#9: SETI in a beauty salon
TRANSCRIPT
Corinne Caputo 0:27
Welcome to Pale Blue Pod, the astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend.
Moiya McTier 0:34
Oh, I am Dr. Moiya McTier, a friend to the universe and an astrophysicist and a folklorist, and one half of this hosting super team.
Corinne Caputo 0:42
And I am Corinne Caputo, the other half of this hosting super team. I am a writer, a comedian, and a friend of the universe.
Moiya McTier 0:49
Oh yeah, you are
Corinne Caputo 0:51
recording from today, Moiya.
Moiya McTier 0:53
Okay, so this episode is actually coming out right after my birthday. So we're recording in the time when I'm preparing for my birthday and I needed to get my hair done. So we are recording today. at a hair salon. I'm here to get deep conditioning, steam treatment, and a little trim just to make sure my ends are healthy. Because I already love the natural style of my hair.
Corinne Caputo 1:15
Yeah, you got a suit yourself on your birthday.
Moiya McTier 1:17
You really do. I want to look good. And I just love being in this environment. With all the chatting all the like the sound of the hairdryer. It just brings me back to my childhood.
Corinne Caputo 1:26
It's very community oriented the hair salon and I love it. It really is Corinne, what
Moiya McTier 1:30
are you getting done today?
Corinne Caputo 1:31
Oh, okay, I'm gonna just get a trim. I'm never as adventurous as I want to be for a haircut. So when Trump got elected in 2016, I cut my hair real short. It was like it was the only time I've ever done that. It was definitely a I suddenly need control quickly. I'm gonna get a short hair cut. It didn't look cool, but it's long again. And maybe I'll get layers.
Moiya McTier 1:57
I think you'd look great with layers.
Corinne Caputo 1:58
Yeah, and maybe maybe a curtain bang. Oh, we'll see.
Moiya McTier 2:02
Well, I mean, is that is that a cry for help Corinne?
Corinne Caputo 2:05
Well, I feel like curtain bangs are if you want to dip your toe in something adventurous but you're not ready for the full liquid. They grow out better than other banks. Okay.
Moiya McTier 2:15
I didn't know that.
Corinne Caputo 2:16
Maybe I'll ask for their opinion. They always know better than me. They do.
Moiya McTier 2:19
They're so wise. They know everything. When you said you cut your hair just to gain back some semblance of control. It reminded me of when I used to get really stressed in college and cut my hair in these fits of rage and sorrow. And my roommate would get so concerned. But the last time I did that was right before my senior year of college. I have I have not taken scissors to my hair and angst.
Corinne Caputo 2:44
It's a very toddler like reaction to life. Yeah. Where you're like, Oh, here's scissors. Here's a little bit of freedom. No one's looking at me.
Moiya McTier 2:54
The things you do as an adult to assert your freedom. Yeah, it's just it's a really cathartic feeling like literally getting some weight off of my shoulders for my hair. Now I just go get stressed tattoos. Yes.
Corinne Caputo 3:04
Oh, totally. That's like a much, much more fun and permanent solution
Moiya McTier 3:11
is like, oh, instead of temporarily chopping off something that naturally comes out of my head. Why don't I just go pay a stranger? Yeah, stabbed me millions of times and permanently alter my physical form. That sounds great. There's a
Corinne Caputo 3:25
tattoo shop in Williamsburg called a femoral and they do like long lasting temporary tattoos.
Moiya McTier 3:30
How does that even work?
Corinne Caputo 3:32
I don't know. I feel like it's got to be a henna type thing. But I don't know how long it lasts, but I liked that it was called a femoral. I thought that was a cool, very, uh, Williamsburg name and it and it fits the
Moiya McTier 3:43
space. Absolutely. Okay, so while we're getting our hair done, let's talk about how astronomers search for extraterrestrial life. This was a topic that you were like, I want to know how we find alien. I
Corinne Caputo 3:57
really need to know about this. Yeah, I? Well, not obviously. But I have no personal connection to aliens. So beyond me, I do. I used to watch a lot of like, pre streaming the cable era of trash TV, which was largely and this is still true. It's largely unsolved mysteries are people talking to camera and saying like, this is when I was abducted, and those are always the shows that I would just gobble up.
Moiya McTier 4:26
I think I watched Ancient Aliens. Like why oh my gosh, and I was like, never again.
Corinne Caputo 4:32
I love the ones that people talking to camera and they're just like, they poked my belly button a few times.
Moiya McTier 4:39
That's just a dream. A dream of someone poking your belly button. But I'm
Corinne Caputo 4:44
sitting there and I'm like, oh my god, they did that. But I mean
Moiya McTier 4:47
to an alien to an alien from a species that doesn't reproduce the same way we do. Yeah, they might not have ever seen a belly but yeah, they're like, ooh, why? Why do they have a feed hole? Why
Corinne Caputo 4:58
do you all have this trait? Yeah. Exactly.
Moiya McTier 5:02
Okay, so I have to say this up top, astronomers have not found evidence of extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe, or here on Earth. Let's just keep that all in mind. Everything we're talking about in this episode is how astronomers are trying to find proof or evidence of, of extraterrestrial life, but we haven't found it yet. But we could, they would take my astronomers card away if I didn't. Because so many times I do interviews or I do talks, and someone from the audience will ask me if I believe in aliens, and like I do, I do think they're out there. Also, I'll be very upfront about that as well. But I know that astronomers haven't found evidence yet because we're all such gossipy bitches. We wouldn't be able to keep the secret I remember back in, I want to say like 2017 because it was it was for the TRAPPIST, one system coming out, it was embargoed. People were not supposed to be talking about these results. No one was supposed to know about it, except for the team of researchers and a very small team of journalists covering it. And I knew about that, like three weeks before it came out because of some some rumors some whispers I heard in a classroom with grad students. This wasn't even this wasn't even faculty talking like I know they were, it trickled down. That's
Corinne Caputo 6:22
so funny. We need to like the Dubois of astronomy like do was the anonymous like blind items Instagram account where everyone sends in their celebrity encounters. And it's a lot to keep up with. I just check in now and then but to have that for a while, and that's what I need for aliens.
