Astronomer Jill Tarter Answers Alien Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

hi I'm Jill tarter and today we're gonna do some et support we'll talk about life beyond Earth first question comes from at John Makuta if you found intelligent life on another planet would you tell the public the truth or keep it a secret absolutely no way we would keep this a secret John we are going to tell the world it's just not possible to keep this kind of thing a secret and we don't intend to at Korac says extraterrestrial etiquette how should a humanity interact with alien intelligence I have to say that although we're really proud of ourselves and we think that we are the pinnacle of evolution the top dog on this planet if someone else can get from their star to our planet they are in fact a lot more technologically advanced I would say the etiquette is we're gonna play by their rules antonio paris says why don't we assume ET uses radio to communicate is setting a waste of time and millions of dollars what do you think well me I think obviously not that's what I've spent my career doing trying to answer this really really old human question of are we alone in the cosmos why do we use radio well we use radio and optical wavelengths particularly radio travels across the very vast distances between the stars in our galaxy without being scattered or absorbed by the dust so at least appease the fairy paradox mathematically the universe should be teeming with intelligent life so why don't we see extraterrestrial versions in all directions really interesting question the answer is we've hardly begun to look let me give you an example if that volume of space we need to explore is equal to the volume of all the world's oceans in 50 plus years we've observed only about one hot tubs worth of the ocean maybe it's not so surprising that we haven't detected anything yet we need to think in terms of cosmic times and not human lifetimes before we decide we're alone because we haven't found anything at Elie Maloney fit wants to know should NATO and the US military developed planetary defense systems in case of an extraterrestrial threat oh come on get real I think what we should develop a defense system against asteroids near-earth objects rocks that have our name on it and that in fact could be big enough that a collision with earth could be civilization ending think about the dinosaurs they didn't have a space program if they had maybe they wouldn't be extinct at Jodee Scott info is math a universal language to make contact with another intelligence or is this just anthropocentrism probably if you're going to be building any kind of transmitter or receiver you need math so in that sense it's universal but now we're thinking the way that we express math may be shaped by the very configuration of our own human brains math may be universal the function may be universal but it may be that we will have a difficult time understanding someone else's expression of that math you don't know love to have that problem at Rachel eight four seven nine nine nine seven four at what year do you think we will discover aliens if ever and Rachel I can't answer that question all I can say is that if we don't search we won't succeed it's an open question and one that I think perhaps the 21st century will give us an answer to at vinyl on tour aliens will land on earth you have only five songs to explain what music means to mankind what songs would you choose well I think the songs of my youth are probably totally alien to to you rather than songs I might go with Bach because I think that is just the most beautiful music we've ever created Johnny be good that was on the Voyager Golden Record as well as AZ box so music is a personal taste I'd send back and I'd brag at a car bunny we assumed aliens look different from us what if their intelligence is unrecognizable how do you give them an IQ test think about how are we going to interact with them are we detecting deliberate messages in optical or radio wavelengths that they've sent us are they here looking us in the face that's going to determine how we interact with them if they can get here they're a lot smarter than we are you can forget the test we'll just follow their rules at Skip's ABS even if there is other intelligent life in the universe is our civilization even worth contacting yeah I suspect we are we're doing a lot of things that are maybe not the wisest but we are us we are different than they are I think the most interesting thing in the universe might be how diverse the laws of physics and chemistry can make life how many different ways can evolution end up producing creatures that are intelligent technological even microbial how many different ways can you make life that might be the biggest question of the cosmos and one that there'd be interested in finding out what happened here at Bobby boliya wants to know did US fighter pilots see a UFO I don't know I've seen those videos too I don't know what they are I don't know whether the equipment which was in fact quite new was behaving properly all I can say is that there's no evidence that indicates that that's spacecraft from another intelligent species more than likely we have some problems with our own equipment it's going to take more than that to prove that aliens are here at will MC Kim how much do we think this recent UFO news is prepping the public for a discussion of actual contact I think that like many things our interest in this question is cyclical we get really hyped up about it somebody makes a claim people discuss it and then after a while the Cardassians