Carl Sagan On Alien Civilizations

if there are other civilizations which are older than our own and have got much further than we have they must have very advanced technologies and I wonder what forms these technologies take well again very difficult to estimate but there are stars which are billions of years older than our Sun some of them very likely have planets and therefore I can imagine civilizations immensely beyond the capabilities of our own what capabilities those are no one can tell in the same sense that even the most fantastic prognostications from the middle of the 19th century about the technology the 20th century all fell short people like Joe van asked to imagine what transportation devices people would have in 1950 imagine the kind of Victorian living room yes with plush velvet furniture in a gondola at the bottom of an enormous balloon which went from New York to San Francisco and only a few weeks and he was of course the most imaginative speculative thinker of the 19th century others would have been more cautious so it's very difficult to predict far into the future even a hundred years when not only new technology but new scientific principles may be discovered so far we've been talking about contact either by radio or direct physical contact by space probes but there might be other means of doing it it does I know sound very like science fiction to talk about teleportation or force travel but do you think this is entirely out of the question at the moment and if so should we be considering it seriously well there's very little in science which is absolutely out of the question but I don't know of any evidence which suggests that we should invest a lot of time and money on those particular ventures although I would not oppose anyone who thought that it was a useful investment of his time then what should we be doing about this research I would say that there are there are several lines of approach all of which look promising it should be pursued further one is laboratory work on the question of the origin of life making the molecules which here we're able to reproduce themselves and led eventually to us secondly a study of the organic chemist in places like Jupiter comets and the interstellar medium it's remarkable that the molecules of life are littering the cosmos thirdly the space vehicle exploration of the neighboring planets in particular for life or life related compounds if it turns out for example that Mars is lifeless that is not a major disappointment because then we have two planets near each other in space and time life developed on one and not on the other you have the classic case of an experiment and a control and be very important to investigate why life on the earth and not on Mars but even more exciting would be if Mars turns out to have life for us to investigate what kind of life it is how similar how different from life on earth that will immensely broaden the science of biology and then there is certainly the serious work long-term patient cautious investigation of other stars for possible signals being sent our way after all we have made a start and I'm thinking of course of Pioneer 10 which has bypassed Jupiter and is now on its way out of the solar system carrying a plaque with a message yes that's right pioneer 10 is the first interstellar spacecraft of mankind but only by accident that as it was designed to examine Jupiter and came so close to Jupiter that it was ejected from the solar system by Jupiter's gravity that being the case we thought it would be a nice idea to have a kind of cosmic greeting card on it in the remote contingency that it were at some future time to be intercepted by some advanced civilization and so a six by nine inch gold-anodized aluminum plaque was designed which has a mysterious part and an obvious part to it the mysterious part is the man and the woman to the right of the plaque and they will be mysterious because there will not be men and women anywhere else the rest of the message we think is written in galactic clear in the one language we have in common with everyone else namely the language of science and it essentially indicates the planet from which the spacecraft was launched the star R around which that planet goes out of the several hundred thousand million stars in the galaxy it specifies one and the year of launch out of the ten thousand million year history of the galaxy and it does it by reference to a set of galactic clocks called pulsars well the chance of this being intercepted is small precisely because space is so empty it's traveling so slowly even though it's the fastest thing we've ever launched that it will take it eighty thousand years to get to the nearest star but it's not headed towards the nearest star so it will very likely survive for billions of years but in the dark of interstellar space it will be the oldest artifact of mankind because a billion years from now mountain building and erosion will have destroyed everything on the earth and yet this plaque will remain intact so in fact the plaque may last longer than the earth itself which is really rather a sobering thought yes the Carl thank you very much pleasure

Channel: Neil deGrasse Tyson Videos

Views: 833,199

Rating: 4.9411492 out of 5

Keywords: space, universe, string theory, black holes, astrophysics, astronomy, earth, planet, aliens, mars, neil degrasse tyson, ufo, ufos, extraterrestrials, Carl Sagan (Author), physics, cosmos, new, latest, civilizations, evolution, science, religion, nasa, on, interview, best, argument, answer, reply, awesome, rare, must, watch, tv, star, star wars, life

Id: q-yqVHrQP2Q

Length: 5min 40sec (340 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 22 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Quarz_34]

Carl Sagan is such an inspiring man, he is what I would want for a leader-figure / role

[u/[deleted]]

Great video. Stuff like this is why I study space 🌚

[u/CaerBannog]

Oh, Patrick Moore, how I miss you! Such an extraordinary thinker, a man who inspired generations of kids to become interested in space technology and science, but who at the same time was rather blinkered in his thinking re: UFOs.

He was also a pure example of the British eccentric. Britain not only tolerates eccentrics, but lauds them. Just listen to the way he talks, he's like a Monty Python character! But he was a brilliant man and had a long running (for decades) TV show, and was extremely well respected.

Anyway, great contribution, thanks.

[u/Dibblerius]

Lovely!