Moiya McTier 6:37
I'll be your doom offering. Alright, so let's get into into this search the search for extraterrestrial life, or SETI as it's now known. Just quick up top SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life is distinct from the SETI Institute. Oh, okay, because I was gonna say I've heard of the SETI Institute, right? The SETI Institute does a lot of Seti work, but they are not the only people who do SETI work people at NASA, other people funded by government agencies, they they can do work in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, even though they are not employed by the Institute. Got it? Yeah, so they are separate. But this is not a new thing. I feel like a lot of people assume that we've only recently started looking for aliens. It is only in the last 30 years or so that we knew there were planets outside of our solar system. But people have been thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life for 1000s of years. We have evidence we have writing from ancient societies, mostly Greek, because that's where a lot of the writing comes from, or like, that's a lot of the writing that survived. But there were some Greeks like Metro, Doris and Epicurus, who separately wrote about how, why should we be the only ones here? There. If you look into ancient Greek philosophies, there was this one called atomism, where they believe that everything, if you zoom out was structured like an atom with a little nucleus in the in the middle, and then things orbiting around it like our Sun, yeah, middle and then planets orbiting around it. And they're like, Why? Why can't there be other little atomic solar systems like we have with their own planets? And if all of the molecules they didn't have this language like that, and but if all of the molecules to make life happened here, why can't they happen elsewhere? So this is not a new thing. But there were institutions back then that squashed thoughts of extraterrestrial life. Corinne, can you think of perhaps one very influential institution that might have squashed this thought? Could it be the church? It could have been always the fucking Catholic Church.
Corinne Caputo 8:46
They're always doing something bad. There's no fun. I know,
Moiya McTier 8:50
the Catholic Church. They were like, not everyone, we are the center of everything. Yeah, if you say anything to the contrary, we're gonna poison you. They're
Corinne Caputo 8:58
always like pulling their fists back. Ready to fight? They
Moiya McTier 9:02
need they need one of their religious brethren to to hold them back. Like in a bar brawl. So a lot of this idea where we haven't been searching for extraterrestrial life. And a lot of people who say, well, there aren't aliens out there. I think a lot of that thinking comes from the church and how adamant they were, that there was nothing else out there and that we were God's chosen, of
Corinne Caputo 9:25
course. Of course, it's all about control, of course. But
Moiya McTier 9:29
then we have the Copernican revolution, we realize that the Sun is the center of our solar system and not the earth and that the earth is at the center of everything. We started looking at the other planets in our solar system through telescopes and gaining better observational data. We learned more about the nature of stars and planets, and we started thinking about aliens more scientifically, which is where I get excited. Sure. Fast forward to 1960 We're going from ancient Greece to 1960 It's a short leap you And so 1960, according to what I found, was the first modern scientific search for extraterrestrial life. It was led this project in 1960 was led by Frank Drake. If you are interested at all in in Alien science stuff, I'm sure you've heard the name Frank Drake, because of the Drake Equation. Have you heard of the Drake Equation?
Corinne Caputo 10:24
I don't think I have really Oh, that's
Moiya McTier 10:26
such a nice surprise. Well, we'll get to the Drake equation in a bit. But first, I want to talk about Frank Drake's project Ozma, which was this first search for ET life. And he named it after the queen of Oz, like from the from the Wizard of Oz. And he said he he named it that because Oz was an I quote, a place very far away, difficult to reach and populated by exotic beings.
Corinne Caputo 10:51
That if there's anything, it's, it's
Moiya McTier 10:53
that he was like, Yeah, I'm looking for a place far away with exotic beings. So let's name this project. Ozma. And I, oh, I love Frank Drake. I'm so glad that he did this work, rip. He died in September 2022. And he did a lot of great work for astronomy, I'm saying a lot of nice things about him because I'm about to say something really mean, this project was so dumb. This project, I don't think makes any scientific sense, given what we now know about about space. So he took NRA owes the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which we talked about in the light episode, shout out to the radio quiet zone and my favorite region of the electromagnetic spectrum. So if Drake was using an Arios 85 foot antenna at the Green Bank Observatory, and he pointed the telescope at two sunlike stars for six hours a day for three months. Okay. Yes. So that telescope wasn't measuring, like how much light we're getting from it, it was measuring the spectra of the stars. And we talked about spectra a little bit in the light episode. But basically, he was trying to figure out what, like what elements were in the stars, okay, but he was specifically focused on one line, one spectral line, the 1420 megahertz line, megahertz is the frequency. And remember, we talked about how frequency and wavelength are very related. So 1420 megahertz corresponds to 21 centimeters, okay, and wavelength. And the 21 centimeter line is, for astronomers, a famous, famous spectral line, we're nerdy enough to have famous. But this this line, this is the frequency or energy of the photon emitted by hydrogen in the interstellar medium. And Frank Drake was like, Oh, we've discovered this interstellar hydrogen, we know that it's very important to astronomy. Any other sufficiently advanced civilization would also know about this line. And for me, this is this is the jump. This is the leap that I don't appreciate. Just because they know about that emission line, they would use it as a hailing frequency. Like Frank Drake really thought that alien societies would all use the 21 centimeter line as a sort of communication.
Corinne Caputo 13:18
Oh, okay. Okay,
Moiya McTier 13:21
across alien species. I
Corinne Caputo 13:23
certainly if we find it interesting, then they will do
Moiya McTier 13:26
exactly yeah. So I, I admire Frank Drake as a scientist, but he was definitely engaging in some, like, principle,
Corinne Caputo 13:35
some assumptions over here. Yes, yes.
Moiya McTier 13:37
So what assumptions were made that the way we do things is the way everyone is going to do things, and you'll see that play out a lot in this episode. And
Corinne Caputo 13:44
this line doesn't correspond to like, what's necessary for what we define as life? No,
Moiya McTier 13:50
it does not then
Corinne Caputo 13:51
what the heck are you doing, man?
Moiya McTier 13:53
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. So when we're looking in the interstellar medium, and the police between stars, we see a lot of hydrogen gas. So it's the more common lines that we study.