do something else and we lose interest what if we are the aliens that we seek and earth was once populated by a much more intelligent life force until we destroyed it well think about that the planet is really quite active about the oldest rocks we can find are a little bit more than four billion years old and the planet we think formed about four-and-a-half billion years ago now these rocks produce the stones called zircons and the zircon sometimes have inclusions that have biological ratios of light carbon to heavy carbon so we're thinking maybe life went back that far but we don't find any huge trash heaps we don't find any evidence of foundries or large structures or roads let's just say we don't see any evidence for that intelligence is proportional to the number of thoughts we can simultaneously call and hold in our minds as we explore new ideas so what would we look like to an alien species who could juggle ten or twenty times as many thoughts as our smartest human we wouldn't look very intelligent would we we have to ask questions not in our language but in their language we have to try and interact with non-human intelligence in ways that they perceive and we're beginning to do a little bit of that with whales and with dolphins and with an of other species we can actually understand that prairie dogs standing up in the field are saying to one another hey there's the big guy over there in the yellow sweater he's back other intelligence is going to have to speak to us in our language if we're going to have any ability to communicate at Gd Bassett thought experiment if Rai could lead to an existential threat and there may be other intelligent life in the universe what about their AI yeah good question I think it's quite likely that what we will encounter is their artificial intelligence it can be propagated in so many different ways between the stars as we build artificial intelligence and hopefully as they built their artificial intelligence they're going to be constraints that build in to the structure goals that remain consistent with goals that we have for ourselves if it's rogue game over what is the organizing principle behind intelligent life whoa what a question we can't defined intelligence what we have done to make progress in this field is to use technology as our proxy for intelligence so if we detect evidence of someone else's technology out there we will assume that at some time there was an intelligent entity that created the technology best we can do at Z Shaw if there's a new planet cool own the real estate will NASA get into the property development business great question we have confirmed over 4,000 other planets around other stars the question of who owns them who can mine them is you know a work in progress the UN Treaty of the outer space says that it is possible to benefit from an extra-terrestrial body without owning it that no one owns it facing this metal law if you wish on the law of the Seas no one owns the ocean but people can in fact salvage and fish and benefit from the oceans that's kind of the playing field that we're dealing now with extrasolar bodies it's a work in progress we'll see how it plays out at code is broken oh yeah my code usually is if aliens exist who could be far far older than humanity and have used similar coms tech to us how come we've not heard a thing because the cosmos is pretty damn big we're talking about signals here for communication maybe we need to look for something else maybe we're doing an absolutely exquisite job and looking for just the wrong thing maybe we haven't figured out that the thing that intelligent advanced societies use to communicate is Zeta rays and we haven't discovered them yet at k-8 mommy Lisa what if they are trying to communicate but we just don't realize it yet yes absolutely what if they're using some technology some physics that we haven't yet invented we could be missing a signal the only strategy is to stay around long enough so that we get smart enough that we invent the technology and then we can find the signal at captain fish bugs do aliens have belly buttons yes well that's a good question I'd love to know the answer to that we look at various forms of life on this planet not all of them have belly buttons so it's possible that aliens don't either at et exists oh I like that when will we hear from et and there are lots of hash tags here I don't know the answer to that question I don't know if et is out there I think it's likely the universe appears to be relatively bio friendly we know about lots of planets around other stars we now know about lots of life-forms on this planet that exist in extreme extreme for us environments there's a chance and the only way that we'll know is to look and when I can't answer that question talk to my great-granddaughter she may have an answer for you that was et support that's what I know and mostly what I don't know but I'm looking forward to learning more with all of you

Channel: WIRED

Views: 448,902

Rating: 4.9268398 out of 5

Keywords: aliens, seti, jill tarter, jill tarter aliens, jill tarter seti, jill tarter wired, astronomer, astronomer tech support, astronomer wired, alien tech support, aliens tech support, twitter tech support, wired, wired tech support, jill tarter seti aliens, seti aliens, extra terrestrials, extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial life, astronomer expert, alien expert, aliens expert, expert on aliens, seti alien research, alien research, wired aliens, aliens wired, seti research

Id: PoL4IlCXDsM

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2019