you said, well, should we be doing this? Should we be broadcasting to aliens? Here we are. Are there potential pitfalls along with benefits to alerting aliens of our presence?
Julia DeMarines: Should is like a values question. What do we value?
Do we value discovery, say, at the risk of destroying our civilization? Should we be sending out an SOS signal because we can't figure out climate change and we are desperate? Should we be doing this because we are bored and want to know if there are aliens around? Most sci fi movies have bad aliens that want to blow up stuff.
So, you could think of like a million disastrous things that aliens would, would want with us or want to do to us. You could also think of a million benefits like maybe there's aliens are only made full of hope and joy and love and are there to be benign communicators of their existence to make us feel less alone.
Maybe they have advanced technology that they are very willing to share and want to help budding civilizations work through their technological adolescence. So, all of these things could be benefits that we might be missing out on. But. Both of these are extremely creative spaces, and it's hard to sort of One against the other.
Dean Regas: Well, and I, I really remember you asked the question and kind of took a poll and it seemed like 50 percent of the audience said, yeah, we should totally do this. And 50 percent said, no, we shouldn't do this. Is that a kind of a representative of, of the responses you've gotten from audiences when you ask them that question?
Julia DeMarines: I would say it's usually majority yes, at the beginning of the presentation. And it usually flips. Somewhat after the presentation.
Dean Regas: You got the audience more worried by the end of your talk, which was fascinating in itself. You're right. Yeah. I remember that now.
Julia DeMarines: It actually it surprised me. I feel like there were still a lot of people saying yes, so I didn't do a very good job But yeah, usually like the these sort of pilot programs I'm working on a project called dear et where I’m working with a philosopher because some of these like should Could value questions fall into that realm You Working on, like, having well informed conversations with people because it kind of depends on, like, the situation and the values of different human groups.
Dean Regas: Do you think life is out there? And I always go out on a limb, and I predict, because I'm an optimist, I predict that we're going to find alien life this century, mostly because I won't be alive that long. But what do you think? Is there life out there? And is the discovery.
Julia DeMarines: Gosh, I mean, I wish I had a gut feeling. Like, I want it to be so bad, right? Like, I think statistically it's improbable that we're alone. Because if it happened on Earth, likely happened somewhere else. The tricky part is proving it. There's something called the Fermi paradox. If the universe is teeming with life, then where is everybody?
Turns out the universe is vast, like things are far away. And so there might be another intelligent civilization that is on the way other side of our galaxy or on another galaxy super far away that even if they did send messages, those would never get to us. And we would never really know if they were there at all.
We have to really prove it and I'm excited for all of the astrobiologists and SETI folks out there that are dedicating their lives and their brain powers to trying to answer these questions.
Dean Regas: Yeah, that's why I say it'll happen by the year 2100. That's what, yeah, prove me wrong. Well, no, I hope so. I know.
That's what I think too. It's, it's one of those things where it's like, it's wishful thinking and I'm with you there on the statistics, but also on the like, well, that's not enough without, without the actual proof. Well, Julia, this has been so much fun talking to you. Uh, thanks for, uh, expanding our minds, thinking about messaging to message or not to message.
Uh, it's been a lot of fun.
Julia DeMarines: Thanks so much for having me and, and for sharing your time with me in this vast universe.
Dean Regas: I gotta say, I, I really pondered that question that Julia gave us. Should we Try to make contact. Should we announce ourselves to the universe? Here we are! Well, I mean my first reaction always is like, well duh, of course we should reach out. We should tell people we're here. We want to find other life forms.
And the more I thought about it, uh, why, why should we, what does it matter if they're aliens out there or not aliens out there? What does it do? So, to find out if somebody's out there and answer why, I mean, they could come destroy us. They, they probably could use their advanced technology to squash us and steal our precious water, air, I don't know, whatever we have is precious.
But even after thinking about this, even after thinking of the negatives, I still think the answer to this question must be telling us something about us. It's definitely not telling us anything about the aliens. And I think it's telling me that I'm an eternal optimist. And I think that aliens, although advanced as they may be, they just would be nicer.
They would not be warlike. I mean, come on, they would, they would have figured it out. They would figure out stuff that we haven't figured out. That's what I hope. And again, that doesn't say anything about the aliens. Just says something about me. I'm a dreamer.
Looking Up with Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio. Kevin Reynolds and I created the podcast in 2017. Ella Rowen and Marshall Verbsky produce and edit our show and are waiting for the day when aliens syndicate our podcast. Think of the space royalties we'll get from the Diamond Planet.
Jenell Walton is our Vice President of Content, and Ronny Salerno is our Digital Platforms Manager. Our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran, and our cover art is by Nicole Tiffany. I'm Dean Regas. Keep looking up!