Corinne Caputo 14:07
So how does it narrow the field down in any way? I don't know, the fact that
Moiya McTier 14:11
like, he picked two stars, two stars out of the hundreds of billions in our galaxy to look at, and he was getting
Corinne Caputo 14:18
paid by big. That's actually uh
Moiya McTier 14:22
oh, I wish speaking of money, though, because he only used existing equipment. And he didn't have other labor. Like he was just doing this work himself because he was passionate about it. The project only cost $2,000 light
Corinne Caputo 14:37
in modern time in
Moiya McTier 14:42
the 1960s. It cost $2,000 For him to operate this telescope on that. I know, right? Because he didn't this was a really controversial topic. The public didn't believe in aliens. The public didn't believe that funding government funding should be put towards this type of research. Okay, um, The public is always so worried about what federal funding is going towards that effort, never paying attention to the military. I
Corinne Caputo 15:06
was just gonna say, I learned when I was at the space center that the New York City Department of Ed has a bigger budget than NASA. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 15:15
NASA's budget is a tiny drop in the bucket tiny. We shouldn't maybe we should do an episode about NASA budgets. That would be fun. So it was a very cheap project. He wasn't trying to enrage the public. And that was in 1960. And then about 15 years later, in 1974. Drake crafted the Arecibo message Have you heard of this? I don't think so. So the Arecibo telescope may rest in peace, man rest in power, actually, yeah, was a huge dish, a huge satellite dish in Puerto Rico that was used to send a message with information about Earth and humankind to a globular cluster, which is this little collection of stars in the like, halo of the Milky Way galaxy. And Frank Drake crafted that message. And then we sent these short pulses of a radio signal to transmit this message out into space. Whoa,
Corinne Caputo 16:11
was So the message is just like signals? Or is it like language? Its signal, okay.
Moiya McTier 16:18
So part of one of the goals for for the Arecibo message was to just show how powerful the telescope was. And the the transmitter was that was sending the signal. And it's just it's waves. It's a wave packet. But they they figured out how to take information about like our DNA and our position in space and put it into wave form, so that it can be hopefully interpreted by whoever receives the signal, and it was aimed at the globular cluster M 13. But by the time the lightwaves actually reach that space, M 13, won't be there anymore. It will have moved, maybe something else will will be there instead. But
Corinne Caputo 17:00
wow.
Moiya McTier 17:01
So a lot of people were mad. They're like, why are you sending out the signal, if someone finds it, they might come to us. So you're putting us in danger. But the chances of someone actually receiving that signal are very, very low. And they mostly were just using it to see how powerful the transmitter in Arecibo was. Okay. So that was 1974. This is now decades of Frank Drake and other people involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, repeatedly hearing from the public. We don't like what you do, we don't want to fund it. We don't want you sending out these messages. And the US government was hearing that and stopped funding through the normal channels to get this research done. So in 1984, some of these SETI astronomers got together and decided to start their own nonprofit called the SETI Institute. There it is, and now we're finally at SETI. It's a nonprofit organization that began operating in 1985. Its first officers were Thomas Pierson, who was a business admin person. And Dr. Jill Tarter, a woman after my own heart, who was one of the like, lead, SETI science researchers there. Early trustees included Frank Drake, of course, and Carl Sagan, who was nice enough to give us the name of this podcast. Yes. So studies, the SETI Institute, I'm going to try and be very careful about that. Yeah, this episode, the SETI Institute's goal when it was incorporated, was to focus on research and education around the factors of the Drake equation. So now now we have to get into what the general equation is. Here we are,
Corinne Caputo 18:38
you've really never heard of this. I think maybe I have. I'm looking at our notes and I it's ringing a bell. But again, the alien stuff I was into was the farmers who have been abducted. Not the actual science facts of aliens. I'm just here for the late night trip to the bathroom where you never return.
Moiya McTier 18:59
Great. Maybe maybe get your bellybutton poked. Exactly. Well, if I were coming out this different angle, maybe perhaps like the aliens probing your belly button. I like to think that they would go they would approach it from the front and the back. That's how I would do it. If I was an alien, they
Corinne Caputo 19:18
would be curious. I'm like, is there? Is there something on the back now,
Moiya McTier 19:21
right? Like, what happens if we meet in the middle? You can imagine poking
Corinne Caputo 19:25
something I've never seen? Like, I just think I would stand far away and be like, I don't know about that. Therein
Moiya McTier 19:31
lies the difference between us. And everything. I'm trying to hold myself back from licking every foreign object I see. You're gonna
Corinne Caputo 19:40
go out there and poke it and report back to me, which is the whole dynamic here anyway,
Moiya McTier 19:44
I'm gonna go lick it and report back to you. Perfect. So this this Drake Equation was not from one single mind. Let's get rid of the idea of the lone scientific genius doing all the work on there. own. Instead, this Drake Equation, even though it's named after Frank Drake was agreed upon at a meeting with a lot of astronomers in 1961. And the Drake equation itself is this long list of factors or coefficients. If you remember that word from high school math class, I do flashbacks, right? So it's a long list of factors or coefficients that represent the steps towards an intelligent species or civilization. And when you multiply all of these factors together, you get the number of transmitting Extra Terrestrial societies, okay? So these there are, there are seven of these factors. And n the, the number of like, transmitting societies equals, I'm just, I'm, I'm gonna say all the all the letters out loud, and then I'll tell you what they mean. So n equals r star times f p times ne times FL times fy, times FC times
Corinne Caputo 21:00
L. Okay? Couldn't believe this is an audio
Moiya McTier 21:04
medium, like really? Everyone got that? Everyone got that? Okay, now I'll tell you what it is. Alright, so this this number of transmitting species, the first coefficient starts with our star, which is the formation rate of suitable stars of stars that could lead to life. That's pretty much all stars, except that we do know that the most massive stars like the O and B stars, we should also do an episode on Stellar pipes that'll that's in the works for the future. But these very, very hot stars don't live long enough for life to form. They can only they live about, like 10 to maybe 100 million years. And we know on Earth, at least, it took one or 2 billion years for life to develop. Okay, so that's the formation rate of suitable stars, which again, is is most types of stars. And in the Milky Way Galaxy, for example, we form like a, we probably form about five to 10 stars a year of various masses.
Corinne Caputo 22:05
Wow, that's good for us.
Moiya McTier 22:07
I know, we form we form like a couple solar masses worth of stars every year, but you have to remember that most stars are much less massive than the Sun. So it's not like we're only making one sun like star every year. Right? So that's, that's the our star. The The next factor is the F p, and that is the fraction of stars with planets. Okay, that makes sense, right? So you're like, you're looking for the the number of stars that form. And then you're only interested in the fraction of those stars that have planets, even more specifically, you're interested in the fraction of those stars with planets around them. But those planets have to be habitable, so that that third coefficient, the N E, is the number of potentially habitable planets per system. That makes sense, that makes sense. But there are a lot of assumptions going into this. Okay. Keep that in mind. So that's the number of potentially habitable planets, and then you multiply that again, by the fraction of planets where life appears. And then the fraction of those planets where the life becomes intelligent. And then the fraction of those planets where the intelligent life creates or invents detectable technology, okay.
And then you have to multiply all of this by L, which is the average length of time that a civilization survives at that technological level.
Corinne Caputo 23:34
Oh, okay. Wait, how long is it? How long do we have? Well, I
Moiya McTier 23:38
mean, what the SETI Institute does is try to constrain the values of each of these coefficients, okay, we still aren't totally sure what the star formation rate is, we still aren't totally sure how many planets there should be in a brain system, like on average, and, and we aren't sure how common life is or right, once there is life, how common is intelligence, like, we don't know these things. And that's what the SETI Institute is trying to figure out. Yeah. But this this L factor is interesting, because that brings in the idea that a civilization might be destroyed. Yeah. This brings in philosophical questions like, Is the end of a civilization inevitable as they continue to advance technologically and there have been so many sci fi stories or so many, like short little thought experiments about this? So I think that the L factor there is really important, and yeah, that's really catching me too. Because because I think it really, it's of all of these factors. It's the one that relates to us the most Yes,
Corinne Caputo 24:41
I'm like, oh, immediately, I'm like, How
Moiya McTier 24:43
long do I have? Exactly? It creates that existential dread? We don't know. We have no way of knowing, but I am choosing to be optimistic. I think a lot of people when they start thinking about the average duration of an intelligent system it, they start thinking maybe about the Fermi Paradox.
Corinne Caputo 25:04
Have you heard of this? Yes, I have heard Fermi's Paradox. Yes.
Moiya McTier 25:08
So Fermi's Paradox is like, if there are all of these planets in the galaxy, and we think that life is probably pretty common, where are all the aliens? Why haven't we found them? Why haven't they made contact? Okay, so there are a lot of reasons. There are a lot of reasons not to fall into the trap of the Fermi Paradox. For one space is really big if people are traveling and they don't have faster than light technology, like if that truly is not possible. And it's going to take a society time to spread around the galaxy. But maybe it's also just expensive to travel around the galaxy. Or maybe it's logistically difficult. Or maybe the galaxy is filled with hostile aliens that prevent any sort of spreading of societies or maybe,
Corinne Caputo 25:51
or maybe visited us in the Midwest one night, and they met that man. And he said, they were like, I don't think I don't think we want to be here. And they put him back. And they
Moiya McTier 26:02
that is a common response to the Fermi paradox, which is like maybe we're just being ignored, maybe the aliens came by saw that we ain't shit, they're like decided to leave,
Corinne Caputo 26:11
I don't want a piece of that. Continue as
Moiya McTier 26:13
you were. So there, there are lots of reasons not to fall into the Fermi trap. I think that just because we haven't detected aliens, doesn't mean they aren't out there. And it doesn't mean that these societies are short lived, because that's the thing, right? Like without the L factor. They're the number of transmitting societies that we get from the Drake equation should be fairly high. And so people think that that l factor is what is making it so we aren't seeing any aliens because they don't want us to see them. And then they get worried about us. They're like, Well, we know we're intelligent, and we have technology. But what if we just don't live long enough? Right? We don't last long enough. So I don't really have any any comforting words for you there, then we seem to be doing fine. I mean, like I know, we joke about how the world is on fire. And yes, the oceans did literally catch on fire a couple years ago. But that's because of stuff that we know how to fix. Like, we can fix it. Yeah, I believe in us.
Corinne Caputo 27:10
I'm looking over at my TV. And I'm like, Are the TVs in the salon. And I'm like, they're gonna just route arms and legs and killers, which is clearly not what we mean by technological like death. But it's what it my brain is going to I'm like, right, everything around me is going to grab a little face and stab me in the night.
Moiya McTier 27:31
Korean That's terrifying. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo 27:32
this is where my brain goes. This is what captivated me. Okay, well, I don't think it's gonna happen. No, we're at least we have a few years.
Moiya McTier 27:42
Being very comforting.
Corinne Caputo 27:44
No, and neither is more. Yeah, that's
Moiya McTier 27:47
true. Okay, let me let me try and be a little bit. I don't think the technology is gonna grow face and attack us. Usually, when people say when they talk about technology leading to the end of a civilization, they mean, the energy use that is required to power a technologically advanced civilization, okay, might be, you might need more energy for that than is available. So we can imagine ways that a society might over use some of its resources to generate power for itself. We are at the start of doing it. We're like, you know, we're in the in the stages of that now, but we know how to fix it. science and science fiction have given us a lot of ideas for how to fix this problem of ours. And I do believe we can do it. Let's do it. And even if we're the first alien race to do that, like great, I'll take I'll take that first. Sure. I'll take that when that
Corinne Caputo 28:42
would be amazing.
Moiya McTier 28:44
So this is this is all about the Fermi Paradox. But there's a kind of cute story about how this paradox originated. So it's named the Fermi Paradox after Enrico Fermi or fer me, who was a Nobel Prize winning physicist who was very involved with the Manhattan Project and the and the and the bombs, like he figured out how to do nuclear fusion for us. And then World War Two happens. So thank you, Enrico Fairbanks for me, thanks. So in 1950, Enrico Fermi was having lunch with his colleagues at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, and kind of just like, under his breath, they weren't really talking about about SETI specifically. But under his breath, he muttered, where is everybody? And in the letters that I read it, they said that it was clear he was talking about aliens, but then he did not go on to actually flesh out this this feminine paradox, but he got fairly died a few years later. And then it was other people who remember this conversation or who did their own calculations that talked about how easy it should be for societies to spread around the galaxy, given how long right the universe has been around, even if it takes you a million years to reach a new Star because you can't travel close to the speed of light. The Galaxy has been around for billions of years. So they should certainly spread. Oh,
Corinne Caputo 30:07
that's so fun. I would love to just say something offhand. And then it becomes like a key piece of science.
Moiya McTier 30:16
Like, maybe I should just have people following me around. I'll have my lunches, writing down my little offhand remarks. You should just be muttering all the time, all the time, and then just totally rock the scientific community with it. Yeah, yes, please. I would like that. That's Fermi's Paradox. There are lots of reasons you don't have to fall into that trap. We know that there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. On average, all of those stars should have a couple planets. So there are many hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy. And who's to say that life can only exist on planets that look exactly like Earth. So why why would it? Why
Corinne Caputo 30:51
would it? Yeah.
Hey, it's Corinne. Here's a quick shout out to some of our amazing patrons who are supporting this podcast. Thank you, as always, to our sunlike stars Siân Llewellyn and Finn, and thank you to our latest pre-main sequence stars threes, the charm, Ileana lado and Shannon Henderson. You too can support us hear your name on this podcast and make it to our patron star chart. All by supporting us on Patreon. Find the star chart, Patreon info and more at our website palebluepod[dot]com or by going right to patreon[dot]com/palebluepod.
Moiya McTier 31:30
I know I'm already a doctor of the universe. And I learned a lot of the stuff that we cover on this pod in school, both undergrad and graduate. But I still have to do a lot of research for these episodes, if only to make sure that what I think I remember is accurate. So I spend so much time on the internet like I'm sure all of you, I open new tabs at a rate that might actually be a little bit alarming. But luckily I know of a way to turn that tab opening into something good for the world. I use Tab for a Cause. It's a browser extension that lets you raise money for charity while doing your thing online. So whenever you open a new tab, you'll see a beautiful photo and a small ad. And part of that ad money goes towards a charity of your choice. You can join the team for Pale Blue Pod by signing up at tabforacause[dot]org/palebluepod. That's tabforacause T-A-B-F-O-R-A-C-A-U-S-E [dot]org/palebluepod and I hope you know how to spell the name of the show that you're listening to right now. So browse the internet and make good stuff happen for the world. You can even choose charities that you want to support. Again, that's tabforacause[dot]org/palebluepod.
Corinne Caputo 32:44
I just wanted to let you know that if you like Pale Blue Pod then you might love StarTripper!! It's a travelogue podcast about former file clerk Feston Pyxis as he searches for the zowiest experiences the galaxy has to offer in the tradition of classic sci-fi, anime, with a little bit of Saturday morning cartoons sprinkled in, dive into the action and explore the thriving Cosmos with Feston and his crew. You can listen as they zoom through an intergalactic Death Race, battle a mega beetle live on a popular cooking show, and navigate their way through the eerie dunes of the package dimension. StarTripper!! has a fully immersive sound design, killer music, and is an instant mood lifter. Popular Science even called StarTripper!! "pure joy in a zippy little sci-fi package." Two complete seasons and two space holiday specials are available to listen now wherever you get your podcasts and on StarTripper's website startripperhq[dot]com.
Moiya McTier 33:34
Hi, it's Moiya. Can I interest you in a podcast recommendation? I'm just gonna go ahead and do it. This one is coming from the Multitude collective. And it's called Games and Feelings. Games and Feelings is an advice podcast all about games appropriately. You can join question keeper Eric Silver and the revolving cast of guests as they answer your questions at the intersection of fun and humanity since you know you got to play games with other people. And we're talking all types of games here. Video games, tabletop games, party games, laser tag, escape rooms, even game streams and d&d podcasts. And the people and companies that make these games really anything related to something that you might play. So they'll ask questions like, how do you convince people who have only played Monopoly to play the new board game that you grabbed at the game store? Or is an escape room? A good third date? If these topics sound interesting to you? And if you like to play things, then why don't you level up your emotional intelligence stat and subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts to games, and feelings. New episodes come out every single Friday. So I think I need to tell you what types of information we can learn about exoplanets before I tell you, like how we're actively searching for the alien. Yes, because all of this so far has been you know, the history of Do people think aliens are out there? And now we can actually start talking about how people are looking for them now that most, most scientists would agree. Yes, they are out there, we just need to find them. Okay. So we will definitely be doing at least one episode in the future about exoplanet detection methods, because that is my Yeah. I would not need to do any prep for that episode. That'd be really nice. Moya
Corinne Caputo 35:24
exoplanet makes
Moiya McTier 35:26
you joke Corinne. But it's true, maybe, maybe, maybe I've changed my middle names legally. So we will definitely do that episode or episodes later. But the information that will be helpful to you right now is that we can only observe or directly measure a few pieces of data about a planet outside of our solar system, we can measure how big the planet is, like its its physical size, its radius, we can also measure its maths, we can figure out how far away the planet is from its star, which gives us an idea about how hot or cold the planet might be, as long as we also know how hot the star is. But that is just that's like an estimate, because we don't know what's going on inside the planet. We might have some basic information about the planet's atmosphere if it's big enough, thanks to spectroscopy. And we might have an idea about how shiny or how reflective the planet is, astronomers call that albedo. And you can do this by like measuring how much light you're getting from the planet as it's rotating around. If you're getting a lot of light from the planet, specifically, it's a shiny planet, and there might be ice on its surface. If you're not getting a lot of light from this planet, then it's probably not very reflective. And maybe there's just like a lot of dirt. Scientists do have lists of like the reflectivity of different substances like trees, dirt, water, ice. It's really cool. It's so cool.
Corinne Caputo 36:56
I love how much you're showing me that it's a lot of, especially in astronomy, it's like, deductive like, well, if we if this is true, then this is true. And I mean, that's how I solve problems in day to day life all the time. So it's just so fun to see it on a large scale, because science can feel so untouchable and like, Yeah,
Moiya McTier 37:15
especially to a science that is literally untouchable. Yeah, to me, I say all the time. I've never I can't touch a star. Yeah, I study stars around the galaxy. Astronomy is fundamentally an observational science, we can't run experiments, we can only make control groups out of like, observe there. Yeah, enough stuff out in the universe. So we do have to do creative deductive reasoning work to learn about space, I love it. All of those things that we can learn about planets, they come from different planet detection methods. So we'll be talking about that in the future episode. But that list, size, mass distance from Star, some information about the atmosphere and how shiny the surfaces. And then in the future, I did a project in grad school, where I came up with a method to figure out how bumpy a planet is. We can't do that with current technology. But soon we will also be able to I say soon, like in the next 10 to 15 years, we'll also be able to learn about the surface features of planets. That's so thanks to my work.
Corinne Caputo 38:14
Thanks to your muttering at lunch.
Moiya McTier 38:16
Yes, exactly. Actually, one of my projects in grad school did happen because one of my advisors had a random shower thought. And then he came into work after that shower. And he was like, Hey, man, have you ever thought of this? That's so fun. I was like, no, but let me spend the fourth year of grad school answering this question. That's amazing. And I did. That's a true story. But that list of things that we can learn. That's all we know about planets. So anytime you hear someone on the news, say that we've found an Earth like planet or that we've found a planet that is habitable, take that with many grains of salt, like be pretty skeptical about that, because we don't have the ability right now with our current technology to learn much about these individual planets. Okay, so we're doing we're doing a lot of we're making a lot of assumptions when we make claims of habitability. But with those things that we can learn, scientists have gotten very creative in manipulating those pieces of data to try and eke out any sort of information about the existence of life on that planet. Broadly speaking, the two types of evidence that astronomers are looking for when we're searching for life, when we're doing the SETI work, are techno signatures and bio signatures, okay, techno signatures are signatures of technology existing on that world, and bio signatures are our signatures of life existing on that world. Remember, that one of the factors in Drake's equation was the fraction of intelligent life that produces and in my notes, this isn't metallics, detectable technology. So the technology part was always really important to the SETI Institute from the beginning from incorporation. researchers, scientists and science fiction writers, they've done a lot for this work, have gotten creative when imagining what that technology could be the aliens produce. And then the scientists who like the astronomers who are looking for these techno signatures have had to get extremely creative and figuring out how to find it. So some things that some like pieces of technology that we might be looking for are lights that they use during night time, okay, or maybe some sort of big structure like a big spaceship that they that they build outside of their world. Or maybe they are like we did with the Arecibo message, maybe they're also transmitting something. So we're looking for these short bursts. But each of those pieces of technology has like a different way that we would try. Yeah, find it. Most of these are by trying to measure how much light you get from the planet and the star. And based on like, the change in light over time figuring out what created that light. Yeah, so one of my, one of my favorite techno signature papers that I ever read, was by, I'm not gonna I'm not going to name the author because he sucks, but the paper was, they were looking for nightlife on exoplanets that aliens going out and clubbing. Like, there, they are picturing an alien Manhattan, and I love it. And that's
Corinne Caputo 41:22
what we're looking for. I'm only going there if they're cool. And it's a city like, if
Moiya McTier 41:27
I can club. So as the planet orbits the star, the planet itself will block some of the stars light, okay, between us and the star. That's normal. We search for planets using that method all the time. It's called transit photometry. And I will absolutely nerd out about it in a future. But for now, for the for the searching for nightlife. As the planet goes around the star, it's also rotating because planets orbit, and they rotate, we have a year on Earth. And we also have a day. Yeah, on Earth. If we can see the night side of the planet, like when it's when the planet is between us and the star, we are looking at the night side, if that night side is brighter than it should be, based on the light that we've been measuring from the system over time, if the night side just looks bright, we would say they have they have some nightlight has night. That's a growing city right there. Or so I talked about mega structures, these alien megastructures is a term that gets thrown around a lot. One of the most famous of, of these mega structures is called a Dyson Sphere. Have you heard of beats?
Corinne Caputo 42:36
No, but I'm picturing a Dyson vacuum which Yeah, right.
Moiya McTier 42:40
You know, far off, I think that Dyson vacuums have like a sphere that rotates. I don't think that that's not part of that.
Corinne Caputo 42:50
I can remember it that way. But the
Moiya McTier 42:52
idea is that if a civilization gets so technologically advanced, they would need more power, but they might not have enough energy on their planet. Okay, so what they would start to do is harness the energy of their star. So a Dyson Sphere is this hypothetical thing I was, I think maybe first or like, early on, it was talked about in science fiction, the Dyson sphere would be this structure that they build around their star of like solar panels to capture energy, and then and then funnel it towards their technology. And we would be able to detect that if, because the, the sphere itself would heat up, it would collect energy from the star, it would block the stars light if it's opaque, but then it would heat up and emit in the infrared part of the spectrum. So we would be able to detect that. And I just love how creative we can get with like, not just the wavelength that we're observing in like you, you can see different things if you observe in the optical versus the infrared. We talked about that in the light episode, but also like the shapes of the signals you're looking for. It's really Oh, yeah, I just, there are so many ways to look for techno signatures. And I I'm just really happy that we have that. So the government, the US Federal Government has recently become more interested in funding techno signature research. So now people at NASA people at federal labs, people at universities that are funded by the government, they are now getting to do more techno signature research, but it's also being funded pretty heavily by private people like by by the private sector. I think the biggest funding for techno signature research right now from the private sector is coming from the breakthrough listen program. breakthrough in general is this series of projects aimed at finding aliens pretty much. It's funded by Yuri Milner, Yuri and Julia, his wife, Milner, and they gave $100 million to break not not all a breakthrough. Just breakthrough. Listen. Wow. $100 million is paid out over 10 years to look for techno signatures specifically,
Corinne Caputo 45:04
that's really cool.
Moiya McTier 45:08
putting so much money into this, that
Corinne Caputo 45:09
is so much money, especially when Drake did it was it was Drake, right who did it for $2,000.
Moiya McTier 45:16
But he was also looking different.
Corinne Caputo 45:18
A different thing. But so funny that we've made the leap from $2,000 to 10 million a year for 10 years.
Moiya McTier 45:25
What would Frank Drake have done like he Oh, my God, he
Corinne Caputo 45:28
would have pointed to the three stars.
Moiya McTier 45:30
You're right. Again, rip. Yeah, two stars. Okay, so that's, that's techno signatures very similar. But, but distinct is the search for bio signatures. These are signs of biological processes on a planet instead of technical ones. So we're not looking for light that they created, we're not looking for any big mega structures, we're looking for stuff that just like happens in their bodies. So we have studied chemical reactions here on earth well enough to know that there are some molecules, there are some compounds that only exist where there is life, because natural processes don't produce it, or don't produce it in high enough quantities to be measured, okay. And then the LEAP there is that if they detect those types of compounds on other planets, they would expect that natural processes on those planets work the same way. So they aren't producing these molecules naturally, but are producing them in an alien bodies. Okay. Some of these molecules are oxygen, methane, nitrous oxide, dimethyl. sulfide, a couple years ago, there was this big story about astronomers fight or thinking that they found it turned out not to be true. But they thought they found phosphine on Venus, which is a bio signature because it's very related to a robic like digestive processes, oh, you find them a lot in, like in garbage dumps here on Earth are bacteria like producing that. And that's not to say that these molecules don't exist without life. Like, we know that there's there's oxygen around, there's, there's methane around. But only life can produce it on Earth at high enough levels that we would expect to detect it in the next planet. And again, we are making assumptions about the biological processes of those aliens, and also the natural processes of those planets, right? I don't know if we can be 100% certain that the chemical reactions would work just the same way on those other planets, you know, they might have drastically different conditions, very different temperatures and pressures. So who knows?
Corinne Caputo 47:46
Yeah, we're really assuming that what we're going to find is a human or like something close to what we have here on Earth? And who knows what we don't know. Yeah,
Moiya McTier 47:54
I, I like to be very generous and say that astronomers know, life out there wouldn't look like us. But we're trying to constrain our search to make it easier for us. We're looking for things that we we know produced some type of life. Yeah. And we are the type of life that we know best. Yeah. So these, these bio signature searches, rely less on light, like the techno signature searches, and more on spectroscopy, more on measuring the elements that you would see in a planet's atmosphere. But there are some light things you can do. If you have, like, I remember seeing this paper about algae blooms. If you have like a lake or something that has algae in it, it will bloom seasonally, like when the planet is in different conditions, so we can measure like the color of the planet over time. And if it's green, some parts of the year and not green, other parts of the year were like algae. Or if we can see, this is very similar if we can see seasonal changes in albedo. And remember albedo is how reflective the surface of the planet is. So if it's very reflective part of the year, and very absorptive, not very reflective the other part of the year, then, you know, maybe ice is just gonna say is that ice melting? Yeah, it's ice melting, or it's trees, like blooming and then dying. So we look for that a lot. And these biosignatures searches are much easier to do in our own solar system. Sure, because the planets are closer. Some of the planets we can actually send stuff to. So the rovers and other machines on Mars are searching through those rocks, like some of them have instruments on board to look for organic compounds and molecules. The Cassini spacecraft that we sent to Saturn and its moons flew through these jets of water that shoot out of one of Saturn's moons called Enceladus. And we knew I'm pretty sure we knew already that that moon Enceladus had an icy surface but liquid water underneath that I see sheet. And we sent Cassini flying through one of those jets of water and analyzed the water. And what we found was was like a mixture of organic compounds and delicious saltiness that lead to life. And we have this mission that will be flying on Titan, another moon of Saturn flying through its atmosphere. The mission is called dragonfly. Because it will look like a little dragonfly just floating, hovering through the atmosphere of Titan. And it's going to be collecting samples to see if there are organic compounds there. That's so fun. So we are actively searching for stuff in our solar system. Enceladus is something that astronomers are excited about Europa, which is one of the moons of Jupiter it also has this ice sheet covering a liquid water ocean underneath. People are excited about that. And people are very excited about dragonfly on Titan. That's so
Corinne Caputo 50:54
cool. I had no idea about the plumes of water even like, oh, faithful, but out. Yeah, it feels so normal. And like, like very earthy.
Moiya McTier 51:05
Yeah, correct. There's, you can find elements of earth. Everywhere else in the universe. I love it. It's the same stuff just arranged in different ways.
Corinne Caputo 51:13
That's amazing.
Moiya McTier 51:14
I read is a bit of a tangent I read come as you are by Emily Nagurski earlier this year. And one of the things she really focuses on in the early chapters is, it's all it's all about, like bodies and sexual pleasure. And one of the things she says over and over again, is that all of our bodies are just the same parts but rearranged differently. Like even across genders like thing, you know. And I like to think of space the same way like everything is the same parts. It's just arranged differently. That's
Corinne Caputo 51:43
really fun. It feels like a Lego thing of like, I can use these pieces and make it in this way now.
Moiya McTier 51:49
Yes, exactly. Well, I
Corinne Caputo 51:51
do have a fun activity for us about aliens. And this is way closer to how I think of aliens. Oh good is it makes perfect. It's perfectly fine. If this is challenging. It is a series of true false questions about the movie Aliens.
Moiya McTier 52:12
I've never seen it. So this will be fun. Neither have I.
Corinne Caputo 52:17
I think I may have seen it on my friend Chelsea's house a few years ago, but I don't remember if that's what we watch. We watched a few movies that night. I thought okay. Let's say aliens the movie. Okay. Well, I'll give you a brief like overview of what alien is. It's a movie starring Sigourney Weaver and an alien. There's more to it than that. But that is what I know about it. For sure.
Moiya McTier 52:43
Good. I'm going in with this. With this much information. I'm so prepared true
Corinne Caputo 52:47
false. Alien. The movie is a 1979 film directed by Ridley Scott. Oh,
Moiya McTier 52:53
shit. Okay. So, the thing about true false quizzes is that usually it's in the details. So like, I could say true, but you're like No, it's 1970 or 1970
Corinne Caputo 53:06
though that when I wrote these I didn't I didn't try to trick Yeah, okay.
Moiya McTier 53:12
I I'm pretty sure that's true. It is true. Korean just a fun thing about Ridley Scott. My favorite commercial ever is a seven minute commercial. directed by Ridley Scott for Hennessy. I've never heard of this for Hennessy X. Oh, and it's their whole thing is like exploring the different worlds which represent the different flavor notes in Hennessy X. Oh
Corinne Caputo 53:41
my god, that's so fun.
Moiya McTier 53:43
I have watched this seven minute commercials so many times. I'm gonna watch this as soon as we're done, please do. So. That's what I know about Ridley Scott. And now I know he directed alien. Okay, next true false.
Corinne Caputo 53:53
Alien. The movie was met with mixed reviews on release, but was a box office success.
Moiya McTier 54:00
And it's a false. I don't know why it's true. It's true. It's true. It was
Corinne Caputo 54:03
met with mixed reviews, but it was a
Moiya McTier 54:06
success. I was like, maybe it was met with great reviews but a failed office because that happens sometimes. That
Corinne Caputo 54:13
happens a lot. Well, luckily, alien success. Okay,
Moiya McTier 54:18
good job. Well, that's good job. Aliens. Why? There are so many yes, there's movies in the franchise
Corinne Caputo 54:22
of them. I don't think I asked you about how many there are, but there are many. Okay, alien the movie was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the Library of Congress.
Moiya McTier 54:36
I refuse to believe is true. Corinne are all of these true? Well
Corinne Caputo 54:46
I think there's one that okay. There's one that might be false coming up, but it's just so deductive. Now you're going to know. Okay, well, here's the next one. Alien, the alien in the movie Alien. He has a full set of human teeth like a real man.
Moiya McTier 55:03
No, true. I know they're called Zeno morphs. Are they? I know that. I know. They erupt from your belly. Oh my god, they do they have human teeth. Why do they have human teeth? Well,
Corinne Caputo 55:14
I don't know if they're human teeth. Clearly he owned. That
Moiya McTier 55:17
was a that was a key a key word in the question.
Corinne Caputo 55:21
I wrote the questions and I've picked the answers in this unscientific way. So to me he has human teeth like a real man.
Moiya McTier 55:34
So the question should have been true, false. I Corinne this alien has human.
Corinne Caputo 55:40
Okay, that's it. That's the question. Okay, next question. The movie Aliens writer Dan O'Brien. also worked on Star Wars.
Moiya McTier 55:51
False. True. Do you make him I'm just gonna say
Corinne Caputo 55:54
false for everything he did computer animation and graphic displays in the miniature and optical effects unit the year before alien came out. Oh, that was cool.
Moiya McTier 56:04
I can see the overlap there. Lots of lots of science. Yeah, effects needed. Probably
Corinne Caputo 56:09
it was probably a smaller world to have like the sci fi movie industry. I imagine. I'm sure
Moiya McTier 56:13
everyone knows everyone. They're like, Hey, you want to hire Jim over there? That's just one lot over. Just
Corinne Caputo 56:19
go get him. I think he rapped on his other thing. Okay, last one. It's not it's not false.
Moiya McTier 56:28
Thanks. I actually have been sitting here like you're like, like, what is the false one? Will that to like what little raccoon hands but also the like perfectionist? Ace. A plus studio for me is like, I gotta get it right. So many wrong. No,
Corinne Caputo 56:41
no, you're doing great. This is actually the best score you can get is a 50. Bridge. Okay, in 2019 students at North Bergen High School in New Jersey adapted the film into a play. Oh,
Moiya McTier 56:58
I know. It's true. And I need to know so much more about how did they how do they do the eruption? That's such a good question. I don't
Corinne Caputo 57:04
know about the like how they did any of the effects but Ridley Scott found out about it was so like excited. He paid for them to do an encore of the show. And Sigourney Weaver attended.
Moiya McTier 57:19
Did Ridley Scott attended?
Corinne Caputo 57:20
I don't think he did. Oh, Lisa. Wikipedia didn't say that. He did. But maybe they didn't care if he went and it was like way more remarkable that Sigourney Weaver went? Yeah, she's remarkable. But there is a stage adaptation of this that a high school did and Sigourney Weaver seen it.
Moiya McTier 57:37
I love that so much. And that
Corinne Caputo 57:39
concludes the alien game. Wow,
Moiya McTier 57:42
what? What a lovely game, where the questions are a bit more made up.
Corinne Caputo 57:49
In the same way we don't know much about aliens. We don't know much about how to write a quiz.
Moiya McTier 57:54
Exactly. Yeah, so we're we're not we're not a quiz podcast. Can't be good at everything. That's true. That's true. You know what? I firmly believe that you cannot be good at everything and you should not we should
Corinne Caputo 58:07
be divided about fair. Yes. Yeah, it would be really rude of me actually.
Moiya McTier 58:11
Leave some awesomeness for the rest of us. Corinne, please. Well, that is perfect timing that we just finished this quiz. And my, my deep conditioning treatment is done. I feel steamed. My hair is so moisturized. And and these curls are gonna be poppin I can already tell
Corinne Caputo 58:28
birthday curls. Let's hit up some alien nightlife.
Moiya McTier 58:32
We're gonna let's go let's go clubbing on an exoplanet. Yes. And we'll know we'll know which ones have the good clubs based on their nightlife. Might light nightlife profile. That's really hard to say. That's
Corinne Caputo 58:44
a mouthful. Yeah, tell I'm gonna warm up for the next.
Moiya McTier 58:49
So listeners, wherever you are, whatever your hair looks like, remember that you are space shy.
Pale Blue Pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the Multitude Productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shea McMullin. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Mischa Stanton.
Corinne Caputo 59:19
Stay in touch with us and the universe by following @PaleBluePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website palebluepod[dot]com we're a member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Pale Blue Pod, you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude[dot]productions.
Moiya McTier 59:38
If you want to support Pale Blue Pod financially, join our community over at patreon[dot]com/palebluepod. For just about $1 per episode, you get a shout out on one of our shows and access to director's commentary for each episode. The very best way, though, to help Pale Blue Pod grow is to share it with your friends. So send this episode, this link, to one person who you think will like it and we will appreciate you for forever.
Corinne Caputo 1:00:04
Thanks for listening to Pale Blue Pod! You'll hear us again next week. Bye!